St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

July 26, 2009

What is it with this series on David; it goes on and on and on. Just check out the back table in the narthex… six sermons, neatly typed up; and here we are today with number 7. I’ll bet some of you are glad that I’m off on holidays after next Sunday; I mean, eight sermons on Jesus… now that’s understandable, but David????

Mind you… it’s a great story. Young man makes good; comes from nothing and rises to fame and fortune… a crown, a kingdom, a harem, a good reputation… and he plays the harp on top of it all. Everything seems to go David’s way… until last week, right? That’s when things started to fall apart. You remember… he saw her bathing on the roof; it was lust at first sight; he sent, he took… he lay with her; and then had her husband killed off. A taste of royal privilege… which also allowed him to cover the whole thing up.

Except of course, everybody knew. Court gossips are as effective as any supermarket tabloid in getting the word out and around. Everybody knew what was happening… Bathsheba bedded; Uriah murdered; Bathsheba -- #1 wife in the royal harem. Everyone knew that the commandments had been violated… though shalt not envy or lust; though shalt not steal and bear false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery and murder. Everybody knows, although nobody is talking, not out loud at least. Everybody is going along with the cover-up… if they know what’s good for them.

Everybody knows…might bring back, for some of you, memories of a Leonard Cohen song, no? –

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed,

Everybody knows that the war is over,

Everybody knows the good guys lost,

Everybody knows the fight was fixed,

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich,

That's how it goes, everybody knows.

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking,

Everybody knows that the captain lied,

Everybody got this broken feeling,

Like their father or their dog just died,

Everybody knows… that’s how it goes… everybody knows.

Everybody knows that the earth is warming, everybody knows the ice is melting,

Everybody knows that the frogs are dying; everybody knows the salmon are going….

Everybody knows that our Vancouver streets are overflowing the mentally ill, the addicted, the homeless;
everybody knows that First Nations reserves are a mess… and everybody knows that we are dropping a billion dollars on security for the Olympics. But nobody is screaming out loud; nobody is saying anything… though everybody knows.

Everybody knows…. well, you fill in the blanks… it’s how we live. We’re good at the cover-up; and everybody chooses not to know. Everybody, that is, except God. God knows…. “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” And something different starts to happen. A new story is about to unfold, though it all begins so simply: “And the Lord sent Nathan to David.”

Just pause for a moment here… “And the Lord sent Nathan to David.” So simple, so ordinary. If ever you were wondering about how God acts in our world, then remember this sentence. Me, I might have expected some fireworks, some major holy smiting; thunder and lighting, sort of like last night’s storm. But instead, God sends a person, an ordinary human being, sends him to tell a story to the King. That’s how God works in our lives… nothing terribly dramatic, I guess… but it works. A word gets spoken, and the world changes.

It’s a great moment of confrontation, between Nathan and David. Interesting, we don’t really have a clue who Nathan is… sort of sprung up from nowhere. Where did he come from? What was his training, his background? Where did he find the wherewithal to speak up… the Emperor has no clothes; or rather, he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Nathan tells David a parable… the rich man who seizes the one little lamb that his poor neighbour loves. And before he knows what is really going on, David pronounces sentence… “That man should die!!!”…. and Nathan bellows out… “You are the man!” In front of the whole court; everybody hears; everybody knows; and everybody holds their collective breath, wondering what will come next. Somebody, including God, is not willing to go along with the cover-up. The truth gets spoken.

Now, it’s a funny thing how sermons emerge…. you never quite know where the Spirit is going to take you. Years ago, when I was engaged in the Spiritual Exercises of the Jesuits, I was introduced to a somewhat different way of doing Bible study. You had to read a given story several times over; you had to allow your imagination to reconstruct the scene… to smell, hear, taste and see everything that was happening. You had to enter into the story, and discover yourself to be a participant in whatever was happening. It didn’t matter where you found yourself; the important point was that your imagination, or maybe it was the Spirit, would place you where you needed to be.

So take this story, just for instance. What happens if you find yourself standing with Nathan, the prophetic voice that names the cover-up, the one who challenges, even denounces what is, driven by a vision of what might be? Nathan shouts out, “You are the man!” Can you see yourself doing the same thing? . As the Quakers would say, will you speak truth to power? Are you willing to be a whistle-blower?

It’s a risky business… the powers that be, they don’t take kindly to anyone lifting up the rug and showing the world whatever dirt is hidden underneath. If everybody has decided to go along with the cover-up … everybody knows, that’s how it goes….well, it can get a tad difficult if you speak the truth. Just ask John the Baptist… well, no, that’s not possible… he lost his head when he started criticizing the sex life of King Herod. And then there’s the story of Thomas More and Henry VIII… off with his head too. Or Solzhenitsyn daring to write the truth about what was happening in the Soviet Union –off to Siberia for him. And then there’s Aung San Suu Kyi, who just four days ago won the international Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize; that’s in addition to the Nobel Peace Prize she won eighteen years ago. Only trouble, of course, is she that can’t be there in person to receive the award -- she’s still under house arrest for daring to criticize the military generals of Myanmar. In fact she’s been under house arrest for something like 13 years now. Oh, yes, it’s a dicey business, this speaking truth to power.

Now, don’t check out of the sermon at this point, thinking to yourself, “Well this isn’t a sermon about me; I’m no big hero.” This whistle-blowing stuff… it can happen in surprising ways, in unexpected moments. Like, who would have thought that a Senate Committee here in Canada could end up being prophetic; but that’s just what happened when Michael Kirby brought out his report on Mental Illness in Canada… “Out of the Shadows at Last.” Sure changes the way you think about how we care for those who live with mental illness in our society; here in Vancouver. We ended up with a few Nathans in our Homelessness and Mental Health Action Group, right here at St. Andrew’s-Wesley.

Years ago I encountered a small-scale Nathan, in my first year of theological studies, down in Boston. Her name was Denise. You need to drift back to 1973, when inclusive language was still a hot button issue; well now, not even that. Far too many of us were still claiming that when we said “man” we meant everybody; and the male pronoun, “he”… well it included everyone; and it was just too cumbersome, as well as unnecessary, to talk about chairwomen and fishers. But that didn’t work for Denise… when she heard people talking about men, and brotherhood, and Father… well she didn’t feel very included. So she asked our teachers to change, to use inclusive language, to say men and women when they meant everyone. We laughed… chill out, we said, in a patronizing way. So one day Denise showed up in class with a big bell in hand; and every time one of the profs used exclusive language, she would ring the bell. It was funny at first… until Denise started ringing that bell just about every other sentence. Until after five minutes, she was driving us all crazy. But she didn’t stop; the bell went on ringing all day long; and the next day too. Till almost no one would speak to Denise; until the faculty threatened to expel her from class; until, finally, some people decided it might be easier to experiment… using inclusive language was a lot easier than having to put up with the bell. I never really got to like Denise; but I learned to speak differently.

Still too dramatic? Well, I know a woman who finally had the strength to tell her husband, “You can’t hit me anymore; I’m not going to take it. It’s not OK; no more cover-up.” And she found the strength to walk out of an abusive relationship. I know a circle of friends who organized an intervention for a beloved alcoholic… everybody knew, and finally they decided to try and do something about it. Or there’s this young guy I bumped into the other day… great T-shirt, with a big slogan on the front: “Laughter is so gay.” There he was, challenging that putdown language, that dismissive, homophobic slur that is so rampant in school halls… “that’s so gay.” Well, he was tired of pretending that it didn’t hurt… I could almost hear him shouting, “Laughter is so gay; respect is so gay; love is so gay; I am so gay.” Didn’t have a chance to ask if he’d ever been teased, bullied, beaten up; but it was clear that he wasn’t going to put it up with anymore. Everybody knows that’s how it goes… but not any more.

So what does the Lord require of you? – well, we just sang the answer a moment ago: do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. That often begins by refusing to go along with the cover-up anymore; it begins by naming the truth of what is happening. And for some of you this is the place to stand in the story; in fact, there’s probably a time or two when each and every one of us has had to stand as a Nathan. You gird your loins, you speak the truth… whether the issue be climate, tasers, the homeless, abuse, prejudice, First Nations, the people of Guatemala; whether it be at home, the office, the church, your family….

But there’s another character in this story; there’s another place you will find yourself standing… with David. Now me, I think I would rather be Nathan… there’s something rather noble about it all. Sure it can be risky and scary, but you get to feel like one of the righteous, the virtuous, one of the good guys. Though I’m always suspicious about that kind of feeling… feels like we’re being tempted to forget about the part about walking humbly with God; it starts sliding pretty quickly to self-righteousness. You need to be on the alert for this… every one of us.

Because, I think, if we’re honest with ourselves, we carry within us a lot of David moments… oh probably nothing so dramatic as murder, but perhaps some occasional adultery; and certainly a lot of envy, perhaps lust, and a bit of false witness. Nothing spectacular perhaps… if you’re like me, you let your institutions do your sinning for you. The whole globe warming up… don’t look at me! Residential schools… hey, I wasn’t around then. Twenty-five thousand kids dying everyday needlessly, from malnutrition or contaminated water… I mean, what can I do? Okay, okay… I know…this could easily become a guilt fest. Perhaps what I’m really talking about is the temptation to live a covered-up life, not being truthful, not even to oneself. Now that’s scary… and sad.

I think what’s happening in this encounter between David and Nathan goes much deeper than any list of terrible things that are happening in the world. Did you hear what God said to David, speaking through the prophet Nathan? Did you hear God’s bewilderment, God’s sadness… “I gave you…” God says… a calling, a blessing, a throne, several good women… “And I would have given you more,” said God, “if only you had asked.” Asked -- not taken; grabbed, despoiled. And finally, this hard question, “Why have you despised the word of the Lord and done what is evil in God’s sight?” Maybe that’s the real question we need to hear … how have we cut ourselves from God, from the sense of mystery and holiness in the universe? How have we lost touch with our truest selves? How have we forgotten the moral imagination that calls us to ethical and compassionate living? O God, send Nathan to us, to me; please.

Nathan points to David, “You are the man!” – then begins to describe the consequences that will come. He describes these as punishment, but surely he is simply describing the inevitable outcome. If you lie, steal, murder; if you’re unfaithful…. things will fall apart; that’s how life works… maybe not right away, but eventually. No question.

Perhaps the turning point in the story comes when David finally calls out, “I have sinned against the LORD.” He didn’t have to say that; he could have cut off Nathan’s head; kings often do. Truth-telling seems to bring forth angry reactions as often as it does repentance. But I guess if you start to identify with David, you might begin to understand how confession is good for the soul.

I have imagined David later in the evening, pacing on the palace roof top, remembering all that happened; regretting what had happened; wondering what would happen next; wondering, perhaps, how he might find make amends, find peace once again, find himself once again. It is said that that evening he wrote Psalm 51… the inscription to the psalm says, “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” Picture him with harp, in the moonlight, singing, “Have mercy on me, O God, O Gracious One, according to your steadfast love.” Though that’s not quite what the Hebrew suggests… the verb is stronger, more direct… more like “Grace me, God; grace me.” That’s what David was asking; maybe that’s what all of us are hoping for… “Grace, me God; grace me.”

At the very heart of the psalm, at verses ten to twelve, David lets out the deepest cry of his being, “Create in me a clean heart…” Create… in Hebrew… Bara… which is exactly the same verb used in Genesis… and God “bara-ed” the world; and the same Divine Energy, this Holy Love will bara David’s heart; your heart too, if you want.

I remember a song I learned long ago… and it haunts me still; listen:

Create in me a clean heart, O God;

And renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence,

And take not thy holy spirit from me.

Restore t ome the joy of thy salvation,

And sustain me with a willing spirit.

Create in me, a clean heart, O God,

And renew a right spirit within me.

That’s some song; that’s some confession; that’s some hope… for new life; for an authentic life. That’s what David’s calling out for; and so are we.