18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
II Samuel 11:26-12:13a
August 2, 2009Bible Pictures
It was a prized possession in my growing-up years – easily as precious as my baseball card collection and the neckerchief slide I made from the vertebra of a cow whose skeleton I came across on a hike. It was bound in leather and had a zipper closure. From the zipper hung a golden cross, which broke off after a few years and had to be replaced with a paper clip. I took it to church with me every Sunday, as much for effect as out of piety. A guy looks pretty cool carrying a leather-bound Bible to church – with a zipper and his own name embossed in gold right under the words Holy Bible – King James Version. A truly cool guy, of course, would dangle his Bible from the tiny cross attached to the zipper. That would be the epitome of cool to a five-year-old.
I was not a fluent reader when I received this Bible from my Aunt Ida Mae, but I was very keen on the pictures it contained. Paintings, I suppose they were, reproduced in full color and scattered amongst the hundreds of pages of onion skin. It was easy to find the pictures. They were printed on thicker paper than the text. I could easily press my thumb against the gilded edges and fan the pages till I felt the heavier stock. I could do this with my eyes closed, or better still, with my eyes on the preacher during worship, giving the impression of rapt attention.
One of the pictures in that Bible appeared in the book of Second Samuel. It showed a white-haired man standing on the steps of what is clearly a royal palace. He has a fierce look in his eye and he’s pointing toward a figure several steps above him, a younger man with handsome features, seated on a fancy chair which even I could tell was a throne. The index finger on the old man’s right hand appears abnormally long, and is pointed straight at the younger man, like Agent 007’s Walther PPK. The younger man looks surprised, as though it were a gun appointed at him, and not just a finger.
As I say, I wasn’t much of a reader at the time, but I could read the caption at the bottom of that picture: Thou Art the Man.
Some time later, perhaps during Sunday School, I was either told or figured out on my own that the picture was an illustration of today’s Old Testament reading, the dramatic culmination of those events we read about last week.
Last week we heard how King David, to use the modern euphemism, “had an affair” with a beautiful woman named Bathsheba, the wife of one of his army officers, a fellow named Uriah. Bathsheba became pregnant, and Uriah wouldn’t go home to “wash his feet” (How’s that for a euphemism!), so David arranged to have him killed in battle. David then took Bathsheba into his harem, made her “wife number one,” and figured that by the time the baby came, no one would be the wiser.
What David didn’t take into account was Nathan, the prophet of the Lord, and the fact that “Human beings look upon outward appearances, but the Lord looks upon the heart” (I Samuel 16:7). That’s what God told Samuel back in I Samuel 16, when the Lord dispatched him to Bethlehem to choose the next king from amongst the sons of Jesse. Samuel lined Jesse’s boys up an looked them over. They were impressive, but none of them seemed right.
“Got any more sons?” Samuel asked Jesse.
“Just the youngest, David. He’s out in the field minding the livestock.”
“Bring him here,” Samuel commanded. David was not bad-looking back then, but he was young and scrawny and redolent of sheep manure. “This is the one!” Samuel had said. Believe it or not, this is God’s chosen one, the next king of Israel. Sonny, Thou art the man.”
That was a long time ago – years before this scene depicted so memorably in my leather-bound, zipper-sided, very cool Bible. A lot of water had passed under the bridge since then. A lot of battles fought. A lot of men killed. A lot of blood shed.
David is no longer the valiant youth anointed by Samuel to do great things -- the brilliant strategist, the daring guerrilla fighter. Now he’s one of those pot-bellied generals who fights battles by firing communiqués to his field commanders. A paper general, not the blood-and-guts variety. He’s sunk so low, he commits adultery and murder without the faintest inkling of remorse.
How did he get to this point? When did he go blind?
I suppose the power of his position might have gone to his head. That happens today, doesn’t it? Somebody rises from the ranks and comes to believe the rules don’t apply to him or her. I suppose psychiatrists might talk of "compartmentalization" or "psychic numbing," or "denial." All I know is, David has come a long way from those days keeping his father’s sheep, and an even longer way from the God who looked into this heart and decided he had the right stuff to be Israel’s king.
Grandpa David lost his moral vision, but he’s not alone. Bad vision runs in the family. You and I don’t see too well, either. We don’t see the faces of homeless people. We don’t see how our lifestyles contribute to global warming. Modern life tends to cut us off from one another and from the consequences of our actions. We learn to look away, to affect a kind of blindness.
When did we see you hungry or naked or thirsty or in prison? ask the people in Matthew 25. That’s just the point, the Lord replies. You didn’t see. Because you didn’t see the least of these, my children, you didn’t see me. You were so busy living the good life, you lost sight of me. To see me, you have to make the connection between me and your neighbors.
David doesn’t make the connection. His sins are a lot more dramatic than ours, but his blindness is much the same.
It takes a simple story to open David’s eyes, a story told by the prophet Nathan, the same Nathan who anointed David king back when David was just a shepherd boy.
It’s a silly story, really. Schmaltzy. Sentimental. It’s about a poor man and a rich man. The poor man has this darling wee lamb which ends up as the main dish at the rich man’s dinner party. Hardly the most subtle or sophisticated story in scripture. Yet it brings us to this moment, this moment of prophetic power, this moment of dramatic self-recognition.
"As the Lord lives," David says to Nathan. "the man who has done this deserves to die . . ."
"Thou art the man."
Nathan has to spell it out for David. He reminds him how God choose him, how God loved him, how God counted on him to live up to his calling. "You despised the word of the Lord," Nathan tells him. God is angry, to be sure, but one gets the feeling that more than anything else, God is so very disappointed. God had such high hopes for David.
I remember looking at this scene in my deluxe, illustrated, very cool Bible, and thinking "Thank God that old man isn’t pointing his bony old finger at me." As I grew older I realized that, in a way, he is.
Thou art the man who falls short of God’s high calling. Thou art the woman who fails to love the world for Christ’s sake. Thou are the disciple who misses the connections.
This scene in David’s court reminds me of another scene in my deluxe Bible. I found in toward the back, in the Gospel of Matthew. It takes place in the courtyard of the High Priest. A man is standing by a charcoal fire, warming his hands, and a person is pointing toward him. Not a old man this time, but a young woman. She’s pointing at him with a long index finger, and we all know what’s she’s saying.
"You’re one of Jesus’ disciples, aren’t you?" The man, of course, is Peter, and the young woman is the servant of the High Priest. Peter is saying "No, I’m not the man. I’m no disciple of Jesus!
"Yes you are. I saw you in the garden! Thou art the man!"
And the caption at to bottom of the picture? "At that moment the cock crowed" (Matthew 26:74).
Tradition has it that after Nathan left, David sat down and penned Psalm 51. We sang it this morning.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.I am the man in the story, David finally admits. I see that now. But I am also the boy you called to serve you all my days, the one you promised to love no matter what. I am the man, and you are the God whose steadfast love endures forever.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain me with a willing spirit.
Although you and I have not broken God’s heart in precisely the same ways as David, our stories are similar enough to share his prayer. We are the ones who have been called and we are the ones who have fallen short. The finger points at us.
Of all the pictures in that Bible of mine, the one I liked the best was the depiction of the prodigal son being welcomed home. The father’s arms are open wide. The ragged, foolish, footsore prodigal is stumbling toward them.
The prodigal can’t believe it. Not cast away, but restored. Not rejected, but sustained. David had a word for it: the joy of God’s salvation. It’s the wonder of the gospel and the promise of the God whose finger points, but whose arms embrace.
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