2 Samuel 11:1-15
Sunday, August 5, 2018
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS
Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
Preachers don’t choose to preach on this text from 2 Samuel very often. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon on it and I know for a fact I’ve never preached it before. Not because of its PG-13 content- after all, if we can’t talk about the hard stuff here, where ARE we going to talk about it? The problem with this text, for me at least, is that the Good News is hard to find. And the whole point of preaching is supposed to be about proclaiming Good News, not bad.
But this is a solidly Bad News text. It really is. Which means artists have been sort of fascinated by it over the years. Have you ever noticed how artists never shy away from grappling with the Bad News texts? Thank God for artists.
Sometimes they get the details wrong….for example, Leonard Cohen tells us that David saw Bathsheba “bathing on the roof” but the text doesn't say that. In fact, the only person on the roof in this story is the King, using his high vantage point to invade Bathsheba’s privacy.
Since then, Bathsheba has been stripped naked for the whole world to see - no roofs required. The King is not the only man who wanted to invade her privacy….a whole host of European male painters have also commodified her body for the whole world to use. A one-dimensional Everywoman; her body is objectified but her voice is silent.
Even in this morning’s text, we hear her speak only one time, when she writes to the King to say, “I am pregnant.” We aren’t told how she feels about being the object of the King’s desire. What we do know is that she wasn’t given any choice in the matter. Women weren’t allowed to say no to powerful men, especially God-ordained rulers.
The fact that Bathsheba’s name is mentioned at all means that those who preserved these stories believed she was very important. After all, as the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney points out, only 9% of the people named in the Hebrew Scriptures are women. [1] Her story matters, even as it is incomplete.
Bathsheba is not the only one-dimensional character in this text. The whole thing reads a bit like a morality play with vastly oversimplified characters.
First, we have David, starring in the role of the Bad King. The Rev. Dr. Gennifer Benjamin Brooks points out that even in the first verse we see that David is a Bad King. He’s not doing what he’s supposed to do. [2] It’s the time of the year when “kings go out to battle,” but where is this particular King? At home, safely tucked into the confines of his palace. He is not following the rules. He’s not doing his job.
But he is acting out the role of a king. Remember when the prophet Samuel warned the people about kings? He told them what would happen: a king will take your sons and get them killed in battle. He will take your daughters to “be perfumers”. He’ll take your money, your servants, your livestock, and more. [3]
So David plays the role of the Biblical King well. He takes and takes. When he sees a woman that he wants, he takes, seizes, possesses, grabs. Furthermore, when he’s caught he knows how to use his power to quietly “take care of things.” In this particular instance, he’s even willing to commit murder to make sure his reputation isn’t harmed.
Juxtaposed with David, of course, is Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, who plays the role of the Good Guy. Uriah IS where he’s supposed to be: out on the battlefield like a good soldier. And when the King summons him home to rest, he refuses to even go home to his wife. “How could I go home and sleep with my wife in our warm, safe bed when my fellow soldiers are sleeping in the mud tonight?” Uriah is such a tragic figure - righteous and used. One of those Good Guys who doesn’t stand a chance against the Big Bad King.
The Bad Guy gets his way, the Good Guy is brutally murdered, and we are left with a bereaved widow, who has been silenced. There’s no happy ending to this Bad News text. Plus, God isn’t even mentioned in it at all.
So why is it here? And why are hearing it today? Well, it’s here, I think, because of what comes later. Bathsheba may be silenced in the short term, but she plays a pivotal role in the story of Israel. The second child she has with David is named Solomon. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?
And if you’d like to hear Bathsheba’s voice, I encourage you to read the first two chapters of 1st Kings. There, she deftly maneuvers for political power and secures the kingship for Solomon. As the Queen Mother she had unfettered access to the halls of power in ancient Israel. And her name is not forgotten. She is one of the four women who makes it into the genealogy of Jesus Christ at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew. Though she is not named (that would have been nice), she IS right there, “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah” - that’s her. She’s there. She’s still standing. The story of Jesus doesn’t happen without her.
And I think, perhaps, if there IS any Good News to be found in this story it has something to do with just that. It’s here. It hasn’t been erased. It’s an integral part of the long arc of Biblical history. It matters. Without it, the entire story of our faith is not the same.
God doesn’t just show up in the nice stories with happy endings. God is also tangled up in the stories of violence and horror.
And that means that God is all tangled up in OUR Bad News stories, too. Survivors of sexual violence, women who are silenced, men who use their power for evil….they’re all right here in the pages of our sacred texts. And they’re all right here in our world, too.
The Bible is not just stories that happened long ago in a galaxy far far away. The story of God’s activity in our beautiful and messed-up world is still unfolding here and now. God is still speaking. And we honor God’s voice when we are still willing to listen and bear witness to the stories...even the ones that seem like they’re just Bad News.
NOTES:
[3] See 1 Samuel 8.
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