To be Held | 2 Samuel 11:1-5; 26-27; 12:1-9Rev. Taylor Lewis Guthrie Hartman

First Presbyterian Church, Statesboro, GAOctober 21, 2018

This is an uncomfortable story. The word “uncomfortable” doesn’t do it justice. It is…horrific?

Violent? Unconscionable? It is…Scripture which is to say Holy Word which is to say worth our

attention. It could’ve been cut from canon but it wasn’t. Instead, it remained and generations of

faithful folks have attempted to make sense of it ever since.

Much has been said of the characters - of Bathsheba, of David, Uriah, and Nathan and anytime

much has been said, or learned, or sunk into our memories, it is worth unearthing and examining.

Because truthfully, with all that was said about these characters, so much more has been unsaid,

especially about the assault David inflicted on Bathsheba and the ways we insinuate Bathsheba’s guilt

by calling this story “David commits adultery,” a misnomer for a most egregious crime. Many of us

were taught to find fault with Bathsheba, done by simply questioning her location on the roof and

the commonplace and law-bound practice of ritual bathing, done in the most practical of places

where privacy had never been a prior problem. There are things taught with words and then things

taught with how the words are used. And yet - the Word - holy and wholly ours - includes this story

so we shall return to it, yet again, the dawn of the new day illuminating our way.

Let us remember - I and II Samuel is “a sweeping narrative that stretches from Hannah and the birth

of her child Samuel in the time of the judges, all the way to Bathsheba and the ascension of her child

Solomon to the throne. (We will learn about Solomon next week.) It is the tale of Israel’s transition

from an affiliation of tribes to a centralized state with a king. The monarchy, though longed for by

the people, centralized power and enshrined oppressive social relationships. [But] God’s desire is that

they would live in a new way, as God’s own people, with their lives and world shaped not by their

own whims, or determined by everyone else’s patterns. I and II Samuel tell of one transition point in

[Israel’s] great journey, the move from each one doing what is right in their own eyes, to the hope of

being bound together as one people.”1

Throughout this story, David is the driving character, the one at the heart of Israel’s hope. Except for

Jesus, there is no other person in all of Scripture as fully drawn as David. We see it all - the breadth

and depth and complicated bits of being human. My friend and fellow pastor, Sarah Wiles, helps me

understand that. She wrote, “We see him in beauty and power, and in defeat and despair. We see him

succeed wildly and fail profoundly. [He was] beloved and charismatic. He was the one everyone

loved to love. He was beautiful and strong and flawed. He was violent, and destructive, and tender,

and a singer of songs. David was just a human, and, apparently, a friend of God.”2

“Yes, but…” we might say. How can he be all of this and still a friend of God? We oscillate between “I

don’t like David!” and “But isn’t David a man after God’s own heart?.” We don’t want David to be

the brutal perpetrator because if he is, then how can he be the faithful writer of one of our most

beloved books of Scripture? How can he be the valiant warrior or the sweet shepherd or…part of our

Lord and Savior’s lineage? It hurts us to see David this full, this deep, this flawed. It hurts when we

see behind the curtain, so to say. And yet…God is faithful, even when David isn’t.

God is faithful and so sends Nathan to call David on his mess. There is something satisfying in

Nathan’s parable and condemnation, isn’t there? It feels like watching the teacher scold the kids in

front of you for being loud in the hallway - a thing you wanted to complain about but didn’t want

1 Just as Pastor Dan is in a preaching study group, I am, too. Much of my learning about 2 Samuel comes from my friend Sarah Wiles, pastor at Bethany Presbyterian in Tacoma, WA. This is from her paper on 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 from our By the Vine Preaching Group, May 2017.2 Wiles.

to cause a scene. It is a step removed and so it feels good, it feels righteous. But for David? Nathan

tells him a parable of a man taking something that wasn’t his and David is incensed at the idea,

calling for the man’s death and fourfold payback. Nathan exclaims, “YOU are the man!” and I

imagine David’s eyes widen and heart sink. To be so blind or which is to say, to be so human as to

not see our own sin.

Do you know what the name “Nathan” means in Hebrew? It is the verb “to give” - nat-an.

Nathan gives a painful and honest gift: Come and be held - held to account which is to say held by

God’s love. Come and close the gap widened by your actions. And while it feels good to watch this kind

of gift from afar, it hurts up close, doesn’t it? Just as vividly as I can remember the feeling of

righteousness watching my teacher rebuke others in the school line, I can feel the guilt tearing my

insides apart as I sat the kitchen table, being held to account by my parents. The gap feels like a gulf

after that, doesn’t it? Once we see what we’ve done and we know the gravitas of it…once someone’s

given us the gift of vision to see the fullness of it.

When David learns of how his rape of Bathsheba and his subsequent murder of her husband and his

soldier, Uriah, has displeased the Lord, he turns to his truest and most trusted response: singing a

song of repentance which is to say, a song of hope. The undertone is clear, isn’t it?

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

(You love me still.)You desire truth in the inward being;

therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. (You love me still.)

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

(You love me still.)Do not cast me away from your presence,

and do not take your holy spirit from me.

(You love me still.)Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and sustain in me a willing spirit. (You love me still.)

God knew all of David - his recklessness and devotion, his friendship and loyalty and deceit. His

outward beauty and his tortured interior life. David was a warrior, a poet, a murderer, a rapist, a

worshipper of God. David was all of this and more than Scripture tells us. Who isn’t the sum of their

parts? Who isn’t many things all at once? I am a child of God and also a child of a blended family. I

have yelled at my children and held them in the crook of my arm, smelling the tops of their heads. I

have swelled with joy and contended with bouts of depression since I was a teenager. I am an artist

and a preacher and a wife and a friend and a daughter and I can be loud and silent and sweet and

bitter and so it is. I come to the end and I am still with God.3 Where can I go from your spirit? Or

where can I flee from your presence? For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together

in my mother’s womb.4

Do you know what the name “David” means in Hebrew? It comes from the word “beloved.” In your

book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. Do you know

what the name “Bathsheba” means in Hebrew? Scholars aren’t confident on a translation and so it

varies from “daughter of seven” to “seven year child” to “daughter of an oath” and yet - I am

fearfully and wonderfully made, wonderful are your works, that I know very well.

The days of pain and hurt and harm. The days of singing songs of praise and marveling at wondrous

works. The fullness of days which is to say one’s whole life - all of them - and God loved David still.

The days of suffering and recovery and grieving. The days of losing a child and the days not recorded

yet known by God alone - all of them - and God loved Bathsheba still. The days we speak about and

3 Again, gratitude to Sarah Wiles for helping me reckon with this truth. I borrowed the format of her reflection to cast my own.4 Selections from Psalm 139

the days secreted to the grave - all of them - and God loves you still. And God loves me still. And so

we say: thanks be, thanks be, thanks be. Amen.