King David might be the most vivid character in all the Old Testament. The books of 1 and 2 Samuel follow him from boyhood to death, and we really get to know the man. As you read his story, David will thrill you, inspire you, let you down, make good again... he has laugh-out-loud hilarious moments and he has facepalm what-is-he-doing moments. And in the part of the story we catch today, he has had a moment of total moral collapse.
It’s one of those moments when the icy, sickening grip of pure evil seems to have taken hold finally and irrevocably. Biblical characters are real people, so they don’t fit into neat categories of “good-guys” who do no wrong and “bad-guys” who 100% rotten. Still, there comes a time when the sum of a someone’s actions have placed him or her pretty squarely on the side of wickedness. It can happen little by little or it can happen pretty suddenly. It has happened to David.
It began with an unchaste gaze. He saw her on the roof. The right thing to do was to turn away, and maybe say a quick prayer of chaste appreciation: “Wow, God, you sure do some incredible work!” What David did was to find some cover and take a good long unchaste look.
It’s such a little sin, right, just a look? This very thing happens how many millions of times every day, in every town of every nation of the world? But it’s a mistake to downplay the little sins as though they’re no big deal. They don’t stay small. Either you fight them, or they metastasize. Little compromises don’t stay little. Things are soon spinning out of control: David in a panic, desperately trying to cover his tracks, until Uriah her husband - is dead. David has murdered him.
Uriah the Hittite, by the way, is my favorite character in the Bible. If I were capable of great poetry, my masterpiece epic would be about Uriah the Hittite. If I could write a great opera, it would be about him.
It’s such a little sin, right, just a look? This very thing happens how many millions of times every day, in every town of every nation of the world? But it’s a mistake to downplay the little sins as though they’re no big deal. They don’t stay small. Either you fight them, or they metastasize. Little compromises don’t stay little. Things are soon spinning out of control: David in a panic, desperately trying to cover his tracks, until Uriah her husband - is dead. David has murdered him.
Uriah the Hittite, by the way, is my favorite character in the Bible. If I were capable of great poetry, my masterpiece epic would be about Uriah the Hittite. If I could write a great opera, it would be about him.
 |
| The Fall of Uriah the Hittite. |
At this moment in David’s life, we are past the point of excuses and rationalization. It’s gone way too far for any talk about how everybody makes mistakes, and how things aren’t always black and white, and whatever. It’s true that not everything is black and white, but there a great number of things that are black and white. David’s actions are in this category. They are blacker than the blackest night.
Enter Nathan the Prophet for a fantastic scene. If they ever make a movie, I think Nathan will definitely be played by Morgan Freeman. Or possibly Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The thing is, David hasn’t really faced his guilt. He’s doing that thing where you tell yourself that you’re a pretty good guy, all things considered, and sure you’re not perfect but nobody is. He hasn’t faced the horror of his deeds.
Nathan is going to remedy that. He tells this story about a farmer who had one little lamb. The farmer’s rich neighbor has a whole flock of sheep but he wants that one too. So he implements a dastardly scheme to get it. David, oblivious to the irony, grows enraged. Disgusted. He is filled with that wonderful righteous indignation that enjoys looking down on others from a position of moral superiority. Apparently that feeling was around even before it had it’s own website called ‘facebook.’ It’s the kind of righteous indignation that is completely confident that I am above such things, I would never stoop so low, this guy is some kind of monster. David is getting angrier and angrier, blind to the obvious fact that this story is about him. Now comes Nathan’s big moment. I picture him suddenly transforming from the grandfatherly storyteller into the terrifying Prophet, rising up in a whirl of robes, thrusting a finger toward the King, narrowing his eyes and delivering the devastating blow: “You are that man.”
Enter Nathan the Prophet for a fantastic scene. If they ever make a movie, I think Nathan will definitely be played by Morgan Freeman. Or possibly Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The thing is, David hasn’t really faced his guilt. He’s doing that thing where you tell yourself that you’re a pretty good guy, all things considered, and sure you’re not perfect but nobody is. He hasn’t faced the horror of his deeds.
Nathan is going to remedy that. He tells this story about a farmer who had one little lamb. The farmer’s rich neighbor has a whole flock of sheep but he wants that one too. So he implements a dastardly scheme to get it. David, oblivious to the irony, grows enraged. Disgusted. He is filled with that wonderful righteous indignation that enjoys looking down on others from a position of moral superiority. Apparently that feeling was around even before it had it’s own website called ‘facebook.’ It’s the kind of righteous indignation that is completely confident that I am above such things, I would never stoop so low, this guy is some kind of monster. David is getting angrier and angrier, blind to the obvious fact that this story is about him. Now comes Nathan’s big moment. I picture him suddenly transforming from the grandfatherly storyteller into the terrifying Prophet, rising up in a whirl of robes, thrusting a finger toward the King, narrowing his eyes and delivering the devastating blow: “You are that man.”
 |
| YOU ARE THAT MAN. |
 |
| YOU ARE THAT MAN. |
Can't decide on the casting. Could go either way.
That’s delicious, but that’s not even the best part. The best part is that this device is working on two levels. Here’s David listening to a story, filled with hyprocritical disgust, even though he’s in the same boat. But the wise reader knows that, as theater people would say, the fourth wall has been broken: what I mean is, we readers are suddenly part of the story because we realize we’ve been doing just the same thing. We’ve been caught out just like David; the way he was reacting to the story of the rich man and the lamb is just like how we’ve been reacting toward the story of David. He was filled with oblivious self-righteousness toward what he thought was a character in Nathan’s story. As we’ve been reading, haven’t we perhaps felt some self-righteousness about David’s actions? That same disgust, that same confidence that we are certainly above such things? As you read, you’re delighted at the trap Nathan sets, and how blithely David walks into it. But the wise reader will suddenly see Nathan’s gaze turn away from David, break right out of the bounds of the story, and fix you squarely in the eye.
You are that man. You, who find it so easy to condemn a character in a story, confident of your own superiority - you are that man.
Now David gets it, and if we are wise we get it too and take our place standing beside him. No more self-righteousness. No more contempt. No more smug assurance that we aren’t among the sinful people. No more pretending that all the evil in the world is done by people not like us, wicked people not like us. The size of your sins is not the point here. Something as simple as an unchaste look is all it takes for evil to gain a beachhead. We belong with David. If you won’t take your place alongside him in repentance, then you stand off to the side with the other Pharisees. You can amuse yourselves patting each other on the back for being such nice people, and shake your head sadly at David, and me, and all the other sinners who are so different from you. But I don’t recommend it.
Because what happens from here gets right to the heart of the Gospel. In repentance, David finds freedom and even happiness. This is one of those things that doesn’t make sense from the outside, only once you've experienced it from the inside. You know how from the outside, people often think Catholicism is all about guilt and feeling bad about yourself? But from the inside - and I hope you know this from experience - that’s just laughably off target. Acknowledging sin doesn’t bring guilt, it releases you from it. That’s why we start off the Mass by saying “let us acknowledge our sins and so prepare ourselves to celebrate these sacred mysteries.” Acknowledging our need for mercy frees us to celebrate! You know who can’t celebrate? Pharisees. The self-righteous. That elder brother of the Prodigal Son who refused to come in to the party. Why can’t they celebrate? No repentance.
I can’t put it any better than David himself in Psalm 31: “Happy the man whose sin is forgiven.”
If there could possibly be a more compelling image of repentance, we get it in Luke’s Gospel as this crazy, wonderful, beautiful woman crashes the party and starts dumping expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet. The Jerusalem Bible translation is my favorite: it says this is a woman “who had a bad name in the town.” They’re already shocked when she walks in the door. She doesn’t belong here, this is for the nice people, has she no shame?
Well... actually, no. She doesn’t have shame because she does have repentance. She’s the one person in the room who really ‘gets’ Jesus, and what His Gospel means. Jesus is so patient with the others, He tries to explain it to them, but how He must have loved to look in the eyes of this girl and know in her smile that here, finally, is someone who gets me!
It’s a terrible burden to think you’re better than other people. We do it because we’re afraid of what it will mean to take our place with those awful wicked sinners. But the plain fact is, we belong there, and when we admit it we find out that our fears were misplaced. Freedom. Celebration. That’s the fruit of repentance. Standing with the Pharisees thinking we’re better than that, don’t need exactly that same mercy… that’s what we should be afraid of.
You are that man. You, who find it so easy to condemn a character in a story, confident of your own superiority - you are that man.
Now David gets it, and if we are wise we get it too and take our place standing beside him. No more self-righteousness. No more contempt. No more smug assurance that we aren’t among the sinful people. No more pretending that all the evil in the world is done by people not like us, wicked people not like us. The size of your sins is not the point here. Something as simple as an unchaste look is all it takes for evil to gain a beachhead. We belong with David. If you won’t take your place alongside him in repentance, then you stand off to the side with the other Pharisees. You can amuse yourselves patting each other on the back for being such nice people, and shake your head sadly at David, and me, and all the other sinners who are so different from you. But I don’t recommend it.
Because what happens from here gets right to the heart of the Gospel. In repentance, David finds freedom and even happiness. This is one of those things that doesn’t make sense from the outside, only once you've experienced it from the inside. You know how from the outside, people often think Catholicism is all about guilt and feeling bad about yourself? But from the inside - and I hope you know this from experience - that’s just laughably off target. Acknowledging sin doesn’t bring guilt, it releases you from it. That’s why we start off the Mass by saying “let us acknowledge our sins and so prepare ourselves to celebrate these sacred mysteries.” Acknowledging our need for mercy frees us to celebrate! You know who can’t celebrate? Pharisees. The self-righteous. That elder brother of the Prodigal Son who refused to come in to the party. Why can’t they celebrate? No repentance.
I can’t put it any better than David himself in Psalm 31: “Happy the man whose sin is forgiven.”
If there could possibly be a more compelling image of repentance, we get it in Luke’s Gospel as this crazy, wonderful, beautiful woman crashes the party and starts dumping expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet. The Jerusalem Bible translation is my favorite: it says this is a woman “who had a bad name in the town.” They’re already shocked when she walks in the door. She doesn’t belong here, this is for the nice people, has she no shame?
Well... actually, no. She doesn’t have shame because she does have repentance. She’s the one person in the room who really ‘gets’ Jesus, and what His Gospel means. Jesus is so patient with the others, He tries to explain it to them, but how He must have loved to look in the eyes of this girl and know in her smile that here, finally, is someone who gets me!
It’s a terrible burden to think you’re better than other people. We do it because we’re afraid of what it will mean to take our place with those awful wicked sinners. But the plain fact is, we belong there, and when we admit it we find out that our fears were misplaced. Freedom. Celebration. That’s the fruit of repentance. Standing with the Pharisees thinking we’re better than that, don’t need exactly that same mercy… that’s what we should be afraid of.
Comments
Post a Comment