2 Samuel 11:26 - 12:15a

The prophet Nathan had a message for his king.  “You’ve done something that you know is unacceptable, and it’s time to come clean.”  And I’ll admit my first reaction is “Thank God it didn’t have to be me!”  Thank God I’ve never been called to confront somebody in authority like that!  I don’t know for certain that I never will, but I kind of hope not because I’m just not sure I have it in me.  A person like me wonders “Where in the world did Nathan get the courage to deliver this message?!  And how did he know David wasn’t too far gone to hear it?”  There’s an ancient rabbinic saying: “Sin enters the house as a guest, but soon becomes the master.”  Or if you like “Evil has a tendency to snowball out of your control – you can start it rolling but you aren’t going to choose when and where it stops.”  I’d say the king was definitely no longer in control at this point.

 This is, after all, how David, greatest and most heroic figure in Israel’s entire monarchy, became a murderer.  Once he took the first step with Bathsheba, nothing he could do seemed worse to him than getting caught, than having other people see his humanity and weakness.  So he wound up digging the hole deeper and deeper to try to keep the truth hidden, justifying every act to himself as necessary to serve the greater good.  “Well I can’t have the people know that their anointed king is an adulterer – it would cause moral and religious chaos.  I can’t let them think I took a woman by force from her husband – people would lose all respect for my leadership.  Now, I can’t just kill an innocent man – but I can cook up a scenario where someone else does it for me.  After all I’m in charge, I make the rules, and that’s my prerogative.”  Eventually David even started believing his own lies.

But God – without any of the same bias, without any of the same fear or need for self-preservation – looks at this behavior and laments.  What David has done is evil, and no one, not even a king of Israel has the authority to say otherwise.  It is not for us to make those kinds of decisions, but Lord help us, it seems embedded within our broken human nature to try.

Look, God set the stars in the heavens, God determined the limits of the ocean!  God is the author of all creation.  God is the foundation and indeed the definition of what is right and what is wrong, what we will call good and what we will call bad . . . and yet, who among us has never cut corners and then justified it to him or herself as acceptable (just this once) because “Well, it’s the only way I can manage.”  Because “Well, everyone else does it, it’s not such a big deal.”  Because, “I know I’m not a bad person.  I wouldn’t normally do something like this, so I can let it slide this time.”  And why is it so easy to swallow our own excuses but then turn around and condemn others when we see them doing the same thing?  People who don’t tell the whole truth are liars.  People who don’t practice charity are coldhearted materialists.  People who take what they haven’t earned are thieves.  Of course, if we ever do those things, we must have had good reason.  We may be experts at identifying sin in the world, but apparently not in the mirror. 

So when Nathan went to confront David, he knew the direct approach was not going to get anywhere.  David was too entrenched in his excuses to even hear the accusation.  Nathan needed to pull David outside of himself, beyond his blinders to a place where he could get an honest perspective.  He needed to show him what was in the mirror before telling him who was standing in front of it.  And so the parable – a common tool in Jesus’ ministry, but a rare and almost unique occurrence in the Old Testament.  Through the story about the stolen sheep, David suddenly is able to view himself the way others do, to look at his own actions without the self-preferential bias, to see what the Lord sees.  And it humbles him.  His defenses crumble and he no longer wants to fight the truth.  What would happen if we all let go of the act, dropped our masks, gave each other an honest look at who we really are?

 There’s a wonderful story Donald Miller tells in his book Blue Like Jazz where he and a group of Christian friends decide to set up a confession booth on Reed College campus in Oregon.  If you’re not familiar with Reed, it’s an extremely secular and liberal institution, in fact it was named "the college where students are most likely to ignore God” by the Princeton Review.  And to make it more interesting, Miller’s friends plan this in the middle of Ren Faire, which is a huge, wild, highly questionable party the students throw themselves every year.  It’s the sort of thing the school doesn’t even try to stop; they just hire security guards and medics to be on standby to prevent any permanent damage.  Are we clear about what is going on at this party?  So Miller and company have the brilliant and audacious idea of plunking a confession booth right in the middle of all that. . . but the twist is they decide “We are not going to accept confessions. We are going to confess to them. We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry. We will apologize for the Crusades, we will apologize for televangelists, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely, we will ask them to forgive us, and we will tell them that in our selfishness, we have misrepresented Jesus on this campus. We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them."

          And incredibly, partiers eventually do start showing up at the booth.  Miller recounts how he awkwardly explained the concept to his first “customer” and then got up the courage to make his confession: that he doesn’t do hardly anything for the poor and the downtrodden, that he’s generally angry and combative toward people who persecute him, that he mixes his politics with religion and can’t seem to separate his own agenda from Christ’s simple message.  All of this in opposition to who he knows Jesus really is and what he knows a Christian is really supposed to be.  He says he’s sorry for doing such a terrible job of showing the world God’s love.  And the student on the other side of the booth, who has become Miller’s de facto priest, with tears welling up in his eyes, tells him “I forgive you.”

It seems so strange, so amazing, and so incredible . . . but in another sense, it is so very natural.  Sincere confession allows forgiveness to happen.  And forgiveness allows relationships to move forward.  When David comes to his senses, the first thing he says is “I have sinned against the Lord – I wrongly put myself in God’s place, telling myself and others that what I did was acceptable.”  The Lord’s answer through Nathan is no less swift: “You are forgiven.  The Lord has put away your sin.”  When we drop the act, stop pretending, that’s when we start truly living.  Now, we cannot ignore that in spite of God’s mercy, the results of David’s sin remain.  Uriah was still dead, Bathsheba had still been abused, and David’s family would face continuing repercussions – not least of which being his newest child would not survive.  The legacy of the psalmist, champion, and paragon of Israel forever bears this black mark.  Yet David is the anointed one of God, the heroic warrior, the celebrated ancestor of Jesus, whereas so many of the kings who followed in both Judah and Israel are remembered only for leading people astray and setting new records in wrongdoing.  What separates him from them is not his innocence or his perfection, but the humility to admit his mistakes.  

We likewise have to learn to live in between grace and consequence, knowing we’ve done wrong and we may not be able to take it back.  But forgiveness lets us move forward, ensures that past sin and failures don’t define who we are.  Paul in Romans 5 & 6 gives us a beautiful theological account of this redemption.  Comparing Adam and Christ as two models or templates he says “Look, you used to reflect Adam and the way he did things – disobedient, prideful, competing with God.  Everything bad you did simply spread and grew worse.  You were always stuck trying to justify yourself, because you could never live up to expectations.  But God made a way to break you out of that cycle; Adam isn’t your namesake anymore.  You died to that reality and God raised you into a new life.  You reflect the second man now, Jesus Christ, who is the very image of God in us.”  And suddenly, just like David, we are able to see ourselves more clearly, and share our lives more honestly.  We have had the mirror held up in front of us and instead of wanting to make excuses and hide the imperfections, we can be grateful for the truth. 

The prophet Nathan had a message for his king.  “You’ve done something that you know is unacceptable, and it’s time to come clean.”  But it was not a message of condemnation.  It was an opportunity for David to let down his guard, remember what God intended for him, and turn back toward that life.  Thanks be to God that we are invited to do the same.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.