Sermon Preached on July 25th, 2021 at Stockbridge Presbyterian Church
I once read the mark of a great friend is someone that will come over and sit on the kitchen floor with a cup of coffee. There is no pretension, no agenda, no need for you to worry about what they think of you. They are with you in the muck of things, that person will sit in the presence of the mess and just be there.
Think about the time when you were feeling like everything was falling apart around you.
What was happening? Who was there? How did it feel? How do you feel about it now?
Scriptures don’t shy away from the mess that we humans get into. Somewhere in the mess of life, God still seems to “Work together all things for good.” and God loves us no matter how far we go.
God had big plans for David since he was a boy. He was given the ability to speak up and use his strength to knock over Goliath. God chose this scrawny shepherd boy to be anointed as King, one after God’s own heart.
David is attributed as the author of so many psalms because of his skill in poetry and music as a man who played the harp and lyre.
Today’s story is one that is a mess. Up until chapter 11 David seemed to follow God’s heart and God’s will do the best of his ability. He took the Ark of the Covenant into battle, he resisted temptation to even kill his greatest enemy Saul because Saul was anointed by God. But then we reach today’s story. It is uncomfortable, it is messy, it is down right appalling the actions that David takes but it is important that the Word of God reaches through the mess.
(Common English Bible- 2 Samuel 11:1-15)
11 In the spring, when kings go off to war, David sent Joab, along with his servants and all the Israelites, and they destroyed the Ammonites, attacking the city of Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2 One evening, David got up from his couch and was pacing back and forth on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.3 David sent someone and inquired about the woman. The report came back: “Isn’t this Eliam’s daughter Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” 4 So David sent messengers to take her. When she came to him, he had sex with her. (Now she had been purifying herself after her monthly period.) Then she returned home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
6 Then David sent a message to Joab: “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” So Joab sent Uriah to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked about the welfare of Joab and the army and how the battle was going.8 Then David told Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.”
Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him.9 However, Uriah slept at the palace entrance with all his master’s servants. He didn’t go down to his own house. 10 David was told, “Uriah didn’t go down to his own house,” so David asked Uriah, “Haven’t you just returned from a journey? Why didn’t you go home?”
11 “The chest and Israel and Judah are all living in tents,” Uriah told David. “And my master Joab and my master’s troops are camping in the open field. How could I go home and eat, drink, and have sex with my wife? I swear on your very life, I will not do that!”
12 Then David told Uriah, “Stay here one more day. Tomorrow I’ll send you back.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day. The next day13 David called for him, and he ate and drank, and David got him drunk. In the evening Uriah went out to sleep in the same place, alongside his master’s servants, but he did not go down to his own home.
14 The next morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.15 He wrote in the letter, “Place Uriah at the front of the fiercest battle, and then pull back from him so that he will be struck down and die.”
This too is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Prayer--God as we have heard the words of your servant David who despite the mess he created may we hear what is is you are saying to us today about how you are with us in and through our mess in life. Amen.
We are presented with a few characters that have lives that completely change in these moments in the story.
David, an upstanding, great King did the right things but then stayed back from battle this one time and while at home he fell under temptation of lust. He then made several decisions that forced a mess upon his own life and in turn completely changed the life of Uriah and Bathsheba.
Bathsheba doesn’t have much mention of her agency in the story, she was forced to the palace after being seen in the privacy of her own home bathing. She was forced by David and had no control over her situation. She became pregnant and had to live with what was to come next. Her mess was forced upon her, she probably felt helpless and hopeless through this story. Thankfully her story doesn’t end here. It doesn’t end in complete shame.
Then Uriah, a man who was a warrior. Even under orders of the king He didn’t go to his wife because the law of God was to stay with his fellow soldiers who didn’t get a chance to be with their wives. Uriah was condemned to death on the battlefield simply because of the actions of another man in greater power.
We are called to learn from not only the beautiful stories of scripture but the powerful ways in which sin drives our actions to not only hurt ourselves and relationship to God but our actions can hurt or destroy the lives of others.
We may not have raped or murdered but we have certainly used others for our benefit at times in our lives.
We may not have acted upon things but the lust in our heart and lives has caused strain on our relationship with God and others.
We have all lived messy lives that are not perfect and have times where we are not proud.
Here is the good news from this story.
God works together all things for good for those who loves him… as Paul remarked.
David had a prophet, mentor, friend in Nathan and if you keep reading Nathan rebukes the action of David by teaching in a parable. David opens his eyes to the mess he created and repents.
David does not totally disregard Bathsheba, he takes her into the court and has other children with her and one of those children became the next king Solomon, the one who was wise and filled with heart.
Author Susan McGeowan offers a study guide about Bathsheba, one that outlines the different interpretations of her character, but comes to the conclusion that “She must have been an amazing woman. Despite their inauspicious beginning, despite her being the focal point for a time in David’s life of his most horrible sin, she remained a powerful and favored influence over him through the remainder of his life - as evidence by their final recorded time together when she secures Solomon’s future as the next king of Israel.”
David takes a look at the mess of his life and tries to redeem himself through repentance he wrote a Psalm that speaks to the depth of his repentant spirit in Psalm 51.
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place.
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you.
14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.
18 May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar.
David understood what he did not only to one but too many others from his position of power.
Uriah doesn’t have much of a voice in this but he dies a hero's death and is blameless under God.
God moved through the mess of each of their lives and loved them through it. God was persistent and patient. God was there allowing for each person to work through their mess and lean on the promises of God.
There isn’t much redeemable qualities to a story of rape and murder but it isn’t the whole story and certainly isn’t the end of the story.
There are plenty of us who have grown up in the church that struggle with the notion that church is the place you go once you have figured out your mess.
This is not true.
Church is the place you go to help you through the mess of life. You are not perfect. I am not perfect. But here we are, coming together, doing the work, living out our messy lives.
A question that came up in women’s bible study while reading the Book of Hosea was
“Why do we have to hit rock bottom before we look up?”
There are times in our lives we think we have it all together and many times we think we did it on our own. Or many times when the good happens it is certainly easy to thank God.
But we are called to also thank God for loving us through our mess.
That mess may be health problems, it may be addiction, it may be desire, it may be mental health.
The good news is God is there, God is here, God is waiting for us to look up? To take a beat, to be thankful in the mess.
To listen to people in our lives like Nathan who are rebuking our actions.
To know that God does not desire our pain but guides us to find ways to glorify God through the pain that might be happening to us or around us. God does not desire for our harm but is holding us as harm is being done to us.
God is a God who loves us no matter what. That is grace. Grace is hard to accept sometimes because in our mess the hardest person to forgive is many times ourselves. Grace is a gift and God has promised us that gift through the cross, through Jesus.
Though there may be parts of our story and our lives that are in so much disarray that it feels irredeemable. God works with us and through others to guide us out of the mess and our story continues. You always have a chance to get out of the mess. To thank God for being there through that time or maybe even through the mess you are in right now.
God loves us no matter what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will do. It is our job to think on these scriptures and know that it is part of a larger story and good can come out of the horrible. Thank God for those times we see that good and thank God for the times good is happening that we can’t see.
Thank you Lord for truly loving us through our mess; the mess we create, the mess that is around us, or the mess that is thrust upon us.
Let us pray.
Sing Thank You, Lord….
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