A Fourth Church Sermon by Calum I. MacLeod

August 6, 2006 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

The Sting in the Tale

Calum I. MacLeod
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 34:1–8
2 Samuel 11:26–12:15

“Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!’”

2 Samuel 12:7 (NRSV)

At the heart of the Christian faith is the memory of suffering.
We would prefer not to remember. We would particularly prefer
not to know how the memory our faith preserves is shown forth today
in hunger and blood across the world in the lives of the poor;
in the overt violence of military repression, in the quiet and seemly
violence of international debt, and in the seizure and violation of the land
on which the poor depend. But salvation for all requires such memory.

Janet Morley

It’s become something of a tradition for me at this time of year to have gone back to Scotland, returned to Chicago, and have an opportunity to preach in the morning. The tradition continues that the congregation wails that they can’t understand me because my accent has thickened so much in the time that I have been in Scotland. It is like the story told about the minister Ernest Somerville, who lived and ministered in Philadelphia. He would go home to Scotland every year in July for the month. He was asked by one of his parishioners, “Why do you always go home at the same time?” and he said, “Well, by the time it gets to the June of the year, my accent has flattened and people start to understand what I’m saying from the pulpit. So I go back home and thicken it up so in August they’ve got no idea what I’m saying!”

It was good to have some vacation time and be at home with family and friends. It was good to hear and share stories, really one of the best things about being together—the new stories and the old stories. I love stories. In the part of Scotland where my family is from, the Outer Hebrides, there is a great tradition of telling stories, the oral tradition. There would be in each community, each village, a village elder who was known as the seannachaidh, a Gaelic word that means “the old man who told stories.” There are still remnants of that in that culture. I heard a great story while I was home, a story from Scottish history about a time when the king of Scotland was at war with one of the local warlords who went by the title “The Lord of the Isles.” The king and the Lord of the Isles weren’t getting on, but the king invited the Lord of the Isles to a banquet he was having in one of his castles. However, he made sure that the Lord of the Isles was seated at one of the lowly places, quite far away from the high table. And to impress on the Lord of the Isles how he had insulted him, during the meal the king sent one of his servants to check and make sure that the Lord of the Isles knew that he was in one of the lowly places. The Lord of the Isles said to the servant, “Go back to your king and tell him that wherever the Lord of the Isles sits is the head of the table!” I love that story and how it is a reframing of the reality that is facing the person.

Stories are important; they’re important for our identity as people. They give us identity for community, for nation, for family. Stories are important for faith. In some sense, the Bible is a library, a repository, of stories—poems and letters also, but certainly stories, much of them gathered from oral tradition and then eventually written down by the scribes. They are stories that frame and reframe the experience of God’s people in relationship to God and of God’s relationship to the community of God’s people. Stories are vital then for us in our understanding of the world and of our faith. Our scripture today—that astonishing story about David and Bathsheba and Uriah and the aftermath—is, in a very real sense, a story about a story. At the heart of this story is the parable that Nathan tells to David.

David is such an interesting character. If we were to have you shout your remembrances of images that you have of David in scripture, some of you would remember the little boy who uses a sling and stone to defeat the great giant Goliath. I have a particular image from my own childhood. I remember being given by my granny a book of Old Testament stories paraphrased and with color plates. One of them is of an angelic-looking young David playing the harp to sooth the concerns and fears of the ailing Saul. For others, the image of David might be Michelangelo’s astonishing sculpture in Florence, the beautiful boy David with the huge hands, an amazing piece of art. David, in scripture, is a complex and ambiguous figure. One of the commentators suggests that David is, in fact, the most rounded character in scripture, the one who is given most flesh and character with whom we can relate. That is partly because David is deeply flawed. Not so much the image of the angelic harpist and psalm writer, David is a warlord himself, a terrorist; he’s a traitor. When he becomes king after Saul, he rules as a kind of a despot or a tyrant and, of course, commits adultery with Bathsheba, an event that forms one of the hinges of the whole history of Israel and the relationship of God and kingship in Israel.

David’s armies are at war, but David is in Jerusalem in his palace. Walking one evening, he sees a beautiful woman taking her bath on the roof of a nearby building. He directs her to come over, and he sleeps with her and she gets pregnant. David realizes that he is in difficulty because she is married to one of his soldiers, Uriah the Hittite, so he calls Uriah back from the front and says to Uriah, “Why don’t you go and spend the night with your wife?” in the hope that he will do that, will lie with her, and when the baby is born, Uriah will think it’s his child. But Uriah, who’s painted as quite a noble figure, declines the comforts of his home and his wife because he says the army, his colleagues, are out fighting and still sleeping under the stars and he will do the same. He confounds David’s plan.

David, devious as ever, reverts to Plan B, and he sends Uriah back to the front, but with him he sends a letter to be given to the commander of the forces, Joab. In the letter, David directs Joab to send Uriah to the place of the hardest fighting so that his death will be assured by the sword of the Ammonites, the army that they are fighting. And that is exactly what happens. Uriah is killed by David’s orders, and David then takes Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, to be his own wife. This action of David, scripture tells us, displeases the Lord, and when the Lord’s not happy, the Lord sends prophets to speak to an individual or to a community. We sometimes think of prophets as being people who look into crystal balls and look into the future; in scripture that’s not really at the heart of prophecy. At the heart of prophecy is that word that God gives to the prophets to speak to the people, often a word of judgment. So the Lord sends Nathan, the prophet, in to speak to the powerful King David and to express the displeasure that God has. Now this is dangerous territory for Nathan—speaking the truth to power is always a dangerous business.

I was reflecting in my email devotion last week—part of the daily devotions that go out to those who have signed up (devotions@fourthchurch.org)—I was reflecting on the reality that when people speak God’s word, when prophets speak God’s word, that the people generally want to do violence to them. It was true for Jeremiah after he preached his sermon in the temple. It was true of Jesus after he had spoken in his hometown of Nazareth and proclaimed that the promise of Isaiah had been fulfilled in his being—and, as a result, the people wanted to throw him off the cliff. And it was true for Paul preaching in Damascus after his conversion, when the authorities wanted to kill him and he escaped in a basket over the walls of the city. And it’s still true today that people want to kill prophets. The roll call of those who spoke truth to power in the twentieth century and suffered martyrdom for it tells us that: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., Bishop Oscar Romero.

So Nathan, being a wise prophet, knows that he’s in a difficult situation in having to tell the truth to this fearsome man. So what does he do? He tells a story, a story with a sting in the tale. A funny story, it’s simple, almost a childish story, about a rich man who’s got plenty of flocks and herds and a poor man who only has one little ewe lamb, which he treats as a member of his family, like a pet—perhaps the only place in scripture where we have the relationship of a person with a pet described. But the nasty rich man doesn’t kill any of his flock to feed a visitor; he steals and kills the lamb that is beloved of the poor man. David is incandescent with rage when he hears this story; he calls judgment on the man who has done this, and in that incredible moment, Nathan turns to David and says to him, “You are the man.”

You are the man. In this story Nathan reframes the reality of what David has done in order that David can recognize and see what his actions are and how they have displeased God. Does Nathan get angry with David? Does he offer judgment? Well, he does, but first of all he waits until David is caught up in this web and has indicted himself. Nathan takes a side route into speaking truth to power. There’s great importance of this story for the story of the people of Israel throughout the rest of the Old Testament: the relationship the people have with the monarchy and the outcome of that. But I think there’s also something about Nathan and the telling of this story that is important for us in our own lives of faith. The Christian story is one that speaks truth to power and one that has a sting in the tale, a story in which that which is weak challenges and overcomes that which is powerful. From the beginning—from the time of the conception of Jesus and of Mary singing the Magnificat about how the powerful will be brought low and the lowly will be raised—it sets the agenda for the ministry that Jesus undertakes and for the experience of death and for the cross and then the victory of what was weak and rejected, the victory of the risen Christ over death. That’s a story that has a sting in the tale for the prevailing powers in our world, I believe. As Christians, we are called to tell that story and to share it and to live it.

I’m sure, like me, all of you have heavy hearts for the situation that continues to develop and harden in the Middle East and Israel and Palestine and Lebanon. It is hard, and it is complex. I know that we have a heart for the people of Israel, persecuted for so long and now in their homeland seeking security and safety. And I know we have hearts for the Palestinian people as they seek a land of their own and self-determination and safety, and we know that, of course, it is the poorest and the most marginalized who are the greatest sufferers when war and military repression and conflict are the tools that the powerful use to further their agendas.

I got a letter by email this week from a minister, a Church of Scotland minister in Jerusalem, and he forwarded with that letter a letter that he’d received from the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem just last week. Among other things the bishop wrote:

The “situation”—as it has come to be called—has deteriorated into a war without boundaries or limitations. A war with deadly potential beyond the imaginations of most civilized people. As I write to you, I am preparing to leave with other bishops for Nablus with medical and other emergency supplies for 500 families. On Saturday we will attempt to enter Gaza with medical aid for doctors and nurses in our hospital there who struggle to serve the injured, the sick, and the dying. And my plan is that I would be able to go to Lebanon next week, where we are presently without a resident priest to bury the dead and comfort the victims of war.”

Here is someone living out the story.

The sting in the tale of Christianity struck me very strongly during the summer mission trip to Honduras. It was our eighth time there with folks from Fourth Church, building homes in the same community. We worshiped together each evening and shared our experiences of working with people who are poor and marginalized. We sang hymns and songs from the Third World, songs of hope and of liberation and trust in God. One evening we shared with this lovely litany, this proclamation of truth, which at its heart has this story that challenges and speaks truth to the power that would cause death and destruction and war.

It is not true that this world and its inhabitants are doomed to die and be lost.

This is true, for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him shall not die but have everlasting life.

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction.

This is true, for Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

It is not true that violence shall have the last word and that war and destruction have come to
stay forever.

This is true, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given in whom authority will rest and whose name will be the Prince of Peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims of the power of evil that seeks to rule the world.

This is true, for Jesus said, “To me is given authority in heaven and on earth and lo, I am with you always to the end of the world.”

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the church, before we can do anything.

This is true, for God says through the prophet, “I will pour out my spirit on all people and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young people shall see visions, and your old folks shall dream dreams.”

It is not true that our dreams of liberation of humankind, our dreams of justice, of human dignity, of peace are not meant for this earth and its history.

This is true, for the hour has come and it is now.

And it is now—for us as we gather and prepare to come to the table and to meet our Lord in bread and the fruit of the vine, to come to the place where all divisions are broken down, where differences are forgotten, where we share communion and find community and in doing so proclaim our story and challenge those who would bring war and destruction and where we instead stand for peace and for the love that Christ has for the whole of humankind. Thanks be to God, Amen.