July 26, 2009 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Batman Is No Superman

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 14
2 Samuel 11:1–15

The first century, like the twentieth, expected deity to triumph through power. But suppose God is not like that. Suppose God, more than anything else, freely loves, and in that love is willing to be vulnerable and to risk suffering.

William C. Placher
Narratives of a Vulnerable God

I love a good story, wherever it comes from—books, television, movies, comics, sitting around a campfire, sitting at the feet of a grandparent. I love a good story.

For this Sunday and next, we have the opportunity to explore a remarkable story from the Hebrew scriptures: the story of David and his affair with Bathsheba. It’s a story that many of us probably remember from Sunday School, though some of it may have been sanitized for you the first time you heard it. It’s one of those juicy and scandalous stories that some people are surprised to find in the Bible.

But it’s really not surprising at all to find this story in the Bible. Despite our efforts to make the Bible a good Presbyterian book—by which I mean “decent and in order”—and once we disabuse ourselves of the notion that the Bible is sacred in such a way that it is removed from the reality of human experience, we discover that the Bible is actually sacred in such a way that it brings us face to face with the presence of God in every aspect of human experience—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And so this week and next, we will discover how God is present in the story of a great leader’s darkest hour.

Let us pray:

Gracious God of love, gracious God of surprises,
gracious God of everyday life, help us to experience
your presence in this very human story of failure.
Give us ears to hear your voice in new and unexpected
ways, and may our hearts and minds be open for you.
Amen.

• • •

This past Monday marked the forty-year anniversary of the first landing on the moon by humans. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the surface of the moon and changed human history forever. I grew up in the years after the Apollo moon missions were discontinued, but I grew up very much in the shadow of those remarkable accomplishments. I grew up in a world where human beings had walked on the moon. It filled us with a sense of amazement and pride and stirred within us a sense of hope in the possibilities and vast potential of humanity. If we could do this, what can’t we do?

So on Monday, I watched a good handful of retrospective television shows and documentaries about the moon landing. Even now, those iconic images and words fill my heart and mind with wonder.

But some of these programs also reminded me that there is a subset of the American population that still believes that the moon landings never happened. They still believe that it was all an elaborate hoax perpetrated by NASA and the government to boost our national pride and our international reputation in the midst of the Cold War.

What is it that prompts people to create and subscribe to such conspiracy theories? Is it a basic suspicion that an accomplishment as great as landing on the moon is really beyond our capabilities? Or is it rather a deep distrust of our government and its agencies, a deep distrust of the people in charge, the people who shape our lives and determine our future? I suppose it is a little of both.

When was it that people began to distrust the government so? Was it during the Watergate scandal, or does our cynicism go much deeper into history than that? For you personally, was there a moment in your life when you lost faith in politicians or in the political system in general? Was there a scandal or a “-gate” that pushed you over the line? Or perhaps it is the cumulative effects of scandal after scandal after scandal.

More broadly, was there a time in your life when someone you admired or trusted let you down?

One of my closest friends grew up with a deep, deep admiration for his father. He idolized his dad. He wanted to be just like him. He even followed a career path very similar to his father’s.

After college, my friend learned that his dad had been involved in an extramarital affair for several years. His parents divorced, and his father ended up marrying the other woman.

My friend was devastated. His trust and admiration for his dad were critically damaged. His disappointment was tangible. I could see the pain in his eyes, hear it in his voice.

Have you ever known that kind of disappointment?

I wonder if that is how the children of Israel felt when they first heard this story of their great king, David. David was their ideal king, the benchmark by which all other kings were judged, the one remembered as a man after God’s own heart. It was through the Davidic line that Israel maintained hope in a messiah. Even for us Christians, David is paradigm and precursor and prefigurement of Jesus the Christ. How can it be that this great man, this ideal king, this hero of heroes could fail so miserably?

Truly, there is pretty much nothing that David does right in this story. Every move he makes is utterly, disastrously wrong. From the very first lines of this story, David is portrayed as a failure.

It was, the story says, the time when kings go out to battle. But the great king David stayed at home in Jerusalem. Instead of leading his troops into battle as he did countless times before, David stays at home and reclines on his couch. When his people need him to lead, David is taking it easy, tending to his own needs and his own desires.

One day the king notices a beautiful woman named Bathsheba. From the lofty roof of his palace, David is able to see this woman bathing, and he is filled with desire. Drunk with the power of monarchy, David inquires about her, only to discover that she is married to one of his greatest warriors. This doesn’t seem to bother David, so he has her summoned, he sleeps with her, and then he sends her home when he is finished. She is nothing more to him than an object of sexual gratification. That is, until it turns out that she gets pregnant.

Now David must scramble to cover his tracks. He calls Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, back from battle, hoping that he will sleep with his wife and thus conceal her adulterous pregnancy as his own child. But noble Uriah displays all of the virtues that David is lacking. The contrast is stark and intentional. So concerned is he with the battle and his troops, the ones David should be caring about and leading, that he refuses to sleep in his own house, preferring instead to camp at the entrance of the palace in solidarity with his companions who are camped out in the battlefield.

So David tries to get Uriah drunk, hoping that intoxication will erode Uriah’s integrity and coax him into sleeping with his wife. But even then Uriah refuses to take his mind off of his friends in battle.

Flustered and desperate, David once again abuses his power, this time with deadly consequences. He writes an order that is essentially Uriah’s death sentence: Uriah is to be sent into the front line of the battle and then abandoned there to be overcome and killed by the enemy. So embroiled is he in this web of adultery and lies, David willingly sends one of his greatest warriors to his death. To make the situation even more repugnant, David asks Uriah himself to unwittingly carry back to the field these very orders that will bring his death.

This is David, Israel’s greatest king, the Bible’s greatest hero.

What do you do with that? Even the biblical writers themselves weren’t entirely sure. When David’s story is retold in the book of Chronicles, this episode is tellingly missing. Already in the Bible itself, David’s story is being whitewashed and sanitized. After all, David’s reputation is on the line. Years later, when the Bible is being interpreted and reinterpreted by generations of faithful Jews and Christians, this story is an embarrassment, and attempts are made to somehow redeem David’s character. Bathsheba is sometimes portrayed as a seductress, or the entire story is reshaped into a love story. But these failed attempts only highlight the reality of this story: Israel’s greatest hero is an utter failure.

So why is this in the Bible? Through all the years of editing, how is it that this unflattering story of Israel’s ideal king made the cut?

This story is here because the holy Bible is a very human book, full of very human stories and very real characters. For better and for worse, David’s story is not unique. David’s story is a reflection of the reality that we all know, because the Bible is a reflection not only of a holy God but also a reflection of the real-life people who try to follow that God. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we fail.

The reality of the Bible is that it is filled with failing heroes and flawed servants. From Abraham to Moses to David to Jesus’ own disciples, the biblical story is populated with less than perfect heroes. There’s a reason for that, and it’s an important one.

Think about two of our modern-day heroes: Batman and Superman. Created seventy years ago, these characters have become icons of American mythology, embodiments of our greatest hopes and our greatest fears. And they couldn’t be more different, a distinction that is used to great effect by many comic book writers and artists.

Superman is the definition of superhuman. In fact, as an alien from a distant planet, he is beyond human. But he looks like us. Yet he’s not like us at all. He can do things we can only dream of. He has powers beyond that of any mortal. And his superhuman powers are matched only by his elevated and perfected sense of truth, justice, and righteousness. He is an idealized incarnation of virtue.

Batman, by contrast, is purely human, blessed with limitless resources and incredible training, but human nonetheless. He can be injured much more easily than Superman. He has many more vulnerabilities, and he has the scars to prove it. Without any superpowers, he must rely on his highly trained mind and skilled body.

But more than this, Batman is deeply flawed. Whereas Superman represents brilliant light and vibrant colors, Batman lives in darkness and shadows. Superman is a beacon of hope, while Batman creates fear and intimidation. The tragedy of the destruction of Superman’s home world inspires him to save humanity. The tragedy of the murder of Batman’s parents fuels rage and vigilante justice. Batman’s psyche is as deeply scarred as his body, and he is prone to violence and vengeance. He is a flawed hero.

It is because of this, I think, that I’m much more drawn to Batman. I can admire Superman as an ideal, but I know I could never be like him. I could never be like Batman, either, but at least there is a sense that Batman is one of us, a flawed and failing human being doing what he can to help others, despite his limitations. Yet it is those very limitations that make him more real—at least as real as a comic book hero can be.

And in the ambiguities of his heroism, his propensity to live in the shades of gray between good and evil, I recognize our own human ambiguities. I recognize in Batman that even when we try to do good, sometimes we do evil. I recognize in Batman that sometimes we let the dark side overtake us and we become the very evil we’re trying to fight.

To be sure, there have been attempts to explore the dark side of Superman, but these labored attempts that never really work only demonstrate that this is simply not part of the basic Superman story. Superman is such an icon of goodness, such an archetype of righteousness, that most attempts to veer from this fall flat. Even when they don’t, Superman is always redeemed in the end, always returned to pristine status.

Batman is always flawed. He is always the Dark Knight. And when you are not purely, impossibly good like Superman, you blur the line between good and bad, like Batman does. Like David did in this story of his failure. Like we do every day of our lives. That is who we are. That is the reality of the human condition.

But our failures don’t define us. They are part of who we are, but they don’t define us. We are defined by the love and grace of God. We are called to strive for good. We are called to transcend our failures. We are called to save the world. We may not be superheroes, but we are called by God to change the world. We’re fooling ourselves if we think the gospel is about anything other than that.

This is why it is so important that the Bible is filled with flawed and failing heroes. Because that is who we are. That is how we see ourselves in the story of God’s redemption of the world. We are flawed servants that identify with failed heroes who God uses to do great things.

Batman is no Superman. Neither is David. Neither are we.

Amen.

• • •

One of the things I like the best about comic books are the cliffhangers. The story is always “to be continued” in the next issue. And so it is for us. David’s story doesn’t end in failure. We have hope that he will repent and find forgiveness. We have hope that he will be redeemed. But you’ll have to come back next week to find out. Same place. Same time.