August 2, 2009 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

If the Parable Doesn’t Fit, You Must Acquit

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 51
2 Samuel 11:26–12:15a

It remains, concerning this prophetic emphasis, to make clear its uncompromising urgency. I take the core of this prophetic accent to be that all members of the community, rich and poor, urban and rural, wise and foolish, powerful and marginated, are bound to each other in a common historical and social enterprise. Every member, by virtue of membership in the community, has entitlement that cannot be abrogated. . . . The negative counterpart to this affirmation is that there are no escape hatches or exceptional treatments for the wise, the rich, the powerful, or the well-connected. Their destiny is linked to the destiny of the whole community.

Walter Brueggemann
Theology of the Old Testament

Last week we were left with a bit of a cliffhanger when we explored the failure of a flawed hero. The great king David had made his greatest mistake. While his army was out fighting the enemies of Israel, David remained at home, reclining on his couch, concerned only with his own desires. One day his desires led him to sleep with a woman named Bathsheba, who was married to one of his greatest warriors, and she became pregnant. David called Bathsheba’s husband Uriah back home from the battle and tried unsuccessfully to get him to sleep with his wife and thus conceal the adulterous pregnancy. Finally, desperate to cover up his transgression, David digs himself even deeper into trouble and sends Uriah back to battle with orders that will lead to his certain death. Having taken his warrior’s wife as an object of sexual gratification, David kills this noble man to cover his own tracks. It is a story of adultery and murder. It is a story of utter failure by Israel’s greatest hero. It is a story that leaves us longing for redemption.

Already this morning we have sung Psalm 51, which our Psalter tradition tells us is a psalm of penance composed by David after his affair with Bathsheba. We continue that story in our scripture lesson for the day, 2 Samuel 11:26–12:15a.

• • •

This past week I enjoyed something of a staycation here in Chicago. Through a generous friend and some good fortune, I was able to secure tickets for all four games of the Cubs–Astros series (a series the Cubs won 3–1, by the way). It was quite an experience to enjoy the great Wrigley Field for four straight days and watch an entire baseball series in person for the first time in my life. I will confess that it required playing a little bit of hooky from work, but of all the reasons to be out of the office at this church, Cubs games are usually a free pass. Though he’s on vacation right now, I like to think that John Buchanan would be proud—especially since I made sure it didn’t cut into my sermon preparation for today. And for the record, in case John is listening, Adam Fronczek has been at White Sox games all week.

As it turns out, baseball provided quite a bit of fodder for my thinking and reflection on this passage this past week. And what better way to discuss theology, philosophy, and morality than over a beer in Wrigleyville? Once again, I think John would be proud.

Early in the week, Pete Rose was the story. It’s been twenty years since his ban from baseball for violating one of sport’s greatest taboos: betting on games while you are an active participant in the competition. There were reports that baseball commissioner Bud Selig was reconsidering Rose’s ban after the great Hank Aaron voiced support for Rose in an impromptu interview while in Cooperstown for the induction of this year’s Hall of Famers. Selig has since made clear that his position on Rose remains unchanged: no reinstatement, which means no Hall of Fame for one of baseball’s greatest players.

One of my best friends from high school was in town to watch the Cubs games with me, and we had a chance to talk a little bit about Rose, a debate that seems to split baseball fans into various camps. My friend shares the opinion that Rose should be allowed into the Hall of Fame because his mistakes do not overshadow his great accomplishments. After all, Rose has a long list of records, including the most career hits in the history of baseball, a record that will probably never be broken.

Former commissioner Fay Vincent, who took over after Bart Giamatti died just eight days after banning Rose, doesn’t think this argument holds up. According to Vincent, to allow Rose back into baseball just to make the Hall of Fame sends the wrong message. It would effectively mean that the threat of permanent suspension would only serve as a deterrent for “players who aren’t of Hall of Fame caliber, not to the .250 hitter, the third base coach, or the bullpen catcher.” Vincent went on to say that “a double standard in the American system has never worked.” While I don’t know if I would say that our culture hasn’t been able to live with double standards—which we clearly have and clearly still do—he is right to name this for what it is: to allow Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame would be a double standard.

Now I can appreciate where Pete Rose’s supporters are coming from. I feel for him. I really do. And I think that part of the reason we have such a hard time turning our backs on Rose is that there are so many more athletes out there who have done far worse things with no major punishment at all. How is it fair to let these players go free while we drop the hammer down on the man known as “Charlie Hustle”?

On Thursday of this same week it was reported that Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, the power hitters for the Boston Red Sox during their 2004 and 2007 World Series championship years, are on the infamous and still-not-fully-disclosed list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003. This has caused quite a stir in Boston and elsewhere. The Red Sox’ World Series victory in 2004 was historic, marking Boston’s first championship in eighty-six years. It would be like the Cubs finally winning one only to discover that their biggest stars had been cheating. For many fans and critics, this revelation has cast a dark shadow over those special Boston championships, not to mention the integrity of the players themselves.

David Ortiz is particularly interesting in this regard. Back in February, after fellow baseball star Alex Rodriquez confessed to using banned performance-enhancing drugs, Ortiz stated publicly that any player who is found guilty of such substance use should be suspended from baseball for an entire year. What do you think his position is on that now? Wouldn’t it be something for Ortiz to walk his talk and submit himself to such a suspension? It wouldn’t undo his offenses and the way his actions have tarnished the accomplishments of the Red Sox and Major League Baseball in general, but wouldn’t that send a pretty powerful message?

The stories of Pete Rose, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz are just a few examples of what has become an all-too-common meme in our culture: the celebrity, politician, or athlete who gets in trouble and the typically lenient punishments that they receive. In this regard, Pete Rose and his twenty-year ban from baseball is very much the exception to the rule, ironically, by not being an exception to the rules of baseball. Yet how many times have we seen this go the other way? How many times have we watched the rich and famous and powerful come away from crimes and offenses with nothing more than a slap on the wrist? And how many of us know good and well that if we were in the same situation, the outcome would most likely be completely different?

This is the context in which I want us to think about the continuation of David’s story this morning. Last week we saw the great depths of David’s failure when he slept with Bathsheba and killed her husband to cover up his indiscretion. This week our story begins with God, through the prophet Nathan, confronting David’s sin.

Nathan is very clever in his prosecution of David. He begins by telling David about a rich man who steals the only lamb of a poor man. David immediately sees the injustice of this abuse of power and proclaims with decisive certainty that the rich man is guilty and should be punished by restoring the lamb fourfold, paying back four lambs for the one he stole.

David’s words come back to haunt him when Nathan reveals that this story is nothing but a parable, a parable created to entrap David and force him to confront his own guilt. David is the powerful man who abuses his power, taking not a lamb but a man’s wife and eventually his life. David is the guilty one. And so David too must be punished.

Now you can imagine how this would play out if it were to happen today. You can imagine David hiring a team of expensive lawyers who specialize in high-profile defendants. You can imagine this team of lawyers doing everything possible to get their client off the hook. You can imagine them looking for some kind of loophole or some other clever defense. You can imagine one of these lawyers staring down the prophet Nathan, looking him right in the eyes, and proclaiming with utmost confidence, “If the parable doesn’t fit, you must acquit!”

But the parable does fit. It fits perfectly, and David knows it. Confronted with his own guilt, David can do nothing but confess and repent. When he does this, Nathan provides him with assurance of his forgiveness. “Now the Lord has put away your sin,” says Nathan. “You shall not die.”

Now if we were to stop right here, we would have a story of the kind of grace and forgiveness that our faith tradition leads us to expect. Each week we come here on Sunday and participate in a corporate prayer of confession, as we did this morning. Each week we are given an assurance of pardon that tells us we are recipients of God’s generous grace and forgiveness. Then we move on with the rest of worship and don’t think too much more about what just happened.

What we rarely talk about are the consequences of our sinful actions. What we rarely acknowledge is that God’s forgiveness does not make our actions go away. God’s forgiveness may remove our guilt and restore our relationships with God and with each other, but it doesn’t make our actions and their consequences magically disappear.

This is why David’s story is so important for us. It brings us back to reality. David is forgiven, but David still suffers the consequences of his actions.

Once again, Nathan’s parable proves to be prophetic. In response to the story of the stolen lamb, David proclaims that the guilty man must pay back four times what he stole. My college Bible professor called this fourfold retribution and demonstrated the poetic justice that flows from David’s words. You see, David too ends up suffering fourfold for his adultery and murder as his family deteriorates before his very eyes. First, the child born from his affair with Bathsheba dies not long after it is born. Then David’s son Amnon follows his father’s example of lust and abuse of power and brutally rapes his sister Tamar. This enrages one of David’s other sons, Absalom, who vows vengeance on Amnon and eventually kills him. After fleeing to a self-imposed exile, Absalom eventually rebels against his father and is ultimately killed himself, bringing to a bitter end the cycle of violence and death that David must suffer as a consequence of his actions with Bathsheba and Uriah.

Now try not to get too hung up on the obvious question that arises from this: what kind of God punishes a man by killing a baby and having his other children raped and murdered? That is a sermon for another day. For now, let’s operate under the assumption that this story of David is itself something of a parable, a story crafted in such a way to convey a message. And the message is this: our actions have consequences that we cannot escape, no matter how rich and powerful we might be. Not even David, the ideal king, the greatest hero of Israel, is able to escape the consequences of his actions.

Intentionally or not, the reality of actions and consequences is, I think, something we try to obscure with our religion of grace and forgiveness. But this is a reality we cannot afford to ignore.

Consider, for example, our current economic situation. Will government bailouts and stimulus packages really change the way we behave? Will these acts of grace and forgiveness deter us from making the same mistakes that created the economic crisis in the first place? Or do we need to suffer the consequences of our actions, at least for a little while, in order to really get it and make some changes for the better?

Maybe that is the message of David. Maybe that is what this story is all about. Maybe we will never change our ways and truly repent unless we face the very real consequences of our actions.

This is something I worry about as I contemplate how Anna and I will raise our son. Time and time again when I was growing up and even after I became an adult, my parents bailed me out of jams. I would do something totally stupid, and my parents would help me get out of it. Right before Anna and I got married, after years of grad school, I had racked up quite a credit card debt. It had come to the point that I wasn’t able to pay the minimum payments and the interest kept piling up. I had dug myself into a hole I couldn’t get out of. So my parents pulled me out. They paid off my bill, and I was able to enter our marriage without a crippling credit card debt.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what my parents did for me. But at the same time, I realize that their gracious act allowed me to escape the consequences of my actions. I realize that what I experienced is out of the ordinary, a gift of privilege. And I wonder if this gift blinded me to the reality of life—that our actions have consequences. I wonder if I am as careful with my actions as I should be, or if deep down I operate with the expectation that someone will come bail me out when I mess up. And I wonder how I will handle situations like this with my own son. How will we navigate the delicate balance between saving our son and letting him learn the hard lessons of life?

And I wonder if a culture shaped by Christian notions of grace and forgiveness has also been blinded to the reality of life—that actions have consequences that no one can really escape, even the rich and powerful?

This is why this story of David, a story shaped by the prophetic understanding of actions and consequences, is so important for us. The Hebrew prophets advocated a strict notion of reward and punishment that they believed was woven into the fabric of reality. If you do what is right, you will be rewarded; if you do what is wrong, you will suffer the consequences. We know, of course, that life isn’t this simple or so clearly black and white, but the basic idea is critical. In his Theology of the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann argues that this is ultimately a matter of justice. According to the Hebrew prophets, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, are all bound together in a common community such that the well-being of any one member affects the well-being of the whole. In such a community, everyone is ultimately equal, because the fate of all is bound together. In such a community, it is imperative that no one receives preferential treatment, because that ends up corrupting the entire community.

And so David stands as an example of this truth. David is a reminder to all of us that no one can escape the consequences of their actions, which is why we must be so mindful about our actions. David is a reminder that if justice is perverted for those at the top, the entire system would collapse. David’s story is ultimately a tragedy, but it is one that I pray we can learn from.

Back in the twenty-first century, wouldn’t it be something if David Ortiz followed the example of his biblical namesake and submitted himself to that one-year suspension he talked about so confidently when he didn’t think it would apply to himself? Wouldn’t that send a powerful message to our culture? God knows we need to hear it.

Amen.