The Judgment of the Lamb

Midweek Worship

The Tenth Week after Pentecost

Semicontinous Reading: 2 Samuel 11:26—12:13a

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“You are the man!” This has to be one of the most astounding moments in the entire Hebrew Bible, and indeed in all of Ancient Near Eastern literature.

We’ve been following the story of David for weeks now, the story of the shepherd who became a warrior who became a king. And he wasn’t just any king; he was the greatest king in Israel’s history. He united the Tribes. He took Jerusalem. He centralized the cult of Yahweh. Without David, there is no Israel of which to speak, no Judah, no Bible, and no prophets proclaiming the coming Messiah within the line of David.

The Bible is in many ways David’s book. He’s the reason we’re here tonight. If it weren’t for David, there would of course still be God. There would of course still be the Savior. But what our faith would look like, what our world would look like, is almost impossible for us to imagine. I mean, this guy is his country’s Washington and Lincoln and Patton and Billy Graham. King Arthur wishes he had been King David, God’s own special chosen champion, the paradigm of right—or at the very least of might.

But the glory days, it seems, are gone. In our reading this evening, he’s no longer the young, idealistic, unbeatable, faithful rebel, who took on his country’s enemies and his country’s king at the same time. No, the years have rolled by, and David has grown settled, and subsequently bored. And a bored man with power is a dangerous beast indeed.

I won’t recount the whole sordid tale of David and Bathsheba. We went into that, with all its gruesome detail, last week. Suffice to say, David saw something he wanted—someone he wanted—and took her. Took her while her husband was away. Took her despite having many wives of his own. Took her as she was powerless to resist.

Lo and behold, the natural result of sex occurred as the natural result of sex. And she was with child, a scandal even David feared his throne might not quite weather. When he couldn’t quite cover his dirty deeds with manipulation and deceit, he doubled down and covered them with murder. Heroic, noble, faithful David sent an innocent man to his death, then took his widow for his own, one more wife for the harem. And no-one was the wiser—at least, no-one who counted.

So now David’s pretty pleased with himself. He’s gotten away with murder. And why shouldn’t he? He is the king, after all. Compared to most Near Eastern monarchs he’s practically a saint. The gentile tyrants had done far worse with less remorse. David was God’s chosen; he’s the hero of this story. So what if he engaged in a little indiscretion? So what if he enjoyed a bit of the spoils of his wars? I mean, all it cost him, really, was a foreign soldier and some men. Is that such a tragedy in the greater scheme of things? Hadn’t he given Bathsheba an upgrade for her troubles?

No blood, no foul, am I right? At least, no blood of anyone important.

But then one day Nathan comes a-calling, the prophet of the Lord. And he tells David a sad little story of a poor man with one little ewe lamb, which he loved and raised as if she were one of his own children. And a rich man with many flocks and herds came and seized that poor man’s beloved little lamb, killed her and ate her, and served her to his guests; despite the fact that the rich man already had more sheep than he knew what to do with.

And David’s anger was greatly kindled when he heard the plight of this poor man, and the loss of his little lamb. “As the Lord lives,” swears David, in his righteous indignation, “the man who has done this deserves to die! He shall repay fourfold what he has taken, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.” No mercy for the merciless.

And now Nathan springs his trap. “You are the man!” he suddenly thunders unto David. “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Look what I have given you! Look how I delivered you! Look what I have made of you! And wasn’t all that enough? I would have given more, if only you had asked! But you have slain Uriah, and you have seized his wife, and as a result of what you have done, the sword will never leave your house! For you did all this secretly, but I will reap my vengeance before all of Israel, and before the sun!” There is no hiding your sin from your God.

And David, mighty David, quails in horror before the blinding light of truth, and all he can manage to croak out in reply is: “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Other gods don’t do this. This doesn’t happen to other kings! What sort of god would turn against his champion, turn against his king, for the sake of some foreigner and his nobody wife, for the sake of a dead soldier and his worthless widow? Yet God does not see as mortals see, nor think as mortals think. God cares not for citizenship or status. God cares not for your weapons or your wealth. God doesn’t care if you’re a king or a warrior or a widow.

For the God of all and everyone, each person has exactly the same value: one. One king, one soldier, one widow. And when any one person violates the Law—murders, rapes, bears false witness—then God will judge them by the measure with which they have measured others. David pronounced the sentence: fourfold of what he took. And over the course of David’s decades to come, he will lose four sons to violence, four sons to his sin. This tawdry tale of ravishment and murder will echo down the generations.

And David’s family will be torn apart, not by the wrath of a fickle God, but as the result of David’s actions, of the blood he has spilled with his own hands. God still loves David. God is still with David. But God loves Bathsheba and Uriah too. And they deserve justice. And David deserves consequences, which he will reap in full. He has rejected the mercies and the justice of his God and thus is left with death.

Should we find this harsh, just remember David’s own words when he murdered Uriah: “Let this not trouble you, for the sword consumes now one, and now another.”

It is true that there is redemption, there is forgiveness, promised for even the worst of us sinners, forgiveness ever extended even to the unforgivable. But it only comes through truth, through light, through the unremitting fires of God’s love. A perfect justice culminates in mercy. And a perfect mercy allows for us to make amends to those we’ve wronged. There is always a consequence for sin. And there is always the hope of salvation. The two go hand-in-hand.

Mercy and justice are both the same fire, the forge and the furnace of truth. And those flames can never compromise. And those flames can never cool.

What a thing it is to see in Scripture God’s consistent choice to favor the low above the high, the poor above the rich, the slave above the master, the younger brother over the heir, the widow over the king, and the crucified over the empire of crucifixion. Let those with power ever fear the watchful eye of God. For Christ shall raise the fallen to burn as the stars in the sky. And the light of that truth, in the end, will set all of us, everyone, free.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.