The Scandalous God

7/29/18 (Proper 12/Ordinary 17 B, Semi-Continuous)

2 Samuel 11:1-15; John 6:1-21

The Scandalous God

If I’m to be honest, the Samuel text for this morning made me uncomfortable.  I wrestled with it in a lot of ways.  One of the things I appreciated about our classes in seminary was that they taught us to look for the connections between the lectionary texts, for ways to tie them together and find a common thread… but what can you really find in common with such different texts as the story of David and Bathsheba and the Feeding of the 5,000 or Jesus walking on the water?  What is there in what are, perhaps, David’s most heinous and reprehensible actions, that would even remotely be worth exploring and lifting up in a sermon at all?  There is nothing good in this account of the King of Israel, his most loyal soldier, and this woman caught in an impossible situation.

Wrestling with these texts was made only more difficult, of course, by all the recent events that we continue to watch unfold in our own current news cycle - the events recorded in 2nd Samuel sound like they could have been ripped from the pages of our own newspapers right now and not be out of place in the least.  As we’ve heard the testimonies from brave women in the #MeToo movement who have come forward to share their stories and watched celebrities and other powerful public figures and politicians fall from the positions of power that they abused, it’s easy enough to see David’s indiscretions being the top story on all the major news networks - to hear the pundits arguing back and forth over whether David was justified in taking Bathsheba to his own chambers, arguing over whether bathing on the roof was something a woman of Bathsheba’s outstanding beauty should have been doing in the first place, reviewing Uriah’s military record and digging through his Twitter to see if he’d ever said anything negative about his King and Commander-in-Chief…

We know this because the arguments have already happened numerous times and are still ongoing in pages and pages of academic work.  Scholars and theologians have scoured this text, discussed its complexities, argued over each jot and tittle… and none of this makes the story itself any less difficult to hear and encounter.

David was supposed to be at the forefront of the battle; this was the “time when kings go out to battle,” after all, but he stays at the palace while his own soldiers carry on the battle.  And, as if ignoring the responsibilities of his office wasn’t bad enough, David compounds the issue by then going on to abuse his position of authority and to utterly take advantage of the wife of one of the soldiers out on the front line!  This kind of indiscretion would be enough to get a president impeached on its own, but David goes on to bring himself down even further by trying to cover up his own wrongdoing by encouraging Uriah to take a furlough, spend some quality time with his wife, and suddenly discover that he’s about to be a daddy.  And when Uriah, good soldier that he is, refuses to enjoy himself while his brothers at arms are still fighting on the frontlines, David goes to his lowest and orders Uriah and his men to the front lines and their deaths - all so that David can have Bathsheba to himself.

Indiscretion, abuse of power, cover-ups - all sound distinctively familiar to our modern ears.  This isn’t a story that we tend to tell very much in our congregations, and I think for pretty understandable reasons.  This isn’t the David that the church chooses to remember - we remember the David who slew Goliath, the David who shepherded sheep and wrote psalms, the David who honored Saul, despite Saul trying to kill him, the David who established Israel as a great and prosperous kingdom, the David who was one of the greatest kings in Israel’s history.  Even when we do happen to look at this story, particularly through the eyes of religious art, we romanticize the tale to lessen the stain on David’s memory.  We think David only committed adultery, that Bathsheba must have done something to entice him, that “it takes two to tango,” but forget the fact that Bathsheba really had no choice in the matter - how do you say no to a King?  Our picture of King David, tarnished though it is, is ultimately still important - we need David, the shining King, because Jesus comes directly from David’s line.  And since Jesus, the author and founder of our faith, was good and perfect in every way, we obviously have to elevate his ancestry to higher levels as well.  It just doesn’t do to have a perfect messiah come from a long line of broken, imperfect people - does it?

Yet this is the very thing that makes Jesus so profound, that demonstrates God’s grace in every aspect of our lives.  A low-down, scheming, adulterous scum-bag like David can find forgiveness and be the great ancestor of a Messiah.  A drunkard can be selected by God to build an ark and save creation from utter destruction.  A murderer with a speech impediment is chosen by God to help lead an entire people out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land.  And the offering of a simple five loaves and two fish by a little boy can be used by God to feed a multitude of over 5,000 people.

You see, I think the feeding of the 5000 was scandalous, too.  Sure, it’s not a kind of scandal that would necessarily make the evening news in the same way that David and Bathsheba may have, but it’s scandalous enough in its own way.  Jesus has the disciples gathered around him in this wilderness area and they’re surrounded by people who want healing, who want to listen to Jesus’ teachings, who are now also hungry and thirsty on top of all of that.  The disciples are worried - there’s no food, there’s no supermarket just down the block to get them something to eat and provide for themselves, let alone these gathered people… and even if there were a market nearby, they don’t have the kind of coin to come up with half a year’s wages just to feed this massive crowd.  They’re in a tough situation of their own, and the only solution they can come up with is that these folks need to go home to get their own food.  And yet this one little boy, in a truly scandalous act of generosity, offers up his own meager offering of food.  The scandal deepens here, of course, because scholars and great debaters of the ages have questioned the turn of events that happens next - did Jesus create a miracle and somehow stretch that bit of food to feed 5,000 as we’ve typically understood the story?  Or did others see the generosity of this boy and realize that they had some food to spare amongst themselves, as well?  Was it a miracle of unending food, or a miracle of community coming together?  We’ve seen this second kind of miracle ourselves even in our own town as people come together and give to help those who’ve had houses burn down, to give assistance with hurricane relief to far-away neighbors, to help pay for medical bills and more.  And in it’s own way, it’s scandalous how God’s grace shows even in those small and unexpected ways.

The news may be filled with scandal and trauma, with pain, deceit, and hard consequences, but like David, an individual’s mistakes need not always define their story.  A little boy’s gift can bring about amazing and abundant blessings.  Bathsheba, abused, aggrieved and ashamed, becomes an ancestor of a Savior.  Amidst tragedy, there is hope.  In a world of sin, we can find forgiveness.  Our God is a God of the unexpected, of scandalous grace - and thank God for that very thing.  God takes that which is broken and uses it to establish a foundation for our salvation.  Christ calls out the underdog, the runt, the little brother, the prostitute, the tax collector, and the drunk, and lifts them up to greater purposes.  Just as he took the fish and loaves, Jesus takes our gifts, our offerings, lifts them up, gives thanks to God for them, and then uses them to bless multitudes.  There is a divine irony at work in our calling that can’t be ignored, but can only be appreciated with the gratitude of the forgiven.  Despite the skepticism of the disciples, despite the jaded attitude of the world and its desire to villainize those who make mistakes, Christ takes us by the hand, tells us “You are forgiven,” and then tells us to go out and do likewise.  So let us go out into the world, let us offer up our fish and our loaves, and let us rely on the grace of God, which surpasses all understanding and lifts us up to higher purposes for His glory.  Amen.