(2 Samuel 11:26-12:13 ) 

 Before you hear this morning’s lesson, I need to give you some background.  Some of you may know all this already, but some may not.  It’s the story of King David.  He has been ruling Israel since he was a poor shepherd boy who defeated the giant Goliath with his sling shot.  Then God made him the king of Israel.  He busied himself with fighting wars while being in covenant with God.  Yet one day David had chosen not to be with his soldiers and the leader he had designated for the battle.  David stayed behind in Jerusalem.  He spied a beautiful woman bathing on the roof of a neighboring house.  He sent for her (so, of course, she had no choice but to come to the king), and “he lay with her.”  David then tried to manipulate this woman’s husband, Uriah, to have sex with his own wife.  This would protect the king because Bathsheba had become pregnant with David’s child.  But Uriah was a righteous man who faithfully performed his duty to the king and did not go home to his wife. 

            So, what was David going to do?  His wrongdoing was multiplied when he ordered the head of the army to put Uriah in the front of the battle so that he would be killed.  And so he was.  That brings us to this morning’s lesson….

When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him.  When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David.  He came to him and said to him.  “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb that he had bought.  He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare and drink from his cup and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him.  Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.”  Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man.  He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.”

Nathan said to David, “You are the man!  Thus says the Lord the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your bosom and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more.  Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?  You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.  Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.  Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight.  For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and in broad daylight.”  David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”  

{ Nathan said to David, “ Now, the Lord has put away your sin…you shall not die”}

            Most of us lived through the Watergate scandal during the Nixon presidency.  If you didn’t live through it, I suppose you would have learned about it in history class.  A short synopsis is that people in Nixon’s circle broke into the Democratic National Committee’s office which was located in the Watergate office building in Washington, DC.  Their mission was to plant wiretap devices and take photos of secret documents.  This was in January of 1972.

            After 2 and half years of investigations, court cases and firings, President Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974, exactly 50 years ago this past week.  You may have read or heard a news story about it.  Once the proof against the President was found in the tapes, testimony, documents uncovered, and through the whistle blower, Deep Throat, Nixon was pressured to resign.  It is an example of a person in power, arguably the most powerful man in the world at the time, once that person is poisoned by his own perception of himself as invulnerable, he is capable of orchestrating and committing very wrong acts.  In Nixon’s case, he and many of those around him had clearly broken the law.  

I don’t know who the truth teller, ultimately, was for Nixon, the person or persons who convinced him that he needed to resign, but this morning’s reading tells us who bravely and courageously spoke truth to King David.  It was the prophet, Nathan.  

Now, the King was one formidable figure. We know the legendary stories about how David was chosen by God for the position he now held! It was truly a rags-to-riches story – shepherd boy to giant killer to king.

But, even this “chosen-by-God person” was not above Judaic law.  He was, especially, not above temptations in life. 

Now, our sources of temptation may be different from David’s, but they are temptations nonetheless. In David’s case he really did yield to temptation!  And, in the midst of it, we are not led to believe that David thought he was doing anything wrong.  His actions: essentially raping Bathsheba, putting her husband in a situation in which he would surely be killed in battle, then bringing the grieving widow, pregnant with his child, into his own home as another wife.

Of course, you know that women in David’s time were absolutely treated as property (she is not even named in today’s text), so it is no surprise that David treated her as if she were nothing.  But Uriah, her husband, becomes the main player in this unfolding drama. 

As you recall from the reading, God sent the prophet Nathan to be the truth-teller to David.  You heard the parable that Nathan told, about the little lamb that belonged to the poor man.  The lamb had been loved and nurtured by that man, raised as a daughter.  The rich man, on the other hand, was drunk with his own power and wealth and thought he could get away with anything, thoughtlessly taking the beloved lamb of the poor man and making it into a meal for him and his visitor. 

The story Nathan told David – of an overbearing, pompous, full-of-himself rich man stealing all that his neighbor had – is poignant.  Nathan told the truth to David through that powerful story, convicting him of his wrongs, but David only saw the injustice and shocking crime that the rich man committed against the poor man.  David shouted for the death of the cruel rich man, and, then, Nathan, in his wisdom, said, “YOU are that man!”

Nathan, then, laid out what all God had done for David and how David had defied God by doing what is evil in God’s sight.  Nathan’s witness to David caused the King to see the truth of his horrible behavior so that he, then, confessed that he had sinned against the Lord.

Nathan was very courageous, speaking truth to this powerful man, risking his own life.   

…Folks, all of us need a Nathan in our lives, someone whom we trust who can help keep us on the path of righteousness. We are not royalty but we have enough wealth to be spoiled and think we can get away with things we shouldn’t pursue. So, I wonder, who is the truthteller in each of our lives? Who can call us to accountability?  Whose words will WE listen to that will force us to look in the mirror.  When we have strayed, who can guide us back to a right relationship with God and others? 

All of us need those guides for many reasons because once we’re off track, it’s hard to get back on. Once we’ve convinced ourselves that only we know best, we can begin to rationalize worse and worse behavior.  Once we decide that we don’t have to listen to anyone but those yes men and women with whom we have surrounded ourselves, it’s nothing but a slippery slope, and that could lead to broken relationships, even criminal behavior, but especially a distance and separation from God. 

Also, people are watching how we conduct ourselves.  Perhaps we’ve been good examples for others, perhaps we’ve been publicly part of church, known as role models for new Christians or for young people. 

It’s really true that what we do makes a difference in this world. What we say and how we conduct ourselves rubs off on others, it affects others; it matters in the scheme of things; our behavior has an impact; it can have a ripple effect in the world.  Can you see how important it is for us to be a force for good.  Can you see how important it is that our leaders are good and righteous people.  Can you see how what leaders say and do has an impact on everyone?

The flip side of that is that we can be trusted truth tellers for each other, speaking the truth in love to our brothers and sisters in our lives.  Whether they choose to hear us or not, it is a pact we can make with one another in our relationships.  It takes courage, yes, but, really, isn’t it something we would want for ourselves, the truth that others are seeing?  Yes, we can work to be aware of ourselves, our choices and what difference they make in the lives of others, but sometimes we miss the most important stuff. 

My worst mistake in ministry happened early on in my time at Wellington.  I was trying to gain trust from the congregation.  They had not yet had a woman pastor so they were a bit slow in accepting my leadership.  One man in particular was in my ear a lot.  We disagreed theologically on many things, yet he was always, seemingly, a good sport about it.  One day he reported to me his concern about a fellow who was teaching youth Sunday School.  The problem that the man reported was that the Sunday School teacher wasn’t giving the kids any content but, was, rather, talking about sports every Sunday morning.  The fellow who was in my ear was going to speak with him about it, but I said I would take care of it.  So, I made that very difficult phone call.  It so happened that the Sunday School teacher’s teenaged daughter was overhearing our conversation.  That unadvised phone call ended up alienating that whole family.  All because I was attempting to protect my own ego and leadership status.  I didn’t really need a truth-teller because I knew I had messed up, but when I confessed the story to the Conference counselor, she confirmed what I already knew.  I tried several times to heal this wound, but it really is something I have had to live with.   

Our decisions matter.  It’s hard to be shown to be in the wrong either willfully or ignorantly or lazily.  If the facts of our wrongdoing are correct, it really is important for us to repent.

This is, admittedly, a difficult Bible lesson.  King David deserved every consequence he received, but the line that you didn’t hear read this morning was this: after David had confessed, Nathan said to David, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.”  This is the unexpected graciousness that we receive from our God.  It’s so important for us to hear this and to really take it in…. 

So, there you go.  A story about a leader who was so weak and so corrupt.  Stories in our heads about how we have messed up.  But being brave enough and humble enough to open our ears to our truth-tellers, we can be called to recognize our own wrongdoings and repent.

One message in this lesson is that we need to stop carrying the weight of our wrongdoing around because it becomes too heavy.  The sad story of King David gives us permission to put down our burdens and repent, trusting that ours is a gracious, forgiving God who will allow us to move on from the things we have done that go all the way from egregious sins like King David’s to small verbal infractions that may be fixed with a simple “I’m sorry.”  

This is who we are called to be – hearers, recipients of the truth as well as carriers of the truth to others, light bearers in a world that can be dark and lonely.  But, in the midst of it, we can be truth-tellers to the world about the great love of God.