9 PENTECOST, PROPER 13, YEAR B

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE

THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY

2 AUGUST 2009

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2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a; Psalm 51:1-13; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35

We meet King David again this week, the next installment in the sorry saga of this phase of his life. From ruddy shepherd boy anointed by God as king of all Israel and Judah, to adulterer, and instigator of the death of his lady love’s husband.

And by now, as we have heard in today’s first reading, the consequences of his deeds are setting in.

This latest part of King David’s story repels me. I hear about the prophet Nathan, sent by God to deal with David by telling him a story; as soon as I hear that, I know what’s coming next and I am repelled. It’s the story of the poor man’s one and only, beloved, precious lamb, stolen and slaughtered for dinner by a rich king because the rich king didn’t want to give up one of his own sheep. A sacrificial lamb.  Where have we heard that before? And David recognizes himself as that cruel, rich king. Suddenly David feels the consequences of what he had done. Eventually, his infant son dies, the baby born of his union with Bathsheba, the murdered man’s wife, and God makes public David’s shame. Indeed, we are still talking about his shame 4000 years later!

Actions have consequences.

Well, at least we haven’t done what David did. What a relief!

But this is more than a juicy story. And it isn’t about King David alone, of course. Scripture is always about us, too. None of us is off the hook. Our actions, too, have consequences.

The point of today’s readings isn’t David and his sin and his relationship with God, but us and our sin and our relationship with God.  Above all, it’s about what we do about what we have done.

What did David do about what he had done?

His story changes, doesn’t it, with the messenger, with Nathan? And David comes face to face, finally, finally, with his own life. It’s the turning point, the beginning of repentance. “I have sinned against the Lord.”

The price for David’s deeds was high, the cost nearly overwhelming. “I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house,” said the Lord. David’s new son dies, his wives are given to a neighbor and his shame is made very public.

And yet David himself survives.  The price for adultery in those days was death. David is spared. I can’t fathom God’s reasoning. The line between God’s anger and God’s mercy is beyond all human understanding.

“I have sinned against the Lord.” David goes on, then, consequences and all. He makes the most of what he has. That’s repentance, turning around, starting anew. That’s the point. God’s mercy in letting him do that—that’s the point, too.

There’s another repentance story. This one’s about a little boy. And who knows, maybe his name was David, too. It’s a story told by the writer Kathleen Norris. She was working with some children and teaching them about psalms and how psalmists used to express their emotions through their writing. So the children wrote their own psalms. One little boy wrote a psalm which he called “The Monster Who Was Sorry.” It’s about himself and how he hated it when his father yelled at him. That always made him mad. It made him want to throw his sister down the stairs, wreck his room and then wreck the whole town. The psalm ends: “Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, ’I shouldn’t have done all that.’”

That little boy was as honest as the psalmists in scripture. As honest as King David: “I have sinned against the Lord.” And he was well on his way towards repentance, says Norris.

What did the little boy then do about what he had done (or had wanted to do)? We know that the next step for him, was to get up, clean the messy house and make it a place where God might wish to live.

King David was well on his way towards repentance. What did King David do about what HE had done? He got up and he wrote a psalm, also. The psalm we have just said part of today, Psalm 51.  “I have done what is evil in your sight…create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me…Cast me not away from your presence…”

David used the gifts that were in him, the gift of writing, for generations to come to sing for themselves. And later, the gift of leadership, as he went on to preside over the land and the people given into his care.

Above all, King David let his heart be opened, allowing God to create it anew. A heart transplant, as it were. He let God shape him, as a potter shapes the pot. “Offer to God your heart,” said Irenaeus the 2^nd century theologian, ”Offer to God your heart, soft and tractable….let your clay be moist, lest you grow hard and lose the imprint of God’s fingers…”

May each of us, each one of us, open our hearts to God, letting our clay be moist and tractable and soft. May we let the imprint of God’s fingers so mold us and transform us that our hearts will become havens of welcome for one another, places where God will wish to live.