The Man in the Mirror – Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost (2 Samuel 11: 26 – 12: 13)
“You are the man!” As someone who grew up in the Nineties and the early Aughts I always learned to hear this phrase as a way of praising someone. As an exclamation point on someone’s success. A way of naming someone as a singularly special person. Usually a man, obviously. Also, in in the Nineties and 2000s they would usually drop the word are, as in “You the man” or the word “the” would become “da.” You da man! In fact, this was so common that the word processor I wrote this sermon with did not even identify that as a misspelling or grammar issue. You da man, perfectly acceptable, apparently. (Even so, I think if I were to use that phrase in conversation today, I would just be showing my age, and most people younger than me would roll their eyes or cringe at how ridiculous I sounded.)
I’m sure King David would have been accustomed to hearing this phrase often, or whatever the ancient Israeli equivalent was. When God directed Samuel to choose David over all his older brothers? You the man! When David defeated the giant warrior Goliath? You the man! When King Saul welcomed him into his courts and his family? You the man. When David was anointed King over Israel and Judah? You are the man! And now, David is hearing these words again. This time spoken to him by the prophet Nathan. Except this time, they are not words of acclamation, they are words of accusation. “You are the man!” As in, “you are the man who has committed such a crime.” “You are the man who has wronged someone.” “You are the man who has disappointed your God.”
Now having heard the story of David’s adultery with Bathsheba, and his subsequent plot to cover it up, even going so far as to conspire to have Bathsheba’s husband killed, we could guess why David is being accused and why God is angry with him. To David, however, the accusation comes as a surprise. He does not realize that is what Nathan has come to talk to him about. And why would he? After all, at this point David must feel as if he is in the clear. Uriah is dead, and he died in battle, not because of David’s plot, but because of a tactical error by Joab, the general of David’s army. Joab let his soldiers get too close to the walls of the city, and once this happened, they were easily picked off by enemy archers on top of the wall. Once Uriah was dead, David waited the appropriate amount of time, letting Bathsheba be in mourning for her late husband, before he brought her to the palace and married her. That issue seemed to be resolved. For David, it was. For God, not so much.
Nathan comes before David and tells him he has a legal case to put before him. During this time the king would serve as the supreme court of the land and pass judgement on various cases. The case Nathan presents to David here is about two men. One man is rich, with many possessions including a large flock of sheep. The other man is poor, he only has one lamb, but he loves this lamb like it is one of his own children. One day the wealthy man has guests over for dinner. To feed them he steals the lamb from the poor man and butchers it.
When David hears this story he is outraged. He believes that it is unjust and unfair that this man who had everything should take from the poor man. Not only does he take from him, he takes what the man loves the most. David passes judgement on the rich man quickly and decisively. He says he must die, and the poor man must be repaid many times over. David doesn’t realize it, but by passing judgement in this way, he has stepped in Nathan’s trap. By accusing the man in the story he has accused and passed judgement on himself. “You are the man” is Nathan’s response.
Nathan goes on to speak further, but what he says now are God’s words, not his. (And we know this because he says, “Thus sayeth the Lord” first.) God is angry at David’s actions. God is angry that David had been given so much, but it still wasn’t enough. David stole from his neighbor, and killed his neighbor. Which is to say nothing of the harm David may have done to Bathsheba. The scriptures are vague on exactly what happened between them, which has led some to assume that Bathsheba was a willing participant. But we don’t know that for sure. What we do know is that David wanted to sleep with her, and we know that he was the king and so she was very unlikely to have said no to him. He had all the power, yet he still decided to take more, and to take what wasn’t his. Just like the man in the story. God also goes on to say that David’s punishment, specifically for plotting to have Uriah killed, will be that violence will continue to plague his rule and his family. We’ll have more on that next week. Now let us look at David’s response.
David is repentant. He repents of his sins and his crimes about as quickly as he passed judgement after hearing Nathan’s story. David does not defend himself against the charges. He does not deny what has been done. He accepts God’s judgement. David does this, because in angering God, he has been reminded of something very important to him, one of his priorities. His relationship with God is important to him, and he knows that he must repent of the terrible things he did, because that is the only choice he can make that will lead him back into right relationship with God. When we prioritize our relationship with God, this is a choice we will all be faced with eventually.
There is no avoiding this for David because he had already passed judgement on himself, even if he didn’t know it at the time. Nathan’s story held a mirror up to David, it revealed a truth to him that he had been overlooking or denying. This was important, especially when we look at the stories of David as examples of finding our way through conflict and challenging situations by faith and through our relationship with God. It is important because sometimes the biggest obstacle we face is our own complicity in a problem and our ability, or inability, to acknowledge that fact. We are too often quick to overlook the part we play in our life’s most challenging situations or moments of conflict. It’s easy to get up in the morning when everything in life is going our way -when we are feeling good, having success, getting things done- and we can look ourselves in the mirror and say, “You da man!” It is much more difficult to get up in the morning when we are feeling less full of hope -we are depressed or angry at the world, things keep going wrong, life feels unsatisfying or disappointing, our fellow travelers just won’t cooperate or do the right thing- and it is difficult to look in the mirror on those days and say, “You are the man.” You had a part to play in all this, you are not free of blame, you have also made mistakes. Sin touches all of our lives, and we play a part in that.
This realization is a big step, because to move on from sin, mistakes, conflict, and challenging situations we must allow ourselves to be both Nathan and David. As Nathan, we are open to passing judgement, but not indiscriminate or biased judgement. Instead, it is judgment that is clear-eyed, judgement based on our understanding of God and who God is calling us to be in the world. As Nathan, we are open to speaking such words of truth to power, whether that power is a king, a government, or our own out of control ego. As David, we must be open to hearing the truth from our Nathans, we must be able to recognize our sins when they are presented to us, and repent of them, to restore right relationship with ourselves, with our community, and with God. When we serve as David and Nathan, we also remember that judgement is not the final word, or shouldn’t be, when we are able to repent we are also making a further word possible. We are making a new word possible.
So, as David did, let us hear now a story. A story about a man named John Newton who was filled with fear as he went through a terrifying experience one night, an experience that led him to look at himself in the proverbial mirror. Today John Newton is best known as the author of the hymn, Amazing Grace. But in 1748 he was a young British sailor on a boat called the Greyhound, and one night that boat found itself in the middle of storm, much like the boat the disciples were sailing. Now, before this time Newton was not a man of faith or religious activity. He was known as someone who could be profane, unreliable, and impulsive. He liked to indulge in his vices, and he gave a hard time to those whom he viewed as devout stick-in-the-muds. He had very little, if any relationship with God. All that began to change, though, on this stormy night as the storm raged and Newton watched some of his fellow sailors be swept overboard by the wind and waves. As many people before him and after him, in this moment of near-death, Newton called out to the Lord to be saved, saying “God help us!” Thankfully, Newton’s life was spared from this storm, and this was the beginning of his spiritual journey. In a moment of fear and doubt he found the faith to give his life into God’s hands.
Perhaps the most morally dubious of Newton’s pre-conversion activities was being involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Taking people from Africa and transporting them into a life of slavery in North America. His conversion did not result in him immediately leaving the slave trade. Unfortunately, that is part of his story. However, he would eventually become a clergyman and an outspoken abolitionist, fighting against the slave trade.
In the example of John Newton, we see someone who had life experiences that led him to a relationship with God, and in that relationship he was led to an opportunity to repent. He confronted many difficult realities in his walk of faith. It started out seemingly small. He first confronted the difficult realities about his own life, the way he behaved, the way he treated other people. In the face of his mortality, he looked in the mirror and chose to call to God, and he repented of this old way of life. This repentance was not the final word. It led to further words in Newton’s life, such as, “[H]ow sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Eventually the changes in his life led Newton to confront the difficult and horrendous reality of the Atlantic slave trade, of which he had at one time been a part of. He looked at this widely accepted, and profitable, practice and accepted that it was wrong. His repentance led him to became an abolitionist, standing in opposition to and calling for the end of the slave trade and the chattel slavery it enabled. He confronted these realities, and responded to the need for change, in himself and in the world. This is what we are called to do as Christians, but it can be scary. After all, racism and the injustice and inequality that it creates remains one of our world’s great sins, which is still in need of repentance.
As big a challenge as is it, though, we should not see it as an insurmountable challenge. Perhaps we can only offer one brick at a time, but when we confront problems in our lives and in our society by judging them with clear eyes and the love of God in our hearts, then we don’t have to be afraid of acknowledging those challenges. If we can acknowledge them this way then we make ourselves prepared for repentance. And when we repent, we are laying the groundwork for new possibilities, possibilities that are only possible when we accept our part in the problem, in the old way of being and commit ourselves to helping bring about the new way of being. As John Newton did, we can write new words to our song.
Then, at the end of the day, we can look ourselves in the mirror and say, “Good job. That’s better. Let’s try again tomorrow.”
Amen.