6 August 2006

It helps to remember last week’s Hebrew Bible lectionary reading in order to make sense of today’s reading. So a recap might be in order.

Last week, David, King of Israel, with a harem of wives, saw Bathsheba bathing from his roof. He desired her and, being the king, got her. The problem was that she was married and David got her pregnant. No problem actually; as king, David had her husband sent to the front lines of battle and killed. Then he was free to marry her as another of his wives. So David took Uriah’s wife as his own after Uriah died in battle.

And that’s where we pick up today’s scripture. Now, I have no doubt that the whole of Jerusalem knew what was going on, human nature being what it is. Tongues will wag. But who is going to confront the king? No one in the entire kingdom is going to raise his or her voice against King David.

Except one…God. God is willing to voice a complaint against the king. God knows what’s going on and will speak up. God will raise judgment against David without fear. But God needs someone to be God’s voice. God needs a prophet to speak for God. And Nathan is just that prophet.

Now Nathan knows that he has to bring the word—God’s word—to the highest power in the land. He takes his orders directly from God. But he also knows that a direct attack on the king could spell disaster. So he comes up with a story, which he tells to King David: a story about a rich man and a poor man. A rich man who is greedy and a poor man who has nothing. Yet the rich man, when faced with serving a guest a meal, decides against taking from his many flocks and instead yanks the only thing that the poor man has—a ewe who has grown up with his children and is treated like one of the family. The rich man ignores his own vast holdings and instead steals the one thing of value in the poor man’s household.

David is incensed by this story. He declares that because of his greed, the rich man should die. The rich man’s power has corrupted him, David decides. He has gone beyond the realm of civilized behaviour.

This is when Nathan must have summoned all his courage. For his words are simple and direct: “You are the man,” he says. “You are the man,” he declares before David, indicting David of his crime of stealing the wife of Uriah and then sending him to die.

It took a lot of nerve for Nathan to do such a thing. Even with the indirect assault of the story, to say, “you are the man” must have taken every morsel of strength and courage in his body. For he still is talking to the king and the king could have him executed immediately for his presumptuousness.

But he didn’t. David, after Nathan explains that God has seen David’s actions in this whole affair, simply repents. His words back to Nathan and God are “I have sinned against the Lord.” Simply yet effective words.


How often are we in the place of David—justifying our actions and thinking no one notices how off base we might be? Thinking that what we are doing is all right when we know it’s wrong? Supposing that we can hide behind our justifications?

Many of us act that way. There are a few souls who have the opposite problem—everything that happens is their fault. They take the blame for everything and don’t try to justify anything. This scripture—and sermon—are not for them. This is for the rest of us who try to hide ourselves behind our justifications.

Like David, we can be caught in the web of justifications. I’m right because I have the power to be right. No one will challenge me. We may not be king or queen or a powerful ruler, but we can still use the power we have to justify what we do.

And this justification is rampant in our society today it seems, all the way to the top of the power chain. We ignore God’s ways and think we can hide from the truth of it.

Yet God sees. And God can get behind our justifications—God knows what’s going on with us even when we can hide it from others.

Now most of our justifications probably aren’t worth the trouble that Nathan took with David. It may be that we drove a little too fast because we were late for a meeting. Or that we didn’t go back to the grocery when we found out we were undercharged. There are plenty of choices each and every day when we find ourselves justifying our way out of making the right on.

But it’s the big ones that require the intervention of our own Nathan’s—usually known as our conscience. It’s when our conscience intervenes that we know the prophet of God is at work. It’s only occasionally that we actually get a real, live prophet to come up to us as Nathan did with David.

It’s when your conscience is pulling you that you know you haven’t escaped God’s notice. It’s that little voice inside of you that tells you that God is present and sees through your justifications, as God indeed can do.

Of course, the way around it all is to lead a life that is perfect in every way. Most of us, I would guess, can’t do that. So instead watch for that prophet inside yourself and know that your justifications may not be truly valid.