Robert Berra
Sermon at St.
Augustine’s, Tempe
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Proper 12
Year B |
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You may have
noticed that since Trinity Sunday we have been reading the stories of the first
kings of Israel.
To briefly recap
the last eight weeks: The people of Israel are tired of never having a king
like other nations, so they ask the prophet Samuel to anoint a king for
them. Saul is chosen as the first
king. But Saul didn’t obey God, so God
sent Samuel to secretly anoint a new king:
David. Well, David and Saul get
close after David slays Goliath; David is invited to live with Saul. But Saul became jealous of David and repeatedly
tried to kill him. David escapes and
lives as a wandering bandit for a while, pursued by Saul. Eventually Saul dies. David comes back from
the cold to be made king officially; and he brings the ark to Israel. Last week, God promised to David that David’s
kingdom and line would continue in perpetuity.
What I love about
this particular track of Bible readings is that it begins with a bit of
satirical foreshadowing. Let’s return
for a moment to that moment that Israel asks for a king eight weeks ago:[1]
All the elders of
Israel gathered together and came to Samuel [the prophet]…and said to him,
"You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us,
then, a king to govern us, like other nations." [Samuel wasn’t too happy
about this, so] Samuel prayed to the LORD, and the LORD said to Samuel,
"Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they
have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.
Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to
this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you.
Now then, listen to their voice; only-- you shall solemnly warn them, and show
them the ways of the king who shall reign over them."
So Samuel
reported all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a
king. He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over
you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his
horsemen, and to run before his chariots... He will take your daughters to be
perfumers and cooks and bakers [not to mention concubines]… He will take the
best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his
courtiers… He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle
and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks,
and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your
king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in
that day."
But the people
refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, "No! but we are
determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations,
and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our
battles."
God told Samuel
to paint a dismal picture of kings, and that speaks to the cynic in me. So that is what Samuel did, basically saying
that if Israel wants a human king instead of a protecting God, that is what
Israel will get. And it will not be fun
for anyone. This is an example of some
of the earliest political critique in the Bible, and will form the basis from
which all of the kings of Israel will be critiqued and judged, all because
Israel wanted to be like every other nation.
And this week… we
have a story in of Hebrew Bible reading that, while it is brief, has all the
drama of an episode of Game of Thrones.
The reading
begins by saying that in the
spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent his soldiers to war.
How kingly. You can kind of hear
the writer saying “See? He’s like every
other king, sending his people to war, in the spring, as kings do.”
Well, In the
midst of this, David (who we are told is not
leading from the front) has an indiscreet moment with Bathsheba, Uriah’s
wife.
[Note: It's worth saying that what happened between David and Bathsheba would be most accurately categorized as rape or sexual assault. There was probably no meaningful way for her to say 'no' in such a situation...as such there was no meaningful consent.]
She conceives,so David
tries to find a way to cover up the whole matter. He
calls Uriah back from the front, presumably to ask him how things are with the
army, but then basically sends him to be intimate with Bathsheba so the child
will be thought to be Uriah’s, saying "Go
down to your house, and wash your feet [wink, wink]."
But
Uriah, being the pious and patriotic eager beaver that he is, says "The
ark and Israel and Judah are in tents; and my commander and the servants of my
lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to
drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives [he says to
David] I will not do such a thing."
Soldiers in Israel at this time had to maintain purity by avoiding
intercourse while at war. David knew this too; in his earlier days, he enforced
this purity on the warriors who rode with him.[2] But, these were desperate times, and his
secret needed to be kept. David even
tried getting Uriah really drunk, hoping he’d forget himself and go home. That didn’t work.
So,
David does something quite drastic.
David sends a letter to the commander of his forces, saying “Set Uriah
in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that
he may be struck down and die."”
And that’s not even the worse part.
David has Uriah unknowingly deliver his death sentence in that letter to
the commander. That’s cold. That’s exactly how Uriah died, too. Bathsheba probably didn’t know the full story
of how her husband died, but after her mourning, David brings her to his palace
and marries her. Insult upon
injury. The story will be continued next
week.
David’s epic
continues, but one can see in this story the beginning of Samuel’s warnings
coming to fruition. Eventually the
monarchy fails Israel as kings disobey God and abuse their own people.
Let’s fast
forward nearly 1,000 years. One of
David’s descendants is roaming the Galilean countryside and getting quite a bit
of attention. In our reading today,
Jesus miraculously feeds thousands out of the limited resources he was
given. He had been performing signs and
wonders as a way of pointing to his identity.
But what draws my attention today is that:
“When
Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him
king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”[3]
The crowd reacted
in a way that is completely understandable.
At the time, it was that that a prophet and messianic king would come
with signs and wonders, and these signs were marks of the promise of the messiah’s
arrival. The messiah would then bring
about the liberation of Israel from Roman control. I’m sure the crowd would have been confused
by Jesus’s refusal to take the power they were handing him.
But
why would he do that? Why would he turn
that power down?
I think the key
to understanding Jesus in this passage, and indeed his whole project on earth,
is to keep in mind both the biblical and prophetic estimation of earthly rulers
(such as Samuel’s low opinion of kings) and Jesus’s confrontation with the
representative of Roman authority: his
interrogation by Pilate before his execution.
When Jesus goes
before Pilate in the Gospel of John, the interrogation never really gets beyond
Pilate asking Jesus who he is.[4] “Are you a king? Where are you from?” Jesus only answers
cryptically before eventually falling silent.
As Jesus falls silent
before Pilate’s questions about his identity, Pilate asks “Do you not know
that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” That
is a terrible power—the power given him by the state. But Jesus knows something else, and it
becomes evident as the drama unfolds. The threat to use this power is a
sign of fear. It is a grasp for control of the situation. It is the
way earthly power works, then and now. Earthly power is borne out of the
desire to control our own fear. The torture and crucifixion Jesus would
endure—and so many other uses of force both great and small— are examples of
this worldly power. The desire to control others. To control circumstances.
To bend the will of a person to our own use. Its use is borne out of
fear. This power is used when the lie of control we continually tell
ourselves fails.
It is this same fear
and grasping for control that led Israel to demand a king in the first
place. The people did not trust God, and
for good reason they did not trust Samuel’s sons. The people desired to take their chances with
the same rules every other nation lived by.
And it was this lie of control and domination borne of fear that Christ
came to expose as a poor substitute for the fuller truth of God’s gracious
reign.
These justifications
and rationalizations of worldly power are the lies of control that Jesus
exposes by not bending to Pilate’s threat. It is the worldly power Jesus
exposed as a fraud through his resurrection—his resurrection which shows that
the worst that worldly power can do will not have the final say. It is the power Jesus was tempted with when
Satan offered him control of all the kingdoms of the world.[5] It is the worldly power Jesus refused to take
up when the crowds surrounded him to make him a king by force. It was the power that David relied on,
thinking he could hide his misdoings.
What does this mean
for us today? Well, you might not have
heard about this—we’ve been keeping it kind of hush-hush and there’s barely a
word about it in the media—but I hear there is an election coming up.
We are still more
than a year away from the elections, and still candidates of every stripe are
already making promises and presenting us with worldviews that may or may not
come to actual policy. And as some
candidates—of every stripe—begin to point to their religious affiliations to
appease voters who claim a faith—or surround their policies in a patina of
holiness as though their position papers fell like manna from heaven—or claim
their presence in the race as the humble following of God’s will—it is worth
noting that the Bible is deeply skeptical of worldly power and its exercise.
Instead of
recommending that an outgrowth of the skepticism is to shy away from the
political process in an effort to remain untainted, I think it is more likely
the case that we are asked to consider how our political decisions are an
outgrowth of Christ’s command to love God and our neighbors in concrete ways. I believe, just as we see in David the
possibility of great failings, and as Christ called out the death-dealing
limits of worldly power, we are called to sober discernment of what we are
promised in our life together as a nation.
But beware. The cheers of crowds and the blaring campaign
songs are sometimes loud enough to drown the still, small voice calling us
to forgo the calculations that keep us estranged from everyone around
us and grasping for control. Yet there
are candidates who rely on worldly calculations of power and appeal to fear to
make their case of a world in which we exert more control. And there are politicians who produce
counterfeit visions of God’s kingdom come in the hope of attracting those of us
who believe in the better world. With
both of these positions comes the all too common occurrence of declaring one’s
opponents wrong in the best case, and demonic at the extreme.
May we all, following
Christ’s example, escape the pull of worldly power and see through its abuses. May we all be wary of trusting too much the
devices and desires of our own hearts when we are promised their fulfillment at
the expense of our neighbors. And may we
hold accountable to God those who aspire to power, whatever its exercise.
Let us pray,
Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers
and privileges: Guide the people of the United States
in the election of officials and representatives;
that, by faithful administration and wise laws, the rights of
all may be protected and our nation be enabled to fulfill your
purposes; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[6]
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