Pentecost 3/Proper 6
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
2 Samuel 11:26 - 12:10, 31:1; Psalm 32; Galations 2: 15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3.
Today we have two apparently different stories – in 2 Samuel and Luke – that have one shared theme. They’re powerful, moving stories about deep human emotions and passions – but unless you know them and their back-stories then the power is lost.
So let me fill you in. The ‘back-story’ in 2 Samuel is one of lust and power and murder – it sounds like an ancient soap opera, and it went like this:
The David we meet in this in this passage had earlier been on the roof of his palace in the cool of the evening and from there had seen an incredibly beautiful woman bathing in her courtyard. That’ woman’s name was Bathsheba – and, it seems to me, she must have known David was watching!.
It was “lust at first sight” – David was immediately intoxicated – “besotted” would be the word, I think – “overthrown” is certainly accurate. He ordered her brought to his chambers – and what the King wants, the king gets – so she was, and, to use the old euphemism he “had his way with her.”
The result? One pregnant woman. Only then, it would appear, did David bother to inquire more about her, and he discovered that she was married to a mid-ranking soldier in his army – Uriah – who was out on the battlefield preparing to fight to defend Israel. What to do!?
His first ploy was clever – bring Uriah back and tell him to go and “see” his wife. Then it could be claimed that the child was Uriah’s.
It didn’t work. It was quite common for soldiers to remain abstinent when facing a battle so as not to break the code of honor with their fellow soldiers..
So David came up with a more devious – and evil – scheme. He ordered his general to have Uriah lead the first charge. This was both a great honor and also a death sentence – like inviting Confederate General Lewis Armistead to lead Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg.
But then David added a literal “coup de gras” – he ordered that once the charge was made the soldiers with Uriah should retreat, leaving him alone in the face of the enemy.
That was a death sentence! The whole thing was a complete set-up and it was Uriah who was the victim – and, indeed, he was executed.
So now that you know this story – about secret betrayal, about being set-up, let’s take a look at the Gospel. .
Jesus has accepted a Pharisee’s invitation to dine with him. Based on how Luke understood Jesus’ relationship with Pharisees – that, to put it mildly, they “didn’t get on”, this was an unusual and risky thing to do. It’s like the young woman in the horror movie who always seems to unlock the door to the basement where the monster’s living – you want to shout “don’t turn that key!!”. Luke’s readers would have been saying the same thing here: “What the heck?? Don’t go to that dinner!” But Jesus goes.
And then this woman shows up, and she’s a “sinner!” What sort of a “sinner” is never made clear, though Pope Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, conflated her with the women in Mark who also anoints Jesus, and with Mary Magdalene who’s mentioned a few verses later, and came up with this composite called Mary Magdalene who, he said, was a reformed prostitute.
Other than being grossly unfair it also distracts us from what’s really going on here. This woman, Luke says, is a “sinner” – meaning that she was unclean - doesn’t matter how. No Jew who cared about purity would want to be touched by someone who was unclean, yet somehow the Simon the Pharisee had “allowed one such person not only to get into the house, but to get near Jesus. Doesn’t this scream “set-up!!” to you? The whole thing was staged – a complete set-up in the same way that Uriah’s death was a complete set-up.
The woman gets near Jesus and he allowed her to touch him and Simon the Pharisee springs his trap – as if speaking to himself he says something like this: “If he was a REAL prophet, he would have known that this woman was unclean”. The logical implication is this: that Jesus is not a real prophet.
This is the same sort of evil deceit from Simon the Pharisee as from King David. In essence, Jesus is being killed in just the same way, in that this is an attempt to remove him from contention as a real prophet, emasculating his threat to Pharisaic Judaism.
So we have a literally dead Uriah, and a metaphorically dead Jesus. What happens now?
In 2 Samuel the theological cavalry charges in to save the day in the form of a real prophet – Nathan. He tells a story about a nasty, self-centered, cruel man who essentially murdered a poor man’s daughter (remember: this sheep was “like a daughter to him”?). And when David expresses righteous indignation, Nathan springs his ethical trap: “you are [that] man!!”
Similarly, with Jesus, he tells a parable which ends with a question to which there is only one correct answer. As with David the carefully laid plan has backfired and Simon the Pharisee is now trapped into condemning himself. In essence, Jesus is saying “You are that man” to Simon.
There are several messages for us here:
One message we don’t always see is this: we can all get sucked into unethical self-justifying behavior– witness David’s behavior which, he would at first have claimed, was done “for love”. In Alcoholics Anonymous that’s called “stinking thinking” – the drunk man who drove his Ford Explorer into the back of a car on I-5 a few days ago, killing two teenaged boys, had convinced himself he could drive safely – that “stinking thinking” proved tragically wrong. It almost always does.
Another message here is this: be careful when someone tells you a story that provokes a response of righteous indignation in you, especially one told by Jesus, because before it’s over you might find out that really it’s a story about you! This is one of Jesus’ standard tricks and is, in fact, the way that parables function – more often than not they are self-indicting traps for the unaware.
And, lastly – if, at least, we are to believe the outcomes of these stories – there’s a common message here of repentance, justice and forgiveness. Our repentant recognition of our own sinful behavior and the restorative justice of God, go hand-in-hand. That’s true for David, for the woman with the Alabaster Jar, and, Jesus is saying, for us, too.
Now that’s Good News! Amen.
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