Preached by Winton Boyd on July 20th
As a parent, I often find myself in the dilemma of having raised very good young lawyers. While I appreciate and respect – really I do – the articulation and passion of my children’s view and beliefs – I am a bit flummoxed by the use of those skills against me! Couldn’t you try them out on someone else? I am often reminded of conversations I had with my own parents in which they questioned my independence, differing political opinions and the way I challenged some of their values. Be careful what you pray for I would say – you raised your children to be independent thinkers and actors – and that’s what I am demonstrating right now. There is quite a difference between being raised to be politically conservative and being raised in a politically conservative house to be clear thinking!
Today’s biblical story is a classic example of two people living in the same environment, seeing the same things, but having very different takes on the events at hand!!
Today’s characters include David, Nathan and to a lesser degree Bathsheba and Uriah. This story undoubtedly has remained alive in the Scriptural tradition because it combines politic, sex, religion and power. However, while the story of David and Bathsheba is important, so also is the role of Nathan – the truth teller. The words are of Nathan are what bring this story into our prophetic and passionate conscience. It is the role of the prophet/priest – the one who remains on the “inside” while maintaining perspective, conscience, and integrity – that comes alive in our reading of this text. He’s “got game.” He has guts.
If we were to imagine ourselves as part of this story – most of us are not the David’s of the world. We do not live with unfettered and unchecked power. We don’t command armies and demand that surrogates steal intimate partners. Most of us are Nathans – looking for truth and justice, dealing with all sorts of nuances in the face of more powerful leadership, seeking to embody the values of God in the face of shady and uncertain behaviors.
We are Nathan and his story is relevant because we too live uneasily with the power we do have, the influence we do exert. We look for the time, the place, and the creative imagination to speak truth to power effectively and faithfully.
Henri Nouwen, priest, author and professor at some of this country’s most prestigious universities (Yale, Harvard, Notre Dame) once spoke with clarity and conviction about what it means to be Christian in this culture. He writes, (Henri Nouwen – Circles of Love),
You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in,
so long as you emphasize the need of conversion both for yourself and for the world,
so long as you in no way let yourself become established in the situation of the world,
so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come.
When he writes of the “need for conversion” he is not talking about a Jesus and me, dramatic, one time experience. He is talking about a way of life, a deepening relationship, a coming into being…He is talking about the aligning, or realigning of our lives with the grace of God we see around us, known in our own experience, and witnessed in the biblical narratives.
Because this kind of “conversion” is a life long turning, a long term reframing of one’s life and commitments, I am often comforted by thinking about some of those who have gone before us – facing similar questions, similar tensions, and similar hopes.
One strand comes out of our 19th century Congregational “evangelicals” forebears. These passionate men and women – unabashedly congregational and unabashedly evangelical in the sense that they saw a real role for their faith in the public sqaure – were “on the front lines of the movements to abolish slavery, to give women the right to vote, to mitigate poverty and overcome sharp class divisions.
Delwin Brown has written, “They understood that their progressive, even revolutionary, stances were required of them as Christians. They were not progressives who also happened to be Christians. They were progressives because they were Christians, in order to be faithful to the gospel. Their pursuit of justice was a spiritual discipline. Their efforts were not dependent on the likelihood of success. They were not based on calculations; they sprang from the conviction that Jesus came to overcome socially and culturally created injustices. They were united in Christian spirit rather than Christian beliefs. They understood that Christians could disagree on matters of theology and still be united in service to God and neighbor.
Another stand comes from the signers of something known as the Barmen Declaration. According to our UCC website, this declaration in 1934 was a call to resistance against the theological claims of the German Nazi state. Shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933, Christians faced pressure to “arranize” the church, expel Jewish Christians from the church and to go along with Hitler’s insistance that he was a German prophet to be held alongside the Bible and Christian principles as a voice of authority. Crassly speaking, it was Hitler’s way of co-opting a strong cultural institution. Rather than shut German churches down, he sought to insert himself into their theology. Many Christians, however, resisted this pressure. Lutheran and Reformed, liberal and orthodox opposed this Nazi theology – forming what became known as the “confessing church” by which they meant that those who were truly Christians needed to remain true to their faith, their confession, even if it meant speaking truth to power. Many of these resisters, like Lutheran pastor Deitrich Bonhoeffer and Catholic priest Bernhard Lichtenberg, were arrested and executed in concentration camps. They rejected the notion that the church should hand over it’s unique vocation of calling people to faith to the state to use and/or abuse for its purposes. The people and the spirituality of this Barmen movement profoundly influenced many of the pastors and lay people who formed the UCC a few short years later in 1957.
Both of these “strands” are part of our heritage, both of them stem from a deep belief that the prophet Nathan and other prophets modeled a faithful way of living. They also understood that the vision Christians cast is not just a negative statement about what is, but a hopeful vision about how conversion will allow something more grace-filled to emerge. Equally as important, they addressed these issues of concern on grand social levels, but also in deeply personal ways. They made simple, daily and often courageous choices – recognizing that speaking truth to power comes in many varied and nuanced ways.
I had the opportunity on Friday evening to witness of grand celebration of current truth tellers. Our own Bonnie Augusta was honored by Outreach, Inc – a gay and lesbian community organization – as woman of the year – for her work as the Madison Schools Gay, Lesbian, BiSexual, Transgender and Questioning Resource Teacher. As she, and others, were honored at this annual banquet, it was a wonderful example of passionate, persistent, faithful and powerful truth telling – namely creating space in our school communities for children of all orientations to have the support, guidance, friendship and love that ALL children and youth deserve. Bonnie is a great example of a Nathan like prophet because while she speaks the truth – she is always speaking in service to a higher vision and a higher calling. As she calls our community to even greater responsibility, and as she fends off criticism disbelief, she does so in a spirit of love and hope. If you have ever seen Bonnie confront someone, or been confronted by her yourself, you know it is always done with deep respect even as she speaks a truth that is hard to hear. She seeks to embody the vision she is asking others to live. We can be proud, and we can be reminded that we too have our truth to tell.
Nathan was effective, as are all prophets, because he embodied a faith that the Apostle Paul would later frame in the book of Acts, chapter, 17, when he said our lives are grounded not in cultural acceptance, but in the fact that “it is in God, and God alone, that we live and move and have our being.”
Henri Nouwen, who I quoted earlier, concluded his definition of being Christian with these words,
You are Christian only when you believe you have a role to play in the realization of the new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.
May the possibility of a new life, a new order, a new kingdom be the focus on our faith, the motivation for our actions, and the hope of our future. Amen.
Introduction to the Scripture (from From ONE NATION, MANY GODS by Harry C. Kiely & Ira G. Zepp, Jr.)
The prophet Nathan was a contemporary of David, Israel’s king in the tenth century BCE. He was close to King David and served as his counselor. David’s reign was the high-water mark in Israel’s history and all successive kings were compared to him. He combined all the elements that make a human being memorable and influential; including moments of glory and grandeur; and moments of disgrace and dishonor.
David’s dark side was exposed by Nathan in one of the most gripping stories of deceit and intrigue found in the Bible. On one occasion David was walking on the roof of his house and saw below a woman taking a bath in her yard. He was struck by her beauty. David had a messenger bring her to him. That she was married to one of his faithful army officers did not matter to the king.
As a result of their sexual affair, Bathsheba became pregnant. His first thought was to see that Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, got out of the picture. So David had Uriah come home to hopefully sleep with his wife so that David’s paternity would not be exposed. When Uriah, true to his soldier obligation of refraining from sexual intercourse during active military service, refused to sleep with Bathsheba, David went to plan B and saw that Uriah got drunk. That, he hoped, would drive Uriah to be in bed with his wife. Well, that failed and plan C went into effect. David, king and general of his army, had Joab, the commander of Uriah’s unit, place Uriah in the first line of battle so he would be the first killed in the next battle. This latter plan was successful and Uriah lost his life in that next battle.
Today’s Scripture comes on the heels of that incident. God was so displeased with David’s sin that he told Nathan to share this parable with David:
“There were two men in a city; one was very rich and powerful with many flocks. The other man was a poor peasant with only a lamb he treasured and cared for as if his life depended on it. A traveler came through town and stopped at the rich man’s house hoping to receive some room and board. He was thirsty and tired. The rich man gave him nothing and what is worse stole the poor man’s only lamb and gave it to the traveler.” By this time David could not contain himself. In his anger he demanded “Who is this man? What is his name? This man deserves to die and should restore fourfold what he took from that peasant.”
Then Nathan said to David these famous words: “You are that man! You have failed the God who gave you your kingdom and all you have. And you have taken from your servant Uriah his wife as well as his own life. You think others are here for your dispensation. You are not God, to take life in this manner.”Speaking our Truth
