August 16, 2009
Misused & Abused - 2 Samuel 11:1-17
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadNewsweek had as its cover story recently Ted Kennedy’s lifelong struggle to implement universal health care. The article covered his entire political career. It talked about his run for the Presidential Primary against Jimmy Carter in 1980. It talked about his long and illustrative and impressive accomplishments in his 43 years as a Senator. It even talked about some of his personal battles, especially with health care, like his son’s fight against cancer in his leg, and his daughter’s fight against cancer in her lungs, and most recently his own fight against cancer in his brain that by most accounts is fatal. Though Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meachum, briefly mentioned this in his introductory article, the article on Ted Kennedy itself never mentioned this little tid-bit: Mary Jo Kopechne, or the 40th anniversary of her death, which was July 18th of this year. At the time, 37-year-old Senator Ted Kennedy, probably drunk and definitely married, had her as a passenger in his car, when he turned right and should have turned left. The car capsized in a pond, Ted swam for safety, and Mary Jo died. Not only did Sen. Kennedy not make any attempt to rescue her, he didn’t even report the incident until the next morning. Her body was immediately whisked away, out of state, with no autopsy. No investigation, no law suits, no grand juries, no plea deals, nothing at all. Thus Curtis Blaine’s bumper sticker, “I’d rather hunt quail with Dick Cheney than ride shot-gun with Ted Kennedy.” Regardless of Ted Kennedy’s achievements, we cannot simply sweep that tragic episode under the rug.
And just so you know that I’m not partisan in my criticism, many republicans have acted similarly repugnant. And, just so you know that I’m not picking on politicians (which I do have a tendency of doing), many other actors, wealthy business men, athletes, and even preachers have acted similarly repugnant, and – what is worse – gotten by with it. And that is the difference, you see. If you or I got drunk, and had an affair, and drove our cars off a bridge leaving our lover to drown to death, we would go to jail, which is exactly where we would belong. It’s not that we’re better than Ted Kennedy, we’re just not as powerful. We don’t have friends in high places to cover up our sins, and therefore we don’t have free reign to do what we want to do. In short, we are not above the law, and some people, depending on their money and power, are.
Not one of us in this sanctuary, however, is. And therefore, this story about David & Bathseba has everything to do with them (the powerful), and not with us. Honestly, this is one of the few stories in Scripture in which I am clearly not implicated. We may be guilty of everything else that we read in Scripture, but not this. Because, David’s primary sin here was not adultery at all. Not that he was innocent of adultery, or that his adultery was okay, but David’s primary sin, it seems to me, was his misuse and abuse of power. First of all, while all his merry men were out fighting the Ammonites, David was home catching some rays up on his roof. For you military types, that looks very similar to AWOL, or to desertion. other able bodied man (in fact Scripture says that “all of Israel) was away at war. Only David, only the chief can get away with being AWOL like that. While David was AWOL, catching rays up on his roof, he saw this beautiful lady taking a bath, and decided that he wanted her. And so he, as only he could, took her. There are laws against that, you know. It’s called rape, kidnapping, assault. Anybody else would go to jail, but not David, not the king. He was too powerful. But not even David could stop a biological clock, and next thing you know Bathsheba uttered those infamous words, “I’m pregnant.” Now things got a little complicated. So David found Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, and called him back from war for a little R&R. David told him to take the load off, to spend some time with his beautiful wife, and to do what husbands and wives do when they haven’t seen each other in a long time. That way, David could say that it was Uriah’s baby. But Uriah was too loyal for that. Uriah never even saw his beautiful wife because he was too loyal to David and Israel. Now, then, David was desperate. So he wrote orders to his General, Joab, to put Uriah on the front lines and have him, the epitome of loyalty, killed in battle. And so sure enough, Joab intentionally planned a failed military encounter that killed many other soldiers just so Uriah would die, just to keep David’s foolin’ around under wraps.
That’s four things that David did that we could never do. He deserted his army (which remains a capital offense in the US military), he forced himself on a woman (rape, assault, kidnapping), he called her husband back from war for no reason (misuse of state funds), and had him killed (that’s murder). Only someone powerful enough as King David could have gotten away with such horrific crimes. Only someone who has power can misuse and abuse power. None of us has that kind of power, though, so we may be guilty of a lot of sins, but we cannot, by definition, be guilty of that one. So rest assured, friends, we are safe.
Or are we? Actually, David did not get away with his sins. Legally he did, but if you read Chapter 12, you’ll see that God found David guilty on all those charges, and his punishment was, in many ways, greater than any legal system could impose. In his indictment of David, God said that “I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul… and I gave you the house of Judah and Israel.” To say that David had earned his power is not true. God freely gave David that power, and God gave it to him for Israel’s sake and not his own. When David used his power for reasons other than what God had intended, it was not just power that David misused and abused, it was God himself that David misused and abused. More than adultery, more than murder even, more than abuse of power, maybe David’s real crime is that he misused God himself. In fact, David even wrote in Psalm 51, “against you and you alone have I sinned.”
Now granted, we do not have much power. We are not the rich and famous. But we do have many other gifts. Regardless of what those gifts are, they all come from God. God gives us those gifts, and the subsequent blessings that come from them, to be used for God’s glory and God’s Kingdom, and not our own. And when we use those gifts for other purposes, when we abuse God’s good gifts (as David did here), it seems to me that maybe we are guilty of David’s crimes in 2 Samuel 11 after all. Our crimes may not be as egregious as David’s (no adultery, no illegitimate children, no murder), but we too have misused and abused God. This story then is not just David’s story, it’s not just a little footnote that proves that David is not who he is cracked up to be, it’s also our own story, and our own little footnote that we ourselves are not who we are cracked up to be either.
Twenty-five of us just got back from Gary, West Virginia on a mission trip. We spent last weekend at a place called the School for Life, which is an old school that has been turned into a house for missionaries like us. Jack Fultz bought that old school for $100 from US Steele in 2004. Jack grew up not far from Gary in Eastern Kentucky, moved away as quickly as possible and made a lot of money. If you know Jack, you can easily understand his knack for making money. Jack could sell ice to an Eskimo. But he decided in his retirement to use those same gifts for different purposes, to spread the Gospel, the good news to people desperately needing to hear it. So he went home and helped those people who were left behind, who everyone else had forgotten. And so somehow, as only he could, Jack finagled a deal to buy this old dilapidated school from US Steele. You would be amazed at what he’s been able to do up there. The School for Life now has a computer lab, a printing shop, a wood-working shop, and an automotive shop. It houses hundreds of missionaries every summer. It has a Vacation Bible School for the children almost every week. It has a thrift store that serves not only as a fundraiser for the school, but also as a way to supply goods to the people there that they could otherwise never afford. God has given Jack some incredible gifts that are unique to Jack, and Jack has used them well up there.
I don’t know what your gifts are. But I do know that you did not earn them. God has freely given them to you with the intent of you using them for God’s purposes and not your own. And when you misuse those gifts and abuse those gifts, or when you don’t even use those gifts at all, you not only waste a perfectly good gift, but you perfectly offend none less than the very God who gave you those gifts.
So put those gifts to use. What Ted Kennedy did on July 18th, 1969 was terrible. What King David did was terrible. In both cases, they misused those things that God had given them to use for something else. And what we do, or don’t do, with the gifts that God has given us is also terrible. As bad as it is, this little story out of 2 Samuel 11 is our story, but it doesn’t have to be. We have an enormous opportunity to be part of something worthwhile. Isn’t that what we want? Don’t we all want our lives to be meaningful? I will be leading an inquirer’s class in September for people interested in membership, and it never ceases to amaze me how much I miss when I talk about the ministries of our church. We’ve got a ton of them, and if we don’t have it, and you’re good at it and have a gift for it, then I consider it to be your job to start it. If we don’t have enough money to do what we feel called to do, it’s only because we hold on to it for too long. It’s not your money anyway. Money is a gift that God has given you to use to for his purposes. I assure you that we have the gifts and the resources to be the church, to be the people that God has called us to be. We just have to use those gifts for the right reasons. So may we use our gifts and resources for God’s purposes, and may this church and this world never become our Bathsheba. There’s too much at stake here. I’ve got two girls that I love more than life itself, and they need the church, now and fifty years from now. The world needs the church. And all these gifts are just too good not to use.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
