Our Sunday Message

The Paradox of Good and Evil: 2 Samuel 11:1-15
Rev. Dr. Kenneth A. Corr
July 30, 2006
Eight Sunday of Kingdomtide

  In his book, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini tells the story of Amir and his best friend and servant Hassan. Amir adored and feared his father, Baba, a man whose love and admiration Amir could never seem to earn.
  When Amir was in the fifth grade, the mullah, the Muslim holy teacher, had said that drinking hard liquor was a sin and this was confusing and frightening to Amir because his beloved Baba drank scotch whiskey every night.
  One night, Amir asked his father, “‘If what he said is true then does it make you a sinner, Baba?’
  “‘Hmm. Do you want to know what your father thinks about sin?’
  “‘Yes.’
  “‘Then I’ll tell you. . . . Are you listening . . . . I mean to speak to you man to man. Do you think you can handle that for once?’
  “‘Yes, Baba jan,’ I muttered, marveling, not for the first time, at how badly Baba could sting me with so few words. . . . ‘Good,’ Baba said. . . . ‘Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.   Do you understand that?’
  “‘No, Baba jan,’ I said, desperately wishing I did. I didn’t want to disappoint him again. . . .
  “‘When you kill a man, you steal a life. . . you steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?’
  “‘There is no act more wretched than stealing, Amir,’ Baba said.”1
It was the life principle that his father had lived by. It was the life lesson that was indelibly imprinted on Amir’s young heart. But as a young man, Amir learned that his good friend and servant, Hassan, was really his half-brother. Amir’s father had an illicit affair with Hassan’s beautiful mother and Amir now realized that his father had lived with this lie all of Amir’s life. How could Amir ever reconcile his father’s genuine belief in truthfulness and this horrible lie?
  The Bible says that David was a man after God’s own heart. He was chosen by God to be king, not because he was a warrior, but because of the quality of his heart; he was the poet king who wrote the songs of praise that comprise the majority of the Psalter; he was the one to whom God promised a lasting lineage; he was the prototype of the messiah. Yet this same poet, priest, and king was an adulterer, liar, and murderer? How can we reconcile in our minds this paradox of good and evil, truthfulness and deceit, life and death?
It is very easy to shake our heads in disgust at David’s dark descent into deadly deception. We can easily bring someone to mind that needs to hear this message. But one thing that we are learning this summer as we study these ancient stories is to ask, “Where is this God’s Word for me today?” I said last Sunday that if we can’t say, “Wow! That is me!” we have probably missed something. Even if I have not committed adultery and murder, what does this story say to me? Walter Brueggemann, the biblical scholar, says, “This narrative is more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.”2
  Let’s look at this text together. This summer we are studying the life of David. David experienced an incredible rise to power. In a few short years, he went from being an anonymous shepherd boy to a powerful warrior king. David was exceptional, but the only explanation for this impressive rise to power was that he was chosen and blessed by God. But now, the story takes a terrible turn. In his commentary on this story, Tony Cartledge says, “David’s fall from the pinnacle of power has begun and there are few interruptions in his downhill slide.”3
  The story begins at “the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab. . .” The years of crisis for Israel are passed. There are still battles to be fought, enemies to be defeated, border disputes to be settled, but they don’t require the warrior king. David and all of Israel can enjoy the rewards of peace.
  It was then, v. 2, “It happened.” It sounds like a bumper sticker. “It happened.” Temptation happened. Abuse of power happened. Adultery happened. Deceit happened. Murder happened. A royal cover-up happened. It is true. Evil happened.
  “It was reported, ‘This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite.’” Bathsheba is identified by her father and her husband. In this ancient, patriarchal world, a woman had no rights, but the men did. The important thing about this identification from the narrator’s point of view was not that Bathsheba was violated, but the men were violated. David knew the men to whom she belonged. Brueggemann observes, “David knows who she is and whose she is. David does not pause, however, because he is the king.”4
  “David sent messengers to get her.” It is the very thing that Samuel had warned against. “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots . . . he will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks. . . He will take the best of your fields and vineyards. . . he will take one-tenth of your grain . . . he will take your make and female slaves . . . He will take one-tenth of your flocks. . .”5
  Kings are “takers.” David’s taking of Bathsheba was not just about sex. It was about power, control, and domination. David took her because he could.
  “It happened.”
  The story is told with an economy of words. The action is quick.   There is no conversation. There is no courtship. There is no caring.   “There is no hint of . . . affection, or love—only lust.”6 “It happened.”
  “The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, ‘I am pregnant.’ So David sent word to Joab, ‘Send me Uriah the Hittite.’”
David is a man of action. There is an easy way to cover up his behavior. But he had to act quickly. What he did not consider or even imagine was that Uriah the Hittite, Uriah the foreigner, Uriah the alien, Uriah the mercenary was a man of loyalty, integrity, discipline and could not be corrupted. Uriah’s incorruptibility is in sharp contrast and striking juxtaposition to David’s guile.
  But David is the king. The king cannot let this goody, goody foreigner stand in his way of taking what he wants. If Uriah cannot be corrupted, he must be eliminated. “In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, ‘Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.’”
“It happened.” Brueggemann says, “Innocence is never to be retrieved. From now on, David is marked, and all Israel must live with the mark.”7
  What is the lesson here? David, the warrior king, easily defeated the giant Goliath; he easily defeated the kings of the Philistines and Ammonites; he easily defeated all other claimants to the throne. The one enemy that he could not defeat was the evil within himself.
  It is easy for us to think of all the people who need to hear this message, but the one who most needs to hear this is ourself. The paradox of good and evil are within us. The apostle Paul said, “If you think you are standing (firm), watch out that you do not fall.”8 It happens.
  Amir was horrified as a young adult to learn that his father had lived his whole life with this lie of infidelity. But Amir could forgive his father because he, Amir, had lived his whole life with the secret that he had abandoned his best friend and servant Hassan at the time of his greatest need.
  “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”9 It happens.

1 Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner, p. 17f.
2 Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation, “1 & 2 Samuel,” p. 272.
3 Tony Cartledge, “Smyth & Helwys, “1 & 2 Samuel,” p. 495.
4 Brueggemann, p. 273.
5 1 Kings 8:10-18.
6 Brueggemann, p. 273.
7 Ibid., p. 272.
8 1 Corinthians 10:12.
9 1 John 1:8.