To read this passage online, go to http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=2+Samuel+11:26+-+12:15&vnum=yes&version=nrsv
Do
you remember the story of Snow White?
The fantasy begins with a magic mirror.
And every morning, the hopelessly vain evil queen rises, dresses, coifs
her hair, applies her make-up, and then admires herself in the mirror. But as we know, it’s not an ordinary
mirror. This mirror can carry on a
conversation. Better than that, this mirror
tells her exactly what she wants to hear.
Every morning the evil queen looks into the mirror and says, “Mirror,
mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” And the dutiful mirror, perfectly rehearsed, answers, “You, my queen, you are the fairest of them all.”
But even brainwashed mirrors can go rogue now and then and one morning when the
queen looked into the mirror with the familiar question, “Mirror , mirror, on
the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”, the mirror replied, “Snow White, my
queen, Snow White is the fairest of them all.”
You know, the truth hurts, doesn’t it?
Sometimes we would rather just live our lives with a magic mirror
affirming that everything we do is the right thing, one that would somehow
allow us to hide in a fairy tale. But
life is not a fairy tale.
Our
Old Testament passage is the continuing story from last week. Remember that David, home alone while his
armies were out fighting battles, had spied the fair Bathsheeba and, in what
can only be described as a colossal failure of leadership and an implausible
abuse of power and authority, had sent
for her, slept with her, impregnated her, and then in an attempt to cover up
the deed, lied, schemed, and finally murdered her husband Uriah the Hittite. So, Uriah is now dead and Bathsheeba
mourns. With Uriah dead, David then is
free to take Bathsheeba as his wife, bringing legitimacy to their son. Well, as you know, there are a variety of
ways that this story is told. Some will
shift the blame to Bathsheeba, depicting her as some sort of harlot or
something that wooed David into the affair.
But that, of course, ignores the fact that it was David that had all the
power here. Others will somehow
characterize it as God’s work, as if God would call David to cheat, lie,
scheme, and murder to further the building of the Kingdom of God. Sorry, I don’t really think that’s quite what
God had in mind.
So
today we have the story of Nathan. I
love Nathan. He confronts the problem
head-on. And he does it in quite a
remarkable way. He tells a parable. (Where have we heard that style of teaching
before?) He tells the story of a rich
man who possessed many flocks and herds—so many, in fact, that he didn’t even
really know them all--and a poor man who possessed one lowly little lamb who
the poor man actually had grown to love. Yet when a traveler appeared, the rich man,
replete with livestock, actually took the one lamb from the poor man to feed
his guest. Well, David was
incensed. After all, what a horrible
man! Someone should do something! That is not justice! That man should be punished! That man doesn’t deserve to live!
You know, John Westerhoff once said that “if
a parable doesn’t make you a bit uncomfortable, [doesn’t make you squirm a
little in your seat], you probably have not gotten it.” So, obviously, David didn’t get it. Obviously, it was much easier to hand out
judgment for someone else’s acts than to recognize his own failures and
shortcomings. So Nathan, courageously
speaking the truth in love, essentially, holds up the mirror. “David,” he said, “You are the man!”
He
then explains in detail what David has done, all the time holding a mirror,
forcing David to look at himself, to look at his own actions, to realize that
his actions have consequences, that they cannot be hidden from God. And, maybe even more painful, they cannot be
hidden from himself. David has to face
what he has done, look at the consequences, look at the pain and the suffering
that he has caused. And David finally
admits his wrong. He confesses. It’s a hard thing. It’s a hard thing to admit when you’ve done
something wrong. It’s a hard thing to be
forced to take a good hard look in that mirror and see the reflection not of
that image of God in which you were created but rather someone that you’d
rather not be around.
Yeah,
sin is a hard thing to talk about. It’s
a hard thing to look at, particularly, when that mirror is showing us someone
that we don’t really want to be. Where
did we go wrong? And what will everyone
else think? And, after all, we’re good
Methodists. We don’t need to talk about
sin. We have grace. Really?
I think Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor has possibly written the most
incredible book on sin that I have ever read.
I highly recommend it. In her book entitled “Speaking of Sin:
The Lost Language of Salvation,” she depicts sin as our only hope. Well that’s a new spin on it! After all, aren’t we trying to avoid it? She says that “sin is our only hope, because the recognition that something is wrong
is the first step toward setting it right again.” (pg. 59) In other words, no longer can we just sweep
something under the rug hoping that it will go away, hoping that our good
Methodist upbringing will shower us with grace and keep our sins closeted away
where they need to be. It’s a phenomenal
way to think about it, to realize that in some way, holding the mirror up for
ourselves or, if we can’t do that, hoping that someone in our life will be
grace-filled enough to do it for us, can actually bring us closer to God,
actually put us on the road to beginning again.
We
often talk about sin as that which separates us from God. Traditional Christianity loves to take it all
the way back to Adam and Eve, as if the first couple’s transgression somehow
changed the path for us all. Do you
think that’s a way of trying to cover it up?
(OK, I must admit, I'm not really an "Original Sin" type of person!) Do you think that’s our way of trying to shift the blame from us a bit, a
way to somehow transfer over to someone else’s mirror? Well, I think we may need some sort of holy
spurt of Windex or something. Because tucking
it away or covering it up or shifting blame does us no good at all. It’s still there, still separating us, still
standing in the way of the grace-filled relationship that God offers each of
us.
Truth is, the opposite
of sin is not innocence. I don’t even
think it’s righteousness. The opposite
of sin is choosing God, choosing to look ourselves in the mirror and finally
see that image of God in each of us. We don’t live in a fairy tale. God did not create a bunch of robotic,
perfect creatures and claim them as children.
God created us—sometimes cheating, sometimes lying, sometimes sinful,
always wanting to do better, always wanting to find our way, always searching
and wondering what it is God desires for us.
I don’t think God wants or expects us to remain innocent. If God had wanted that, we wouldn’t be here
at all. We would have no reason to
be. Faith would be non-existent. Innocence has no reason to choose God. Innocence does not need faith. Maybe
we need a Nathan in our life unless we can somehow learn to look into the
mirrors that God provides for us along the way, to truly see ourselves, where
we fall short, where we choose darkness over light, where we choose or just
acquiesce to those systemic sins that we see (hunger and homelessness over
shared resources, prejudice over
acceptance, classism over equality, nationalism over patriotism ) and, most of
all, to see that image of God that is always part of us somehow slip through
and reveals itself in the most miraculous ways.
We
are not innocent; we are forgiven. But
that’s not an eraser on the giant chalkboard of life. God’s forgiveness comes when we don’t deserve
it, when we haven’t earned it. It comes
in the darkness; it comes at our lowest point; it comes when sin is our only
hope. It is grace. “Mirror,
mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” It is that you that is staring back—doubtful
and assured, sinful and forgiven, speaking the truth in love with a tiny piece
of God in you—only an image, a faint glimmer that holds your whole life in its
hands. That’s all that God needs to
create beauty, to create wonder, to create life. You see, God has done this before—many, many
times. It is the very mirror that
shows us the image of God, that shows us who we are really called to be.
Grace and Peace,
Shelli
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