Charles Kutz-Marks preaching

Bridling Power

Pentecost 8, b, July 30, 2006

2 Samuel 11:1-15

Maybe because it is so much like a memorable soap opera, you probably know this story from 2 Samuel 11.  Like many soaps, it has a powerful rendition of illicit sex that grabs the listener.  From his palace perch above the city of Jerusalem below, King David spots Bathsheba bathing on her flat rooftop.  Her husband, Uriah, was an officer in David’s army off in battle elsewhere.  David likes what he sees on that roof top show, so he invites, or orders, her over.  He is the king, so “command performance” rightly describes their sexual encounter.  The plot thickens when she later sends back the concise message that changes the course of all their histories, “I am pregnant.”

Pregnancy was certainly not what David had hoped for, so the cover-up begins.  First, David tries to provide Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, a furlough from his battlefront post and an opportunity to be with her, and so cover the illicit deed.  It didn’t work.  Uriah was so principled, that he wouldn’t allow himself those pleasures if his comrades in arms were still in the field.

 So David digs a deeper hole, plan B, arrange for Uriah to be placed out front in a in a dangerous battle, have the other troops draw back.  Let the enemy kill him.  Plan B works.  Then David takes Bathsheba for his wife.  The child born is his, and David probably thinks that is the end of that.  But he should have known better. 

It was Psalm 139, the great hymn King David himself is to have written:

139:1  O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

2  You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.  You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways…

7  Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.  If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,  even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.  If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,"  even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

“For darkness is as light to you.”  David should have known, you cannot commit misdeeds such as the abuse of others and hide them from God.  But we humans are very good at hiding at avoiding guilt.  And it is dangerous to tell a King that he has done wrong.

In David’s case, it would take a clever analogy that the prophet Nathan would spin, that would open David’s eyes to the magnitude of his own degradation.  As the story Nathan tells of a villainous man draws to a close, David exclaims, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die…”Then Nathan delivers his punch line: "You are the man!”  Change only a circumstance or two, and you have exactly what David had done in his taking of Bathsheba and his killing of Uriah.

Then Nathan goes on:   “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul;  I gave you your master's house, and your master's wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more.  Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife.”(2 Samuel 12:7b-9b)

You cannot hide deeds under the darkness of subterfuge and expect God to be fooled.

This story would be tragic enough were it a one time event.  But in its essence, it happens over and over, with slight changes in the characters.  One episode was reported in the Wed. in the Austin-American Statesman.  The Headline: “New sex allegations against Blanco monastery. “Christ of the Hills has been the focus of numerous sexual assault claims.” The opening sentences:

 “The founder of Christ of the Hills Monastery in Blanco County and three other monks were arrested Tuesday on charges of sexual assault of a child and organized crime, according to the Blanco County sheriff's office.

A fifth monk, imprisoned in Beaumont on a previous sexual assault conviction, also was charged in the case Tuesday.”

As the lurid story unfolds, their cover up includes the manufacturing of fake tears on a religious icon there in order to bilk the faithful out of untold sums, used among other things to pay their out of court settlement of $1 million for previous sexual assaults of minors.

As in the case of King David, what captures the attention is the sexual oppression, the sexual abuse.  But this morning, I ask that you consider the real evil here is even deeper than sexual exploitation.  The base issue is one of power, and its abuse.   The issue in these and in so many other cases of every kind of abuse, is the ungodly application of power to serve personal desire.

Nowhere is it more clearly seen than in the June, 2004 “60 Minutes” TV show interview that Dan Rather held with former President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Rather: "The central question, if I may, and I know this is difficult, the central question is why?"

Clinton: "I think I did something for the worst possible reason -- just because I could.”

          I’m certain that King David would have said the exact same thing had Rather interviewed him.  But a chastened Clinton went on:

"I think I did something for the worst possible reason -- just because I could. I think that's the most , just about the most morally indefensible reason that anybody could have for doing anything. When you do something just because you could ... I've thought about it a lot. And there are lots of more sophisticated explanations, more complicated psychological explanations. But none of them are an excuse ..."

Clinton’s power over Lewinsky, the Blanco “monks” power over the children in their care, King David’s power over Bathsheba.  At heart they are all wrong for the very same reason.  Abuse of power.

Lord Acton’s famous line, rings for many of us as the first thing we think of when we here the topic, “power.” “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Though less well known, Charles Caleb Colton’s aphorism from a century earlier might be more to the point in our power issues of today: “Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.”

Indeed, the Bible is constantly concerned with the proper use of power.  Power, itself, is simply the ability to act, to get someone done.  In the generic, power is certainly good.  To be able to DO is a good thing.  The Bible’s interest is in :

1. making sure that everyone has the ability to act, that is, that everyone has power,  because that power is a birthright of all, an inheritance that is given by God , and
2.  to what ends that power is used, what I’ll call, the bridling of power.

One fine example of how we might understand power is found in James 3:3:

2  For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.3  If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies.4  Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.

          James’ teaching is that God grants us both

1. the power to act, and
2.  the proper spirit by which to express that power, to direct that power.

A humble spirit.  A spirit that recognizes God has provided all abilities, all gifts and that we are to steward our abilities with care for the poor, the powerless and the weak.   We are to do what God wants of us, and bridle our power into that service.   As Deut. 8:17-18  puts it:

“Do not say to yourself~ ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ances­tors, as he is doing today”

          We individuals blessed to live in the United States of America in the year 2006 have great power bestowed upon us, not because we are somehow morally greater or because God loves us more.  Our relative wealth and our relative power vis-à-vis others in this world is not due to some genetic superiority, nor, as history teaches us, is it likely to be a permanent advantage. It just is, now.  But what it requires of us is a higher care in our decision-making, a clearer-eyed view of why it is, and how it is, that we choose whatever course is before us.   As  Jesus teaches in Luke Chapter 12:

“From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48)

          The same is true of us and others in the national sense.  Because as a nation we are for now the only Superpower, because we have the capacity to enforce our own will in any number of situations around the world, we have a special responsibility to do so wisely.

          What bothered me so greatly in the run up to the Iraq war was not just the basic Christian bias towards non-violence based on the teachings of Jesus and the earliest Christian church, but it was also the overweening pride, the overconfidence that our leaders expressed that this incursion was right and that it was doable, that Iraqis would welcome us as liberators and all would be well.  It was part of a political perspective that claimed the extension of American might could and should be used to promote American values, and structures abroad – with our without the support of international opinion, with or without substantial evidence of imminent danger.  It was the imperial tone of the use of power that brought with it such a great foreboding. 

You see, far too often, we Americans like all great powers on the world stage- have succumbed to the great central sin of the powerful in both Judeo-Christian and Greek cultures.  Pride!  Hubris!  Do you remember that prescient quote from Stewart Udall in 1965, in the midst of our Viet Nam, “We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.”

My friend, Rabbi Steve Forstein back in Kalamazoo, shares with me a special love for Israel, for Palestine, for the nation and the Palestinian people.  He and I both must be careful in our moral judgments about Israel, because like most Americans have for America, our love for a nation can blind us to the moral challenges and the moral failings that we might otherwise see.  A couple of months ago in reflecting on the development of modern day Israel, birthed you will remember rudely and violently in 1948, Rabbi Steve said,  “We [speaking as the Jews founding the nation] had the decision of whether to aim to become a light on a hill, or a state among states.  We made the wrong choice.”  Rabbi Steve meant that Israel has in the last nearly sixty years, time and again made judgments on how to relate to violent actions and threats of further violence.  Too often, Steve says, Israel’s power has been the most significant question.

          We Americans, too, have too often confused power with greatness.  Whether we are weak or strong, greatness has to do with fidelity to godly principles: compassion, justice, and truthfulness.  Living these out personally and nationally sometimes bridles our expression of power, tempers it, tames it.  And in a world where one pilot in one jet with one bomb can create a nuclear disaster taking millions of lives; in a world where one lunatic with a box cutter can turn a jet into a bomb and kill thousands, it must be clear that the great challenge of our day if we are to survive another century, is not increasing our power.  No, the challenge is to channel our power, to remain faithful to the right principles even when lust for sex, lust for power, or lust for security would lead us beyond.

          Ours is an age for the conscious, intentional, and faithful bridling of power.  And in this Gospel, we are given the design for how it can be done.  Thanks be to God.

 1.) Wednesday, July 26, 2006