URC Daily Devotion Saturday 16th November 2024

2 Samuel 11: 1-5, 26: 12:7

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.  David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, ‘This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.’  So David sent messengers to fetch her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house.  The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, ‘I am pregnant.’…When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son.  But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord,  and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, ‘There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had very many flocks and herds;  but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meagre fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him.  Now there came a traveller to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.’  Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die;  he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.’ Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!

Reflection

The David and Bathsheba story is well known; Hollywood promoted it as a love story and Bathsheba has been presented as a temptress.  It’s not often, however, that we name David for what he was – a voyeur, rapist, and murderer.  A woman in that era would have had no choice but to submit to the king.  She was powerless, married to a foreigner, and unable to resist.  Now we understand rape to be less about sexual desire and more about power and control.  If we were to read this story about anyone else we’d have no problems in seeing it as abuse, rape, and murder.  Yet it feels slightly wrong to say this about the biblical hero David.  After all he was supposed to have written many of the Psalms!  

We find it hard to believe bad things about people we see as good.  Westminster Cathedral in London has stunning carved Stations of the Cross by Eric Gill – now widely known to have abused his daughters and his pet dog.  The Stations are beautiful; the man who made them had huge ugliness.  When the abuse was revealed in the late 1980s there were calls to remove his art from public exhibition; calls which have been resisted. The Catholic Church in Scotland was rocked when Cardinal Keith O’Brien – a long term vociferous critic of homosexuality – was exposed as a long term gay sexual predator who had abused his power over seminarians and priests.  It seems the Church knew for some time about complaints but refused to believe.   British charismatic evangelist, Michael Pilavachi, a former Anglican priest, co-founder and former leader of the Soul Survivor charity had, like O’Brien advocated celibacy outside marriage.  Allegations of inappropriate touching of young men led to him being laicised by the Church of England;  allegations which were first raised nearly 20 years before action was taken.  

Silence and dismissal of the truth leads to more abuse and pain.  Breaking the silence leads to justice and healing.

Prayer

God give us the courage of the prophet Nathan,
to call out evil into the light,
to name and disempower it,
that the wounded may find healing
and that your people might be safe. Amen.