MUMC Sermon-08/13/06

13 August 2006

The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost

2 Samuel 18 (selections); Ephesians 4

The Reverend Jennifer K. Morrow

The bible and The New York Times. As I see it, we have three options before us. We can either read only the bible, which in today’s world I believe would be irresponsible; or we can read only The New York Times, which in today’s world I believe would be irresponsible; or we can do something like this: we can read them together. We can allow the words of one to inform the words of the other. And let me be clear. It doesn’t matter if this (the bible) is the New Revised Standard Version, or a contemporary translation, or straight from King James himself. Nor does it matter if this is the Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or the El Diario. (Probably not The New York Post, but anything else is really fine.)

Of course, this relationship between the two is only important to establish if we believe our faith has anything to do with the world around us. If Christianity is strictly a personal matter, one that goes no further than what I feel or believe in my heart, then it has little to say about situations or to people around the world. In the spirit of Richard’s sermon last week, I want to confess to you that there have been times in my life during which I have come dangerously close to understanding my faith in just such an insulated, individualistic way.

Ironically, during one of those periods my favorite passage in all the bible was the one we heard last week, the one Richard preached about, the prayer of confession known as Psalm 51 and traditionally associated with David after owning up to his actions toward Bathsheba and her first, and now-late husband Uriah.

What I loved most about this prayer were two couplets, in the middle and at the end, which really spoke to me. The first was, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and put a new and a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51.10) And later, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51.17) What I did with these supplications is what so many of us do with so much: we hear what we want to hear.

What I heard was a prayer to a God who was in the business of fixing up the messes inside; a God who would take the things my lonely teenage self didn’t like about my lonely teenage self and turn them into things that were new, different, and felt much better. What I failed to hear was that what was “new and right” about the psalmist’s spirit was that perhaps it had moved from a place of consuming, and often sad selfishness to a place of freeing and self-giving care for others. What I failed to recognize about “the sacrifice of a broken heart” was that only hearts that love deeply can be broken.

And with this, Psalm 51 leads us directly to the continuation of David’s story, which Amy read for us this morning from 2 Samuel. While most scholars agree that David himself did not write the psalm, his life in today’s story seems to bear out the answer to that prayer. When we last met David, the prophet Nathan was confronting him about his relationship with Bathsheba and his dealings with her husband. David is convicted by Nathan’s words, his heart contrite, to borrow the words of the psalm. But then Nathan alludes to a string of tragedies that would beset David’s family as a result of his sin. It is this succession of misfortunes that provide the context for today’s reading.

Besides Bathsheba, David had six or so other wives, with whom he had numerous children. These children become the source of the tragedy. A young child dies. A son Amnon, rapes a daughter Tamar. Another son, Absalom, tells Tamar to keep it quiet then waits two years and murders his brother Amnon , ostensibly though unconvincingly, to avenge his sister Tamar’s rape. Absalom then flees the palace in Jerusalem and doesn’t return for three years. When he does, he begins to conspire against his father, King David, to usurp him. He takes off for the northern half of the kingdom, at this time known as Israel, to amass troops and fuel an uprising against his father. David flees Jerusalem himself, after which he sends his own army into battle against his son’s army with the command, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.”

But as this morning’s story recounts, David’s order is not followed. Absalom is killed by his father’s soldiers. Militarily speaking, it was a victory for David. His leadership and his kingdom were no longer in jeopardy. His forces had prevailed. And yet. And yet. And yet it was still a war and war resists true victors. David won but he lost his son. When he hears the news he utters among the most stirring laments of a father for a son ever written, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I have died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

How things have changed for David. The man who was so unashamedly public about his joy years earlier as he danced through the streets in worship and celebration, has learned to mourn with the same courage. Upon hearing the news he does not retreat to his room but goes to the city gates and sobs.

For all of David’s failings, he gets this one thing right. David has learned to love. David has learned to love in spite of and not because. David anguishes over the son that tried to undo him. Only hearts that love deeply can be broken.

What is it that breaks your heart? What is it that you cannot abide any longer? What are you ready to give your life for? One of my professors at Union Seminary, James Cone, says this is where change begins. Growing up black and in Arkansas in the 1960’s is what it was for him, and it has shaped his life and work ever since. What is it for you? Whatever paper you choose to read will leave you with no shortage of possibilities. What is it? Or is it anything? Is there anything that you can no longer stand that leaves you with no choice to change the world around you? Or have you not yet learned love deep enough to break your heart into that kind of action?

I ask myself these questions, and when I do I realize I am still growing into that kind of love. Of course I love my daughter Claire in that way; she has changed the landscape of my heart. I love her with a love that simply won’t allow me to keep my seat. It functions on instinct in a fearless sort of way, and because of that, often surprises me. And there are others, most of them known, a few even nameless, for whom I am moved in such a way.

But it is still a smallish love, and needs to grow if things are really ever going to change. The same can probably be said for most of us, which is why it matters so much that we keep meeting here week after week. Because this, as we’ve said time and time before, is where we learn to love. For this is where we come to know God in all God’s love. And this is where we find the clumsy courage of David: confessing our own sins and daring to come face to face with the things most unlovable about our own selves.

This is what I missed about Psalm 51 years ago: that confession and repentance are not about fixing up what is broken and then feeling better; they are about naming what is broken and discovering that we are loved lavishly by God right there in the midst of all our mess.

It is only when we face our failings that we will realize the depths of God’s love for us. And it is only when we embrace the depths of God’s love for us that we will understand what it means to be, as Ephesians puts it, “imitators of God…living in love as Christ loved us.” There is a reason the word “repentance” literally means “change.” Years later, the fruit of David’s confession was loud, unashamed, selfless love. The same can be true of us.

This is where the fruit of our repentance grows. Where we learn to love. Where we become the kind of people who can’t read the paper and just put it down quietly anymore…because we read the bible too! This is where our hearts become things that can be broken.

And perhaps this will even be where we realize what we can’t abide any longer. Maybe this will even be the very place where the change YOU bring, and YOU bring, and I bring, and YOU bring will begin. A few of us might just stand up right here. Walk right out of our pews. Go to the doors of the church, the gates of the city, the voting booth or the nursing home or the UN or our neighborhood or Columbus Park or Nicaragua or Africa or the South Bronx or Rye Neck Middle School.

And we’ll have found our voices and we’ll raise them and say, “O my child Absalom, Lebanon…my child who has AIDS, or who lives in a country of civil war, or who lives in fear…my child, my child who doesn’t have clean water, my child who can’t afford school shoes…my child who is depressed ...would that it were me instead of you!”

And with those words, and the love that fills them, things will change. I want to be a part of that. Do you?