"David's Emptiness, Christ's Fullness" Sermon for Pentecost 10

Sermon:

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Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who gives us the bread we seek.

            I have to admit it was hard to overlook last week’s first lesson. There are some texts that when they come up, you have to look at them it feels. The reasons I didn’t were to focus on our trip to Detroit while it was fresh and the fact that the story continued in our reading from today to look at the whole thing at once.

            Last week we read as David broke around half of the commandments in one go it seems. He is out on his roof, and he sees a woman bathing nearby. He’s enamored with her, commandment 10 coveting your neighbor’s wife down, and then he sends his messengers to go get her and it nicely says, "and he lay with her." It’s not nice, it’s rape and adultery. She had no choice, the messenger had no choice but to get her, this is only on David, and it’s rape. Commandment 6 you shall not commit adultery down.

            And David doesn't behave any better as the story goes on. Bathsheba tells him that she is pregnant now through David. David thinks, well, let’s try to sneak this by everyone. Go get her husband Uriah from the war. They bring him back and David says, since you’re back why don’t you spend some time with your wife, thinking, they’ll have sex and everyone will think that the child is Uriah’s not David’s. But, unlike David who is displaying that he is a bad soldier by not going with his troops, Uriah does not want to have things that his troops do not have, so he doesn’t go home, he sleeps with the guards by the gate. The next day, again David says, why don’t you go to your wife. And again Uriah does not. So, David says, well, the only way is to get him killed, then I can marry Bathsheba and no one will suspect anything. So, he goes out and has his general Joab send Uriah to the heaviest fighting, right on the front  line. And as expected he is killed, Commandment 5, you shall not kill down.

            In our lesson from today, we witness what then happens. David thinks everything went as good as it could, sure Uriah’s dead, but he, the king, does not have people thinking that he did anything wrong. He’s in the clear he thinks. He brings Bathsheba to his house and marries her, still I’m sure nothing is to her plan, and she bears a son. And to David I’m sure he’s thinking, that’s the end of that. It’s like the end of Looney Tunes, That’s all folks!

            But, then there comes the screeching of the music to a halt and someone throws the curtain back open and says, Just a minute here! In Looney Tunes it’s Bugs or Daffy, here it’s the same guy who originally anointed David, Nathan the prophet. And he doesn’t accuse David of anything, just tells him a story.

  There’s two men, one is rich and one is poor. The rich man has everything, money, power, crops, cattle, livestock, sheep. The poor man, he has his family and a single lamb. He cares for this lamb just like his kids, it eats what they have, it drinks from their cup, it sleeps in the bed with them, he cares for it just like a daughter. A traveler comes to visit the rich man. Does the rich man take one of his own lambs, of which he has plenty? No, he takes the poor mans only lamb for their feast.

            David is enraged! He curses the rich man, Who is this man! I will kill him! He deserves the worst that can be thought of, he did the worst thing I can think of, and he has no pity about it.

            You are the man.

            David stops, and says to Nathan. “I have sinned against the Lord.”

            We could talk about forgiveness now, or David’s faults despite still being called by God and how our own faults do not hold us back. But, I want to look at how this all started. It all starts because David is empty. This starts with us because we are empty.

            David by this point is a somewhat rich king, it means in that time he has lots of wives already. So, we can’t even give him the benefit of thinking about his future heirs. He has sons already, he takes Bathsheba and rapes her simply because he wants her and goes to get her. He’s not thinking about others in any way. He’s only thinking about himself. He’s empty, and he goes to his own lengths to seemly find a way to fill himself, and it only leaves him emptier.

            Do we rape and kill and commit adultery all the time? No, We probably covet other people and their things more than we care to admit, but this isn’t even really about that. It’s about trying to find meaning, and thinking that we need other things to find it. I need more money at others expense, I deserve better treatment than that person even if it harms them. I want her or him. I can do what I want, because it’s for me. I am empty, and I attempt to fill it myself, sometimes through healthy means, but often not.

            Jesus addresses something similar in our Gospel today. The crowd from the feeding of the 5000 has followed Jesus around the coast to another part of the sea. Jesus tells them, you are here not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill when we were together. You’re empty, and you’re still just searching for bread.

            That’s what’s going on with us, and with David. Everywhere we turn and everywhere we go, we’re empty and searching for bread. We think that thing will nourish us, but it doesn’t, we think that thing will sustain us, but it doesn’t, we think that doing that thing with that person will solve the problems, we think that things like sex, drugs and alcohol will fill the voids we feel, but they don’t.

            “Jesus said to them. I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

            We think that it’s incredibly hard to find meaning, to find that fullness that we always seek, to be nourished, to find life. But, it’s not. It’s just believing, it’s taking some time in our busy lives to trust that God is here. To know that we don’t need those things for life.

            When we are full through Christ's Bread of Life, we walk on roof tops not looking for the next thing we think we want, we look to see the grandeur of God’s creation.

           

            When you walk on life's rooftops don't be David searching for what ever his self-destructive desires want, but be Christ looking instead for those in need, so we can go to extend the love of Christ, so that all may be full.

            Let us pray,

God of forgiveness, we do know that we screw up like David, forgive us when we do, and help us to look for the bread of life which nourishes and not earthly bread which simply leaves us hungry again. Amen.