David’s Truth, Our Truth
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church November 23, 2003 II
Samuel 23:1-7/John 18:33-37
December 7. Now, September 11. And yesterday, November 22.
Dates that are etched on our cultural and historical consciousness,
dates filled with a sense of tragedy.
It seems difficult to believe that it was 40 years ago yesterday
that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. I am
sure that you remember where you were on that day, or if you
are not quite of the age where you would remember personally,
that your family history has some remembrance in it. What we
all can acknowledge, I would submit, is the manner in which
all of us live in the legacy of that tragic event, made even
more tragic, it seems to me, because of his relative youth and
the long shadow that his death cast over an entire generation.
Every form of media over the past few weeks has inundated us
with words and images, some of them having to do with the manner
in which the president died, some of them having to do with
the manner in which he lived. But more than that, for many years
now we have been inundated as well the words and images about
the late president. We know more about him now than anyone did
when he was alive. Some of it is to the good; some of it I am
not so sure about.
John F. Kennedy is not the only figure whose full life is now
available to us. We live in a world defined by the Internet
and 24 hour news. Nothing is a secret anymore, and celebrity
and scandal seem to generate interest and attention more than
real issues of policy and leadership. That is not to countenance
behavior, of course, or to make excuses. It is simply to note
that we live in a new era, where we have access to more information,
where we can communicate almost instantaneously, where we are
more cynical, where style predominates over substance.
And even more than that, we live in a moment in which, almost
ironically, the more information we have access to, the more
elusive and slippery the truth seems to be. What we think about
things changes, again almost instantaneously. We are driven
by polling and perception, rather than true and honest discourse.
As much as we can affirm the notion of tolerance, the acceptance
of difference in our common life, or diversity of thinking even
in our religious life, we seem to be slipping toward something
else – where people seem reluctant to take firm stands
on issues not so much because they are worried about disagreement
with others, but because the world in which we live just doesn’t
seem to care. How many times have we heard that issues do not
matter? That image is everything?
Well now, before this conversation gets any more somber, driven
perhaps by Ohio State’s shellacking yesterday, it is time
for a little good news. It is the reason for which we gather.
A bit of a strange liturgical confluence is happening this
morning. It is, in fact, the last Sunday of the liturgical year.
Our tradition calls it Christ the King Sunday, a day to focus
on the lordship and reign of Christ before we begin the cycle
all over again next Sunday as Advent begins.
It is also the Sunday prior to perhaps the best holiday of
them all, Thanksgiving, a day that seems to be getting increasingly
lost in the rush to Christmas. We will touch on each notion
this morning, Christ the King and Thanksgiving, perhaps just
enough to confuse each, or, to the better, perhaps just enough
to give due attention to each.
We begin to do so through another life, a flawed, great leader,
iconic, supremely faithful. King David’s reign over Israel
was marked by great moments, as well as by tragedy and shame.
Yet continually, God seemed to have work for him to do, God’s
ongoing task of redeeming David for God’s work mirroring
God’s ongoing task of redeeming Israel for God’s
work.
We hear this morning from II Samuel a kind of eulogy before
the fact, a tribute as David’s career and life come to
an end. They are words that live beyond the specifics of any
one person – “One who rules over people justly,
ruling in the fear of God, is like the sun of morning, like
the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain
on the grassy land.”
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, whose extraordinary
teaching has inspired a generation of students and preachers,
writes in a book called David’s Truth that David is the
person to whom the Hebrew people went time after time as a “serious,
reliable disclosure of truth.” (Page 15)
Truth, to Brueggemann, and perhaps to us, is a deliberately
ambiguous term. It is less about what big thinkers call “facticity,”
the facts of anything. It has something to do with discernment,
what we do with the facts and perceptions presented to us. And
it has to do with imagination, how we imagine the world to be
even in the face of the facts. That would be truth for we people
of faith, discerning what is around us and imagining a faithful
difference.
Biblical faith would insist that the personality of David would
provide an entry point to that conversation. Scholars have described
David as a “bloodthirsty oversexed bandit” and one
whose “purity of faith assumed a quality of elegance.”
(Brueggemann, pages 15-16) Could both be true? Certainly, statements
capturing the fuller nature of each of us, all of us, could
be made, though none of us would include the term “bloodthirsty,
oversexed bandit” on our resume.
Yet here we are, flaws and all, seeking to find meaning, seeking
to offer service, seeking to worship God in some way through
our beliefs and actions, seeking community with other travelers
who have similar stories, joining our stories into one grand
story.
David is many things, including a mirror to our own selves.
It is perhaps a connection to the present moment. Who hasn’t
said, at least to her-or-himself, when the latest controversy
has erupted over a public figure: “I would never run for
office because I couldn’t stand the scrutiny.” We
need that mirror, the opportunity to learn with truth who we
are and more so, that opportunity to discern with imagination
who we might become.
You remember the story well. David moves from being a nobody,
from the margins, to the centers of power. And somehow we understand
that power as a curse, that it corrupts, and that the flaws
become nearly fatal, or the least seemingly irredeemable. David
sees Bathsheba bathing on a roof, and manipulates things so
that her husband Uriah meets his death. How more flawed can
one become than that? Perception of power is shattered by reality
at this point.
It takes Nathan the priest to hold the mirror of truth to David’s
face, and, at the same time, moving David from the center of
the picture and moving God into full focus. Power leads to humiliation.
And, according to Brueggemann, one more surprise: David repents.
(Page 64) The truth of his life, and by extension, the truth
for our lives, is the truth that we are not locked into old
ways of doing things. Repentance brings about true change, and
not simply for some faraway mythic biblical figure. Truth happens
to us, change, as we look in whatever mirror it is that reveals
our true selves.
It never happens alone, I would submit, but always in the context
of community. This grand narrative of which we are a part insists
that we never go it alone, that even in the most critical moments
of self-discovery and flaw finding, we have friends and fellow
travelers to share the journey. That is not a bad definition
of the church, by the way, a place whereby we are given access
to the story so that we may be reminded of it when our memory
fades.
Centuries later, as a young man faces his death, another mirror
moment happens. This time the dynamic is reversed. This one,
whom today we would call “king,” stands in front
of his accusers. Pilate, the Gentile ruler who really has no
dog to hunt in this Jesus controversy, asks a series of breathtaking
questions. “Are you the king?’ “What have
you done?” And, finally, “what is truth?”
This question is not, of course, about facts. It is about perception
and imagination, and the political and religious authorities
will have none of either.
The mirror Pilate seeks to hold up to Jesus, the king who entered
the city, remember, riding on a donkey, is really the mirror
held up to all of us. And the good news is that we are not sentenced
because of the flaws we see, but rather we are liberated by
the redemption we receive.
Pilate seeks to know just the facts about Jesus, but soon realizes
that such a quest is a dead-end proposition. The question is
more elusive. Jesus as truth. The truth that Jesus proclaims.
The truth to which Jesus clings. The truth into which Jesus
invites us. It is not always clear. It is certainly not always
based on “just the facts.” It is oftentimes ambiguous.
But it is always interesting, and it most surely is always redemptive.
David seeks truth in power, and finds it in weakness and humility.
Pilate seeks truth in power, and finds it in weakness and humility
re-defined, leadership re-defined, royalty re-defined. That,
finally, is our power, our truth.
Gregory Wolfe writes that Jesus is neither simply an “ethereal
authority figure who is remote from earthly life and experience”
nor a “superior social worker or a popular guru.”
(See Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace, page 162) We, rather, live
in the paradox that Jesus is both, and more.
We speak of duality, of paradox, of ambiguity. Such terms leave
us wanting certainty, do they not? Jesus as one thing or Jesus
as another thing. And yet that is Jesus’ truth, and the
truth into which he invites us day after day, redemption to
redemption.
It is why we can be both poet and scientist, flawed royalty
and redeemed follower, believer and doubter. Pilate asks “what
is truth,” even as it was looking him in the eye. We ask
“what is truth,” and we see it all around, the face
of Christ, whose truth makes all things new, and welcomes us
home.
Centuries ago, poet George Herbert wrote:
“Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:/Such a way as gives
us breath;/Such a truth as ends all strife,/Such a life as killeth
death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:/Such a light as shows
a feast,/Such a feast as mends in length,/Such a strength as
makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:/Such a joy as none can move,/Such
a love as none can part,/Such a heart as joys in love.”
Come, my way, my truth, my life. Thanks be to God. Amen.
