Rev. Tom Lenhart
Sermon July 30, 2006
The Problem Isn’t One of Power?
2 Samuel 11: 1-17 and Psalm 14

Let us pray.

            The British historian, Lord Acton, wrote in 1873 “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton might have been describing the story of David and Bathsheba. It reads like a best seller and contains all the elements that Hollywood seemingly wants to portray today. Indeed, it has been the subject of a number of movies, including Gregory Peck’s David and Bathsheba and more recently the movie King David, starring Richard Gere. It involves power, illicit sex, and an attempted cover up that ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.

            Even leaving aside its salacious aspects, it is a remarkable story -- for the offender here is not just any man; indeed, not just any king, but the one -- the King -- that Samuel reports “the Lord has appointed to rule” and who is a man “after the [Lord’s] own heart.” (I Samuel 13:14) This story is a reminder that leaders often have feet of clay. But in this day and age we hardly need be reminded of that lesson.   The evening news programs and the front pages of our papers are never devoid of a story or two of a politician, corporate executive, religious figure, professional athlete or some other person who has abused a position of power. Today’s text does, however, remind us that the foibles of today are in a most basic sense no different than those of antiquity. What the passage from Samuel, as illuminated by the wisdom found in Psalm 14, attempts to do is to explain this reality from a theological perspective. To understand this lesson, we first need to spend a few minutes dissecting David’s story.  

            From the very beginning of David’s rise to leadership he has been the divinely ordained warrior leading the troops of Israel and Judah in successful holy wars against their enemies. Yet, in our story David is not leading his troops into battle in the spring -- the traditional time to begin such campaigns: he is not at the front with the troops fighting the Ammonites in what is today Amman, Jordan but instead is relaxing in Jerusalem --perhaps slowing down in mid-life.  He has time on his hands and spies a beautiful woman bathing. He learns she is the wife of one of his celebrated soldiers, who unlike David is at the front. And exercising his power as King, David compels her to come to him and to have sex with him. This sordid moment is fundamentally and enduringly complicated when Bathsheba later tells him she is pregnant. This pregnancy is potentially a disaster -- certainly for Bathsheba for an adulterous wife was subject to death by stoning, certainly for the child who born out of wedlock will be an outcast, certainly for the cuckold, Uriah, in that patriarchal society, and certainly for David who as God’s anointed leader had been clothed in a mantel of morality and righteousness only now to risk being seen as an immoral king, deifying the very commandants upon which his reign was based.

            Reminiscent of Watergate and all the other “gates” we have seen over the years -- what happens next is an attempted cover-up by David. Again utilizing his power David has Bathsheba's husband Uriah, the Hittite, recalled from the front. While in the guise of attempting to find out how the battle fares, David attempts to persuade Uriah to go home and slept with Bathsheba.  By this scheme he will cause the world and especially Uriah to assume that the baby is Uriah’s. But Uriah foils this plan not once but twice. While we know little about Uriah, we do know he was a gifted soldier, one of the so-called special 30. He is described as a Hittite, which is a non-Jewish sect from the area, but his name means “Yahweh is the light.” This suggests that Uriah ---whatever his background -- is a follower of Yahweh, the God of Israel. Moreover, what is clear from the story is that Uriah will not enjoy the pleasures of home nor will he sleep with his wife while his fellow soldiers are at the front. Even David’s attempt to get Uriah drunk so that he will ignore these principles fails. This ploy of contriving to establish that Uriah is the father having failed, David, as the commander in chief, now sends Uriah back to the front. He carries orders for the commander at the front to place Uriah in the place of the fieriest and most dangerous fighting and then to withdraw the soldiers around him; thus condemning Uriah to certain death at the hands of the Ammonites. And so it comes to pass Uriah is, indeed, killed. Upon learning this David takes Bathsheba for his wife.

            Some scholars and the bulk of the purveyors of mass culture have choked at this picture of David. They have sought to recharacterize or reshape the story to rehabilitate David. In the various movie versions the relationship between David and Bathsheba has been portrayed as a love affair with David falling in love at first sight. Nothing could be further from the text. It was to be blunt about it for David nothing more that a one night fling --at best the straying of one in mid-life perhaps attempting to deal with the reality of diminished power. 

Likewise, some have portrayed Uriah as an abusive husband from whom David rescued Bathsheba. Again that is simply fiction. There is nothing in the text to support this. If anything this suggestion runs counter to the picture of the principled, loyal Uriah that we are expressly given. Some scholars also have argued that Uriah’s death is simply appropriate punishment for treason.  Uriah disobeyed his commander, David, when he did not return to his home. Thus, he committed treason punishable by death. Again, no biblical source really suggests that the basis for David’s actions was Uriah’s disobedience. No the story is simply and starkly about David’s extraordinary transgressions. David, the one appointed by God, failed. He truly had feet of clay.

            What happened to David? What does this story tell us about the dangers of power? Does any lesson – any insight-- really apply to most of us who do not wield kingly power? Psalm 14 supplies some insight. The psalmist in this psalm uniquely focuses on those “fools” who in the psalmist words say in their hearts “there is no God.”  These are the “every day” atheists.  David was an “every day” atheist. Why do I call him an “every day” atheist because he lived a compartmentalized life – religion at the appropriate services and sacrifices but not apparently during the rest of his life. David’s problem wasn’t that he didn’t worship, pray or do the appropriate religious sacrifices. No, it was how he lived his day-to-day life, how he exercised his power, how he related to others. Such people turn from God and the following of God’s commandments in their every day life. The psalmist says it best-- those who are every day atheists “eat up my people as they eat bread.” Bathsheba was not a person for David but rather an object of beauty and of sexual desire. This story told by authors of the book of Samuel uncharacteristically contains little of Bathsheba’s personality and character. However, that is not by accident but rather reflects that for David she was simply an object -- the focus of his sexual appetite. She wasn’t a real person. Who she really was didn’t matter.

            We certainly live in a world in which people are often simply objects, commodities, assets or statistics. We are bombarded with advertisements that tell us we are wanting, deficient -- if we don’t have this gadget or appear in a certain way. The relationships that seem to be venerated -- those that find there way to our magazine covers for example-- seldom appear to reflect relationships of mutual respect. Have you been ever been referred to or treated as an object or asset to be used and consumed.  I suspect I have. But I am even more certain that when I sat around the table at my old law firm with my partners deciding the fate of the young lawyers working for us, we thought too much in terms of them as assets -- what was their economic valve, how hard were they working, how much business were they bringing in -- and too little about the more complete picture of them. That is not to say that performance was irrelevant but it was not the full picture. Who they were, how they treated others were important but we didn’t give these much weight. The English refer to employee layoffs as being made “redundant.” The very term speaks volumes about how business at times looks at its employees. How can a human being ever be truly redundant?           

I once attended a board meeting of a public company that had an illustrious group of board members. One of those members, after the meeting ended, was talking casually with several other board members. This individual’s company -- one for which he had worked for 40 years (literally from the bottom to the very top) -- had just been taken over by buyout firm. The stated goal of the acquirer was to break up this Fortune 500 company, sell off most of the pieces, and to reduce the work force of the remaining portions to make them even more profitable for those who had just acquired it. This leader of industry, no softy by any means, was lamenting the shortsightedness and unfairness of the elimination of tens of thousands of company jobs held in fact by hard working, productive men and women. This was not a situation of near bankruptcy but simply the maximization of short-term profits for a few. Seldom have I ever been so clearly reminded of the danger of viewing people simply as assets and commodities. Ironically, the lay offs didn’t ultimately materialize; some restructuring occurred, but the company went on to flourish in part because someone began truly to appreciate the human resources that the company had.

            Martin Buber, the extraordinary Jewish mystic, separated relationships between those that were “I –thou” relationships and those that were “I –it” relationships. The former reflect relationships of mutuality and respect that involve service by each to the other.  The latter relationships -- the “I –it” ones -- deny individuality and personhood and are premised on the one with power being served by the weaker other. William Sloane Coffin highlighted the essence of the “I-thou” relationship in his recent book, Letters to a Young Doubter. He wrote, talking about our relationship with God, “we are called to obey not God’s power, but God’s love. God wants not submission to his power but in return for his love, our own.”

As the psalmist recognized we are all too some extent every day atheists “they have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse: there is no one who does good, no, not one.” Why do we go astray – not perhaps to the extent David did - but astray at times? Why do we sometimes treat people in ways that are less then they deserve? The first reason is that it is easier than the alternative. Loving relationships and those of mutual respect and service demand a lot. They demand that we be prepared to be accepting of the fundamental worth of the other even if different from us, that we be prepared to give of ourselves, and that we be prepared to be vulnerable and, yes, to give up power. We also must be prepared to work at the relationship. Anyone in a committed long-term relationship will tell you it is hard work.

            Several years ago in the Boston Magazine there was an article on teenage sexual activity and practices based upon a substantial number of interviews of teenage boys and girls in Eastern Massachusetts. The article rather starkly confirmed what many had suspected that serious sexual activity is extensive and that it occurs widely and at much earlier ages than even ten years ago. Casual and temporary sexual encounters, often referred to as hooking-up, are common. For me the most disheartening aspect of the article was the repeated explanation given by teenagers for these casual sexual encounters. Having a lasting, meaningful relationship with another was too hard and too risky – the pain of failure just too great to risk. The alternative was easier—to simply be a consumer of momentary sexual pleasure – in theory no mess, no fuss, no bother, no complications, no risks. Don’t you imagine that David thought that too?

I wish some of those teenagers, indeed some adults, could see David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago. While it is so explicit as to be off putting at times, it adroitly chronicles the sexual liberation of the 70s and in the end reveals those activities to be largely without meaning and fundamentally destructive.  The short answer is that we all from time to time deal with others as objects or assets or consumables because it is easier than the alternative.

We also deal with others as objects because we fear the loss of power. A danger in possessing power is that it becomes the end in itself. It is not what can be done with power, the opportunities for change, development and improvement that power offers but simply the rush – the boast – that comes from its exercise that captures some. This is what Lord Acton summed up, I think, in his famous epigram that I quoted earlier. How often in human history have we seen a reform leader come forward only to be seduced by the thrill of power once he has it? Loss of that power whether because of diminished skills or strength or from the rise of political opponents frightens those with power. The specter of the loss of power becomes palpable. That fear is overcome by the simple expedient of the exercise of that power capriciously and often with the goal of entrenching the power and of simply basking in the power per se. I have little doubt that David felt such a rush when he first possessed Bathsheba.

             There is yet another factor contributing to David’s predicament. In real sense he got into trouble because he sought to adopt a God-like sense of control over his world and especially Bathsheba. And this too in a sense flows from his “every day atheism” -- from his turning away from God and his commandments. David, the King of the newly united Israel and Judah, and commander and chief believed that he was in control. He could orchestrate this little tryst. Yet as the story reveals he was not in control. Bathsheba became pregnant; David could command Uriah to travel to and from the front and even have him killed but David could not get Uriah to violate his principles. Even after Uriah’s death David’s control was illusory. Ultimately, David marries Bathsheba thus putting an end in theory to the problem. Wrong! The baby dies and the house of David is to be bedeviled by suffering and violence from then on. Even though a powerful king, David did not have true control.

Our power is mere illusion when measured against God’s. The danger for the every day atheist is not simply that we devour others but that we believe and act as if we have God-like power. David at least for a moment forgot about God. Juxtapose that with Lincoln’s recognition of God’s power in his Second Inaugural Address given days before his assassination, there he wrote: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive ... to bind up the nations wounds….” Lincoln certainly exercised power, indeed great power, but he also never forgot that his power to be effective must always reflect God’s power and commandments.

 It would be a mistake to believe that our message today is an indictment of power per se. Power in and of itself is neutral neither good nor bad. Indeed, power is an inevitable factor in life; some always have more of it than others do. What is important is how power is exercised. There is a difference between power, which is exercised over the many for the benefit of the few, and power that is exercised through the few for the benefit of the many.

 With all due respect to Lord Acton, David was not really corrupted by the power he had.  Rather for a moment in time, he forgot about God and God’s commandments in his exercise of the power he had -- he became in the psalmist’s view an every day atheist. As Ivan Karamazov suggests in Dostoevsky’s novel the Brothers Karamazov, without God anything is possible. Think about that for a moment. Without God anything is possible! Without acceptance of God -- moral perspective is compromised.  When in our lives we become every day atheists anything is possible. As David learned some choices --some exercises of power -- are destructive for without God‘s guidance we can convince ourselves of the appropriateness of most anything.  With God’s guidance we have a good chance of making better choices.  Amen.