Scripture text: 2 Samuel 11:26 - 12:15
What is a hero? What makes a hero? I suppose the answers to these questions would be myriad, but certain qualities will emerge. Courage, strength, honor, nobility, success, and so forth.
Human beings have thrived on hero stories since before civilization even existed. They form the basis of mythology and folklore. Our ancestors thrilled to the tales of Hercules and Siegfried. We grew up with James Bond, Luke Skywalker,or Atticus Finch. Sometimes our heroes are real people: Martin Luther King or George Washington. They are role models. People, fictional or real, that we admire, people we want to emulate. In fact, anthropologists would likely argue that’s the purpose of the hero story: To illustrate in dramatic and entertaining form, the ideals of our society. What we aspire to be ourselves. The people we wish we could be.
In the midst of such worship, it is easy for us to forget that all our heroes, whether they be literary or historical, are still human beings. The stories themselves usually don’t shy away from that. Yes, Hercules completes his great labors, he slays monsters, he has his apotheosis and becomes a god himself, but he also loses his temper with his wife and children and murders them in a rage. John McClain defeats the terrorists over four (five?) Die Hard movies, but he’s still just a New York cop with a broken marriage and kids who want little to do with him.
Probably the best example of this is Jamie Lannister, because it turns the trope on its head. Who, you may ask. Well, Jamie is a character in George RR Martin’s infamous Song of Ice and Fire novels, better known to most through its HBO TV adaptation Game of Thrones. When we are first introduced to Jamie, we find him en flagrante with his twin sister and when they’re caught by a small child, Jamie promptly throws the child out a third story window to keep his secret.
The other characters tell us in the story that is not to be unexpected, that Jamie is a despicable honorless dog, a man of cruelty and viciousness. He was the king’s bodyguard and murdered him after all, broke all his knightly vows. But as we get to know Jamie over the course of several books, we find he’s a person very disgusted with being held in contempt for an act he considers to be an act of great good; he killed a tyrant who was about to order the murder of thousands of innocent people.
So Jamie decides to defy everyone’s expectations. He will become a paragon, the most noble, the most honorable, and the most chivalric of knights. And he does. His word is like iron. He’s kind, honest, noble, honorable, and no one knows what to do with him, including the readers of the book. This evil man becomes a hero and no one can quite get over it.
Our first lesson is part of the story of one of the greatest heroes in the Old Testament: King David. And the pieces of the hero story are here. He’s the Giant-Slayer who brought low mighty Goliath. He’s noble and honorable, refusing to slay even his worst enemy when he found him quite literally on the toilet. No noble death that, so David refused to kill. He’s the author of the Psalms, the one the Bible says is a “man after God’s own heart.” He’s pious and brave and everything you could want in a hero. When people want to honor Jesus generations later, they call him the “Son of David.”
But like so many others from page, screen, and history, we forget he’s human. And like Jamie Lannister, it is David’s lust that leads him to an act of unspeakable evil. One day the king is looking down from his balcony and spies a beautiful woman bathing below. He orders her to come to him and they begin this tawdry love affair. Bathsheba, the woman, gets pregnant and David decides to do something about her husband, one his most loyal and brave soldiers named Uriah. David orders Uriah to be placed at the vanguard of the next battle, the most dangerous place on the battlefield, and he is killed. Bathsheba comes into David’s household and all seems well. Except the prophet Nathan has heard of this murder and comes before the king.
The “man after God’s own heart” is a cold-blooded conspirator and murderer. The author of the Psalms is an adulterer. The man whose name is used to give honor to our savior is guilty of a vicious and cruel act. And much like Jamie Lannister in reverse, we really don’t know what to do with that. The hero has become the evil man. The paragon has become the villain.
To his credit, David repents of his evil, but the consequences of his actions never leave him be henceforth. His child dies. His kingdom is torn by rebellion and insurrection. To borrow words from another famous fantasy story, he bears the crown “upon a troubled brow.”
But what is the lesson for us in all this? Probably in how God responds to all of this. You see, God’s favor is with David from the very start. God loves him. God blesses him. God gives him his anointing, promises him the crown of the kingdom. God is with him on the battlefield against Goliath and all his other enemies. God stands by him through everything, including THIS.
David has done something horrible, and thanks to Nathan, he knows it and he knows God knows it. There is every reason for God to withdraw his favor. Every reason for those blessings to be cancelled, for another king to be anointed, for David to lose everything because of his sin. But that’s not what happens. There are consequences, as I said, but God forgives. God continues to love David. God continues to bless David. God’s promises are not voided by David’s sins. They stand firm.
And as it was for this king, so it is with us. I keep harping on this idea of how “God loves us as we are, not as we should be,” an idea from Scripture of course but lauded heavily by Brennan Manning in his preaching, a scholar and preacher I admire greatly. God loves us as we are, not as we should be. Well, David is proof of that. Here is man guilty of a heinous crime, a horrific abuse of his kingly power, and God STILL loves him through it all.
No one here is a murderer. We might have been tempted from time to time. No one here is an adulterer...that I know of (please don’t inform me otherwise.) But even if we are, those sins and any of the others that we have committed are not grounds for God to withdraw his love and favor. He just doesn’t do that. That’s not how God works.
Think about it. God sent his son into this world for you. Became incarnate from the virgin as Jesus for you. Taught all these things for you. Performed his miracles to show you his kingdom. Went to the cross and died for you. Rose again on the third day for you. God went through all that trouble to be with you. That’s how much he loves you, and you think a little sin is going to stop all that?
St. Paul spoke truly in Romans 8. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. David’s murder of Urriah did not drive God’s love from him. Your sins will not drive God away from you. My sins will not drive him from me. He is ours forever. Amen.
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