None of us live perfect lives. I have on occasion been an absolute
jackass. One New Year’s Eve, some of us
who were celebrating, decided to call our parish priest at one o’clock in the
morning to wish him a happy new year. He
wasn’t amused and told us all to go back to our partying and to leave him
alone. I felt terrible after we did this
and I wondered what this had to do with anything at all in my life. It certainly didn’t improve my standing with
my Lord, who looks at behavior like this as outside the bounds. It was a little thing in the grand scheme,
but it affected me for a long time.
When I read
what Luke says about the Pharisee who invited Jesus into his home and the woman
who came and anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair,
I understand a little bit about how it is that God forgives the things that we
all do. The Pharisee had done things
also, small things that he didn’t think rose to the level of sin, but the woman
was almost apoplectic in her grief over her many sins. Jesus forgave her all of it and the people
around the table were amazed: Who
is this who can forgive sins?, they asked. The answer, of course is that it is God who
forgives us and is ready to accept us the way that we are, even though we have
done things that have made ourselves and those around us uncomfortable. Our sins are forgiven and we are received by
our God as the beautiful, innocent people whom he made.
But God’s
forgiveness is not often the issue with us.
It is the ability to forgive ourselves and others that is frequently the
sticking point. How would it look if we
could do this? The story of David and
Bathsheba is a great case in point. You
all know the story, David sees the wife of Uriah the Hittite bathing of a
neighboring roof. He invites her over
and has sex with her. Bathsheba becomes
pregnant. David then tries to get her
husband, Uriah, who is serving in the army to come home and sleep with his
wife. Uriah refuses because he doesn’t
want to offend his men. David then asks
the commander of his troops to send Uriah into the most intense fighting, where
Uriah is killed. He then has Bathsheba
brought to the palace and he makes her his wife.
Nathan the
prophet is told this story by the Lord, and Nathan goes to David to confront
him with his behavior. He tells the
story of the rich man and the poor man.
The poor man has one little ewe lamb which he has raised as his
own. The rich man has a vast herd of
sheep. When a visitor comes, the rich
man takes the poor man’s little lamb and serves it to his visitor. David is outraged by this story and says that
the man who did this should die. Nathan
then says to David those poignant words:
You are the man! He
describes David’s behavior with Bathsheba and tells him how displeased that the
Lord is with him because of his adultery.
The legend
is that David went back to his room and wrote Psalm 51, which is the great
confessional psalm that we use on Ash Wednesday and which pours out our hearts
in remorse over our sins. I know this to
be a beautiful story not only of confession, but primarily of forgiveness by
God of the things that we have done to each other in the process of living our
lives. We can rest assured that our God
in his incredible love has received us all back into his graces, despite our
shortcomings.
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