23/VII/23 Trinity 7 (Proper 11) Cathedral, 3.30p.m. Year A
DAVID’S LAST WORDS – & WHAT WE MAKE OF THEM
I Kings 2:1-10
Acts 4:1-22
Lord Jesus, stride into this mess of words and make some sense of them. Come into our hearts and minds and fill them with your love and truth. AMEN.
When they were arranging the Lectionary for what is called the ‘Second Service’ for this 7th Sunday after Trinity, I wonder what the compilers were wanting us to receive from our first Reading this afternoon – the last words of the great King David to his son, Solomon.
It begins well enough, with David telling Solomon that he is about to die, and charging him to ‘Be strong, be courageous, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his ordinances, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses’ [I Kings 2:2-3], and reminding him that, if he and his successors did that, the Lord had promised that ‘There shall not fail you a successor on the throne of Israel [I Kings 2:4].
But then, in what one Jewish writer calls ‘History’s first ‘Hit List’’, quoting the American academic and Jewish scholar, Robert Alter, who wrote, ‘David gives his son and heir Solomon a hit list — ‘a last will and testament worthy of a dying Mafia capo’, which may even have been ‘The inspiration for the final scene of ‘The Godfather’’ [Jonathan Kirsch – https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/fourteen-things-you-need-to-know-about-king-david/] – but then, with his final breaths, David gives his son three instructions, two of which are truly shocking, and seemingly incompatible with ‘Keeping the law and the commandments’: 1 – ‘Take revenge on Joab’, the Commander of David’s army, for his murder of Abner, against David’s wishes, in revenge for Abner’s killing of Joab’s brother; 2 – ‘Deal loyally… with the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, and let them be among those who eat at your table; for with such loyalty they met me when I fled from your brother Absalom’ [I Kings 2:7]; and 3 – perhaps most shockingly of all, ‘There is also with you Shimei son of Gera… who cursed me with a terrible curse on the day when I went to Mahanaim; but… I swore to him by the Lord, “I will not put you to death with the sword.” Therefore do not hold him guiltless, for you are a wise man; you will know what you ought to do to him, and you must bring his grey head down with blood to Sheol’ [I Kings 2:7]. Semantically, David was right – he had promised that he would not put Shimei to death by the sword, but that rather seems to be splitting hairs! The next we hear is ‘Then David slept with his ancestors, and was buried in the city of David.’ [I Kings 2:10].
In some of our Services, the reader would say, ‘This is the Word of the Lord’, and we would be encouraged to say, ‘Thanks be to God’. There are times when those words stick in my throat, and I prefer the rather more open ‘For the Word of the Lord’, ‘Thanks be to God’. I’ll come back to that distinction later.
Why do the Lectionary compilers think this a useful passage for us to hear in these last days of July, as the school year has draws to a close, and many people are looking forward to a break, what I’ve described in the coming Diocesan Mailer as, ‘a fallow time’, when we try to relax and re-group a little?
Firstly, I think the Lectionary compilers are right to encourage us to listen to the more challenging parts of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, as well as the more comforting and uplifting parts. Some chapters of the Bible are wonderful to return to – I’m sure you all have favourite passages and favourite stories, from both the Old and the New Testaments, to which you might return with joy, or in a time of difficulty, or whatever.
But there are other passages, more, but not exclusively, in the Old rather than the New, which can be quite traumatic to read – the killing of whole populations, the treatment of women, betrayals and manipulations, dysfunctional relationships, and much more.
Think even of the stories we learnt as children – Noah and the Ark, where the whole population apart from Noah and his family are drowned; or David and Goliath; or Daniel in the Lions’ Den – Daniel survives, but not the others who get thrown into the pit. They are gripping stories, with much to teach, but they make uncomfortable reading.
Nowhere is it said that the Bible, the Word of God, is an easy book. And if we are to hear the whole of the story of God’s dealings with his people, from the Creation to the end of all things, and their understanding of what he was doing and asking of them, then we need to hear the challenging stories, as well as the comforting ones. We need to get to grips with the whole of the Bible, and ask, ‘How is this the Word of the Lord for us today?’ Which, by the by, would make a good response to the Readings.
So, firstly, the Lectionary compilers are right to give us a selection of readings which includes the comforting, the uplifting, the inspiring, and the challenging.
And secondly, the Bible is honest about its leaders. Apart from Jesus, all leadership in the Bible is flawed – and the Biblical writers are honest about that. Moses, who tried to avoid leadership because he wasn’t a confident public speaker; Saul, who had psychotic episodes and tried to kill David with a spear; David, who had Uriah the Hittite killed in battle so that he could take Bathsheba as his wife; Peter, who denied Jesus three times, after saying he would go to his death with him; Paul, who persecuted the Church; and so on – the list is endless.
David is the greatest King of the Old Testament – he’s mentioned over 1,000 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. But he’s no cardboard cut-out saint! We see his greatness, and we see the greatness of his failures – and yet – and yet, he is still the Lord’s Anointed, the great King of Israel.
Not all the Biblical writers had quite the same view of this. As well as the Second Book of Samuel, the First Book of the Chronicles tells the story of David – but that is a more sanitised version – one Jewish writer says that it, ‘depicts David as a much milder, tamer and more pious figure. Most of the salacious, bloodthirsty and otherwise shocking incidents that we find in Samuel are left out entirely. “See what Chronicles has made of David!” declared the 19th century Bible scholar Julius Wellhausen’ [Jonathan Kirsch – https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/fourteen-things-you-need-to-know-about-king-david/].
David is the great King – but he is also the flawed King, and the Bible is honest about that. And that is saying something to us, about our own leaders, our own lives, the sorts of people we are, and how God can use people who aren’t perfect in every way in his service.
I hope none of us will have quite the same death-bed conversation as David did with Solomon, but we are certainly all the same mixture of goodness and badness.
Reflecting on the life of David through this lens, may cause us to wonder about other people who demonstrated this same mixture of wonder and horror.
The nineteenth century German composer, Richard Wagner, wrote wonderful music, but also wrote awful things about the Jews, which endeared him to Hitler and the Nazis, and who brings out brings out similar feelings. Or the exquisite Canticles by Thomas Weelkes we’ve just heard [Evening Service for Trebles] – are we affected by the fact that he was an alcoholic, and a really cantankerous and difficult person?
There is robust debate around Sir Winston Churchill, and the balance between his fine leadership during the War and his colonial and racist views.
Do the faults of a leader, or a TV personality, or a film star, or a writer, or a Bishop, cancel out all of the good that they do? These are really difficult questions, which we sometimes have to deal with in our own lives, our friends, even our relations, sometimes. If we perform the music of a composer like Wagner, are we promoting the views which they held, or the ways in which their music has been used?
Each time any clergyperson enters a new office, we have to affirm ‘The faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures’ [Oaths & Decs]. And we also affirm ‘The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion’, article 6 of which states, ‘Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation’ [http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-nine_articles.html].
Even great human beings, like King David, fail to understand what God is asking of them, and do terrible things in God’s name. And yet, somehow, every word of the Bible has something to teach us, every part contains, ‘The Word of the Lord for us today?’ And that’s why, after every Reading, I’m happy with the ending, ‘For the Word of the Lord; thanks be to God’. AMEN.
