Sermon delivered on Sunday, Trinity 9B, August 5, 2012, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: 2 Samuel 11.26-12.13a; Psalm 51.1-13; Ephesians 4.1-16; John 6.24-35.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week we looked at the sad and shocking story of David and Bathsheba, and all that went on in that sordid affair. We saw that in this one affair alone, David broke five of the ten commandments, murder and adultery being among the most serious of them. We looked at how sin is conceived and what we might do on our part to help prevent its conception. But last week’s text did not address the related issues of consequences and forgiveness besides the obvious. David had coveted and stolen another man’s wife. His affair with her had produced some unwanted consequences so David schemed ultimately to have Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, murdered at the hands of the Ammonites. As you reflected on the story as it unfolded, you might have wondered if it were possible for David and Bathsheba to be forgiven, and if so, what might that look like? And so this morning I want us to look briefly at this issue of forgiveness and see what our texts have to tell us about it so that we can be strengthened in our faith and by grace grow in our relationship with the Lord and each other.

At the very beginning of our OT lesson, we see a highly unusual statement in the midst of the story: “[T]he thing David had done displeased the Lord.” While the Bible chronicles its fair share of mayhem and madness, it is rare for an author to note God’s displeasure over one person’s transgressions. But we find it here and that alerts us to the utmost seriousness of David’s actions in God’s eyes. Not only has David brought about catastrophic relational consequences on the human level by destroying a family through adultery and murder, he apparently has also caused significant damage to his special relationship with God, and God confronts David as he often did Israel’s kings through one of his prophets, Nathan.

The first thing we notice is the way Nathan confronted David. Nathan did not accuse David directly, which might have produced a quite different response on David’s part. Instead, through Nathan, God confronted David with a story that paralleled David’s own transgressions and aroused the king’s anger, prompting him to pass judgment immediately on the transgressor in the story. Even though David was a major law-breaker himself, it didn’t stop him from passing judgment on another! This reminds us that it is much easier for us to focus on the sins of others rather than our own. And if you don’t believe me, think about your own reaction to the sordid details from last week. Did the story evoke a profound sense of sorrow in you, both for the destructive capacity of sin in David’s life and your own, or a sense of complacency?

Nathan uses David’s own words to convict him and in the process we are reminded in a powerful way that sin is not only ruinous to human relationships, but it can also destroy our relationship with God. The Lord reminds David that when we sin, we not only sin against God’s word contained in the Law, but in doing so we show God that we despise him. Let that sink in for a moment. When we sin against God, we in effect are telling God that we despise him. Ouch.

The Lord also reminds David of all that he has done for him. God gave David the throne, promised him an everlasting dynasty, rescued him from Saul’s hand, and gave him all the trappings of his kingly office. Not only that, but God would have been even more generous had David let him by remaining faithful to God through his obedience to God’s word contained in the Law. But when David sinned against God and others, all bets were off. If we didn’t know who was talking, we might mistake this as coming from a spurned friend or jilted lover. If we are old enough, each one of us knows the pain of unrequited love and God’s heart is not immune to that pain just like our hearts are not. In other words, God’s pain reminds us of the depth of God’s love for us. This is why sin is so terribly costly. Not only does it help spawn evil, it also has the power to destroy relationships of all kinds and in various ways.

But then the most remarkable thing happens. David confesses his transgressions immediately and without excuse or denial, and the Lord’s response to him was immediate, equally as direct and unrestrained. David’s life would be spared despite the fact that he had committed capital crimes and he would receive God’s gracious forgiveness. You’ve got to be kidding me! I mean, where’s the justice in that?? A murderer, thief, and adulterer receives God’s forgiveness despite the fact that he has despised God by committing these sins and others?

What is even more remarkable is that God did not require David to offer any sacrifices or sin offerings as the Law prescribed. And what is even more remarkable, this reminds us that such offerings were only prescribed for unintentional sins, not deliberate ones like the ones David committed! No, for deliberate sins, the punishment was to be cut off from God’s people and thus be cut off from God himself (cf. Numbers 15.22-31). But even though David had sinned intentionally, he was not cut off from his people or God. Instead he received God’s forgiveness because he was quick to confess his sins, a confession that we read in today’s Psalm, and he didn’t try to rationalize or deny the evil he had done. We must do likewise in our confessions.

If you have ever wondered what the heart of God looks like, stop and reflect on today’s OT story for a good long while. To be sure, despite God’s forgiveness, consequences remained for David. God used the measure of David’s judgment on the man in Nathan’s story as the basis for his own judgment on David. Consistent with the fourfold penalty David had prescribed, as judgment on his murder of Uriah, David would lose four sons prematurely. As judgment on David’s own lust and adultery, his daughter Tamar would be raped by her half-brother and David’s harem would be plundered by David’s own son Absalom. This truly was the turning point in David’s life and career, and not for the better. The consequences of his terrible sins would plague David the rest of his life, even as he enjoyed God’s forgiveness and a restoration of his relationship with God. Forgiveness is essential for the healing of relationships. It does not necessarily grant us immunity or protection from the consequences of sin. But we miss a critical point of the story if we focus on the lingering consequences of David’s transgressions and miss the astounding fact that because David confessed his sins and turned away from them, he received God’s gracious forgiveness so that the basis for restoring his relationship with God was established. This despite the fact that David had despised God, even in the face of God’s gracious and abundant gifts to David!

And this is part of what Jesus was trying to tell his followers and us in today’s gospel lesson. The fact that Jesus walked on water in last week’s lesson and today calls himself the bread from heaven that gives life to the world are clear reminders to us of the Exodus story in which God rescued his people Israel from slavery in Egypt and brought them to God’s promised land. So here Jesus is telling us to not look to him for what he can do for us but to look at who he is, the very embodiment of God, who is about to rescue us from our slavery to sin and the alienation from God that our sin causes. In other words, Jesus is reminding us that as God’s Son, he has come to rescue us from the evils of sin and death, and every time we feed on his body and blood at his holy Table, we are reminded of this in a powerful and tangible way.

The cross of Christ shows us the heart of God clearly and unambiguously. It reminds us in the most powerful way ever that we have a God who loves us and who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in his steadfast love for us. As we saw with David, there is nothing that we can do that puts us outside of God’s love for us and forgiveness offered to us except our proud and defiant refusal to accept the gifts offered. We do that by refusing to turn away from the evil we do that tells God we despise him and say no thank you to God’s gracious offer to rescue us from the sin that enslaves us and the death which inevitably results.

And this is the whole point behind God’s holy anger toward sin. It’s not that God is a cosmic bean counter who follows us around with his iPad, recording every time we misbehave. No, God’s anger is aroused by our sin because God is holy and has a holy love for us, a love that is quick to forgive to be sure, but also a love that wants better for us, that wants us to be fully human in the way God intends for us when he created us. But all sin dehumanizes us and works to slowly (or sometimes quickly) destroy both our relationship with God and others. That’s why God’s wrath is aroused when we thumb our nose at him. That is also why God is quick to forgive when we confess our sins and seek to turn away from them with the help of God’s Spirit living in us. God wants better for us than we usually want for ourselves.

So what should we do with this? As Paul reminds us in today’s epistle lesson, we miss part of the point if we see God’s forgiveness as nothing more than a means to restore our relationship with God, massively important as that is. God forgives us so that he can also use us as his people to bring his healing love to the world. We do that individually but we do that primarily as Christ’s body, the Church. And so we must grow up in Christ in every way so that together God can use us for the good works in Christ for which he created us (Ephesians 2.10). That is why we should only do the things that will build up the body by becoming (and acting) more and more like Jesus in and through the power of the Spirit.

Of course, we won’t be much interested in any of this if we resolve to make ourselves God instead of allowing God to be God and following him by becoming like Jesus through the power of the Spirit. And if we see God as some angry tyrant or ogre who is determined to spoil our fun instead of seeing him as a loving and holy Father who wants the best for us and who is lavish in his gracious love and forgiveness despite our desperately flawed condition, we certainly will not be inclined to turn our hearts toward God in loving obedience to his command-ments. That is why we need to understand how God’s love, grace, and forgiveness work before we can begin to grow up in Christ through the various spiritual disciplines like prayer, worship, and Bible study. And when by God’s grace we experience his love and forgiveness so that we know its reality, we will also know what it means to have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.