Not a King Like That

The Last Sunday after Pentecost
2 Samuel 23:1-7
The Rev. Joshua Rodriguez-Hobbs

Last week, we heard the story of Hannah and how she gave birth to her son, Samuel, the last of the judges who ruled over Israel before the establishment of the monarchy. This week, we are hearing the last words of David, the great king, the man God chose to make an eternal covenant with, that a king from David’s line would always sit on Israel’s throne. Of course, there’s a lot that occurs between those two stories. There’s story of how the Israelites rejected Samuel’s leadership and called for a king. There’s the story of how Samuel chose Saul to be Israel’s first king because he literally stood head and shoulders above his fellow Israelites.  There’s the story of how Saul disobeyed God, and how David was anointed king in Saul’s place. There are the many, many stories of David. And those stories make these last words sound like the spin of a seasoned politician.

The God of Israel has spoken, the Rock of Israel has said to me: One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land. Is not my house like this with God? For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure. Will he not cause to prosper all my help and my desire?

The stories that the lectionary skips call David’s words here into question. We tend not to remember them. We remember the good ones, David and Goliath, David and Jonathan, how David spared Saul’s grandson after Saul’s death. We usually remember the story of David and Bathsheba and Uriah. We usually tell it as a tragedy, when we tell it at all, how David was tempted and gave in to temptation. It might be better to tell it this way: how a powerful king took what he wanted without thought for consequences, how David saw Bathsheba as a thing to possess, and not as a person, how David saw Uriah as an obstacle to be overcome, and not a person. That’s how the prophet Nathan tells it, when he confronts David about it. But the story of David and Bathsheba is not the darkest story about David. Just before these last words, we read the story of David’s daughter, Tamar, whose story we rarely tell. Tamar is beautiful, and her half-brother Amnon, David’s heir, desires her. So he takes her, just as their father took Bathsheba. No one does anything about the rape. David looks the other way. Amnon goes unpunished. So Absalom, Tamar’s brother, takes matters into his own hands. Absalom kills Amnon, and he declares himself king. David is forced to leave Jerusalem and wage war against his son. To maintain his own rule, David has Absalom killed. He weeps for Absalom, as he never wept for Tamar. And this man claims to rule over the people justly.

The idea of God’s eternal covenant with David stands in tension within the Bible. After the Babylonians destroyed the Davidic monarchy, the people of Judah had to find a new way to make sense of their relationship with God. The Hebrew Bible is ambivalent about David. For every good thing it says about him, it also says something negative. David is the man after God’s own heart, who ruled Israel wisely, but who simultaneously could not rule his own family. Christians have tended to be more positive about David, because we have interpreted God’s promise of an eternal kingship as a prophecy about Jesus. So we’ve read David’s story selectively, ignoring the less savory portions.

But David’s last words, which we heard this morning, remind us that even this great king was also a petty politician, a mixture of saint and sinner, just as all of us are. David provides us with one lens through which to understand what it means to proclaim that Jesus is king, but that lens is as much a contrast as it is anything else. Christ is the King of David’s line, but he is not a king like David. Christ came not to be served, but to serve, and this makes all the difference. In Christ’s story we do not see the power politics which are so troubling in David’s. Christ is a king, but not a king like David.

You see, in the end, David presents us with a model of kingship with which we are familiar. It is still the same way that our leaders maintain power today: through spin, through innuendo, through the raw exercise of power. We may not use the title “king,” but David’s story is continually played out in our government, at every level, regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats are in the majority. Jesus gives us a different story, a story in which a king is born in a manger, not a palace. Jesus’ story is one where the newborn king is a refugee,  powerless and vulnerable, forced to flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous wrath. Jesus’ story is a story of a kingdom where there is more than enough for everyone, where somehow, five loaves and two small fish feed thousands, a story where the other cheek is turned, instead of repaying evil for evil.

Jesus’ story is the story of the Kingdom of God, a story in which we are a part. Jesus’ story calls us to live by faith, not by fear. There are so many reasons to be afraid, it’s true. But David’s story goes wrong because David allows himself to be ruled by fear: the fear of losing power, the fear of not founding a dynasty, the fear of not having enough. Jesus invites us to live differently, to put our trust in God’s abundance, even when we are surrounded by the world’s scarcity.

Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, when we will begin our preparations for this King, this Refugee, to be born once again in our hearts. May we who follow the Prince of Peace learn to trust in his love, which casts out all our fears. Amen.