True Power

2 Samuel 11:1-15

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.

David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, "This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite."

So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house.

The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, "I am pregnant."

So David sent word to Joab, "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent Uriah to David.

When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going.

Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house, and wash your feet." Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king.

But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house.

When they told David, "Uriah did not go down to his house," David said to Uriah, "You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?"

Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing."

Then David said to Uriah, "Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day,

David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah.

In the letter he wrote, "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die."

Ephesians 3:14-21

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

John 6:1-21

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.

A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick.

Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples.

Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.

When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?"

He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do.

Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little."

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him,

"There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?"

Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all.

Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.

When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost."

So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.

When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.

The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.

When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified.

But he said to them, "It is I; do not be afraid."

Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

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There is a lot being said in today’s readings about the nature of power. About what happens when people use power, and about what happens when God uses power. In these days, just like all days since humanity began living together, power is a key factor in the way we live our lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. And so it’s good for us to unpack these scripture readings this morning and to try to get a better understanding of what having power and using power means to us as Christians, and to God.

In today’s Old Testament reading, King David is at home, while the battle rages not so far away. We are told this is the time when kings go out to battle. But David is at home. He gets up late one afternoon, wanders around on his roof, gazing at the homes of all his subjects, and notices a beautiful woman who is bathing. He first sends someone to find out who she is, and he learns her name, her father’s name, her husband’s name. Then the King sends messengers to go get her. Now clearly she has no choice in the matter; this is the king, and she is subject to him. There is no issue of consent here. He sends messengers to bring him to her, and he lays with her, meaning he rapes her, and then he sends her home.

And perhaps King David thinks he has gotten away with it, having just had an afternoon of pleasure which came about because of the power of his position. But then she sends him an unwelcome message, that she is pregnant. At that point, King David sets out to use his power, his seeming ability to control whatever he wants, in order to create an outcome that will cover his steps and cause him to appear innocent, at least in the eyes of his people. He must have forgotten, for the moment, about God.

Anyway, he calls her husband Uriah back from the battle, and tries for several days to get Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife. But Uriah, who knows full well that he is both subject to the king – that is why he is here, back from battle in the first place – and also in solidarity with his colleagues in battle, will not take unfair advantage of this brief furlough, and so he never goes home to sleep with Bathsheba. And so when Uriah is set to go back to the front, King David arranges for Uriah to be in the middle of a fierce battle, and, just as King David hoped, Uriah is killed. And of course this frees up King David to make Bathsheba his eighth wife, thus allowing her to bear a legitimate child.

The uses, or rather, abuses, of power in this story are many. They are all imposed by King David onto his subjects. First it’s Bathsheba, and then Uriah, her husband and a soldier in King David’s army, then Joab, who King David requires to become a co-conspirator in the death of Uriah, by sending him up to the front in the next big battle. All of these are ways the King has chosen to impose his power upon his people.

And King David is named in scripture as “a man after God’s own heart.” He is certainly known as a good king, as one of the most significant kings in the history of Israel. But clearly “good” people do “bad” things, just as those whom we would call “bad” people do “good” things. And often power and control is behind the temptations we face.

In John’s gospel, we hear again the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand people who have come to him. We heard parts of this story last week as told in Mark’s gospel – specifically we focused on the statement that Jesus had compassion for the people, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.  And we talked about good shepherds and bad shepherds – how good shepherds lead the sheep into abundant life, and how bad shepherds ultimately bring about death.

In John’s gospel the focus is on the miraculous, abundant supply of bread that fed all the people, with plenty left over. The people who were there may have remembered the stories of the times in the wilderness with Moses, when God provided the people of Israel with manna, just enough manna for the day, as they wandered for 40 years. The abundance of bread that they received this day from Jesus was more than enough to fill them, with bread left over, twelve baskets full. The people take this as a sign to mean that Jesus must really be something special – “the prophet who is to come into the world”, they say. They are likely referring to the Prophet that Moses said would come, one who was like him. The Jews were waiting for this Prophet, and often equated him with the Messiah who was to come.

And then John says this: “When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”

When Jesus saw that the people intended to use their own power to make him king, he stopped that from happening, by withdrawing himself from the situation.

Jesus knew that he would be seen as king on his own terms, not on the peoples’ terms. He knew that they misunderstood the nature of his power. And it isn’t until he stands before Pilate that he finally puts into words the nature of his power. Pilate asks him, “are you the King of the Jews?” and Jesus replies, “my kingdom is not of this world”.  Pilate says “so you are a king?” and Jesus says, “for this I was born and came into the world: to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Then, of course, Pilate utters the now-famous question of Jesus, “What is truth?” And in response, Jesus stands silently before him.

For Jesus, it’s not about power that is demonstrated through force. For Jesus, it’s about Truth. It’s about the power of love. This is the power of God – the power that brings life, that brings light into the darkness.

The kind of power that King David was using in today’s story was power that leads to destruction of peoples’ lives, that leads to death. It was power that was intended to save him, but it was power used without the awareness that God sees our hearts, that God sees our private thoughts and actions, that God knows us inside and out. And God knew what King David had really done.

We continue to rely on people power to protect us, and to control other people. We work relentlessly, it seems, to build up our own power, and we choose our leaders based on their ability to wield power. When people power is used to bring about death, to diminish others, to exclude anyone – anyone – from the love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ, then it is power that is not of God.

We come today to this sanctuary with yet another mass shooting in our headlines. Every week, it seems, for as long as I can remember. We have lost our way as a people, for we have taken the power of death into our hands and chosen to use it against one another to get what we want, to maintain or protect a way of life that is ultimately not of God if it is leading us to these sorts of actions.  And God sees our hearts. God knows what and whom we love, and what and whom we hate. The power of God is power to heal our broken lives, our broken views of God’s world and God’s people. It is the power of forgiveness. It is grace, God’s favor which cannot be earned but which must be accepted to have any effect. We must be open to the Truth that leads us to the power of love, no matter how counter-cultural that may seem to be.

On the mountain that day, Jesus knew that people have the power to subvert the love of God in a particular time and place. The power of people can overwhelm the love of God, can reject the Truth that Christ presents. But the power of people cannot ultimately reign. God reigns, with the Truth that the Word of God reflects, and with the power that is expressed in unconditional, self-giving love.  This love is sealed in our baptism, and abides with us all our life long. It’s love that is beyond our comprehension. It’s Truth that is beyond our imagination.

This leads us into Paul’s words to the Ephesians that we heard this morning. This passage is a prayer, actually, that Paul is praying in writing to the people of Ephesus. We will close with this prayer, a prayer to keep us in the Truth and love of Christ all our days. I’m praying this from the Message translation.

Let us pray.

And so,

my response is to get down on my knees before the Father,

this magnificent Father

who parcels out all heaven and earth.

I ask God to strengthen you by his Spirit—

not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—

that Christ will live in you

as you open the door and invite him in.

And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love,

you’ll be able to take in with all Christians

the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.

Reach out and experience the breadth!

Test its length!

Plumb the depths!

Rise to the heights!

Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

God can do anything, you know—

far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request

in your wildest dreams!

He does it not by pushing us around

but by working within us,

his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

 

Glory to God in the church!

Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!

Glory down all the generations!

Glory through all millennia! Amen!