Psalm 14; 2 Samuel 11:1-15
August 8, 2021
- The Abuse of Power
Today is all about the abuse of power. As you might well imagine, that can occur anywhere, even in the church.
Back when I was looking for my first church, I was approached by one church (actually in this presbytery) for an interview, and what I remember is how they promoted themselves as a “preacher church” that would put their preacher “on a pedestal” – that exact language. That was something that I had never heard in my life. Seminary never told me about pedestals. Of course, I had heard of putting persons on a pedestal, certain, beloved or idolized individuals, but I had never heard of putting a type of person, a category of people, a vocation of people on a pedestal. It was a whole way of considering pastors that I had never before considered. Sure, I was fascinated by the idea of ministry when I was little. That is what sparked my interest when I was a child to think about ministry. The preacher was an impressive figure draped in black, and everyone seemed to hang on what they preacher was saying and doing in worship – I know better than that now, but I understood that there was some sense of attention for the preacher. Something about that person was important, but as I have gone along in life and service, I have quite plainly seen that if there is anything worthwhile, meaningful, or useful from what I am doing as a pastor, it is by the grace of God. I need as little authority as I can afford. I am a redeemed sinner growing in the grace and love of God just like all of you here, and I have to be especially aware and sensitive to the dangers of abusing my relationship in your midst. Clergy have a long history of abuses in their ranks. I for one never want to be one of them, and I have no desire for people to pedestalize this regular human being. That kind of authority terrifies me. While I understand that I have to stand here and try to speak for God, I do so in as much humility as I can muster, and I ask that you hear me as an ordinary man with a special calling.
Now, the flip side was another interview in that same time of interviewing with churches. This time I was sitting down with a different church in a different presbytery with established, powerful, old money leaders. I felt like I was interviewing in the shark tank, and there was a guppy in my seat. I was, again, troubled by the language, the tone, and the impression that led me to the feeling that they could easily pull my strings and get me to do whatever it was they wanted me to do. That is the way they operated in their town, and that was the way they worked the church.
The abuse of power if a dangerous thing from any angle. It makes good people into something else.
I am going to guess that at some point in your life you have known someone who took advantage of their place in relation to you. Maybe it was a teacher, a friend, a family member, a church leader, a community leader, a parent. We live with so many kinds of abuses. We should never take them lightly since real lives and real relationship are on the line with these destructive actions. Some of us have lived with the scars for decades.
And the issues go so far deeper than we realize: it has been proven that the same judge will issue different judgements for the same crime on different days and at different times. If you do ever have to go before a judge for sentencing, you should hope that it is not right before lunch. That is when it is the worst for defendants. Now, just after lunch is a better time for people hanging in the balance. The judge will most likely be in a better mood then. I hope you get some idea that the power we hold over other lives is a very tricky thing and should be carefully respected and considered. This is something that David lost altogether.
King David had been doing so well by God and the people up to this point. He had seemingly not made any mistakes and had, in fact, made some pretty hard choices. His life, his kingdom, his family, everything was booming and could not have been better. Sadly, that is when he let it all get into his head. He let God’s glory become his glory or the authority of God settle in his lap – who knows? Somehow, he became so comfortable in his power as king that he quit ruling in fear of God and in service to his people. He became just like any other earthly king, and in that kind of dangerous game, he abdicated God’s good for the ways of the world. Functionally, he quit being God’s righteous king the rest of his life which is framed by failure after failure through the rest of the book, and it begins here.
You need to know just how much this passage marks a turning point for David. In the very opening line of this chapter, the author is shouting to us the corruption to come. In the spring, armies would go out to do battle, and the king was the one who was supposed to be at the lead. That’s what kings were for, what David had ALWAYS done, what he had done for Saul, even, but this year he stayed home. This is not the same David. You heard the story, but what you may not have heard was the number of times the word “sent” was used – far more times here in this passage than anywhere else in Scripture. This story is all about power being thrown around every which way, people being sent here and there, instructions and news, all kinds of things are being issued from people in the desire to move the story in a direction. If you are not willing to get your hands dirty, you send others to do your bidding.
The bottom line, however, is that David crosses every line and violates every norm that he has ever held dear, and he is the king, so he gets to get away with it. Powerful people often do. In fact, he does not even truly realize what he has done until Nathan the prophet later confronts him with the magnitude of his sin. We will hear that story next week which is so dramatic and so wrenching. Bring a tissue next week.
What is also striking in the story is the only person who seems truly righteous is the one who has NO power – Uriah the Hittite. He is not even Jewish. There is no tribe of Hitt. He is a leftover from a previous day, someone whose family was there before the Jews and just got absorbed into the people, but Uriah is a good and faithful member of the nation. He served his king well and died for it. Of course, David was trying to get Uriah to visit his wife so that the child might be explained, but would David really have been able to leave Bathsheba alone with her husband? Maybe he would have felt the need to get rid of Uriah one way or another. At least, this irony is not lost on us since he died fighting FOR David, but David fought to have him killed.
Clearly, this is a tremendous abuse of power. We still see these situations today by people in positions of leadership of influence with politicians at the top of the list, but everyone has some kind of power in relation to someone else, and power is always potentially a problem. Human inclinations prevent us from exercising power as God wants. We love our self-benefit more than how we can serve God. To be honest, that somewhat seems like pretty weak power though. If power is to be measured by how much you have gained or how much you have or how many bragging rights you have collected, then that does not seem like a very enduring use of power. I am wondering if true human power is the power to forgive, the power to serve, the power to love, the power to seek the welfare of others, the power speak the truth, or the power to show compassion. I know which kind of power changes lives more profoundly and more beautifully, and changed lives make for a changed world. In this sense, true human power is when we go beyond just our self-interests to bless someone else or when we seek to build up our neighbor more than ourselves.
Everyone does have power. As a collection of people, we represent a fair bit of human potential and the exercise of power. It would be very useful to recognize what kind of power do we have as a church family, a congregation in Christ. How have we used our power in the past? What have we accomplished? What might we accomplish today with the help of God’s Spirit? To put this in entirely different perspective, if our church completely disappeared off the face of the earth, would there be a noticeable hole in our community? Whatever power we are able to share needs to answer these questions for the glory of God.
This is really the point here. Far too often, what we see are the abuses of power, and they make people act in terrible and terrifying ways. There are a good number of people who will never step foot in a church again because of how someone spoke to them or treated them at the church. It hurt them deeply to be regarded with anything less than Christian love in the home of Christian love. Of course, Christians are really and truly just ordinary human beings on a sacred quest, but we are trying to become the person we are seeking as literal followers of Christ. He is here, but we have a long way to go.
Along the way, we have to be able to choose and work toward God’s good in our midst, using our power, our influence, our resources, our gifts, whatever you want to call it, to do something worthwhile and meaningful with the life we have been given. Our community will never get better by itself. Too much pushes the other way. People tend to push the other way, but Jesus gives us the power to be more. If David had simply loved Uriah, things would have been different. If we share powerful love with those who are around us, this community will be different.
To God be the glory. Amen.