How much easier it is to see faults in others than in ourselves!

Sermon delivered Sunday, August 2, 2015 (10th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 13, Year B), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.

(2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a, Psalm 51:1-13)



In our reading from the Hebrew Bible last week, we heard about David’s affair with Bathsheba. The concluding sentence of that reading was, “In the letter [David sent to the general, he] wrote, ‘Set Uriah [Bathsheba’s husband] in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.’” If it seemed a little odd to you that our response to this reading was, “Thanks be to God!”, your discomfort should be assuaged by the way the story continues in this week’s reading. David might be remembered as one of Israel’s great kings and “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14), but he doesn’t get away with adultery, deceit and murder without a stern rebuke.

In this week’s lesson, the prophet Nathan confronts David about his actions. But the way he does so is very clever. Instead of accusing David directly of his indiscretions, which probably would have made David defensive and unable to hear his critique, Nathan instead tells David a story. “There once was a rich man,” he says, “who had many possessions. This man had access to anything he could possibly want, but when a traveler came by seeking shelter and food, the rich man didn’t offer him anything from his own possessions, even though he had plenty to spare. Instead, he stole a lamb from his neighbor, a poor man who had barely enough to provide for his family. The rich man killed and prepared the poor man’s lamb as food for the traveler. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the lamb was not just livestock to his neighbor; it was like a member of his family, a beloved companion animal who was ‘like a daughter to him.’”

When David hears this story, he is outraged. He says to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” The Hebrew phrase that is translated “the man who has done this deserves to die” literally says, “this man is a son of death.” Calling someone a “son of death” was not a legal judgment indicating that the person deserved the death penalty, but an attack on a person’s character, a colloquialism used to disparage people.

So David has walked right into Nathan’s trap. “This man did WHAT?” he says. “What a dirty, rotten, no good…” you fill in the blank with your choice of insults. The names David calls the rich man in the story probably weren’t the G-rated version I’m choosing to give from the pulpit, if you get my drift. And then Nathan sticks it to him with his “gotcha” line – “You are the man! This story is an illustration of what you’ve done, you dirty, rotten, no good – hey, you said it, not me – rich man with all the abundance in the world of goods and possessions and many wives already at your service in your lavish palace – and yet you pick out the only wife of one of your men at battle, sleep with her, and then have her husband killed so you can take her for yourself. Yeah, the rich man in the story is a ‘son of death,’ alright – and that rich man is YOU!”

Nathan’s approach works. Rather than becoming angry and defensive, David’s eyes are opened and he acknowledges his guilt. “I have sinned against the Lord,” he admits, and, according to tradition, promptly pens the 51st psalm. The psalm we read this morning, that famous psalm of repentance, that psalm that we read every year on Ash Wednesday as we begin the season of Lent and acknowledge our own sins and repent before God, is attributed to King David, and tradition holds that he wrote it right after Nathan confronted him about his affair with Bathsheba.

Nathan’s use of an indirect story to confront David about his sin works because it is so often easier to see faults in others than it is to recognize them in ourselves. David can clearly see what the “rich man” in the story has done wrong, even when he is blind to his own sin. It is always easier to point out what others have done wrong in any conflict or argument than to seriously consider what role we have played in contributing to the issue. Sometimes seeing ourselves portrayed in caricature in a story allows our eyes to be opened to truths about ourselves that otherwise may be difficult to face.

A Jewish rabbi and therapist named Edwin Friedman, who specialized in family systems theory and applying that theory to congregational life, published a series of modern-day parables called “Friedman’s Fables” in the early 1990s. These parables were designed to open our eyes to the dynamics of unhealthy relationships within families or congregations. I’d like to share one of them with you today, because they are a sort of modern equivalent to Nathan’s use of a parable to help David to see his sin. This one is called “A Nervous Condition,” and it may give some of you an experience of what David must have felt when he realized he was the rich man in Nathan’s parable. See if you can see yourself or anyone you know in this fable:

[Read “A Nervous Condition,” from Edwin H. Friedman, Friedman’s Fables (New York: Guilford Press, 1990). I'm not sure whether it would violate copyright rules to post the story in its entirety here in written form, so I'm not posting it. But you can hear the whole story if you listen to the audio file of the sermon, linked above.]

The discussion questions included in the back of the book summarize this fable with the following moral: “Beware the insensitivities of the sensitive.” Having always been a very sensitive person from the time I was a child, this parable probably hit me as hard as Nathan’s story hit David when I first read it many years ago. My eyes were suddenly opened as to how my sensitivity could have a negative impact on others. I have since done a lot of internal work to try to recognize when my sensitivity may be inadvertently hurting others, and to claim responsibility for my own feelings rather than blaming my state of mind or reactions on others.

Friedman’s basic thesis in all of his family therapy and congregational work is that a system – whether it be a family, a workplace, a congregation, or a country – is only as healthy as its leaders, and that the key to successful leadership is not learning how to manage one’s children or employees or parishioners or constituents, but learning how to manage oneself. If we are able to become differentiated – that is, to become defined by our own sense of identity that comes from a place of deep internal conviction rather than being defined by the feelings, opinions, and reactions of others – then we automatically have a positive effect on the system, even without directly trying to change anything about it. Friedman suggests that sometimes rather than taking the “problem child” or “problem person” into therapy, if the person who sees the problem in others can begin to work on themselves, their own internal work can change the system enough so that the “problem person” begins to change even without making any intentional effort themselves. It is an illustration of Jesus’s advice in the Sermon on the Mount: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” In other words, if you want others to address their faults, work first on addressing your own.

The work of faith is the work of serious reflection and self-examination. While we are called to work for reconciliation and peace and justice and righteousness in the world around us, that work must first start with ourselves. The old cliché about “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me” has more truth to it than we realize. Or the one about “charity begins at home.” One way we can all work to change the world is to work on changing ourselves. It’s the only thing we really can change, after all. So as our eyes are opened to the faults in others, let us see that as an invitation to look more closely at the faults in ourselves. With much prayer and discernment, and with the help of a trusted guide like a therapist or spiritual director, we can change the world, one repentant sinner at a time.