"One Death That's Different" 2 Samuel 11:1-15

In the Bible, King David is a warrior, strong and courageous. As a warrior, fighting battles, he kills lots of people.

In the eyes of Israel, this makes him a hero. Even before becoming king, the people sing about how Saul – the current king – has killed thousands, but David killed ten thousands.

By the time his story is over, David has killed over a hundred thousand. And the Bible celebrates this! It’s not because the Bible thinks killing is good; it’s because in ancient times, the ability to defeat one’s enemies is a sure sign that God is with you.

 Each person he killed is a sign of David’s God-given courage, his valor, his strength on the battlefield. His skill as a warrior, above all his other qualities, defines him as a man and presents to Israel a model of what a real man is like.

But there is one death – just one – that the Bible does not celebrate. There is one killing in the story of David that the Bible condemns. And that is the death of Uriah the Hittite.

What is it about this one death, this one killing, that makes it so different from all the others?

The story begins in the time of year when kings normally go out to battle. Yet David, the mighty warrior, is not on the battlefield; he is standing on the roof of his palace, looking out over his kingdom.

You may recall that, before, when David had a moment to look out from his palace and gaze at his kingdom, his thoughts turned to the Lord, and to building a temple for the Lord. This time, however, his thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a beautiful woman bathing nearby.

The woman, of course, was Bathsheba. Something inside David made him want her. So he had her brought to the palace.

As far as I can tell, this is the only time David ever feels lust for a woman. The Bible does say that he has many wives and concubines, but they are more possessions than love interests for him. In fact, if King David is the ideal man for Israel, a real man’s man, then it appears that a real man’s man in ancient Israel was independent, free, and unburdened by any obligations to women or the emotions that might entangle him in such obligations.

It’s not a very flattering image of masculinity, I admit; and not very respectful of women. But these are ancient times we’re talking about.

So the Bible presents David as the ideal man. He’s strong and courageous, a successful warrior… and he is unattached, emotionally, to women.

But Bathsheba threatens this un-attachment.

By the way, it would be a whole other sermon to talk about Bathsheba, the oppression of women, feminism, misogyny, etc., and probably a very good and helpful sermon at that. But today I’m talking about David and manhood, and that is more than enough for one day.

David has Bathsheba brought to him, and gets her pregnant.

Upon learning this, he summons Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, from the battlefield, and tells him to go spend some time with Bathsheba. That way, it might appear that the baby is his. However, spending time with one’s wife was something soldiers weren’t supposed to do during a time of battle; in fact, soldiers took a vow, that they wouldn’t be with their wife until after the war. Uriah, being the good soldier that he is, refused to stay with his wife.

So David sent him back to the battlefield, and arranged it so that Uriah would be killed.

Probably, David saw the killing of Uriah as just one more battlefield death. David was a warrior and a king, after all, and a warrior and a king does whatever is necessary to achieve victory. In this “situation,” David felt he needed to be victorious, so he had Uriah killed. In his mind, there is nothing wrong here.

When one has killed hundreds of thousands, what is one more death?

But this one death is condemned by Nathan the prophet, and by the author and narrator of scripture. Which begs the question:

What’s so different about this killing?

After all, it’s just one man, and David has killed so many before. Why is this death different?

About a year and a half ago, I spent some time with our youth group talking about what makes a hero. In fact, we became heroes and warriors. The shields and swords we made still hang on the wall of the youth room upstairs.

And right above those swords and shields is a sign that says: “What are the marks of a hero? Strength and love.” This is based on two verses in Psalm 62, which refer to God’s strength and steadfast love.

And at Loch Leven a few weeks ago, we slept out under the stars one night, and I pointed out constellations, and when I showed the boys the constellation Hercules, I asked them what they knew about the story of Hercules. Many kids today know the Disney version, and in that version Hercules needs to prove that he’s a real hero, so he works and trains and builds his strength and his courage. But none of this makes him a true hero until he learns that it’s not just the strength of one’s body, but the strength of one’s love that makes a person a true hero.

All those battles David fought, all those men David killed, he did so because of his love for his nation and his God. Every time, he was fighting for a cause bigger than himself.

But when he killed Uriah the Hittite, the only person he was thinking of was himself. No matter how strong you are, if you are only living for yourself, you are no hero.

And that’s why this killing is different from all the others.

Now, we have to be careful here. The point of this story is NOT that it’s OK to kill hundreds of thousands of people if you are doing it for someone besides yourself. It’s not a story about whether or when it’s ok to kill; it’s a story about who you are called to serve, and whether you are using your own strength and courage for selfish reasons or for the good of others.

We must remember that Jesus practiced nonviolence. Scholars have made convincing arguments that, when Jesus taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” the temptation he was referring to was specifically the temptation to use violence. The devil himself presented Jesus this temptation, saying that if Jesus would only worship him, he would give Jesus the power to control all the kingdoms and all the armies on earth.

So the story of King David is not a story about whether or not violence is acceptable. It’s a story about what’s in one’s heart, what one’s motives are, and how one goes about using the gifts of strength and courage to make the world a better place.

Throughout history, masculinity and manhood have often been exercised in unhelpful, sometimes abusive ways. But the solution to bad masculinity is not no masculinity; the solution is good masculinity. In the same way, religion has abused and oppressed people over the centuries, leading many to abandon religion in the 21st century. But the solution to bad religion is not no religion; it’s good religion.

It’s a challenging task for us, to recover both a positive masculinity and a positive religion. Concerning religion, this is why theology is so important to me. The implications of bad theology are detrimental to the wellbeing of many. There is so much bad theology going around, and it makes people fearful and judgmental and, in extreme cases, hateful and violent. Churches are burned and terrorist attacks are launched, and these often have their roots in bad theology.

Bad masculinity can be just as dangerous. The Bible condemns David’s killing of Uriah because it was an act of violence motivated only by David’s desire to protect himself from the consequences of his mistake. There was no love in what he did. And without love, there is no hero.

In the movie Big Hero 6, Hiro Hamada learns how to transform his genius intelligence into power and strength.

But at one point he gets caught up in emotion, and loses sight of what it is that might truly make him a hero or even a man.

That same confusion exists today in the minds of young boys becoming men. What does it mean to be a man? How can I be the hero God calls me to be? Society does not provide many clear answers.

Which is why the church needs to teach our boys that the man God calls them to be is a man who uses his strength and courage for the good of others. He’s a man whose greatest strength is the strength of his love.

This is what we are called to teach our young people. This is why I spend so much of my time working with youth, going to camp and VBS… We in the church are called to provide our young people positive models of manhood and womanhood that will bring wholeness to their lives and to the world.