"David and Bathsheba" Keynote - Sara Barton - Harbor 2019

[Music] my name is Sarah Barton and I have the privilege of working as the university chaplain here at Pepperdine and many people have mentioned to you I think we've all mentioned to you what a year we have had thank you for your support and prayers from so far away and I can't help but notice because I know the community how many people are here with us tonight who are in Pepperdine employees and so if I could ask you to stand Pepperdine employees I just want you to know thank you I want you to know that a chaplain gets to see behind the scenes who does why who does the dirty work who flipped burgers when the people who needed to cook the burgers couldn't make it to campus because of fires who showed up in the middle of the night when terrible terrible things happen at borderline grill these are wonderful people to be waves with and so I'm grateful for them I see so many of you tonight I love you I was talking to a student that I mentor recently and we were talking about prayer requests that we have for one another we share prayer requests often and he shared some prayer requests with me and I shared a prayer request with him I said well you can be praying for me because I was asked to preach at the Pepperdine Bible lectures and he said well what's that and so I was telling him what this is and it's kind of a big deal or whatever he didn't know he didn't know what it was so I was telling him about it and then I said and on top of that I am a woman and that's kind of sometimes a big deal not me not me and he honestly didn't know that either and so then I said and you won't believe my topic you won't believe the passage that might cope gave me and he said who's that and I said my passage is in second Samuel and I'm gonna be talking about Bathsheba and he went home and he read that story that night and he said he texted me oMG I had no idea this stuff was in the Bible this is not a story that we often tell in Sunday school this is a story that honestly is going to have some rough spots tonight this is a story that in some ways is unspeakable and yet I will try to speak here the reading of God's Word from second samuel chapter 11 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 in Jerusalem it happened late one afternoon when David Rhodes from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king's house that he saw from the whoot 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 and me Uriah the Hittite my husband John and I started off our lives together as missionaries in Jinja Uganda in East Africa a place we still love and cherish to this day we were church planters and we went there we were young we were idealistic but we learned to love people our son and his wife are actually living and working there now and during that time while we were there I as churches would start and congregations would begin one of the things that I enjoy doing was going out to the churches and doing a Bible study series with women in that congregation and so in the story I want to tell you I was doing a series on women in the Bible and so each week when I went out we would study a different woman in the Bible Sarah and Ruth and Naomi Mary and Martha and Mary and Elizabeth and women in the Bible it was a it was a a really good conversation these are compelling women with with lives that are interesting and so each week we would study one of the women in the Bible but I decided one week that we had been going through these different stories going through these different women and I thought we might be getting some mixed up with others and so I decided to have a week of review and instead of going with a Bible study in a lesson plan for that evening for that day I went with questions and I prepared ten or twelve questions and I worked through them in loose Olga that was the language that we were speaking there and I worked through the questions in my mind and at the Bible study that day we never got past the first question we spent the entire time talking about the first question that I asked and I just thought it was one of those gets you going kind of questions you know and the others deep stuff would come later the first course question that I asked was this in the way that you might translate it into English because you know how language works sometimes a word can mean several things I wanted to be asking which woman in the Bible is your favorite woman that we've been studying you could say that and translate that to say which woman do you appreciate which woman do you love which woman do you which woman do you admire and unlike Western culture where if we ask that question to a class to a group of people here we would have someone raise their hand and say pick me pick me my favorite woman in the Bible is Sarah or pick me pick me my favorite woman in the Bible is Ruth but that's not what they did in Uganda that day it's a communal culture and so everyone turned to one another and they started discussing among themselves who they were going to tell me was their favorite woman in the Bible that they all agreed upon so I was watching and listening and I could follow along in my Lew saga closely enough so that I heard one woman nominate Sarah and some of the other women agreed with her and then I heard another woman nominate Mary and Mary was very popular Mary almost got it and then I saw a woman make a suggestion and I didn't follow along and hear who she said but all of a sudden every head turned and they said yes that is the one that is our favorite woman in the Bible and the woman who was speaking Goretti turned to me and she said we have chosen our favorite our best the woman we admire the woman we appreciate the most we have chosen her and the woman we love the most is Bathsheba now my first inward thought was she was not in my series on women in the Bible I didn't know it'd bring up Bathsheba my second thought was can't they see The Scarlet Letter a on Bathsheba's dress don't they know that storied are they my are you sure that's the one you want to talk about because she comes from kind of a sketchy story but I was a good missionary that day and I said the Watchi which is why why do you love Bathsheba and the conversation that followed is one that has changed me it's why I remember it all these years later it's why I want to tell you about the story all these years later I wish I wish my friends could come and be here and we could just sit and talk and you could hear them tell the story they would tell it much better but I will do my best to tell you what they taught me that day they said we admire we appreciate Bathsheba because we see that her marriage life and her sex life is like our marriage lives and our sex lives it went deep really fast that day we didn't talk about things like that at most of these Bible studies the way that they interpreted this story David was the king and the power differential between a king and a female subject was so great that there was no way she could have said no there was no way that she could have said let me call my husband or there was no way and they told me that's kind of how it is for us that's how it is for many of us it's our husbands I'm imminent I'm sorry it's our fathers and it's our uncles and it's our brothers who choose our husbands we don't have a lot of say in that and so we see what happened to her and that's how they interpreted it as we were talking that day and I want you to know I have permission to tell this story so we were talking that day one of the women told me that the way her marriage started a man snuck in the window of her house at night and raped her and her brothers went to get him the next day and make him marry her and she told me about her marriage and her children to this man the man with whom her marriage had started in that way and so I was listening and I was thinking about Bathsheba in a very different way by the way the woman was even older than I am and in the culture that would have been seen as a way of defending her honor but you can see that it would be a very difficult situation so I was listening then they told me another reason that they liked and admired Bathsheba and they said we like Bathsheba because she was a co wife she was a wife among other wives she was a wife and a polygamist situation and many of them had grown up in a polygamous situation and if they did not yet share their husbands with other men they knew that that might happen to them if they got old it might happen to them if they could not have children and so they said if you're going to be a co wife you want to be a successful co wife you want to be the favorite Co wife and the way they saw it Bathsheba was the best and the favorite and the most successful Co wife because her son became the next king and they admired the way I think we would say it now that despite the way her marriage started Bathsheba had agency she found her way through that and she was successful and then they gave me a third reason another one that I remember another one that stands out to me they said and this one breaks your heart they said we see we appreciate we understand Bathsheba because her baby died one in five babies born in Uganda will not live to see a fifth birthday and so they saw Bathsheba grieving they saw her crying they saw her putting her baby in the ground and covering the baby with dirt and they they liked her they loved her they felt her they knew her and after that conversation I began to think I love Bathsheba I see Bathsheba and I will never again teach a series on women in the Bible without including Bathsheba and it is my honor to preach about Bathsheba tonight let's admit something it is not just in other cultures or way back in time that similar situations take place don't look at my friends in Wong Kong gay village and judge them or pity them power is abused everywhere in relation to sex they could certainly turn the tables and critique critique plenty of abuses of power and sex in our culture we are not sure what happened in that bedroom between David and Bathsheba was it adultery between between two consenting adults or should we call it assault should we call it rape I know this some of my sisters some of our sisters in Wong Kong gay saw it that way and plenty of other sisters around the world see it that way and so I'm asking this hard question tonight I'm wrestling with it tonight I honestly do not like saying the word rape in a public way like this I tried to figure out a way to do this without saying it without it I don't like saying and talking about it without a chance to care for the people for whom this is very personal and I deep regret if this sermon hurts anyone and I want you to know we are a community who loves one another and so let's look out for one another tonight it's very sensitive to many of us because in the United States one in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their life one in three women and one in six men experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetime and the fact is that you cannot study David like we are this week without noticing that sexual trauma occurs in the storyline it would be weird if we went through this week without acknowledging that some of the Bible's most difficult scenes are in second Samuel the rape of Tamar and the rape of David's concubines on a rooftop I hate it I hate those stories but they're there and they're here in our world and there is no doubt about what it's called it is sin and here's what I think about our text there was a terrible sin perpetrated against Bathsheba in Nathan's words an innocent limb and against her husband Uriah an innocent lamb and Bathsheba's baby who died an innocent lamb and those sins had consequences for generations of David's family David famously grieved his son Absalom Absalom my son Absalom may we say today what David failed to say when his own daughter was raped Tamar Tamar daughter of God Tamar we see you we see you innocent lamb we see you my experience in Hong Kong a village made me want to learn more about how about Sheba has been interpreted and other times in places and it turns out that she is the subject of pages and pages of biblical commentary when you think about it Bathsheba is a minor character in second Samuel she does not even speak she sends a message I am pregnant and that's all we know but that has not stopped people from speculating because we are not told what Bathsheba thought or felt there are a number of interpretations of her many have said she was power-hungry and opportunistic and she set out to lure the king by bathing in his line of sight art for example a common medium for interpretation in biblical history has overwhelmingly interpreted interpreted Bathsheba that way Bathsheba's objectified body is the subject of numerous paintings and sculptures in which she is depicted as a seductress just go to the Getty Museum right here in Los Angeles and take a look at Dutch artist Yan Steen's painting of Bathsheba in which she is pictured getting her toenails clipped as she prepares her body for David or look at French artist Jean Buddha Sean's painting which was prepared for King Louie the 12th in which Bathsheba is recreated seducing King Louie Ida I just like she seduced David I - I there's plenty of biblical commentary that makes these points women should dress modestly so they won't cause men to misbehave and boys will be boys and women shouldn't be in that location in the first place until recent history that has been the general line of biblical interpretation but after all these years of blaming Bathsheba many scholars now emphasize what the wise women of Wong Kong a village suggested that David abused his power to get Bathsheba in his bed you can make a strong case that Bathsheba had very little say in the matter especially given the cultural and historical setting especially considering the well-established patriarchal culture especially given the record of David's unhealthy marital and sexual behavior throughout the entire story with innumerable wives and concubines all the way up to his very dying day in Scripture Bathsheba's sin is not discussed even once while there is no doubt that what David did was terribly wrong that what David did was sin let's all remember something important while Bathsheba is presented as a minor character in the story and while David is a major character David is not the main character of this story God is the main character of this story's the main character in the Bible and in 1st and 2nd Samuel and in all of history and this is what we know about God it happens over and over again in the Bible God sees minor characters and wants us to see them - God is not caught up God is not caught up in earthly kings and political figures God is caught up in the story of those who mourn God sees the pure in heart God sees those who hunger and thirst for righteousness God sees those whom people revile and persecute and utter all kinds of evil falsely against so as we remember and study David this week I asked why have we historically let David off the hook for his abuse of power in relation to Bathsheba why have we failed to see that David created sexual trauma for countless women this is not about me taking our culture and imposing it on another culture I really don't believe that the writer of Samuel no how a woman should be treated in First Samuel Chapter one we get a glimpse of what that could look like an ancient culture Elkanah loved Hanna and showed her kindness when she was sad when she was grieving because she could not have children he gave her a double portion of meat which I don't suggest as a romantic gesture today but it was big back in the day there are glimpses of healthy relationships between husbands and wives even in the Old Testament even in the old days but none of them occur with David David used women but in general we have failed to see that and we need to ask ourselves what I asked those women in one congee Watchi why why because like anything in Scripture this is not just about David this is about us - that's how we believe the Bible works I will speak for myself why is it so hard to ask if what David did was rape I can feel my mouth holding it back I don't want to say it out loud because that's distant as these as these biblical characters are from us I love David the shepherd who cares for his flock the courageous boy who inspires us to face our Giants the gentle heart purposed the poet David a great prophet I don't want to believe God's anointed king did that in all honesty I prefer to remain naive but I am forcing myself to ask why why did I so easily forgive David and fail to see Bathsheba why today's Bathsheba's and tomorrow's are saying enough is enough through hashtag me - and church - whatever you think of those move women are speaking up about the culture that makes it possible for people to be abused by those in power I want to take you back to Uganda for a moment back when our family lived there we experienced some of the most powerful rains I have ever seen in rainy season storms push off Lake Victoria the second largest freshwater lake in the world the place where the Nile River starts waters rains come off of this water with such force I often felt like I was in a gigantic car wash with rain coming from every direction at once we lived in a concrete block house with a clay tile roof and the way that the roof worked the way it was designed there was a thick sheet of plastic under the tiles to keep the rain out so if the rain got through the tiles supposedly then the the plastic would catch it and take it down to the gutters and it would not come inside our house one night in particular however water found its way through the tiles and through the plastic and we woke up not to a drippy leak but to a waterfall in our living room we used every bucket we used every kitchen mixing bowl to catch as much water as we could and my husband John is brave he got up in the attic and dodge dodged bats the size of a bald eagle armed with a flashlight and buckets and duct tape I was down below hitting the ceiling with a broom handle to show him where the water was getting through but just when he stopped the leak in one hole the water found its way like a little river through another hole in the plastic and we had another waterfall and when that one was fixed two more were created and two more after that even after we got professional help with that leaky roof new rivers of water just kept finding a way through and assumed the came clear the only way to fix the problem was this workers came and literally raised our roof because it was all done they before it was all done they removed every last tile and replay all of the plastic I have to admit that lately when I wake up each day and read the news and hear another me to story I feel like I'm living in some kind of vortex of accusations and denials it breaks my heart to know just how much sexual trauma occurs but just when one problem is revealed and one person is fired from their job two more stories pop up and two more after that some people have said we can solve this problem with a rule that unless they are married a man and a woman should never spend time alone under any circumstance a hard and fast rule but the problem with that rule is that it creates new problems in our lives namely significant professional barriers for women people have made other suggestions Nancy Pelosi recently suggested that we should all stop shaking hands and touching each other at all she said let's all live like we have colds should some Nancy Pelosi it's obviously never been to the pepperdine Bible lectures should some of us rethink and closely examine the way we hug each other and joke with or about each other certainly there are examples but if we all start acting like we have a cold that would not address the real problem someone might defensively say and be correct but I'm not a misogynist or I've never grabbed anybody anywhere but that let's all of us off the hook too easily this is not about one leak in the ceiling this is about the whole roof there is a broken system that infects and shapes every part of our lives and even when we try to address it one situation at a time it is like we are armed with duct tape to plug a waterfall the system that made it possible for David to sin for about shiba like he did that not just pop out of nowhere a culture existed around David in which orders were given and followed without question and yes it was all wrapped up in military power which is why people put up with Kings in the first place for the sake of their national security but let's not forget that David's power was also wrapped up intimately with religious power even before the temple was built Jerusalem was sacred it was a high and holy place a juncture between heaven and earth David was a holy leader and he stood on a sacred high place on that rooftop looking down on Bathsheba Samuel and the prophets had warned the people of Israel Kings will take take take take that is King culture King culture is dangerous even a king with a heart of worship even a king after God's own heart even a good person is dangerous with all that power human Kings gain power and then they take what does not belong to them just look at the verbs in the story David sees Bathsheba David sins envoys to get her get that's the same Hebrew word for take David sees David takes all because he can because Kings have power to take what they want on a whim even a sexual whim that is King culture but remember that the people men and women asked for King culture they begged God for it and defended it from numerous angles for centuries King culture is nurtured not just by the kings themselves but by the people who want the Kings in the first place it's like the story of the Emperor's New Clothes where everybody in the system pretended the Kings invisible clothes were beautiful the King walked around naked and everyone said oh how fine are the emperor's new clothes don't they fit him to perfection what kind of stim blinds people like that like they don't see the truth right in front of them King culture does a culture existed on NBC's Today Show that made it feasible for Matt Lauer to have a button in his desk that locked the door behind women when they entered his office and he assaulted them who installed that button according to a highly publicized recent documentary a culture was present in the life of King of Pop Michael Jackson that made it possible for him to close the door to his bedroom and sexually abuse little boys while their parents slept in the same house and did not see what was happening but this is not just about the secular culture and the crazy things that happen out there as soon as we start pointing fingers at the world out there the prophets finger comes pointing right back at us keen culture it's found in the church do you know what Pope Francis has said about it he says people give too much power to church leaders who stand above their flocks and he says that is a sin for both clergy and laypeople what culture makes it possible for priests who commit sexual abuse and then get sent to a different parish for a fresh start like no one saw anything like the victims and their trauma were invisible King culture does but it is not just the Catholic Church that has a problem with King culture just in the past year the Southern Baptist Convention faced their own sex scandals Beth Moore whose Bible studies many of us use a sexual abuse survivor herself led conversations and the convention voted in resolutions the first which begins we deplore apologize and ask forgiveness for failures to protect the abused Southern Baptist Convention it happened at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago a church many of us have looked to to study church growth after multiple sexual allegations were brought against their senior pastor do you know what the church confessed they admitted in the Chicago Tribune that they gave their pastor too much autonomy and blind loyalty that they did not maintain commune accountability that church gave in to King culture for the sake of church growth just take a look at the well-known Church of Christ newspaper the Christian Chronicle and you will find two stories of sexual abuse printed in the last two months one of our sisters courageously told about her experiences of unwanted sexual advances in the church she said from the time I had to hit a man in the crotch with my purse when I was in junior high to the man I always had to avoid because he made me uncomfortable touching my hair when I was in high school to the man who made lewd suggestions to my tearing up his sheets with my Spurs when I was a grandmother the church is not immune to sexual predators and leadership often seems ill-equipped to deal with them churches have to do better end quote keen culture is not just out there in those denominations you pick your news organization political candidate your president Republican or Democrat you pick your movie director musician or actor you pick your pastor or a priest or a preacher or elder or youth minister scandal one person with power is clearly sinful but all kinds of people contribute to the system that gives that person the power to be abused there was a system that allowed for the terrible sin perpetrated against Bathsheba in Nathan's words an innocent lamb and against her husband Uriah an innocent lamb and Bathsheba's baby innocent lamb and all of this is because David was afforded power by a lot of people who were willing to go to great lengths to help him cover up his sin even though it was all as obvious as Bathsheba's protruding belly we need to remember this the story of 1st and 2nd Samuel is not primarily about how David the King ought to get his life straight and desire God it's about how all God's people ought to get things rate and desire God all of us ought to be praying create an us a clean heart O God create in us a right spirit because institutional sin is a real thing we all sin when we contribute to King culture we all sin if we go along with the cover-up and abuse of power this sin is as old as time all God's children since Eve have been reaching out to take power there's that same Hebrew word again the one we see when David takes Bathsheba the same word we see when the prophets warned that Kings will take take take it's the same Hebrew word for taking that fruit since Adam and Eve all of us men and women we have been reaching out to take take take the fruit that belongs only the God and then cover up that sin with a few fig leaves we have a propensity to take what little power we get and then to take take take some more keen culture is in our nature but we are reading this story as Christians and as Christians we do not follow King culture we follow Jesus Christ who humbled himself who emptied himself of power we follow a baby who was born not in a king's palace but in a stable we followed Jesus who preached about power that is best understood as something small a mustard seed a lost coin we followed Jesus who looked right past life's majorly important characters and said let those little children come to me and rejoice with me for I have found the one innocent little lamb that was lost and let any one among you who would sit who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her we followed Jesus and innocent lamb who was mocked for the kind of King he was we followed Jesus the uncover came death so that we could be entrusted with an unconditioned of power to a world that is terribly confused about power can you imagine can you imagine what might happen if Christians were known as the people who say absolutely not and never to any form of King culture even if it's awkward to talk about even if change is hard even if it upsets people back at church in the face of the vortex of accusations and denials we the church do not wring our hands and wonder what to do we do not act like we have cold we do not bring out the duct tape the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead lives in these mortal bodies of ours and so men and women after God's own heart let's raise the roof on this thing [Applause]

Channel: Pepperdine Church Relations

Views: 8,828

Rating: 4.6799998 out of 5

Keywords: Sara Barton, Broken Covenant, David, Bathsheba, God, Book of Samuel, Christian, King David, Israel, Saul, Sin, covenant, old testament, harbor2019, Hebrews, bible lectures, pbl2019, church relations, harbor, Pepperdine

Id: 0pTyrZU8H38

Length: 38min 58sec (2338 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2019