Thursday, March 3, 2022

David's Adultery and Vlad's Treachery: A Lenten Reflection

 



Every year, on Ash Wednesday, we pray with King David the powerful Psalm 51:   “Have mercy on me, O God….Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…”   To plumb the depths of this beloved psalm, we must revisit the tawdriest episode in King David’s life when he committed adultery with his neighbor’s wife, Bathsheba (see II Samuel 11 and 12 for the whole heart-rending tale).   So infatuated was David with Bathsheba that he went to great lengths to seduce her, including his willingness to arrange for the murder of her husband.

Reflecting on Psalm 51 and its biblical back-story, I’m struck by the resonances between David’s treachery and the tragedy playing out these days in Ukraine.  Not unlike ancient King David, Vlad the Destroyer gazed westward, lusting for his neighbors in the beautiful country of Ukraine, leading him to take by force what was not his.  

The brave, stern prophet of the LORD, Nathan, confronted King David and forced him to realize the error of his ways:  “You are the man!”  (II Samuel 12:7).    Today the freedom-loving democracies of the world are taking the part of Nathan in proclaiming to Vlad the Destroyer, “You are the man!”

This is, of course, my own interpretation of how both the biblical story and the tragedy of Ukraine might be playing out right before our eyes.    Some may write off such ruminations as “more politics   But I believe it is incumbent upon us all to seek to discern the mysterious ways of God as they are interwoven in real-time events in our own day.

In this regard I call upon Abraham Lincoln—not much of a church-goer, but the most profound lay theologian ever to occupy the White House—in the stirring conclusion of his magnificent Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, during the waning days of the Civil War:

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.  Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another draw with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’   

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”    (Henry Steele Commager, editor of Documents of American History, Volume I, pages 442-443)


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