Confession Is Good for the Soul

2 Samuel 11:1-5, 16-27; 12:1-9; Psalm 51:1-9; Matthew 9:9-13

And the prophet Nathan said to King David: “You are the man!”

In our experiment with the Narrative Lectionary, we read last week about the people of Israel arriving in the Promised Land to begin their life together as God’s covenant people. At first they had no king but God, but after a time they decided they needed a ruler who would defend the nation from military attack and who would apply God’s justice in everyday life. But, as the saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and even King David – the greatest of Israel’s kings, the man “after God’s own heart,” got too used to getting whatever he wanted with no questions asked.

Our story today begins in the spring, when the army is out on campaign but – for some reason – David the commander in chief is not with them. David is not where he is supposed to be, and perhaps this is the first sign that something is wrong. But Bathsheba is exactly where she is supposed to be, performing a ritual washing prescribed by the Law of Moses, when David sees her. He learns that Bathsheba is the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of the officers of the army now out on deployment.

So David has his people arrange a little meeting. We are not told what Bathsheba thinks of the king’s attention, or whether she really had much choice in the matter. But when she sends word to the king that she has become pregnant during her husband’s deployment, David is worried people will find out.

In a part of the story that we left out of the reading today, David first suggests that Uriah come home for a conjugal visit. But Uriah is an officer devoted to his soldiers. Like a good officer, he refuses a privilege that his men cannot also share. Then David goes to Plan B. He gives orders that Uriah be given an especially dangerous mission, and when – predictably – Uriah is killed in battle, David simply takes Bathsheba as one of his many wives. And as far as David is concerned, the coverup is complete.

Well, but Jerusalem is a small town, and people talk. David’s close advisor Nathan is worried. Nathan is a prophet, a person of faith in the Lord who has insight into God’s ways, and Nathan knows that the Lord does not approve of what David has done. Nathan knows that he must make David aware of the harm that he has done – but that confronting David directly might cause David to deny, to deflect, to lie and dig his hole even deeper. So Nathan decides to tell David a parable.

In a certain city of the realm, Nathan says, there is a rich man with many flocks and herds, and a poor man with one poor little ewe, really more a pet than an asset. The rich man was entertaining important visitors, and rather than take from his own flocks to prepare a banquet, he stole the poor man’s pet lamb and turned it into lunch. Now, Your Majesty, what should be done with this rich man?

Now David may have gone seriously astray, but he still thinks of himself as God’s appointed king, and he knows how to respond to Nathan’s story. This is a disgrace! David shouts angrily. A person so greedy, so lacking in compassion and pity, has no place in the community of God’s people. To avoid a sentence of death, the man must pay back the poor man four times what he took.

(This is, by the way, the standard practice in the law of Israel – you may remember the gospel story of Zaccheus the tax collector, who went up into the tree to see Jesus. When Jesus meets with him, Zaccheus says, if I have defrauded anyone, I pay him back fourfold. That’s the expectation in Israel when someone harms another deliberately. If I harm someone accidentally, it is enough to simply make restitution – but if I harm someone on purpose, more is required. Fourfold restitution implies public confession that the harm was premeditated, that the injured party doesn’t simply need their property restored but that more must be done to repair the relationship and the community.)

It's obvious to David that, if this rich man is going to continue to be part of the covenant people of God living in the Promised Land, fourfold restitution is the minimum required to repair the outrage. And it is only when David has given his judgment that Nathan can look David in the eye and say, “You are that man.” And to his credit, David is able to see what Nathan has shown him. David is able to confess what he has done, and that he was in the wrong.

It's really hard for many people, especially people like David who are used to thinking of themselves as good and righteous people, to admit that they have been wrong. To take responsibility for messing up. “I’m sorry that you took it that way, that’s not how I meant it.” “I meant well, it’s not my fault things worked out that way.” Or even the famous “Mistakes were made.” It is much harder to say “I made a mistake, and I’m sorry.” Or “I was thoughtless and never stopped to consider things from your perspective, how careless of me.” Especially for religious people, being good, being right is often part of our identity – if we’re not as good as we think we are, or as we want others to think we are, or as we want God to think we are, then what? Too scary even to think about.

Other people have a different problem with confession. In a broken world we have also all been on the receiving end of harm, and part of the way some of us carry that is to assume that somehow we deserve what’s been done to us. That we are worthless and hopeless screw-ups who don’t have a right to expect better. I wonder if Bathsheba ever stayed up at night wondering if this mess was her fault. That she should have been more careful, that she should have said no more forcefully, even to the king. Even though she did nothing wrong – even though David was completely at fault – did she find it easier to blame herself?

Either way, confession is difficult if you assume that your worth as an individual – for good or for ill – is tied up with what you deserve. Now Lutherans should be the last people to think this way – we are Christians especially committed to the idea that God’s love and acceptance are unconditional. So they are not conditioned in any way on what we have or have not done. If we admit that we have done wrong, we claim to believe that our standing before God is not affected in the least. We do not have to be good people to be valued and worthy of respect as people. After all, Jesus hung out all the time with tax collectors and notorious sinners. If we take our faith seriously, we believe that we risk nothing by admitting our complicity in evil – and that should give us a leg up in getting on with the work of restitution and renewal.

Of course, it’s not that easy. I think modern American Christians are actually rather bad at confession and repentance. Because we prefer to believe that we’re self-made people and get what we deserve. Even though, especially as Lutherans, we ought to know better than that. We know that confession is good for the soul. We want to have the freedom to let go of denial and to let go of shame and just ‘fess up when we are wrong and get to work repairing relationships and making things whole. But it’s really hard. 

When David heard Nathan’s parable, David knew what was required from him to continue as part of God’s faithful people – confession, yes, but also the work of restitution. We know from the story that David confessed, admitted his responsibility, asked for forgiveness and grace. That is already difficult enough, but David knew more was necessary. We are not told how David went about making things right. I wonder what David said to Bathsheba the night after his confrontation with Nathan. Or how she received what he said. We are not told how David was changed by his experience, what he did differently to avoid making this mistake again. These are difficult questions for any of us. It may take long sessions in prayer, in therapy, in conversation with a pastor or a trusted friend.

The first step is the hardest – to have the faith that it is OK to confess one’s own responsibility. To trust that we are still worthy of care and concern and respect, that God will remain in relationship with us, even if we’ve really messed up. If we don’t have the faith that God’s grace will sustain us no matter what, we may never find the courage to be brutally honest with ourselves or with God. And without that honesty, our efforts to repair our relationships will always be partial, incomplete, self-serving.

I wish I was better at taking ownership of my own faults and mistakes. I wish I was better at not blaming myself for the faults and mistakes of others. I wish the church was better at confession and repentance than we are. Because there is a lot of hurt in this world, and if we aren’t willing to own up to how our own actions have contributed to the problem, we’ll never be able to help make things better. Because the thing we need most of all is to trust that God’s grace and mercy can make all things right. We come together this morning to remind one another of God’s promise, to (like Nathan) help one another to see ourselves as God sees us, to support one another in the work of repentance and repair, to experience the healing and the mercy of God.