Monday, July 29, 2024 | Trey Comstock
By Rev. Emily Larsen
I’ll never forget the time one of my parishioners first heard me use a curse word. This particular gentleman had a complicated past that included lots of drugs and rock and roll. He had left that world behind and dedicated his life to following God and serving the church. He had in his mind the impression that all of us pastors were perfect people that deserved to be on pedestals who never struggled with sin and would never deign to use language that he associated completely with his former lifestyle.
The day I first swore in front of him, I think I saw his jaw literally hit the floor. You could see the wheels in his head turning as his brain tried to comprehend what he had just heard me say. If that moment were portrayed in a movie, you would’ve heard a record scratch followed by a long pause for dramatic effect. In that moment, he realized that pastors are people too; that we don’t live in a perfect Christian bubble that sequesters us from the rest of the world. We put our pants on one leg at a time. And we are as equally capable of royally messing up as everybody else around us. In short, that nobody is perfect and that we are all humans in need of God’s redeeming grace!
You know that old adage “Never meet your heroes”? The disappointment we feel when we find out somebody that we looked up to isn’t as great as they’re hyped up to be can be devastating.
Today’s scripture is a great example of that. We get to see an up close and personal picture of a monumental failure on the part of King David. King David; the man after God’s own heart. King David; the perfect 7th son of Jesse who was out tending the sheep before he was anointed the next king of Israel. King David; the boy with the good countenance who stood up to and defeated the Philistine Giant, Goliath. King David who united Israel, defeated armies, established Jerusalem as a capital city, built a palace, received a divine promise of an everlasting dynasty. King David who loved God enough to make a spectacle of himself by dancing in his skivvies in the streets and having cake. THAT King David. The one that everybody loves. Everybody’s hero.
This next story about King David is one that centers as the hinge pin of his life. Before these poor choices, David is exalted by God from shepherd boy to successful warrior king. After this story, David’s entire family has a shocking downfall, he has to run for his life, and Israel is eventually divided and hauled away to exile! This tipping point is where the dream ends and the nightmare begins.
We tend to put our heroes, be they Bible heroes, modern day preachers and prophets, political leaders, celebrities, or otherwise on a pedestal. We can become so personally invested in their lives that we feel personally wronged when we find out about their ability to be human.
When Olympian (and fellow Houstonian) Simone Biles had to step down from some of the gymnastics events in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics citing mental health reasons, I remember the shock of many of her admirers. They couldn’t believe that this super-human gymnast would need a break. She made a positive impact in the mental health world by claiming the need to preserve herself and her own mental wellness over the expectations of those around her.
Some headlines from heroes are much less flattering. Every week, we hear more sensational news about somebody in power who was caught up in some moral scandal or ethical conundrum. It is usually somebody who thought their position of power would protect them and their reputation. Politicians seem to be an easy target for this. But others in the public eye are just as scrutinized.
But we know that nobody is above temptation. Nobody, aside from the perfect person of Jesus, has lived a sinless life. The fact that David’s story of adultery and murder survives is a testament to the importance of this fact. It would have been easy for early church writers and scribes to omit this from the history and to paint David in a better light. Yet this story survives as evidence that even our beloved King David is not without fault. Perhaps that is precisely why we include this story in our lectionary still today. To know that even those who are called “after God’s own heart” can mess up. To know that no matter how far we fall, God will always be there with a message of grace and redemption to pick us back up again.