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Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
Just what exactly is the Kingdom of God? And what does it mean? Today we are challenged to live in the mystery.
The Mystery of the Kingdom of God
The kingdom of God is a mysterious thing. How God acts and how God chooses to act is not always clear to us. In fact, there may be instances we look at certain situations in the world and we say, “Why doesn’t God inspire somebody to do something about this or that?”
Those seem like really important things to be attentive to. But if the kingdom of God is a mystery and how God works in the world is a mystery, sin, not so much. We get today the story of David. It is a, I’m going to say, sugar-coated version of this story, and you’ll know what I mean when I begin to dig into it a little deeper. But here’s the thing.
The sin didn’t begin with what we hear today. That’s not where it started. The king had very specific duties. And one of them was to lead the troops in battle. And that’s like very high on the priority list. It’s why they have a king.
So when we hear, at the turn of the year when kings go out on campaign, it would be like my saying, “You know, I don’t want to say Mass this weekend. “I’m just going to kind of let you guys figure out “what you’re going to do without it.”
Okay, this is a high priority for a king. David would have known that, okay, big deal. And he doesn’t. He doesn’t go. We don’t know why. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he got tired of this campaign. But whatever it is, he’s not doing what he’s supposed to do. He’s not doing what is really one of the most important things he’s supposed to do.
And then he gets himself into trouble. He’s not being attentive or faithful to what God is asking of him. And he begins to find other ways not to be attentive and faithful to God. And he notices Bathsheba. Now, by all accounts, as beautiful as David was, we hear that he’s a youth, handsome and ruddy. Bathsheba is a woman, beautiful, described here as well.
And this is where the story gets really sugar-coated, I think. We have to remember that King David is the most powerful man in his kingdom. And Bathsheba is a woman who, well, she isn’t terribly powerful, quite frankly. So when it says that she came over and she had relations with him, today I think we would use a different word to describe that. I think we would say he raped her.
Okay, this was not a consensual matter. Okay, he’s the most powerful man in all of Israel. She’s not capable of consenting to him. In this situation, under these circumstances, she’s married. And by all accounts, she loves her husband Uriah. And we certainly see with Uriah that he loves her because he’s faithful to God.
He doesn’t go and stay with his wife not because he doesn’t love his wife, but because this is what soldiers do when they are on campaign. They don’t have these relations with their wife or spend time. They have to make a sacrifice because of what God is asking them to do. And we can’t get caught up in the war part.
Okay, we see this. I mean, it was real. I’m not saying that David couldn’t build the temple because he had shed too much blood. We’re not talking about something that didn’t happen. But we have to understand it in a different context, maybe for another day.
Then there’s Uriah. Now, here’s the interesting thing which doesn’t come up here. But David had kind of a force of (Navy) Seals or an elite fighting force. They were called the mighty men. There were 30 of them, the 30 mighty men. Uriah was one of those mighty men.
So this is not just some any old little soldier that’s there. This is one of the hand-picked men who are the best fighters in the kingdom. Uriah is someone who is close to David and has tremendous skill. And to cover his sin, he’s willing to kill him. And we learn at the end, others who had nothing to do with any of this.
See, that’s kind of the way sin works though, isn’t it? It starts in a little small way. And if we don’t give attention to what God is calling us to do, it grows and it moves out of control. But here’s the mystery of God we do understand. When we sin, then what we need to do is what David does immediately hereafter. We need to go to God, ask for mercy, tell him we’re going to change our life because we deliberately mean to do so and to seek his forgiveness.
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