Dropping the Shields
2 Samuel 12:1-14
Sermon preached on Sunday, February 22, 2009
by Rev. Patricia Pearce
Our Hebrew scripture reading comes to us from Second Samuel. Let me just give you a little bit of background on today's story before we launch into the text. This is a story about David, who now, as king, has this idea that he can pretty much have whatever he wants. And he's out one day, and he notices a beautiful woman who is bathing in her yard, and he decides that he wants her. Now, her name – I'm sure we all are familiar with – her name is Bathsheba. And so David commits adultery with her, and then he connives to get her husband, who is doing battle with David's army, back home, so that he would sleep with his wife, so that the pregnancy – that now Bathsheba realizes she has become pregnant – David tries to manipulate the situation so that Uriah might think that the baby is his. Well, the attempts fail, and so Plan B: he sends Uriah back into battle, in the front lines, the most dangerous part of the battle, and Uriah is killed. Then David takes Bathsheba as his wife. So we pick up from Chapter 12:
"But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, 'There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his meager fare and drink from his cup and lie in his bosom. And it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loathe to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him. But he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.'
"Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, 'As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die. He shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.' Nathan said to David, 'You are the man. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your bosom, and I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in God's sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house. For you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.'
"David said to Nathan, 'I have sinned against the Lord.' Nathan said to David, 'Now the Lord has put away your sin. You shall not die. Nevertheless, because, by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die.' Then Nathan went to his house."
{prayer}
Some while back – it was probably more than a year ago – I was out at Pendle Hill, which is a Quaker retreat center out in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And they have, at the beginning of their day, a meeting, a Quaker meeting, a silent meeting. And people, as I'm sure all of you know, they sit in silence until the Spirit moves them to stand and say something. And that day that I was there, a woman stood up, and she stood there, and she said:
(singing): Gonna lay down my sword and shield.
She said, "I'm gonna lay down my sword … AND shield."
And ever since then, I've been aware that peacemaking requires more than laying down the sword. That maybe it is laying down the shield that is more radical and requires more courage. To lay down the shield is to expose oneself to whatever might come one's way. It's to make myself vulnerable.
When I typed, or emailed Barbara with my reflection title for the week, "Dropping the Shields", she emailed back "Oh, good, another Star Trek reference!" And she's absolutely right. That's, of course, where this phrase comes from. I mean, you're on the bridge, and Jean Luc Picard (or, Captain Kirk, whatever, but I really like Jean Luc Picard… I think he's great.) Anyway, so, there's this moment, you know: the Romulans have de-cloaked. The warbird, in all of its malevolent greenness, is right in front of the Enterprise. And there's a moment – and Kip reminded me of this episode… do you mind? Let me just indulge myself for a moment… There's this episode where a crew member of the Enterprise is stranded on a planet with a crew member of a Romulan ship. There's been a crash; they're both there. They have to work out how to survive together. So these two enemies, of course, on the planet, they learn to work together. So now both of them are on board the Enterprise, the Romulans have been contacted, they've shown up to retrieve their cohort. And there's this moment when – now, this is Kip's rendition; I didn't go back to research if this is exactly the way it goes, but: Jean Luc says to them, "I am about to lower our shields. You are able, if you choose, to destroy our ship. But do you really want to create an interstellar conflict." (something like that) So, he gives the command: "Drop the shields." And then the transport happens, and he goes "Shields up!" and everything's fine.
But there's this moment – it's metaphorical – whenever he says "Drop the shields" it's a significant moment, because it's an act of trust. Until the shields are dropped, there can be no relationship, there can be no trust between peoples, or species.
How willing are we to drop our shields? To expose ourselves in vulnerability and trust? We talked a few weeks ago about healing the wounds of oppression and about the repentance of the Ninevites and how they had to listen to Jonah in order to understand that their own position of privilege, living in the Empire, was something that needed to change.
This time we're looking at how not only do we need to acknowledge the wounds, but we have to in some way experience the pain of wounds, especially wounds of oppression. We have to be able to take that in, to give that pain some sort of place to reside, some sort of place to give expression in order for it to heal.
I have a friend who makes her livelihood doing this, she does something called "theater of witness." In the work that she does, she goes into communities that are troubled, that have experienced trauma in many cases. Right now she's in Northern Ireland, working with people on both sides of "the Trouble" as it's referred to. She takes into herself the stories – the stories of pain, and suffering and injustice. She listens to people. She takes these stories into herself, and she holds them. She literally is a container for this pain. Then out of these stories, she crafts a theater piece. And the people that she's interviewed play the parts of themselves, and they give expression to what they have experienced. And in doing so, they experience an incredible transformation of their suffering. Not only for themselves, but then people who witness these pieces are themselves transformed by these stories. There is something amazingly healing about taking in the stories. About taking in the pain. About dropping our shields long enough to let that in. Because as long as these stories of suffering and pain have nowhere to go, if they're put out but then repelled back, the wounds and the pain and the injustices intensify.
Now, in David's situation, the pain that he caused both Bathsheba and, obviously, Uriah, was based on his notion that as king he could pretty much have whatever he wanted. He was entitled. And it wasn't until Nathan helped him walk in the shoes of the one who had been wronged that David 'got it.' David felt in his own body the anger and the pain that was involved, that was caused by his own actions. And as a consequence of his ability to take that into himself, he recognized his role in the suffering. And he felt aggrieved. He felt the grief of what he had done.
I think that when suffering is the result of human intention, it is intensified all the more. And I think that part of our role as healers is to allow those stories to be heard, to take them into ourselves, to give them a place to reside so that they can be transformed.
I also want to say, though, that the shields aren't always towards stories coming at us from the outside. Sometimes we construct shields to protect us from our own stories. To protect us from our own pain, to protect us from the wrongs that have been done to us. And that until we drop those shields, and allow ourselves to experience the fullness of the anger and the pain, we will continue to be controlled by those events and those experiences.
I chose this Acts passage because a similar thing happens to Saul on the road: he has a sudden "aha!", recognizing that his actions were causing tremendous suffering. And that recognition becomes a turning point in his life.
This week I had a dream. I won't tell you the whole gist of it but there was this one little segment where there were these two children in strollers. One was a little boy, one was a little girl. And the little boy was over here, and he had to get his hands washed, and he had his arms up like this, and he was crying… And the other child, the little girl in the stroller – she had dark curly hair, and these shining brown eyes. She was just so sweet. And I was somehow, you know how dreams are, I'm at her eye level. I must be stooping down in front of the stroller. And she's totally fine, but this little kid starts to cry when he has to get his hands washed, and so she starts to cry. Wah!! And then, she suddenly stops, and her eyes are just shining, and we're sort of looking at each other, and she says to me, "When somebody cries, Jesus cries." And I reached out and I smoothed her bangs, and I said, "He does, doesn't He?"
I imagine this sympathetic crying that children do. In a nursery, one starts up, and pretty soon they're all going, right? This sympathetic crying of children. And I thought, what would it be like if the adults learned how to do sympathetic crying with each other? If we all felt one another's pain, and we all cried together – we just had a huge crying fest, and gave this pain someplace to go. We just lifted it up, and just wailed together. If we were with each other at that level, what kind of healing might happen?
When somebody cries, Jesus cries.
© 2009 by Patricia Pearce. All rights reserved. Please consult the author at tabernacle@tabunited.org if you wish to use the text of this sermon, in whole or in part.
