When it comes to the Old Testament, we hear so much about King David, so today we’re going to focus on prophets. I invite you to think about times in your life when you felt like a prophet was speaking or when it seemed like God was present in someone’s words or actions.
When I was a young kid, my favorite TV show was Mr Rogers. There was something about his soothing voice, his deliberate motions, his attention to detail and his ear for a good story. I loved those video segments where he would do little factory tours and go behind the scenes to show how things are made in our modern world. And the trolly – amazing! Even more than the puppets and the songs and the sweater collection, in Mr Rogers Neighborhood, kindness always ruled the day.
He was honest with children, and not afraid to tackle hard subjects. When it came to natural disasters or difficult human tragedies, he recalled a saying from his mother: “Look for the helpers. If you will look for the helpers, you will know that there’s hope.”
When things are grim, in the midst of violence and oppression and chaos and disaster, God sends helpers. Throughout the pages of the Old Testament, we find that when things aren’t going well, God sends people to show the way. These folks are called “prophets.”
Our story from 2 Samuel today picks up directly from last week. After committing murder and rape, King David brings Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, into his royal harem as a wife.
Finally, finally, God intervenes in the story by sending a prophet. The prophet Nathan, who had earlier told David of God’s everlasting love for him and his descendants, now confronts David. We can imagine the scene. Nathan comes to the royal court, resolute and heavy-hearted, past the guards, to confront David himself. Nathan brilliantly sets a rhetorical trap and baits David, who can easily spot the cruel injustice of the rich man stealing something precious from the poor. David gets angry – the wicked man deserves to die; but instead of death he must follow the teachings of the Law and pay back the poor man fourfold.
David, you are this man. David, God entrusted you with the care of God’s people, and you failed. David, your reign has turned rotten; instead of protecting the vulnerable you are now preying upon them. Instead of sacrificing your life for your people, you’ve demanded sacrifices laid at your feet. David, you’ve become a pharaoh. “David,” Nathan says, “why have you despised the word of the Lord?”
This part of the Bible is one long narrative that runs from Deuteronomy to the end of 2 Kings, a period basically from the Exodus to the Exile. 400 years after God’s promise to Abraham to create a new people, the Israelites find freedom by following their God out of Egypt, into the desert. The book of Deuteronomy is a collection of speeches that Moses, a prophet according to Jewish tradition, gives to the assembly of God’s people before they enter the promised land. It’s time to build a new society, something new and different than all the surrounding kingdoms.
This new community is meant to be a blessing to the whole world; to care for the vulnerable, including immigrants, orphans and widows. This community is meant to trust fully in God, resisting the temptation to find security in military strength. This community, called by God and delivered out of Pharaoh’s hand, is meant to celebrate Jubilee and embody an economics of abundance.
Here’s what Moses says about the idea of having a king (Deut 17:14-20 NRSV):
“When… you say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. [The king] must not acquire many horses for himself or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You must never return that way again.’ And he must not acquire many wives for himself or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself. When he has taken the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. It shall remain with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes, neither exalting himself above other members of the community nor turning aside from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, so that he and his descendants may reign long over his kingdom in Israel.”
Well, we know how this goes… In Deuteronomy, the people pledge fidelity to God, but before long, things fall apart. After functioning as a confederation of loose tribes for generations, the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel, another prophet, and begged for a king. Turns out, the thing they wanted most was to be like other nations. Samuel warns them (1 Sam 8:10-20):
“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen… and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands… to plow his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards… He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And on that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you on that day.” But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! We are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
God gives the people what they want, and rather predictably, trouble follows. Israel’s kings fail to live up to the Deuteronomy standard. Time after time, they abandon their treaty with God and instead seek the glittery goods of empire. Internal conflict shreds the kingdom in half (Israel in the north, and Judah in the south). As the people abandon God and look to their own military might, they are overrun. By the end of 2 Kings, the north is destroyed, and the people of Judah are exiled from their land, captives in Babylon. Nothing except rubble remains of God’s house, the temple in David’s city, Jerusalem.
To me, the most surprising part of this story is that God never abandons the people. God’s mysterious and all-consuming love will not let them go. In the pages of the Old Testament, we find that God has many ways of communicating: fire, flood, lightning bolts from the sky, a still small voice. One of the main ways, it seems, is through ordinary people – the prophets. When there is a crisis, look for the helpers.
To be a king, you had to be born into the royal family. To be a priest, you had to be a male born into the tribe of the Levites. But to be prophet, you only needed to be called. Occupation, status in society, geographic location, your family history – it doesn’t matter.
Prophets are gifted with a connection to the divine, the ability to see things clearly for what they are – an uncanny clarity – and the courage to speak truth to power. We’ve already heard from Nathan, probably risking his life to challenge David to his face. But God sends wave after wave of prophets to urge the people toward repentance, toward the new community described in the Torah.
Many of these prophets’ messages have been recorded for future generations. There’s Deborah, who judges Israel from under a palm tree. There’s Samuel, who learns as a boy to hear God speak in the middle of the night. There’s Elijah, who challenges those who worship other gods. There’s Isaiah, whose mouth was set on fire with God’s word like a spicy, delicious pepper. There’s Jeremiah, who laments the destruction of Jerusalem but still sings “Great is They Faithfulness.”
Amos, the shepherd, zeroes in on the disconnect between people’s religious practices and the way that they treat people. Ezekiel sees a valley of dry bones come to life. Joel imagines a day when God’s spirit will be poured out on all people. Esther risks her own life to save her people from annihilation. Jonah, kicking and screaming, eventually brings the good news of God’s love to a foreign land. Zechariah speaks of a new kind of king, humble, riding into the city on a donkey.
The prophets were a bit of a crazy bunch. Some worked inside the system – learning who to talk to, which committees actually held power, preparing their whole lives for a single confrontation in the halls of power. Some were activists, doing street theater, publishing art that no one had ever seen before, sharing haunting visions that once heard would never be forgotten. Different callings, different contexts, different parts of the same community, the same metaphorical body.
The prophets were not super heroes. They were real people: complex, flawed, three-dimensional. Some famously ran away from God and tried to do something (anything!) else with their life other than deliver God’s message.
As the generations went by, Israel’s prophetic tradition grew more robust. Later prophets quoted famous lines from earlier prophets. Words that had been spoken around campfires and dinner meals were repeated, written down, collected, organized, etched onto scrolls, published, and copied over and over. In first-century Palestine, at synagogues throughout the land, rabbis would quote from Isaiah, from Jeremiah, from Nathan.
I wonder how these teachings struck a young Jewish boy named Yeshua – Jesus. Which prophets gave him goosebumps? When he looked around at the machinery of the Roman Empire and wicked sellouts like King Herod, what visions did he have?
Jesus heard in these same prophets the hope of a new kind of king. It was the hope for a political leader, a messiah, born of David and Bathsheba’s family tree, who would lead God’s people into a life of freedom, community, and abundance. A king who would break the cycle of violence and oppression, who would love his enemies, who would embody the law all the days of his life, observing its statues, refusing to exalt himself above the community.
A king who would lead by serving, who would rather make his triumphal entry on a borrowed donkey than an Egyptian war horse, who would rather die rather than kill.
Amen.