There’s a certain kind of official photograph that’s popular no matter who the president is: the White House Situation Room candid. You may know the most famous example, from the night of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011: Obama sits, hunched forward in an open-collared shirt and tie; across the table, Hillary Clinton pensively analyzes the situation; to Obama’s right, Joe Biden looks like he’s seen it all. It’s not hard to find other examples: George W. Bush sitting casually around the table with Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice to hear the latest updates on Iraq; Clinton leaned back with his arms over the chest while he’s briefed on Bosnia; Trump and a team of decorated generals sitting up very straight and starting straight ahead as they watch the mission to capture Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. These images project everything a president wants to be: serious, commanding, and in control, and maybe—if you’re Bill Clinton—cool, in more than one sense of the word. When the commander-in-chief sits in the White House Situation Room, he can, with the mere word and the click of a button, deploy the full might of the greatest superpower in history anywhere in the world. Ironically, this is the exact opposite what a leader would want his subject’s to picture him doing for most of history. An ancient leader would have shown his strength by leading from the front, not by staying at home in a secure room.
Embed from Getty ImagesSo the way the narrator tells this story about David in our first reading today is intentional. Like any great ancient king, David was first and foremost a warrior. His rise to power hadn’t begun with a rousing speech or a brilliant policy plan; he was the one out there with a rock in his sling, fighting the giant Goliath. But now, his long decline from greatness has begun, and you can see it in the first sentence: “In the spring of the year, when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel… But David remained at Jerusalem.” (2 Samuel 11:1) And not only has he stayed behind; he’s sleeping in. The story happens “late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof.” (11:2) His men are at war, risking their lives, and David’s at loose ends.
And unsurprisingly, he gets up to no good. In quick succession, he sees his neighbor’s wife Bathsheba bathing on the roof, sends for her, and sleeps with her; and soon enough, it turns out she’s pregnant. David tries to cover it up. He sends for his neighbor Uriah to come home from the war, thinking that perhaps if he returns soon enough, nobody will even know whose child it really is. But Uriah, unlike David, chooses solidarity and integrity; while his men are out in the fields, he won’t sleep at home. So David covers his tracks another way instead. He writes a letter to his general Joab, and puts it in Uriah’s own hand to deliver, with the grim message to send him to his death. David is in control. David is in command. David has all the power in the world—and he uses it in the worst way imaginable.
It may be the case that our presidents look strong when they lead from home, and David looks weak. But in a more important way, they have something in common: they want to be in control. The presidents want to project a public image of being in command, so they pose for photos surrounded by generals and advisors, or choose to publish the perfect candid shot. David just wants to be in control of everything, all the time. He sends for Bathsheba, and she comes to him. He sends for Uriah, and he comes to him. But human beings, it turns out, aren’t quite pieces on a chessboard. He can’t, ultimately, make Uriah go along with the cover-up; and so he makes a much worse plan instead.
Few of us have David’s power. Most of us don’t even have David’s temptations. But many of us have that same desire for control. Wouldn’t it be easier at work, or in a relationship, at church or in our country, if people would just do what you wanted when you wanted? Most of us, after all, think that we’re right, most of the time. When others disagree, most of us wish that they would just want the same things that we want and do the things we want them to do. We have plans in our heads for the way things should work, and it would be so much easier if everyone else would just go along with it—wouldn’t it? We constantly struggle for control over the situation, and when someone else gets their way, or even just refuses to go along with the plan, we get really mad.
(Or maybe I’m just projecting. I do have a three-year-old.)
So it’s a refreshing contrast to see Jesus’ surprising behavior in our gospel this morning. He’s been traveling around Galilee, doing signs and wonders, healing people and multiplying loaves and fishes, and now they want to come and “make him king.” (John 6:15) But he retreats. He’s spent his whole ministry proclaiming the coming kingdom of God, recruiting lieutenants and gathering a crowd of supporters, but the very moment that they try to put him on the throne, he runs away. He gives up control, he gives up the opportunity to seize power and enact his agenda; instead, he chooses weakness, and he’ll stay weak until the very end. David’s plan to stay in control ends with him sending an innocent man to his death, but Jesus’ plan is just the opposite; he himself will be the one to die.
And yet, strangely, this will be the greatest victory yet. Jesus turns away from earthly power because he’s got bigger fish to fry. He’s not waging war on Herod or on Rome, but on some stronger celestial force, on all the stormy powers of darkness and chaos through which he walks calmly. David’s weakness in staying behind when the army goes out to fight is just weakness, and it highlights his greater weakness of willpower and character. But Jesus’ weakness is a kind of strength. By going to the front, but refusing to fight, he somehow, mysteriously, wins the battle against death itself.
This isn’t a kind of moralistic tale: “Be like Jesus, don’t be like David.” You should try to be a little more like Jesus and a little less like David. But that’s actually not the point. Yes, we struggle with our own desires for control. Yes, we struggle with our various other temptations. Jesus has already won the final victory for us, but we still struggle in this life and so, as Paul writes, he sends the Spirit “that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power…and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” (Eph. 3:14) In the daily struggle to be a better version of yourself, God is there, strengthening you along the way. But Christianity is not, primarily, about whether we live up to that measure of perfection, whether our love for one another really approaches the purity of the love shown to us by the Christ who dwells in our hearts.
It’s about the strange juxtaposition of our imperfection and God’s grace. It’s about this contrast: We are, for the most part, like David: good in many ways, sometimes even great, but always flawed, one way or another. And yet always loved even more deeply than our flaws, even more deeply than we can imagine. Paul has to pray for the Ephesians that they “may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of Christ’s love for them, (Eph. 3:18) because God’s love for us, however imperfect we are, is more powerful than we could possibly understand without God’s help.
King David and our presidents want to project and image of power, of calm, of control. And so do we. We want to look and feel competent and in control of our lives. But we’re not. We’re not in control of the situations around us, or the things that we feel. Many of us lose control, from time to time, of the things that we say and do, and come to regret them. But whenever we lose control, whenever our imperfections show, whenever we do something we ought not to have done, or leave undone some thing we ought to have done, whenever we see what we have done and feel regret, God is already there, dwelling in our hearts, forgiving us and loving us beyond our wildest imaginings. And all we need to do is to accept it. So I pray, with Paul, “that you may have the power to comprehend…what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:18) Amen.