sermon excerpts: Facing the Truth

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Now, David’s dilemma is not an ancient story. I’m reminded of this moment of facing a difficult truth by two different men in the media spotlight for different reasons: Floyd Landis and Mel Gibson.

Floyd Landis won the Tour de France this year. It was an impressive show of cycling prowess: after losing 8 minutes in the late stage of the race all but dashing any hope of victory, he rallied for an incredible comeback the next day. He won with a hip that needed surgery. Then we find out that his drug test came back positive for increased levels of testosterone. He first claims that he is innocent, that his body naturally has higher levels of this hormone.

Then we learn the testosterone was synthetic, meaning his body couldn’t have produced it. So he made some claims about sabotage and conspiracies. And the back-up sample was also positive. Granted, I don’t know what the actual truth of the matter is, but it doesn’t look good to me from my view on the couch. Weeks later and this story is still prominent in sports headlines.

Compare and contrast this saga with the news item that Mel Gibson, movie star, was arrested for drinking and driving. As the police dealt with the situation, he became increasingly belligerent resorting to racial slurs and aggressive comments. The next day he offered an apology, owning up to his actions, embarrassed by what he said and accepted full responsibility. Only the entertainment programs continue the probe, the “what” and “why” of this story, for the most part we’ve gone on with the rest of our lives and so has Mr. Gibson.

These stories also show us a few things about what it means to live in society. The rich prosper at the expense of the poor (that’s a blanket statement I know, with exceptions to the rules, but as multi-national corporations takeover smaller ventures and as the family farm gets squeezed out by larger agribusinesses it’s hard to ignore).

We have trouble recognizing when we have enough. The rich man in Nathan’s story could never be satisfied; even using one of his lambs meant that his flock was diminished. The gospel of John suggests the people went searching for Jesus because they were fed with bread and fish and wanted more. God promised David that he could have had even more than his already impressive kingdom and power, were he to ask...

Not ever being satisfied becomes a further problem when we measure our self-worth in comparison to others because then we will never measure up. We see it in professional athletes negotiating their next contract. They check to see what others are getting and start to reason: “if this player makes $3 million, surely I deserve $4 million because I’m a better player…” We saw how this lead to the NHL lockout a few years ago. We see it in the escalating pay of movie stars such as Mel Gibson. King David did not have an equal on earth and began to imagine that the rules didn’t apply to him, that he could get away with anything.

Given the preoccupation with Hollywood and the media-manufactured ideals of beauty and sexiness, we have people pressured to eating disorders and plastic surgery because we’re losing the ability to be confident in ourselves and our vitality and attractiveness.

And what of the churches that compare ourselves to? It is easy to envy the evangelical churches that always seem to be building bigger and more modern sanctuaries, or the American megachurch that tends to the worship needs of thousands on a Sunday, or the church with more money invested and donated than they know what to do. We look at congregations that have more children, more teenagers, more in the choir, more modern "this" or more "traditional" that ….

Is the grass greener on the other side? We spend so much time trying to measure up to our rivals, to our peers, to our own expectations that we forget who we actually are. We lose sight of what it is God wants us to be. Keeping up the Joneses is a race that never ends.

I’ve spent most of the morning with David and Nathan’s discussion about Bathsheba. My concluding thoughts boil down to what Jesus was asking the people in the gospel. Without so many words, he wanted to know “why are you here?”

Why are we here? There is no right answer, just an honest one. We can’t look to another person to live our faith for us. They cannot eat of the bread of life on our behalf, that is something we have to do for ourselves so that we can be fed, our gifts, our strength, our spirits nurtured in grace. Like King David, who like us is wonderfully gifted and flawed, we have to take responsibility for our lives, face up to the consequences of our decisions, face up to our wrongs and work to make the world right.