William H. Willimon - "To Tell the Truth" (July 30, 2000)

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-	The second reading is from	0:07
	the Gospel According to Saint John, the sixth chapter.	0:08
	After this, Jesus went to the other side	0:18
	of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberius.	0:22
	A large crowd kept following him,	0:29
	because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick.	0:33
	Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there	0:40
	with his disciples.	0:43
	Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.	0:47
	When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him,	0:54
	Jesus said to Philip,	0:59
	"Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?"	1:03
	He said this to test him,	1:09
	for he himself knew what he was going to do.	1:12
	Philip answered him,	1:20
	"Six months' wages would not buy enough bread	1:23
	"for each of them to get a little."	1:27
	One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother,	1:33
	said to him,	1:39
	"There is a boy here	1:42
	"who has five barley loaves and two fish,	1:45
	"but what are they among so many people?"	1:52
	Jesus said, "Make the people sit down."	1:57
	Now there was a great deal of grass in the place,	2:03
	so they sat down, about 5,000 in all.	2:08
	Then Jesus took the loaves,	2:15
	and when he had given thanks,	2:21
	he distributed them to those who were seated,	2:25
	so also the fish, as much as they wanted.	2:30
	When they were satisfied, he told his disciples,	2:36
	"Gather up the fragments left over,	2:42
	"so that nothing may be lost."	2:45
	So they gathered them up,	2:50
	and from the fragments of the five barley loaves	2:53
	left by those who had eaten, they filled 12 baskets.	2:58
	When the people saw the sign that he had done,	3:07
	they began to say,	3:11
	"This is indeed the prophet	3:14
	"who is to come into the world.	3:18
	"This is the word of the Lord."	3:22
-	In today's appointed first lesson from 2 Samuel,	3:36
	I've got a Bible story about a politician	3:42
	at the summit of his power and popularity,	3:48
	who treats a woman shabbily,	3:53
	who, drunk with power, then forsakes his marriage vows.	3:57
	He commits adultery quite quickly.	4:03
	It descends into other crimes.	4:08
	He is almost removed from office because of his actions.	4:10
	Don't you just hate it the way the Bible isn't related	4:17
	to anything in contemporary life?	4:19
	(audience laughs)	4:22
	You know the only time	4:24
	I think anybody every walked out of a sermon of mine	4:25
	was when, a few years ago, I preached on this text.	4:28
	As people were leaving, they said,	4:33
	"This sort of thing is just not suitable	4:36
	"when there are children present."	4:38
	I said to them, "You know, it's not original with me.	4:41
	"It's in the Bible, 2 Samuel."	4:43
	And yet, there is some truth	4:48
	to maybe you have to be an adult,	4:50
	past the R-17 rating,	4:55
	to really understand what it's like here, in 2 Samuel,	4:59
	for a man at midlife, in a late afternoon,	5:05
	to catch a glimpse of the lovely Bathsheba,	5:09
	and to lust for her, and to take her,	5:13
	and then to dupe her poor husband,	5:18
	dumb, loyal Uriah, the Hittite.	5:22
	It probably takes an adult at midlife	5:30
	to realize how vulnerable any of us are to such a moment.	5:32
	Well, it's a story about a powerful man, King David,	5:40
	working his will on a powerless woman, Bathsheba.	5:47
	And then, having his way with her husband, Uriah.	5:52
	First there is the seeing,	5:58
	King David, in his garden, taking an afternoon stroll,	6:00
	glimpsing the lovely Bathsheba,	6:04
	and then the lusting, and then the taking,	6:06
	and quickly the sin of adultery becomes compounded	6:10
	into the sin of an arranged murder of her husband.	6:13
	It's not only a story about adultery,	6:18
	it's about rape, and then killing,	6:21
	and it's in the Bible.	6:25
	Later in the story, not the part we read this morning,	6:28
	but later in the story, after the sordid event,	6:32
	God sends the prophet Nathan to King David.	6:36
	The prophet Nathan says to David,	6:40
	"Let me tell you a little story.	6:42
	"There was a rich man, and there was a poor man.	6:45
	"The poor man had one little lamb	6:50
	"that caused him great joy.	6:52
	"And this rich man took a liking to the poor man's lamb.	6:55
	"He took that lamb, he killed it,	6:58
	"he served it up to his cronies."	7:00
	And David grows white with indignation,	7:04
	and then the prophet Nathan says, "Thou art the man."	7:10
	It's a parable.	7:16
	It's a little sermon illustration about you.	7:18
	The prophet does not call what David did	7:25
	a midlife fling, or mistakes were made,	7:27
	or even a constitutional crisis.	7:31
	The prophet calls it sin, rebellion against God.	7:35
	It is a great biblical achievement	7:42
	to be able to call things by their proper names.	7:45
	A recent Duke graduate called me	7:50
	one Sunday evening from L.A.	7:53
	He had been in church that morning,	7:57
	fall, couple of years ago,	7:59
	a little episcopal church in Los Angeles.	8:01
	And he said, "I wanna tell you what happened	8:05
	"in the service today.	8:07
	"We went through the service,	8:08
	"got to the time for the sermon,	8:09
	"the priest comes out, he looks over the congregation,	8:10
	"and says, Church, I have given consideration	8:13
	"as to whether or not I ought to make a pastoral comment	8:18
	"on the situation going on in Washington, the White House,	8:22
	"and the President, and the Intern, and all the rest.	8:26
	"Should I preach on the subject?	8:30
	"Should I attempt to give some theological assessment?	8:31
	"Should I reflect upon the situation	8:34
	"from a biblical perspective?"	8:35
	Then he said this priest wheeled around	8:39
	and glared at the congregation, and said,	8:41
	"People, do I have to go over this one more time?	8:43
	"In a divine service, in words of one syllable,	8:48
	"let's get this straight.	8:52
	"Adultery is wrong.	8:54
	"Infidelity to one's vows is shameful.	8:56
	"The powerful taking advantage of the powerless is sin,	9:00
	"and we don't care who does it, and where it's done.	9:03
	"Now, could we proceed to more interesting matters?"	9:08
	And he said with that,	9:11
	he trudged into a sermon on the work of the Holy Spirit.	9:12
	"Isn't he great, my priest?", the young man said.	9:16
	And I thought to myself, isn't this interesting?	9:22
	A young man, early 20s, so pleased by this priest	9:26
	who is able to call an ace an ace, a spade a spade?	9:30
	And maybe it's because that young man is a member	9:36
	of a generation who has been particularly hurt	9:40
	by parents who failed to keep their promises.	9:45
	Or maybe it's because the young man is a Christian	9:50
	living in a morally confused and chaotic place.	9:53
	I told you he was from L.A.	9:56
	And maybe he is proud when the poor old church rises up	9:59
	and says something that brings some word of sanity	10:03
	to an insane situation.	10:06
	Sometimes we preachers go through all sorts	10:08
	of verbal gymnastics,	10:10
	and walk around the barn, not to belabor the obvious.	10:13
	And maybe we live in such times that we can be grateful.	10:20
	We ought to risk the labor.	10:24
	People, let's get this straight.	10:27
	In our day, in this economy,	10:33
	even something so simple as sex	10:38
	has become extremely problematic.	10:40
	There is such a nice fit	10:44
	between our sexual drives and our economic appetites.	10:45
	Our government, you will note,	10:52
	no longer refers to us as citizens.	10:54
	We are consumers.	10:57
	And if we can get you to consume cigarettes, and cars,	11:00
	and mouthwash, and sedatives,	11:03
	well then we can get you to consume people.	11:06
	That's why Calvin Klein uses soft kiddie porn	11:09
	to sell blue jeans,	11:12
	and why the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog	11:14
	must come in a protective brown wrapper.	11:16
	There is just such, this nice fit	11:20
	between our training in consumption	11:24
	and our satiation with sex.	11:27
	Our President was only acting out in the Oval Office	11:31
	that which we have been trained to think of	11:33
	as the greatest human goal,	11:36
	the very purpose of our society, consumption.	11:38
	We have no greater human purpose	11:44
	than accumulation and aggrandizement.	11:47
	You are here for me.	11:51
	The whole world, in fact, is here for me.	11:56
	I am the very center of the universe.	12:00
	My desires, and the fulfillment of them,	12:04
	are the point of everything.	12:06
	Sex has therefore	12:09
	become a major defining human characteristic.	12:10
	We now designate other human beings as mainly straight,	12:14
	or gay, or homo, or hetero.	12:19
	Churches feud and fight over someone's sexual orientation,	12:21
	as if that were the most significant sign of humanity.	12:26
	Universities grow entire departments	12:31
	of gender studies and queer studies,	12:34
	and waste entire semesters on scintillating subjects	12:37
	like sexual repression of women in the literature	12:40
	of late Edwardian England.	12:44
	We've got, it appears,	12:47
	no more significant and interesting assignment in life	12:49
	than the, in the words of 2 Samuel,	12:53
	the seeing, and the taking, and the having,	12:56
	and the consuming.	13:00
	Frankly, and there's part of me that pains to admit this,	13:05
	but frankly, the Bible doesn't have	13:09
	very much to say about sex.	13:11
	It certainly has no idea what we're talking about	13:15
	when we speak of human sexuality as a sort of	13:18
	significant, independent, ontologically-defining	13:20
	characteristic of human beings.	13:25
	The Bible would surely find curious	13:28
	our consumption with sex.	13:31
	Now I've enjoyed making you uncomfortable	13:34
	by talking about it this morning,	13:36
	but the Bible probably wouldn't approve	13:39
	of taking this much time in a sermon	13:41
	on so superficial a subject.	13:44
	But look, modernity tends to be reductionistic.	13:47
	We love to simplify.	13:53
	We enjoy making statements like,	13:55
	well, you see, basically, people are only this.	13:58
	Or, you will find, when it all boils down to it,	14:03
	human beings are basically...	14:07
	Now if we're going to say that people are mostly about sex,	14:11
	well then we might as well define a baby	14:16
	as basically a digestive tube.	14:18
	I heard someone say in jest,	14:23
	a baby is a digestive tract	14:26
	with a voracious appetite at one end,	14:29
	and total irresponsibility at the other.	14:32
	(audience laugh)	14:35
	The Bible doesn't have a lot to say about sex,	14:38
	but it does have to say a lot about sin,	14:44
	our lives before God.	14:50
	We are created as complex and complicated creatures	14:55
	who are answerable to something more significant	14:59
	than our genitals.	15:01
	We live under God.	15:03
	We exist to please God, rather than ourselves.	15:06
	Church, let's try to get this straight, okay?	15:12
	Do we have to take time on a Sunday	15:17
	to go over this one more time?	15:18
	We are not our own.	15:22
	We are put on this planet for a purpose,	15:25
	to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.	15:30
	Our lives, all of us, are accountable,	15:34
	not to just what makes us feel good,	15:39
	but to that which gives God glory.	15:42
	God has a rigorous sense of responsibility for the powerful,	15:47
	and a zealous protectiveness for the powerless.	15:53
	For the powerful, when they use their power	15:57
	to prey on the powerless,	16:01
	whether that be sexually or economically or militarily,	16:03
	this is sin.	16:08
	Breaking promises,	16:11
	particularly the promises of marriage, is sin.	16:13
	Parents who fail to order their lives	16:17
	as responsible examples to their children, sin.	16:20
	Politicians who think the rules are made	16:26
	for everybody else but them, are wrong.	16:27
	Preachers who think there's some way to preach	16:31
	without ever calling God's beloved people to account	16:34
	are not just cowards, but sinful cowards.	16:38
	So today, we've got laid on us,	16:45
	I didn't choose this, you didn't choose it either,	16:48
	laid on us by 2 Samuel,	16:50
	we've got laid on us a none-too-original story of sin,	16:53
	our sin, and what God does with it.	16:59
	When the prophet Nathan finally comes on the scene,	17:06
	gets the king's attention, and speaks to him for God,	17:09
	Nathan reminds the king of something that kings forget.	17:13
	God says, in the prophet Nathan,	17:19
	"Let's go over this one more time.	17:23
	"In words of one syllable.	17:26
	"I made you.	17:29
	"I gave you.	17:30
	"I placed you over.	17:32
	"Now you owe me."	17:36
	We are, all of us, gifts of God.	17:40
	Our lives have been given, formed,	17:46
	are accountable, and answerable to a gracious creator.	17:48
	That's why maybe a highlight of this service	17:54
	you'll find out is the offering.	17:56
	When we take our money and our lives,	18:00
	and we lay all of that on the altar,	18:03
	we give it back to God, who has given so graciously to us.	18:06
	And that's also why, you will note,	18:14
	that we have begun this service	18:15
	in a curiously Christian way.	18:17
	We all got together, and then,	18:20
	wanting to be religious, wanting to be close to God,	18:26
	the first thing we were made to do in this service	18:30
	is to confess our sin.	18:34
	And I know what you were thinking,	18:36
	you're thinking, wait a minute.	18:38
	It's a church, never likes anybody to have a good time,	18:40
	always gotta talk about the sin.	18:43
	I've got my Masters Degree.	18:44
	I'm making progress.	18:46
	Hey, getting out of bed, a Sunday in late July,	18:47
	that oughta count for something.	18:50
	I know what you're thinking.	18:52
	And yet, we come and we confess our sin.	18:55
	And we go through it every Sunday.	19:00
	We generally go through the same prayer of confession	19:01
	every Sunday, because in this culture,	19:04
	it's a hard thing to get right.	19:07
	We are those who, like King David,	19:11
	have been given so much by God.	19:14
	And yet, like King David, we'v foolishly lived	19:18
	as if our lives were our own.	19:21
	And so we ask God to forgive us.	19:26
	And forgive in Christ God does.	19:30
	This is not only a story about lurid sin.	19:37
	It's also a story about forgiveness.	19:44
	As soon as the prophet Nathan says to David,	19:47
	"Thou art the man.",	19:53
	the next words out of David's mouth are,	19:55
	"I have sinned."	19:57
	In fact, the psalm that we sang this morning, Psalm 81,	20:00
	is said to come from the very hand of David.	20:04
	"Wash me, O God, make me clean,	20:08
	"do that for me which I cannot do for myself, forgive me."	20:11
	The prophet Nathan not only convicts David of sin,	20:18
	but forgives the sin as well.	20:23
	People, let's get this straight.	20:27
	Do we have to go over it one more time? Yes.	20:30
	We are not only accountable and responsible and sinful.	20:34
	We all also thank God for giving,	20:39
	and this enables us to go on.	20:45
	Our sin, serious as it is, does not defeat us.	20:48
	God loves us enough,	20:54
	both to tell us the truth about ourselves,	20:56
	to make us stare in the mirror of who we are,	21:01
	and yet still loves us despite our sin.	21:04
	The first hymn we sang today,	21:11
	"I sing the mighty power of God.	21:13
	"I sing the power of God to make mountains and the seas."	21:15
	I'll tell you an even greater power of God.	21:20
	The power to wash us and make us clean,	21:24
	and to forgive no matter what the sin.	21:27
	And that we are given both the grace to tell it like it is,	21:32
	to gather on a Sunday morning,	21:37
	and tell the truth about ourselves, and tell it straight,	21:39
	even about a subject so inherently deceitful as sex,	21:43
	and to confess, and to be forgiven,	21:49
	to start over, to breathe, to begin again.	21:53
	Oh, I tell you, for us sinners,	21:59
	this is grace, and it is amazing.	22:03
	Amen.	22:11

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "To Tell the Truth" (July 30, 2000)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 3:36. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 22:16.
Elaborating on King David’s story of adultery, the preacher argues that the root problem of adultery, and other immorality, is sin, which is a rebellion against God that does not accredit to God the glory that God deserves. The preacher asks his audience to truthfully name what is sinful as sin, to give glory to God, and to be assured of the forgiveness that God has already given through Jesus Christ. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4z60ch5h

Date:

July 30, 2000

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

2 Samuel

Chapter and Verse:

2 Samuel 11:1-15

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-1024
ref10205_x31
uachapelsermaud
duke:320905
dcrau001668
ark:/87924/r4z60ch5h
68a76f6e-4bf5-4ae2-8628-30b2dcc9c619

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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