177 - Something Just Happened

Something Just Happened
By David Steele

The Text: II Samuel, chaps. 11 and 12

"It happened, late one afternoon …"
So the Bible begins our story.
Late one afternoon, it happened …
It just happened.
It happened, that's all.

What happened?
A bored king stretches his legs
On his penthouse patio
After an afternoon snooze.
A lonely soldier's wife
Fills her time while hubby is on maneuvers
By working on her tan, au naturel,
In the backyard near the royal palace.
He looks down.
She looks up.
Their eyes meet.
He smiles …
She does not reach for her towel.
They nod.
A messenger is sent; she joins her King.
They lie together till the sun goes down.
And later on she sends a message:
"I am with child."
It happened, late one afternoon.

Does anything in human life and love
Just happen late, one afternoon?
What about that afternoon months before
When the exuberant King David
Danced with abandon before the Holy Ark
And saw his wife Michal, his beloved,

David Steele is the minister of Christ Presbyterian Church, Terra Linda, San Rafael, California. He is a graduate of Westminster College (Utah), Princeton Theological Seminary, and San Francisco Theological Seminary where he received his doctorate. Dr. Steele has served churches in Maryland and Utah and was for several years chaplain at Punahou School, Honolulu. His narrative poem, "The Jacob Cycle," appeared in THEOLOGY TODAY in the January 1981 issue.

178 - Something Just Happened

Looking down at him with a sneer,
Mocking his faith, despising his very being?
After that afternoon, the Bible says discreetly
"Michal had no child till the day of her death."
We sense what that means.
David's first great love was finished that day.
No great problem one supposes for a king
With several wives and many concubines.
If he craves a woman, one is handy.
But, lately he has begun to crave a queen.

It happened, late one afternoon …
What about all those afternoons
When Bathsheba tried to talk with Uriah
About applying for OCS?
Why, she could hardly get him
To stop doing those damn pushups.
Those afternoons when she simply
Could not get him to take his future …
Their future … seriously.
Those afternoons when he kept babbling
In his naive way,
About wanting to stay with the boys …
And how he wouldn't be caught dead
Sitting in an office all day long,
Strutting around like some big shot.
What about that afternoon
She peered over the fence
And saw her contemporaries lounging by the pool
At the officers' club,
Their browned offspring splashing contentedly beside them?
And Bathsheba realized:
"We'll never get here …
I'll be lucky if he makes sergeant."

It happened, late one afternoon … all right
But like so many happenings,
This one has been getting ready to happen
For some time now.
That King is waiting,
As is the lonely wife,
For something to happen.
It does … at last … late one afternoon.
King meets ambitious lady.
Power is a heavy aphrodisiac.
Why, it was bound to happen.

179 - Something Just Happened

It happened, late one afternoon.
But things that happen
Have a way of continuing to happen.
We do not read of those other afternoons
They spent in one another's arms.
The happening goes on and on
Until that fateful day
When Bathsheba discovers
That something else has happened.
"I am with child."

You'd think the news would come
As no great surprise.
That in their time together
The two might have well discussed
What might happen.
They don't.

We human beings know of course
That acts have consequences;
That one event leads inevitably to another;
But we do not care to think about it.
We are generally surprised … shocked
To learn that something else has happened.
It's a little trick we learn as kids
To play upon ourselves.

They are not ready for the new event.
"I am with child"
Changes what is happening.
The twosome has become a foursome.
Now what is happening
Includes an unborn child
And a husband who has been absent for weeks.
It is a knotty problem.

But perhaps not insoluble.
If a tree falls in the forest
And no ear hears the crash,
Did its falling really make a noise?
If a child is conceived out of wedlock
But the husband thinks the child is his own
Did infidelity really happen?
The solution is simple.
Give Uriah a week of R & R.
(You know what soldiers home from overseas
Do before they put down their suitcase.)

180 - Something Just Happened

Send him back to the front.
When in a few weeks the news of a pregnant wife reaches him
He will be ecstatic.
If Uriah never knows
What has happened has really never happened!

One happening leads to another.
What happens now, we call a cover-up.
It is a time-honored method
For dealing with embarrassing -matters
Of State or life.
Uriah is sent with a message from the front
And is ordered to report directly to his King.
David listens appreciatively, commends the messenger,
And presents him with a three-day pass.
He has been in action many weeks.
He deserves some time at home.
The stage is set.
Nature will take its course.
But there's often a problem with cover-ups.
It's the covers. They are too short.
Uriah won't get under David's covers.
He is too gung-ho;
Brainwashed with ideas of patriotism and discipline.
He will not relax in his wife's arms
While his buddies are in the trenches.
Uriah spends the night on the ground outside the palace.

What can be worse in a good cover-up
Than dealing with a person who has principles?
Well, again, there's a time-honored method
Of dealing with principles.
"Get him drunk!", David orders.
But not even liberal applications
Of the fruit of the hop and the vine
Succeed in whittling down Uriah's resolve.
He returns to the front un-bedded.

Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat,
Or solve a dilemma.
David's order to his General, Joab, is clear:
"See that Uriah does not survive!"
A patrol into hostile terrain is arranged.
The lieutenant withdraws his men,
One fails to get the message.
He is overrun by the enemy,
And Uriah dies in battle.
He is accorded all the pomp and circumstance
Appropriate for the funeral of a military hero.

181 - Something Just Happened

His prostrate wife grieves for the proper time
And then becomes the bride of the King.
Thank God, the problem is solved!

Thank God? An interesting comment.
Interesting because Yahweh God
Has become involved in this happening.
Yahweh God has noticed the relation of events
From tryst, to pregnancy,
To cover-up, to murder.
Yahweh God is not about to allow anyone,
Even the King,
To get away with murder.
As David breathes his sigh of relief,
Signifying the end
Of what he has come to call the "Uriah affaire,"
He does not realize his happening
Has moved to another dimension.
Now David must deal with Yahweh God.
Even while he breathes in relief,
David stands under judgment.

Enter Nathan!
We do not know where Nathan gets his information
About the "Uriah affaire,"
But the whole cover-up has as many holes
As a wedge of Swiss cheese.
From a general with uneasy conscience
About an order to destroy one of his men?
From the lieutenant on patrol?
A sergeant … one of Uriah's buddies?
We are not sure.
But now the covers must enfold
Nathan … Prophet of the Living God.
And that is not a simple matter.

Enter Nathan.
He comes ostensibly to seek the King's advice.
We wonder at David's naivιtι .
Doesn't he see through Nathan's obvious parable?
Ah, but we forget what sin does to us.
Once we are involved in something we despise,
Something which we know is wrong,
Abhorrent to our fellow human beings
And to Yahweh God,
We do not dwell on what is done.
We can't! To think of it will drive us mad.
We thrust it deep within the self.

182 - Something Just Happened

We pound it down … far from conscious thought.
And so we go about our daily work.
It's all we can do.
Life must go on.

So, David thinks, as do we all,
That he has put the Uriah matter to rest.
He's ready now for other things.
For interesting questions
Like the one that Nathan brings to him.
"Suppose, good King," says Nathan
"Suppose that a rich man with many flocks of sheep
Decides to prepare a feast for a friend.
And suppose, O King, that he orders his servants
To steal the lamb of a humble peasant,
A man who has but one animal to call his own.
And suppose they butcher that poor man's lamb
And feast upon it. Suppose that happens.
What would the King say to that?"

David is incensed. He knows this is no hypothetical tale.
The prophet has encountered
An act of rank injustice
In his realm.
As King, he cannot permit such acts
To go unpunished.
He understands the prophet's reticence
To name names. But a name he must have.
"Who is this man? Tell me.
I will see the full measure of the law
Falls upon him."

Then the simple word of Nathan:
"You are the man!"

"You are the man."
The Word of Yahweh
Slices through the cover-up
And creates a new happening.
All that is false and phony, disappears …
What is left is … reality.
Reality is what happens now.

David, the King,
Stands before the Living God;
Takes ownership of every sorry deed;
The tryst, the murder, the cover-up,
"I have sinned … " he says,

183 - Something Just Happened

And with these simple words
This act of responsibility,
David, the boy wonder,
David, the macho hero of men,
David, the lothario,
David, the King,
Becomes a person!
One who wills to stand
Before the refining fire of Yahweh God;
Willing to allow the dross to be melted away
That the real might appear.
It is a terrible thing
To fall into the hands of the Living God.
Let it be said to David's credit
When push comes to shove
He does not back off.
"I have sinned … " he says.

In this act, David and Bathsheba shoulder consequences:
Their love child is born weak and feeble,
Sickens and dies.
The cause: Improper prenatal care?
Parental guilt? The direct hand of Yahweh?
We need not know. David weeps.
Acts have consequences.
He bears that now.
And in this act of responsibility
David discovers something unexpected.
He learns the Judgment of God
Is never the end.
It is not the last word
But the first.
God says emphatic NO
To what is false and phony
So that what is real and good
May hear a YES.

Together … in their tragedy,
David and Bathsheba discover one another
In a deeper way than they had known before.
Out of their union
Solomon, son of the future is born.
Together they learn
God's word of Judgment
Is not the end … but the beginning.

And so we learn of God above
That judgment is God's way to love.