Sin, Karma, and Denial:  Living With the Wrong We’ve Done
2 Samuel 11:26—12:13a; Matthew 5:3-11
A  Sermon by the Reverend Ron Parker

Sometime in the twenty-four hours before I’m scheduled to preach a sermon, I invariably find myself wishing that there were someone I could blame for the sermon title that is printed in the bulletin.  What was I thinking?  
 
Well…I know what I was thinking.  I was thinking what I always think, “Look at the scripture readings that the Lectionary assigns to this day; pick the weirdest and most difficult one and see what you can make of it.”
 
That’s how we all got stuck with the story of David’s getting the wife of his trusted commander Uriah pregnant and then arranging to get Uriah killed to cover up the matter. Except it is not completely covered up because the prophet Nathan comes and confronts him and so our story ends with David saying, “I have sinned.”
 
So that’s our text for the day, “I have sinned.”
 
How uplifting.  
 
I suppose I could have gone for a cheaper and sweeter sermon by sticking with the reading from the familiar Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel, but who among us has not fallen short in poverty of spirit or purity of heart or meekness or mercy or all of the above.
 
Like David, we have sinned. Or as Paul puts in his letter to the Romans, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
 
Right now, I begin to hear a familiar rustling in the pews. I am not unaware that we progressive folk start to squirm or even tune out when someone uses the “s” word.  And I agree that that word has been used in condemnatory and moralistic ways with which we are justly uncomfortable.  But I think that we liberal folk might want to take back the word from the fundamentalists and the demagogues and reclaim it for our own edification.
 
The thing I like about David’s confession is that it’s so clear and unambiguous.  There are no excuses, no fancy footwork, no trying to put a better spin on the story, no psychological explanations, no pointing the finger at someone else, no blaming that woman Bathsheba for tempting him, no taking refuge in the culture of kings and royal privilege.
 
Just a simple, clear confession: “I have sinned.”
 
Confession is the necessary foundation of a new start.  But only when the slate is wiped clean of excuses and justifications, is a new start possible.  As long as we are still busy defending ourselves and making excuses, we are still locked into living in the past.
 
Of course even the clearest of confessions does not mean that does not mean that there are no consequences. Uriah is dead.  David’s confession cannot bring him back. And as the story goes on, there is a whole chain of nasty circumstances that are loosely related to David’s transgression.
 
So let’s be perfectly clear, confession does not get us off the hook.  In fact, confession may be a process of willingly placing ourselves on the hook – of taking responsibility for the consequences of our own actions.
 
But we can say that a confession is a new start, because it’s the beginning of something and not an end in itself.  It is a moment of self-insight and taking responsibility for our own actions, a moment of resolve to act in a new way.
 
The kind of confession I’m talking about now does not depend on being forgiven by the people we have wronged.   Uriah couldn’t possibly forgive David.  Neither should we place the burden of giving forgiveness on others who have been wronged.
 
It is a purely personal matter between ourselves and God, perhaps with the help of a trusted friend.  It is a simple matter of affirming that we are through with that wrong way of acting and ready to take responsibility in a new way.
 
So, as important as it is, I’m not speaking right now about the process of becoming reconciled with the person or persons we have wronged.  Sometimes that’s possible; sometimes it’s not.  In any case, it’s not the point here.  What I’m thinking about right now is the kind of confession that enables us to go on as a new person.
 
David’s confession was made in private to the prophet Nathan.  Court prophets in those days were sort of like really aggressive therapists to the king.  I don’t know if David would have responded the same way if Nathan had made his accusations on the evening news.  This private confrontation enabled him to make a clear confession without excuses or justifications.
 
We’ve had a spate of public confessions by governors and congressmen in the past few months.  In fact, in a televised cabinet meeting a month ago, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina even invoked David’s example, saying, “King David didn’t back down after his sex scandal, and neither will I.”  
 
I don’t think I’ll touch that.
 
But the trouble with these public confessions is that they are often designed by spin-doctors to get cheap forgiveness.   Although, I must say, Governor Mark Sanford doesn’t seem to wait for advice from anyone before he speaks.
 
In any case, while public confessions may have value and be necessary in many cases, more private confessions are more likely to be straightforward, honest and truly life changing.
 
And change, after all, is the point of confession.  
Let me say that again: Change is the point of confession.
 
One of the biggest difficulties of making this simple, straightforward confession is that the responsibility for rectifying the damage seems so onerous. The enormity of the task can be overwhelming and immobilizing.
 
Judy Kriege articulated that for us during the prayers of the people last week when she spoke of how overwhelming it was to think of all the environmental damage we have done and how impossible it seemed to rectify the consequences of our misdeeds.
 
In fact, in the face of this overwhelm, there is a real danger that we’ll back away from confessing our responsibility altogether and slink back into denial or self-justification.
 
One of the first facts we have to recognize is that we can no more rectify the results of our transgressions than David could bring Uriah back from the dead.  Most things cannot be reversed.  The confession we’re talking about here is not like a lawsuit where the court awards damages commensurate to the harm done. Here we’re talking about more harm than we could ever pay for.
 
This time of year, I always find myself reflecting on the horror of the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan on our behalf.  How could we as a people ever repay the damage done when 80,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and another 75,000 were killed in Nagasaki?  The fact is, we can’t.
 
So here’s where grace comes in. Grace is not excusing wrongdoing. It’s not removing consequences. It’s not wiping out the results of the sin.
 
Grace is the means by which God enables us to go on as a new person when we have done something irreparable.
 
The fact is we are constantly changing.  We are not the same person we were when we got up this morning … not the same person we were yesterday, or a year ago, or when we did the deed for which we needed to confess. We are constantly changing.
 
Confession of sin is a way of directing that change, a way of saying, “I don’t want to be that way anymore.” Grace does not repair the damage. It enables the one who did the damage to become a new person.
 
Once we have made our clear confession, there is still much work to be done.  I don’t know what actions may be necessary or possible to address the wrong, but they will clearly be part of the work of the one changed by grace.
 
What I do know is that no restoration is possible until the clear confession has taken place.
 
This clear-eyed acknowledgement of what we have done is always the first step in whatever repair we can accomplish. 

 Without it, we can’t move forward.