Tuesday of the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 396

Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance;

Who does not persist in anger forever,

but delights rather in clemency,

And will again have compassion on us,

treading underfoot our guilt?

King David was  overwhelmed with gratitude and humility when Nathan the Prophet conveyed God's promise that David's "house" would stand forever. A thousand years before Christ, he could not imagine the tumult, turmoil, uprooting and estrangement that would follow as Jerusalem would be conquered and its people dispersed. He probably supposed as we do that the future will be pretty much like the present; a young "King David the Umpteenth" will occupy the same throne in the same palace in Jerusalem a thousand years from now!

Whatever he expected he did get something right when he prayed,

Great are you, Lord GOD! There is no one like you, no God but you, as we have always heard.

What other nation on earth is there like your people Israel?

I ​ hear an echo of David's "Great are you Lord God" in today's reading from Micah: "Who is there like you?"

Sometime later King David would violate God's blessing by his wanton abuse of Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah; and he would hear a terrible curse leveled against the same "house" which he was founding:

Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.

And yet he would remember God's mercy and immediately confess his sin when Nathan confronted him,

Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Nathan answered David: “For his part, the Lord has removed your sin. You shall not die....

I see David as the great progenitor of penance. Where Abraham and Moses remained faithful in their face-to-face relationship with the Lord, David sinned egregiously -- and repented with wholehearted confidence in God.  

David was a warrior and he knew God as a warrior, a "battle buddy." They had fought together and were bonded by the scalding memories of horrific violence. David knew his Champion would never abandon him. Nor would he overlook his sins. Friends don't idolize or idealize their friends; certainly God would not ignore David's crimes. If anyone should have had a millstone around his neck and cast into the sea it was David, but the Lord is faithful.

He does not persist in anger forever. He delights rather in clemency, and will again have compassion on us, treading underfoot our guilt.

I cannot ignore the parallels with Jesus, but in this case David is the apostles, Peter and Judas; and Uriah is Jesus. The disciples abandoned the Lord; Peter died him and Judas betrayed him. David's betrayal is shocking especially because Uriah was David's faithful soldier, practicing the very piety David had always insisted upon. His soldiers must have put two and two together. Returning to Jerusalem, they saw the lovely, young widow ensconced in the King's palace. That senseless foray against the well-defended Rabbah and the waste of a good soldier suddenly made sense. 

When we consider the mercy of God we should ponder the depths of our sin. I don't believe God can simply ignore sins as if they never happened. Stephen Daedalus would complain, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." but it doesn't disappear because we wake up, move on or move away. Like the cross, the history of sin from Eden to Auschwitz to Armageddon must be raised up, purified and glorified with the Lord himself.

Despite David's remorse and God's forgiveness, purification did not come easily for David. The ghost of Uriah remained in the royal palace with Bathsheba while his soldiers winked knowingly at each other. The child of their adultery died an infant. David's favored son, Absalom rebelled, raised an army and drove the king from the city. Civil war is the worst kind of war and the fighting of brother against brother was savage. David's remorse staggered him when Absalom was killed in the field.

For all his sins, David is the great progenitor of penance. We study his life and writings, especially the 51st and 130th psalms, to understand the sacrament, virtue and practice we call penance. We begin each Mass with Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy. We dare not enter God's presence without acknowledging our guilt. With David and a host of sinners we are reassured of welcome for the Lord does not persist in anger forever, he delights rather in clemency.

You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins;

You will show faithfulness to Jacob, and grace to Abraham,

As you have sworn to our fathers from days of old.