athan the prophet would have had after-hours access to his king. In my imagination his determined gait echoed in the torchlit hallways of David’s palace. Then, shoving the monarch’s reposing body on the royal mattress, the prophet starts abruptly, relaying a message crafted by the Lord, Himself. A parable:Poor man has a sweet lamb that the family loves so much she sleeps in the bed at night and eats from their table. She’s part of the family. When the rich man entertains a traveling friend one evening, however, the rich man doesn’t select from his own vast herd to prepare a meal for his guest—no. He has spied the frolicking pet at the poor man’s house. Determined to have her, and because he could, he commandeered his way in past the strong arm of the father, the objections of the mother, and the tears of the babies. He seizes the lamb, kills it, and serves it to his guest for dinner.
End of story. Nathan waits.
David erupts at the thought of this miserable injustice and through his righteous clenched teeth declares:
“As the Lord liveth, this man shall die!”
That’s when Nathan turns to David, his king, and says to him, “Thou art the man.”
This moment stands alone in its dramatic and prophetic force. Expecting a child any day now from his stolen wife, the king thought he got over.
“Few individuals in David’s reign wielded the influence or had the guts to confront him on his sin” John Maxwell posits about Nathan the prophet. One of the most famous gut checks in the Bible, and David did not see it coming. It was a sho nuff “straight lick with a crooked stick.” The content was so strategically embedded as to protect the prophet, because, you know, messengers can lose their jobs these days, if not their heads. But if you read it as simply a response to David’s infidelity with Bathsheeba, you may have missed its broader application.
This evergreen parable inspired by the God of love and justice, illustrates that He stands witness. A parent, a spouse, organizational leader, corporate executive or head of state without godly restraint, fears to cross no line. David’s sexual impropriety was but one in a series of moral lapses. Always a power play, sexual “conquest” is but one symptom of an individual who craves, and is drunk with power.
Consider: David’s woeful accession and appropriation to himself of another man’s wife. How David manipulated and strung along Uriah, playing him for a fool as part of his cover up. Witness the sexual exploitation of Bathsheeba’s body, and the resulting pregnancy. Then came a veritable hit put on one of the nation’s elite and valiant soldiers. The collusion among trusted advisors, implicating all in the heinous plot. Finally, watch David simply move Bathsheeba into the palace—under the appearance of normalcy.
Up until Nathan’s visit, David could both live with himself, and sleep at night just fine, apparently. That the parable’s imagery includes the details of a closely held relationship between the family and its one lamb, can also be expanded. Though he had and could have anyone he wanted, power drives the rich man to seize the lamb, and David to seize Uriah’s wife. Gaming the system, and exploiting the advantage, scorching the earth and her people — rather than a kingdom tactic, repulses the sensibilities of a compassionate God.
“The poor are the oppressed and the afflicted, those who cannot defend themselves against the powerful,” wrote James Cone in the seminal “God of the Oppressed.” “They are the least and the last, the hungry and the thirsty, the unclothed and the strangers, the sick and the captives. It is for these little ones that the gospel is preached and for whom liberation has come in the words and deed of Jesus.”
Recently, when the richest Americans received tax breaks in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per household, their windfall was funded by cuts to programs and supports we tend to value and hold close like: food for low income individuals and their children, healthcare for elderly and disabled, housing, and educational access. Yet, we feel powerless to protect these.
I can’t help but notice that thousands of years before John the Baptist heralded Jesus as “the lamb who takes away the sins of the world,” and Jesus told the story of the lost sheep, or the sheep and the goats, and John the Revelator saw the victorious “Lamb” open the mysterious seals that preceded the terrible wrath of God, Nathan employed the same motif, a seemingly defenseless lamb. Yet, it rings true, somehow, that Jesus the lamb of God centers Himself in stories in and around vulnerable people. (See Exodus 22:21-23, Matthew 25:31-40). You may have mixed feelings to know that He really was right there when they “did it unto you.” I find that it gives me comfort and hope, knowing that no injury or imposition will have gone unregistered in heaven, and that He will repay.
In the meantime, we work, in the prophetic tradition of a Nathan. We work smart to drive home an awareness of the representative responsibilities of those in power, in contrast to an abuse of power. Use your 5 Calls app to reach elected officials, or sign a Change.org petition. Visit, call, and talk to those in power to persuasively gain what would seem like an impossible conviction for change.
CARMELA MONK CRAWFORD, Esq., is Editor of Message Magazine