Captured Fire: The Sunday Homilies, Cycle C by Krempa S. Joseph

Author:Krempa, S. Joseph [Krempa, S. Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: ST PAULS / Alba House
Published: 2005-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

2 Samuel 12:7-10, 13 Galatians 2:16, 19-21 Luke 7:36-8:3

HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE reunions are fascinating and revealing times. When we gather with friends we have not seen for several years, we are usually startled by how they have aged. We see scattered wrinkles, graying hairs, emerging double chins and maybe more girth than we expected. It might make us wonder what we look like to them since we do not usually see ourselves as having aged that dramatically. It is always easier to see changes in others than in ourselves.

That is the thrust of today’s first reading from the Second Book of Samuel It is about a story as old as mankind and as fresh as this morning’s gossip. It is about King David, one of his officers named Uriah and Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. One day while Uriah was away fighting one of David’s wars, David happened to see his young wife Bathsheba tanning herself on a nearby roof. She was a beautiful woman and eventually she and King David were intimate. Later when she told David that she was going to have his child, David rushed her husband home from the front so Uriah could spend a few evenings with his wife and then believe that the child was his own.

Twice David tried to persuade him to stay with his wife but Uriah refused to break the code of military discipline at the time. David then wrote to Uriah’s commander to place Uriah in the front line when the fighting became fierce and then to pull back and leave him alone. That is exactly what happened and Uriah was killed. After Uriah’s burial, David quickly married Bathsheba. Shortly thereafter, the prophet Nathan came before David and asked him to decide a case.

Nathan tells of a wealthy man who had huge herds of sheep and a poor tenant farmer who had only one lamb. When the rancher invited a guest over, he didn’t touch his own flock but took the poor farmer’s small lamb for the meal. Asked what he thought of this case, David exploded with rage and insisted that the wealthy man pay for what he did and give back what he took several times over. In one of the great confrontations of the Bible, Nathan looked David squarely in the eye and said, “You are that man!” Then in today’s reading, David sees the truth of what he had done in regard to Uriah and admits that he had sinned.

This story highlights a common problem we all have. It contrasts David’s honest outrage at a case of injustice “out there” while missing it in his own life. David’s problem is also our own. It is very easy for us to discern hypocrisy in the people around us and miss the disparity between our beliefs and our actions in our own life. It is easy for us to be outraged at cases of betrayal about which we read and to ignore the ways we betray our Lord, our Church, our family and our friends.

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