The Cost of Paying Attention

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (RCL, Year B, Proper 12)
Summer Sermon Series (6 of 11)
July 26, 2009

The Reverend Paul Abernathy

My staunch Baptist grandmother, Audia Hoard Roberts, was a walking, talking fountain of aphorisms – those often tersely worded statements of opinion, which, however, when uttered by her were to be understood by me as gospel truth! Among many things, she often said, “Everything that looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels good is not good for you!”

I accept the view of the great French paleontologist, Jesuit priest, philosopher, and mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,^[1] that we are not human beings in search of spirit, but spiritual beings immersed in human experience. Yet, in that immersion, we are sensate creatures. In the course of daily living, much of our perception of reality, much of what we know that we know comes via our physical senses.

Today, with this sixth sermon in our summer series, we begin a second round of our five-part thematic cycle, returning to Pay Attention! Five weeks ago, Susan^[2] called us to Pay Attention! to each moment of our living. Knowing how hard that is, how hard it is not to spend each instant looking back in reflection and forward in anticipation, she challenged us to be aware of eternity, that qualitative sense of time that ever envelopes quantitative temporal time, and, thus, to be present to the promise of the present.

Today, I bid we consider the cost of paying attention because everything that looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels good isn’t good.

King David espies the beautiful Bathsheba, wife of Uriah.^[3] He commands that she be brought to his house. There they conceive a child. What began with the lust of the eyes and for the flesh continues with David’s determination to cover his paternity – urging Uriah to “go down to your house” to be with his wife, which the pious soldier, eschewing pleasure while his comrades remain in battle, refuses to do – leading to David’s desperation to contrive Uriah’s death, handing the unwitting and doomed man his own death warrant. Private misbehavior leads to a very bloody, public murder.

There is one lesson here to which we need not pay strict attention, for many and recent are the reminders that the pleasures promised by the physical senses can yield the cost of misconduct in high places – be it of kings or senators and governors.^[4] It is, however, the cost stemming from our own conduct to which we need always pay particularly preventative attention.

As an aside, for those of us and, perhaps, for that part of each of us that craves the righteous recompense of an exacting justice for wrongdoing, the story continues. Uriah dies. Bathsheba grieves. David takes Bathsheba as his wife. Their child is born. The prophet Nathan, sent by God, tells David a parable of a rich man who took the prized possession of a poor man. David, as king, thus, judge over his people, in anger cries, “As the Lord lives, that man deserves death!” Nathan declares, “You, David, are the man!” The judgment rendered, the sentence is announced. The sword of conflict shall ne’er depart from David’s kingdom and the child will die.^[5]

So, let us pay attention, take care and beware whene’er our hearts yearn for justice. For none, even, it seems, God, thus, surely not we ourselves, can wield the gavel of righteousness in a way that spares the innocent.

Now, back to the story… If all David teaches or re-teaches us is that our human sensibilities are subject to err and that each of us is complicated and conflicted, a cosmic admixture of angelic and demonic desirings and given to act on each, then, where does that leave us other than where we already are with what we already know?

Here, the story of Jesus helps me.

Now, I confess, at first blush, I saw little connection between David’s duplicity and Jesus’ feeding the 5,000.^[6] The most I could conjure up was a tale of two kings – one who feasts on others, serving only himself and one who feeds, serves others. Rather simplistic and shallow. Yet, the more I think, this remains a tale of two kings and two conceptions of power.

A large hungry crowd came to Jesus. He asked Philip, “Where shall we buy enough bread for the people?” We are told that Jesus already knew what he would do and asked only to test his disciple.

How did Jesus feed the people? Was it literally a miracle of multiplication? Or were the people, amazed by Jesus’ generosity in giving away what little he had, moved to share what they had until all were fed? I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. For a point, it seems to me, is simply this: each of us has power, the capacity to do something. Question is what is the desire of our hearts – to which we must pay attention – that compels our exercise of the power we possess? Is it like that of David – to reach out with an open hand only to grasp and close our fingers around what we want to take for ourselves? Or is it like that of Jesus – a king who refuses to be made a worldly king, whose kingship is a kinship for he is lover of all, whose justice is merciful forgiveness, whose power is his submission in service and sacrifice – to reach out with an open hand on which rests what we offer to others that they may have life and have it more abundantly?

[1] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955).

[2] The Reverend Susan Beth Pinkerton, St. Mark’s Assistant Rector

[3] The Hebrew scripture appointed for the day is 2 Samuel 11.1-15.

[4] “Senators and governors” is an allusion to a number of current news stories concerning the marital infidelities of elected officials.

[5] See 2 Samuel 12.1-14.

[6] The gospel appointed for the day is John 6.1-15.