Last Sunday I was the guest preacher/celebrant at a nearby parish and had the chance the preach on David. As many of you know, he is one of my favorite biblical figures, but not always for the reasons people expect. The Revised Common Lectionary this summer has been following the story of David through Samuel so I took this opportunity to consider how it could be that this murdering, adulterer could be a man after God’s own heart.”
Proper 14
Year B
RCL
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51
2 thoughts on “The example of David, good or bad?”
Hi Chris
While the God-heartedness of David is seen in the history of his life, I have come to the opinion that it is more clearly seen in his psalms. Perhaps “after my own heart” might refer to more than possessing traits like God in David’s life, but to his trust of and pursuit of God’s heart, God’s character. This seems to really come across in his psalms. David is capable of great depths of emotion and contrition. He takes responsibility and, while crying out to God, never blames Him. His life was driven by the heart of God.
BTW, we always called them flannel boards instead of flannel graphs. There was an older gentleman who preached in a gospel meeting where I was serving 4 or 5 years ago who delivered every lesson with a flannel board. I told him Bill Gates owed him some money since Microsoft’s Powerpoint was just a digital flannel board.
John, thank you for the comments. In my longer form of this talk (a chapter in a book actually) I do discuss the psalms as well. The psalms, at least those attributed to David and most relevant to this study, are an outpouring and expression of David’s life and so we find the narrative in Samuel.
In addition to flannel boards and flannelgraphs (Wikipedia says both are acceptable) there is the story of David and Bathsheba in Lego.