2 Sm 11

Question: “What has God been doing in your life?” I used to really hate being asked that. Apparently, the assumption was that, number one, God had been doing something in my life—and that, number two, I was supposed to have some way of knowing what it was! Sometimes I would even get irritated at the person who had asked the question. How dare you drop something like that on me? I had to make a choice: I could ignore the subject of God’s activity in my life, and then let it gnaw away deep inside, like a termite digesting wood. Or I could choose to deal with it, and go about the often difficult work of discovery.

I no longer hate being asked the question, “What has God been doing in your life?”, but there still are times when it catches me by surprise. There still are times when I’m hard pressed to give an answer. Sometimes it’s because I haven’t been attentive to the movements of God in my life. And sometimes I just don’t know. In my sermon on darkness, I said that one of the things that darkness represents is our own lack of knowledge, our own lack of awareness. God being who God is, there is always an element of mystery involved.

And that brings me to my theme for today: availability. Previously, in this series on spiritual themes, I’ve addressed darkness, time, and imagination. Availability is interwoven among them all. Being available to God helps to dispel the darkness; it takes time and enables us to redeem the time; it fires our imaginations and fills them with new possibility.

As I mentioned in the children’s sermon, this is the seventeenth anniversary of my baptism. The brief time we did go to church when I was a kid was at a church that didn’t consider baptism to be a sacrament. For me, baptism actually was a means of making myself available to God. For months after my conversion—that is, my coming of awareness to faith—I had resisted submitting to the waters of baptism. In fact, I had resisted attending church more than once in a blue moon. I figured I could take care of my relationship with God without help from anyone else.

Nonetheless, at some point, it became clear to me that I was standing still. I needed to go forward. Eventually, I responded to the call of God’s Spirit—as well as to the prompting of a Christian mother!—and I was baptized. It’s probably safe to say that that is when my conversion really happened: when I took that step of obedience to, and solidarity with, Jesus Christ. It felt like a weight was lifted from me, a weight that I didn’t even know I was carrying.

What can be said about availability? It’s like opening oneself up to light…and to darkness. It involves being present with the joyful…and with the sorrowful in life. It absolutely embraces prayer. Reflecting on the apostle Paul’s instruction to “pray without ceasing” (1 Th 5:17), Robert Mulholland sees prayer as being fundamental to Christian life. He sees it as essential as breath itself, saying that “true prayer is the breath of a life of radical abandonment to God, the heartbeat of a life of radical abiding in God, and the action of a life of radical availability to God in the world.”[1]

Today’s scripture readings give us some examples of availability in operation. For the epistle reading, I decided against the lectionary text and went with the story of Lydia from Acts 16. Part of the reason for the switch is that 3 August is St. Lydia’s Day. (Yes, I know, it’s marked on all of our calendars!) But the main reason is what happens in the story.

Paul, in the midst of his second missionary voyage, has stopped at Troas (the ancient city of Troy). It’s there that, in the night, he has a vision of a Macedonian man pleading with him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (v. 9). Paul and his associates then set sail through the Aegean Sea and arrive in Europe.

They encounter Lydia in Philippi, one of Macedonia’s biggest cities. The scripture says that she’s “a dealer in purple cloth,” which is a valuable commodity (v. 14). Lydia is considered to be the first of Paul’s converts in Europe. After she and her household are baptized, she urges Paul and his friends to “come and stay at my home” (v. 15). Lydia practices availability with a vengeance! I like the way the verse ends: “And she prevailed upon us.” The New Jerusalem Bible reads, “And she would take no refusal.” You’re coming to my house—I insist!

Lydia’s persistence in hospitality serves Paul well after he and Silas are released from jail. The magistrates, realizing that Paul’s and Silas’ rights as Roman citizens have been violated, urge them to get out of town—quickly and quietly. But having a place to stay in town gives Paul an excellent opportunity to encourage the church before they leave, an opportunity he refuses to pass up. All because Lydia insisted on being available!

Our Old Testament reading introduces a new character into the story of David and Bathsheba, which I mentioned last week. The king receives a visit from the prophet Nathan. At this point, we don’t know who Nathan is or how he’s been able to get an audience with the king, other than the brief comment of verse 1: “the Lord sent Nathan to David.”

Nathan begins by appealing to David’s sense of justice. He tells him the story of a rich man and a poor man. The rich man, despite having many flocks of sheep, refuses to offer one to a visiting traveler. Instead, he demands the single little lamb of the poor man—the single cute little lamb that was considered a part of the family. The prophet adds, in almost greeting card fashion, it would “eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup.” The poor man would embrace the little lamb; “it was like a daughter to him” (v. 3).

David is furious at the rich man, as he should be. Nathan’s story reminds me of one-dimensional movies in which the good guys and bad guys are clearly marked out in very stark detail. We have no choice but to be sympathetic with the good guys, and as for the bad guys…well, in the vernacular of the Old West, hangin’s too good for ‘em! And that’s how King David feels!

Then Nathan turns the tables on David. You know the guy you said hangin’s too good for? That’s you, buddy! “You are the man!” (v. 7). It does take more than a little courage to call out the king for adultery and murder. But that’s what the prophet does, and instead of having Nathan tossed into jail or even executed, the king recognizes his fault and repents.

I realize that the theme of availability is rarely the first thing that comes to mind when reflecting on the story of David and Nathan. But consider this: it’s precisely because Nathan is available to God that he can tell David the story that leads to his repentance. Nathan is willing to bring a message that David needs to hear, even if there is considerable risk involved.

Now, let us…ponder the ramifications of Nathan’s availability and David’s repentance. I understand that speculating about “what if” can be very tricky business. But who can say what would have happened if Nathan had chickened out and not spoken to David about his crimes?

Maybe the king still would have seen the error of his ways; he was, after all, a sincere worshipper of the Lord. At the same time, it’s not like he would be the only good leader to suffer a fall. Perhaps David was spared the fate of turning into just another power-grabbing monarch. He was enabled have a better destiny than that. And to a greater or lesser extent, Nathan had a role to play.

It’s not likely that any of us will ever need to correct a king or queen—contact our elected officials, to be sure—but do an imitation of Nathan, probably not. Still, Nathan models a principle that does apply to us. We are our brother’s and sister’s keeper. That’s part of what it means to be human. It’s definitely part of what it means to be Christian.

I’ve spoken of being available to both God and people. Being present to others helps open us to God. Part of being present means really listening, being completely attentive, turning off our mental chatter. Jan Johnson comments on an especially troublesome aspect of this, that is, being available to those who rub us the wrong way.

“Being present to enemies—those who secretly wish we would drop dead, or at least move away—may be the most troubling. When people do obnoxious things to get attention, criticize in a public meeting, or interrupt throughout a telephone conversation, I have difficulty getting past their neediness. Why don’t they grow up? They cost us something—we feel our energy drain away. A part of us would like to pretend to pay attention, smile politely, and move on, but there’s that principle of being present to people.”[2]

I think we all can agree that being present, being available, to people is no piece of cake. Those of you who’ve raised children can testify to that! People who have acted as mentors know something about it.

A moment ago we heard a rather whimsical description of the difficulties of being available to others, but it can be much more serious. Almost ten years ago, a movie came out based on the life of Sister Helen Prejean, a nun living in Louisiana. Entitled “Dead Man Walking,” the film stars Susan Sarandon as Sr. Helen and Sean Penn as Matthew Poncelet, a young man on death row for his part in a double murder and rape.

This isn’t one of those one-dimensional movies I mentioned earlier. For those of you who’ve never seen it, director Tim Robbins is careful to present the complicated mix of emotions and forces at work; he doesn’t hide the savagery of Poncelet’s crime. In responding to Poncelet’s letter in which he requests a visit, Sr. Helen makes herself available—she exposes herself—to the horror, to the raw emotion, associated with a death penalty case.

I’ll mention just one example. She visits the parents of the young woman who was killed, and, over cups of coffee in the kitchen, Sr. Helen tells them that she wants to be available to them—to help them, to pray with them. By visiting them, the parents assume that she’s decided to have nothing more to do with Poncelet. So when she says that she’s agreed to serve as his spiritual advisor in the days before his execution, they are shocked. “How can you come here?” the mother demands. And the father says, with pained anger rising in his voice, “Sister, I think you need to leave this house right now! You can’t have it both ways…You can’t befriend that murderer and expect to be our friend too!”

Just like Susan Sarandon in the movie, when we dare to practice availability, when we really let the Spirit of God direct us, there’s no telling what transformations will occur. It can be wondrous. It can be scary. We find out things about ourselves. Maybe that’s why we so rarely practice it…at least, practice it wholeheartedly.

Still, I issue the call for us to be available—to God and to each other. We have to work at ignoring the voice that says, “What’s in it for me?” We have to work at not simply “playing church.” We have to want to be the church, in power and in spirit. And it is Christ who can show us the way to be that.

I want to finish with the final segment of “Dead Man Walking.” After the execution, Sr. Helen is with the family at the funeral. And as the service ends, she notices, standing at a distance, Mr. Delacroix, the father of the murdered young man. She walks over to greet him, and he replies, “I don’t know why I’m here. I got a lot of hate. I don’t have your faith.”

Sr. Helen responds, “It’s not faith. I wish it were that easy. It’s work. Maybe…we could help each other find a way out of the hate.” Mr. Delacroix isn’t sure. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

After Sr. Helen returns home, the scene fades to a little church out in the woods. We see her enter the building, and as the movie ends, she and Mr. Delacroix are seated together on one of the pews, praying. What neither of them can do, God can. The story ends on a note of quiet hope, of peaceful joy.

There’s no limit to what can be when we make ourselves available. Are we willing to take the risk of being available? To the best within us, to our neighbors’ cry, to saying “no” to evil? Are we willing to risk being available to God utterly and completely? Are we available to the wondrous things God can accomplish through us? May it be so.

[1] M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., “Prayer as Availability to God,” Weavings 12:5 (Sep-Oct 1997): 26.

[2] Jan Johnson, “Being Present to Others: A Meditation on Mark 5:22-35,” Weavings 12:5 (Sep-Oct 1997): 33.