Beauty and Vulgarity

Proverbs 14:16-17, 17:27 and 26:21

 

I want to begin today with our David story. It is a less well known story; we might even call it a minor story, one of seeming insignificance, the story of David and Nabal from 1 Samuel 25. We all know about David and Goliath or David and Saul; these stories draw our attention, for they are the “main attraction.” Stories such as David and Nabal seem minor, a detour from that which is most important, but, as we shall see, it can be in the so-called “little things” of life that faith is most tempted to fail and most challenged to succeed.

 

David is in the wilderness, having been chased away from Jerusalem by Saul who is going insane and seeking to kill David, for he is jealous of him. When we read the book of 1 Samuel, Saul's pursuit of David is where the action is, but we will not deal with Saul today. Instead, we will look at what appears to be a detour at first: David in the wilderness. David in the wilderness appears to be a detour, appears to be a minor story, appears insignificant, yet of such seeming insignificance does the life of faith develop.

 

David is in the wilderness. He has formed his men into a band of Good Samaritans. In addition to the many natural dangers in the wilderness, the area was a high crime district. Bandits frequented the neighborhood, feasting on travelers, ready to mug anyone who showed promise of a fat wallet. David and his men enter the wilderness and begin to serve as a kind of neighborhood watch group, protecting the farmers and shepherds who are at risk. As ruthless outlaws roamed the canyons and mesas, David introduced some law and order into the moral chaos.

 

It's David's Good Samaritan work that occasions his encounter with Nabal, a wealthy sheep owner, whose name in Hebrew literally means, "fool." The shepherds working Nabal's flocks were vulnerable to the wilderness outlaws, and David provided protection for them. One of the shepherds testifies that David and his men "were a wall to us both by night and by day. all the while we were with them keeping sheep" (1 Samuel 25:16). Then sheep-shearing time arrived, which began with hard work and culminated in a great celebration. As the year's harvest was gathered, banquet tables were weighed down with food and drink. It was time to party!

 

David was in the neighborhood and sent ten of his men to ask for some food and drink from the feast tables. It was a reasonable request and natural under the circumstances. David had been protecting these shepherds all year long and was no doubt living on survival rations in the harsh wilderness. Some of Nabal's fresh fruit and baked goods would have been a welcome change. But when Nabal heard the request, he acted as if he had never heard of David. Not only that, he lumped him together with the common criminals of the wilderness, saying he was like "the many servants nowadays who break away from their masters" (1 Samuel 25:10). Nabal had not only refused to feed David from his feast, he insulted him!

 

David, of course, is outraged. He determines to exact a bloody revenge. He calls for his armed men and sets out for Nabal's feast. He would kill Nabal for is ingratitude, his insult, his rudeness! From that moment Nabal was marked for death. David lost his temper but then lost something far more important: he lost his identity as a child of God. He lost his sense that he had been chosen as God's anointed. He lost his search for an inner holiness that would express itself in an outer beauty. David was on the verge of becoming what he had always resisted: just another thug with a sword. Nabal's angry words led to David's anger. Nabal's vulgarity provoked vulgarity in David.

 

The Book of Proverbs describes this phenomenon by saying, "As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife." Or again, "A fool is hot-headed and reckless; a quick tempered man does foolish things." David was mere moments away from becoming no better than Saul who had chased him into the wilderness, and no better than the bandits he encountered once he got there. But David did not become just another thug with a sword, of course. And it is instructive to see how David was saved from himself. Enter Abigail.

 

Abigail is Nabal's wife. Abigail got wind of the insult and anticipated the consequences. She took swift action to head off David's predictably angry response. She gathered the makings of a great feast, loaded everything on to some pack animals, and set off to intercept David. The moment she saw him, she dismounted, went to her knees, putting her face to the ground in reverence and respect, and essentially said, "Please, please, please don't do this. This is not an action worthy of a prince of Israel. Remember who you are. Remember God's anointing. Remember God's mercy. Remember God's leading. Don't stoop to fighting grudge battles; you are to fight the battles of the Lord. Nabal is a fool, but don't you also become one. One fool in this story is enough."

 

Abigail witnesses to God's work in David: God's call, God's promise, God's covenant, God's word. She reminds David that his life is so tangled up with the life of God that there is no way he can become untangled and still be himself. There's no way he can act as if God was not in him and still be David. His life is shaped and formed by the tender mercies of God, not the foolishness of Nabal. Nabal is no Goliath, but the way David chooses to respond to him will be just as significant. Remarkably, David stops, looks, and listens. Abigail, in the middle of nowhere, on her knees before David, speaks God back into David's life. And David lets her speak it. This is amazing in many ways, for in the ancient culture women were considered less than men and not credible to bear witness to the truth in a court of law.  Yet David allows Abigail to bear witness to the truth found in the court of his heart.

 

What do we do when anger overtakes us? What do we do when the vulgarity of others touches off our own vulgarity? How do we keep ourselves from becoming something or someone we are not? How do we discover the beauty of Abigail when confronted with the vulgarity of Nabal?

 

I have been tempted to allow myself to be provoked by Nabal. Once I thought I was going to get into a fist fight with a church member.  The member in question was being a bit surly, and I allowed said member’s surliness to provoke my own surliness.  Frustrated, irritated, fed up, I invited the church member to leave the gathering.  The ensuing verbal confrontation had me wondering, “Is he going to hit me?”  I wasn’t real sure how I would respond if he did, although I knew I couldn’t beat up a parishioner.  It’s so easy to be provoked by Nabal.  And, in all honesty, I have to ask myself regarding the above situation, “Was I the Nabal?”

 

David in the wilderness appears to be a detour in the story of his life; it appears to be minor, appears insignificant, yet of such seeming insignificance does the life of faith develop. And, in truth, of such minor events do our lives revolve as well. What will we do when we confront our own Nabal? It is so easy to be angry. Anger is natural. Anger flows quickly for some, slowly for others but inevitably for all. But what we do in the face of our anger bears out the truth of the proverb: "As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife." We can respond to Nabal in kind. or we can remember that our struggle is never, never, never, never, never, never, never with Nabal but always with the call of God upon our lives.

 

When confronted with Nabal, we can remember God's anointing, God's mercy, God's leading. We can refuse to stoop to fighting grudge battles. Instead, we can remember God's work in us: God's call, God's promise, God's covenant, God's word. We can remember that our lives are so tangled up with the life of God that there is no way we can become untangled and still be ourselves. There's no way we can act as if God were not in us and still be ourselves. Our lives are shaped and formed by the tender mercies of God, not the foolishness of Nabal. Nabal is no Goliath, but the way we choose to respond to him will be just as significant. And we, too, can be remarkable as we stop, look and listen. We, too, can, remarkably, allow Abigail to speak God back into our lives.

 

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