People of the Book – David
Having lived for far too short a time in Florence, studying Renaissance history, art and philosophy, as well as Peroni beer, Italian nightclubs and soccer stadiums (including one where I saw a memorable Eric Clapton performance), I came to know full well the charming but rather self-congratulatory mentality of the Florentine people. They claim responsibility for the unification of the vernacular into the contemporary Italian language (via Dante), Europe’s first centralized fiscal and banking center (via the Medici family), and the reappropriation of classical wisdom in the context of late medieval humanism (via Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Ghirlandaio and others). And thus, they take every chance they get to reaffirm their importance in Italian and world history, often at the expense of the Romans, who as one Tuscan-born professor told me, “do everything with a brutta figura” — basically “in bad taste.” I shudder to think what he would say about my fellow Manhattanites.
Florentines often famously relish their role as underdogs, emblematic of the exceedingly small city-state that changed the history of Western civilization. Because of this, a constant presence in the city is that of the biblical figure David, (although he is not the official patron saint, that distinction belongs to the ubiquitous John the Baptist). Three famous statues of the shepherd-king created and still housed in the city, by Verrocchio, Donatello, and of course Michelangelo, all attest to the role David plays in dominating their collective mentality as overcoming impossible odds to achieve lasting prominence.
David, perhaps the greatest king in the history of Israel, is almost always depicted as the youthful peasant adolescent just removed from the fields of grazing sheep to face the brutal Philistine mercenary Goliath with nothing but his sling and stones. Whether it be through Michelangelo’s sculpted marble adonis or the almost feminine smirking prepubescent figures cast in bronze by Verrocchio and Donatello, images of David always seem to be captivated by the unlikely heroics of his early years. There is more to his legacy, however, than the famous colloquialism of giant-killing.
In the multi-volumed books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, the Bible tells the story of this youngest of the sons of Jesse, born in Bethlehem roughly a thousand years before his direct descendents Joseph and Jesus. At 30, well after he began to compose the bulk of the hymns that would come to be called the book of psalms, he assumes the throne and conquers the Jebusite city of Jerusalem, making “the city of David” the political and religious centerpiece of his empire.
At the height of his power, David strolls along the rooftop gardens of his palace, literally looking down upon the lands and people he has conquered, and sees a ravishing woman bathing. Desiring her, he sends his forces to gather information and discovers that she is Bathsheba, the wife of one of his generals named Uriah. Not only does the king who has been given so much take from the humble Uriah the only woman the soldier has ever truly and unconditionally loved, but David then compounds his sin by having Uriah placed in the front ranks of battle without military support where he will surely die, so that his treachery will go undiscovered, at least by human eyes.
It is far too easy for us to condemn David from afar and to look with contempt upon such heinous acts. For as both Ecclesiastes 7 and Romans 3 make clear: “Indeed there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins. All have turned away…Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit.”
Every one of us lives in a permanent state of dialectical tension, where we are both in constant need of the prophetic voice of others in our lives calling us like David’s countryman Nathan to repentance and change of heart, and yet hypocritically and humblingly somehow serving this role ourselves to others, always co-conditioned by both our status as children of God and our sinful history and proud conceit: “for I know my transgression and my fault goes before me always” (Ps 51). Such a co-conditioning element of guilt and alienation as part of our very existence is the reality which the church doctrinally (and sometimes fumblingly) describes as original sin.
Like David, it remains necessary for each one of us to master our passions ever better — whether romantic, jealous, angry, self-absorbed or otherwise — and to profess like him, “I have sinned against the Lord.” This confession can never be a mere platitude, for as a result of it God punishes David gravely, and understandably so. (I think here of Cardinal Lamberto telling Michael Corleone in Godfather III “Your sins are terrible and it is just that you suffer,” before offering him absolution).
David’s firstborn son, the innocent fruit of his deception, is taken from him by God, despite the king’s fasting and ardent pleas to the contrary. But out of the abyss of this brokenness comes healing, and out of guilt, redemption. He and Bathsheba have another son, Solomon, “whom the Lord loved,” and who carries on David’s legacy which eventually culminates in Christ, so that even this repentant evildoer is given the riches of a reign that now continues both globally and endlessly (Cf. Is 9). Despite our faults, shattered hearts, and often broken lives, we are called to no less a task and destiny.
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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