But I did see a film called Safety Not Guaranteed. It stars Aubrey Plaza from the TV show Parks and Rec. She plays an intern at a Seattle magazine who gets sent with a reporter and another intern to track down a man who has put a strange classified in the newspaper. The classified ad says:
WANTED: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91, Ocean View, WA 99393. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.
So the three of them go off to a small coastal town to track down this guy who is promising time travel.
Only the reporter is going for an entirely different reason. He wants to catch up with an old flame that he hasn't seen in twenty years, so he's doing his own kind of time travel. But the intern, named Darius, discovers that the guy who placed the ad may really be on to something. And she begins to believe that maybe she can go really go back in time to the moment before her mother died in a car accident. Darius' last conversation with her mom had been a phone call when she had kind of rudely asked her mom to pick up something on her way home. We realize that she has been living with oceans of regret ever since.
Kenneth, the man building the time machine, has regrets of his own. He has lost a girl and, in a sense, has lost his mind and is trying to find his way back. I won't spoil the ending but what struck me is the deep personal work these characters are doing. It's not about the machine. It's about the healing. And the movie title gets at what needs to be said - when you try to heal the past, safety is not guaranteed. It will take confrontation with the pain. All that said - it is a comedy.
Our Bible story says much the same thing - safety, when dealing with past sins, is not guaranteed. Last week Peter told you that King David did a bad, bad thing. The man after God's own heart did a bad, bad thing. Neglected his duties to lead his armies, coveted and slept with his neighbor's wife, tried to cover up his misdeed when she becomes pregnant, and then murders her husband when that fails. Yeah, I think that qualifies as several bad, bad things. The scripture even says that what David did was "evil in God's sight."
David, however, is able to ignore the pain that he has caused. He goes on as if nothing as happened. So God sends Nathan to call out the king. Not an easy position to be in. But that's why the prophets get paid the big bucks. Or they would have if they'd been paid at all.
Nathan is a good storyteller, just like Jesus. He has a great parable to tell the king. Of course, he doesn't tell David that it's a parable. Nathan presents it to him as if it's a real problem going on in another part of the kingdom and he tells it as if he wants David's advice.
"There is this rich man," Nathan says, "and this poor man living in the same neighborhood. The rich man has all kinds of sheep and cattle, but the poor man only has one little ewe lamb which he had to scrape up money to buy. He's not going to make a meal out of this lamb, either. He raises it up as a pet - more like a member of the family, really. He lets it eat at the table with him and lets it drink from his cup - even let's it sleep with him. The poor man really loves this lamb.
"Now one day a traveler comes to stay with the rich man," Nathan continues. Now hospitality is a big thing, even today, in the Middle East. When you have a guest you go all out, sparing no expense. So you would always have a huge meal and slaughter an animal for a feast. It's such a big deal, and such a big responsibility, that it's even legal for you to take a neighbor's animal to use for the feast. But there are two big restrictions - you can't take your neighbor's sheep if you have some of your own, which of course the rich man does. And you can't take your neighbor's sheep if it is a pet, and, of course, the poor man's ewe is a pet.
So there is no justifiable reason for the rich man to take the poor man's lamb. But he does it anyway. He takes that lamb which the poor man loved so much and fixes it up as a barbecue for his guest.
Well, when David hears this story he is livid. David has a strong sense of justice. He knows how hard it is for the poor to get an even break in Israel. He swears by God and says, "As Yahweh lives, the guy who did this ought to die! I'll make him pay four times over for that sheep and for his lowdown attitude!"
David doesn't know what he's saying. He's so caught up in the story that he can't see through it to what Nathan is really trying to say. So Nathan spells it out for him with four of the most powerful words in the Bible: You are the man.
Nathan then proceeds to tell David how much God is displeased with him. David, of course, is the rich man, and God accuses him of theft and murder in his sins with Bathsheba and Uriah. Worse still, David is exposed as a hypocrite since his sense of justice doesn't extend to himself and his actions.
In the end Nathan pronounces God's curse which is that David himself will know the tragedy of death and murder in his family. David himself will know the pain of having his wives taken from him. And all of this comes true in the rebellion of his son, Absalom, which we'll talk about next week.
David is led to confession as he admits to Nathan, "I have sinned against God."
Have you ever been there where David was? Oh, maybe you never went on a Ten Commandment-breaking spree like David did, but have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and realized that there are things there you don't like. Things you have done. Things you regret. Things you know have warped you. Deep, deep wounds that continue to cause you pain. Things that you don't know how to get rid of. Maybe there's nobody like Nathan standing there pointing the finger at you and saying, "You are the man" or "You are the woman," but you don't really need one when you get in touch with the sin that has distorted your life, twisting you up in knots. And what do you do with that pain when you acknowledge it? What do you do with it?
Well, confession, they say, is good for the soul. And confession of sins is always a step in the right direction. It's David's first step. "I have sinned against God," he says. But confession is not a mechanical act. It's not something that you and then it's over. That's why in the medieval church there was such an emphasis on works of satisfaction. You would go confess to the priest, you would receive some things to do or prayers to say to satisfy the punishment, and then you would receive absolution.
The writer Peter De Vries said, "Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy."* If we just do it to conceal the pain or to vaccinate ourselves against really dealing with sin, it is not enough.
Confession needs to do things: First, it needs to open us up so that we can see who we are and offer who we are to God. Secondly, it needs to connect us to the God who knows the remedy and who knows how costly it is.
Safety is not guaranteed when God deals with sin. It requires vulnerability and openness to the possibility that there won't be a happy ending. David, as we'll see next week, knew all sorts of heartbreak in the wake of his sin. Jesus deals with sin through suffering and death, baring his body and the heart of God to the worst that could be done to him. But on that cross, God deals with sin. Safety is not guaranteed but forgiveness is.
It doesn't mean that God deals with sin so that you don't have to. The cross is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's not meant to keep you from growing. And the only way to keep growing is to do the work of dealing with your soul. But it gives us the ground to walk on. We can face the pain because Jesus faced the pain. We can have confidence that our efforts to be open and brave in dealing with the roots of sin and the consequences of sin will be fruitful because Christ has gone there first.
The book of Hebrews, in chapter 4 beginning with verse 12, says, "God’s word is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point that it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. It’s able to judge the heart’s thoughts and intentions. No creature is hidden from it, but rather everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of the one to whom we have to give an answer.
"Yet, let’s hold on to the confession [of our faith] since we have a great high priest who passed through the heavens, who is Jesus, God’s Son; because we don’t have a high priest who can’t sympathize with our weaknesses but instead one who was tempted in every way that we are, except without sin. So at last, let’s draw near to the throne of favor with boldness so that we can receive mercy and find grace when we need help."
Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, when he finally had his moment of clarity, drew strength from this vision of Christ. He was able to say, "“So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: 'I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!'”**
At the end, where else would we go? When I know that "I am the man" or "I am the woman" to whom else shall we turn except the one who knows that safety is not guaranteed, but God's love is. Thanks be to God.
*http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Peter_De_Vries/
**http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/29874.Martin_Luther
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