Monday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 323

But the king replied: “What business is it of mine or of yours,
sons of Zeruiah, that he curses?
Suppose the LORD has told him to curse David;
who then will dare to say, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

I believe it was King Henry II, played by Peter O’Toole in ­Lion in Winter, who declared, “I am the king. When I pray, God answers!” King David has learned a different lesson after his many years in authority, “God is still in charge.”

Authority has a way of settling into one’s nervous system, seeping through and around whatever reluctance or resistance we might place before it.  When Barack Obama walked into the press room after his inauguration he was taken aback when everyone stood up. Then he remembered he is the president and that’s what people do. But he got used to it. Five years later he would take it amiss if someone were not to stand up.  

In authority, you might remind yourself you are only representing a higher authority. You might ponder Jesus’ words to Pontius Pilate, “You would have no authority whatsoever were it not given you from above.” But, you get used to the deference your former peers give to you. It takes root in your identity.

King David had been to the top and, as he fled Jerusalem and his son’s advancing army, he was on his way down. Out there on the road he had left the “bubble” of advisors and courtiers who habitually deferred to him. Hearing the unfamiliar curses of “Shimei, the son of Gera of the same clan as Saul’s family” he remembered that Saul’s kinsmen resent his authority. Despite David’s efforts to distance himself from Saul’s battlefield death, they suspected his complicity.

He also remembered that he was once a lowly shepherd boy, the least of his family of stalwart men. He was not always high and mighty. Most importantly, he remembered God’s rebuke when he took Uriah’s wife as his own, and the subsequent death of their child.

Shimei’s curses fit David’s mood. High authority had not completely erased his capacity for self-doubt. The rebellion of his son Absalom, a man of principle and a very capable commander, shocked the King. He had neglected his own family while he tended to matters of state. "In any case," he thought, "there’s no harm in doing penance."

Perhaps the LORD will look upon my affliction
and make it up to me with benefits
for the curses he is uttering this day.”

This story of King David’s penance reminds us the virtue of penance is not for the faint of heart. Nor does it belong to those who habitually dismiss or ignore their own worth. It is rather a reminder to the powerful – those who have grown accustomed to privileges and perks – that God brings down the powerful and exalts the lowly.