The Past

Lent 2 II Sam. 16:5-14
 The scene presented in our text begins like an old Monte Python sketch.  However, the scene is not a comedy sketch, but deadly serious.
 David and his companions having passed through the Kidron Valley, the valley of humiliation and shame, now entered into the valley of mockery and cursing.   David arrived at the arid and rock strewn wilderness east of Jerusalem.  Still on the run from Absalom, his rebellious son, they trudge along in the heat of the day. Suddenly, what seemed to be a wild and deranged man appeared on the rocky hillside above them.  He screamed curses upon David, pelting the struggling group with rocks and stones.  He scooped clouds dust into the air.  Shimei, the perpetrator of this rain of rocks and curses was not above kicking a man when he is down.
 You see, Shimei was of the clan of Saul, the king whom David replaced.  Shimei remembered.  He remembered back 40 or 50 years when Saul and Saul’s son Jonathon were killed and David became king.  Now he was bringing the past raining down on David’s head with stones and curses.  He remembered the past.   David was finally getting his comeuppance.
 Are you a present day Shimei carrying around a memory from the past and letting it affect how you act and react now?  Is there something that happened in 1951, or ’61 or ‘91 that you carry around and let it affect your life, your marriage, your family, your faith ever since?  Perhaps the younger generation doesn’t even know what touches off the anger and the tirade, but they know where your goat is tied and how to go and get it.  We seek to deal with the present situation by hurling stones of the past upon one another’s head.  We let the past run amuck in the present.
 Oh, there is something else about Shimei that you should know.  He had the story wrong.  He had heard the stories, rumors, and suspicions that David was responsible for Saul’s death.  After all, at the time, David was supposedly attached to the Philistine army.  The rumor mill worked hard in the clan of Saul.  However, David had not killed Saul.  Saul had fallen on his own sword rather than allow the Philistines to humiliate and kill him.  When we hold a grudge for so long time clouds our memory.  We distort the facts or at least begin to see them from only our own point of view.  Where the facts are lacking we fill in with our own conjecture.
 Like Shimei, we act on the basis of rumor  How many times have we put the worst construction on something?  How many times have we nursed grudges over the years?  Then when the opportunity presents itself we seek to take the matter into our own hands.  We are unable to let it go because we continue to act on the memory and cannot forgive.  Who gets hurt when we allow the past to run amuck in the present?  Who gets Killed? 
 We are new people whom God has recreated and given new life in Christ Jesus.  We are a family of God’s chosen people.  When we remember and act upon the sins of the past and hurl them down upon one another in the present - then we are killing the Body of Christ.  We are killing ourselves.  Because we are all members of the same body, that is Christ’s body.  When we hurt one another, we are hurting ourselves, for like it or not we are one in Christ.  And, we are crucifying Christ anew.
 In our text, Joab volunteers to go up and whack off Shimei’s head.  However, David says, “Perhaps he is cursing me at God’s direction.  It may be that God sent him to curse me.”  David was willing to take the curse, even though he knew he was innocent.
 Now here is where this text touches Jesus life.  Jesus also took the mockery and the cursing even though he knew he was innocent.  Listen to what God did to his own Son as he remembered our past sins and took it out on His own Son.  “Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus…and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him.  They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him and twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head.  They put a staff in his hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him, ’Hail king of the Jews.’  They spit on him and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.  After they mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him.  Then they led him away to be crucified.”  God heaped all of your past and future sins, my past and future sins and all the past and future sins of all humanity upon him as he suffered the derision of the soldiers.
 And then we want to hurl the stones and curses of the past down upon each other when they have already been cast upon the head of Jesus?  When they fell on Jesus they crushed him, but in so doing were smashed into smithereens so that the stones of the past have no more power.  Why then would we want to heap more suffering upon the body of Christ when Jesus has already suffered for all the wrongs which we do to ourselves and to one another?  Christ was mocked in our stead.  He became a curse for us.
 Yet, even with that knowledge, that Christ died and paid the penalty for our sins; yet with the promises in hand that in Jesus God will not remember our sin and therefore, will not punish us; still we, influenced by our old sinful self and by the wiles of Satan, want to punish ourselves and one another.  Such is the weakness of our flesh and the strength of our destructive remembering.
 However, the Lord remembers too.  He remembers he sent His Son, Jesus, to suffer the consequences of our sin.  The Psalmist prays, “Remember, O Lord your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.”  All along the way of time God has been forgiving your sins and my sins and everyone’s sins in Jesus Christ.  Everyday his mercy is new.  That mercy  new to us everyday has operated in our lives ever since we became his in the faith we received in baptism.  Even though our old sinful person would want to hurl the memory of the past at us; the Lord remembers us and blesses us.  He forgives and forgets.  In Christ, he rules and he heals all wounds.  The scar may be there, like the scar from an operation, but the scar reminds us of the healing done by another that gives us life and well being.  With his stripes we are healed.
 The story of David and Shimei concludes, “The king and all the people with him arrived at their destination exhausted.  And there he refreshed himself.”  As we arrive at the destination of our day, having struggled to live according to the life giving love of God - we too find ourselves often exhausted.  Remember then our king, Jesus.  Remember him and what he has done for us.  In carrying that memory we will be able to find refreshment in the wilderness of our life.  We will have no need to let the memory of the past run amuck in the present.