God Doesn’t Look Away

This Advent season, we’ve been tracing the messy, complicated branches of Jesus’ family tree, discovering again and again that God’s story is never confined to neat, sanitized places. Rather, God has always and continues to show up in lives that are messy, marked by waiting, woundedness, courage, and surprising grace.

We began with Abraham and Sarah, who stumbled in their waiting, yet God remained faithful. We stood with Tamar, who refused to disappear into injustice. We listened to Rahab, who reached for hope with only a whisper of faith. And last week, we walked beside Naomi and Ruth, whose steadfast love carried them from emptiness to new beginnings.

Today, the story turns toward Bathsheba, a name often whispered more than spoken, a woman remembered more for scandal than for truth. But what if we’ve remembered her wrong? What if Bathsheba’s place in Jesus’ family tree isn’t about shame? What if it's about God’s refusal to let injustice have the final word? What if her presence there isn’t a mark of disgrace, but a sign of God’s determination to work through pain and injustice, no matter how deep?

Sadly, the world can’t resist a good scandal. Whether it’s a politician, a church leader, or even our neighbor, nothing gets the gossip circles going like a good scandal. We love to dissect it, talk about it, and replay it over and over. We love to speculate on the details and imagine different scenarios for how these things played out. It’s the kind of story that would be all over social media if it happened today, or at least the church parking lot. The scripture narrative this morning gives us the account of King David’s sin. It includes lust, manipulation, a cover-up, and even a plot for murder. It has all the ingredients we’re drawn to. What better way to get our gossip circles going this morning than a good old-fashioned sex scandal?

In the midst of all the scandalous gossip, Bathsheba is almost erased, misnamed, blamed, and reduced to rumor. Her story begins not with scandal, but with injustice. If we are honest with ourselves, Bathsheba is often reduced to David's sins rather than to someone harmed by David. This is not just a problem of the past. Even today, victims of abuse or exploitation are often minimized, questioned, or ignored, especially women. Instead of letting the voices of the harmed shape the story, we let the powerful define what is remembered. We rewrite the narrative to protect the status quo. But Advent invites us to tell the truth. It calls us to name injustice clearly and to recognize the pain that others would rather overlook. 

The truth is, Bathsheba was not the one who sinned. David, once a king after God’s own heart, uses his power to take what does not belong to him. After waking from a nap, he sees Bathsheba bathing, a ritual cleansing required by law, and instead of looking away, he acts. He sends messengers to take her. The text doesn’t say she had a choice. This isn’t a romance. It’s an abuse of power. David doesn’t intend to marry her. He knows she is married. But he sleeps with her anyway. When Bathsheba becomes pregnant, David scrambles to cover it up by manipulating her husband Uriah, one of his most loyal soldiers, into sleeping with her, hoping to pass off the child as Uriah’s. But Uriah, full of integrity, refuses to enjoy comforts while his men are at war. So David arranges his death. This is the cruelty of power when it goes unchecked. David sends for people like they’re pawns on a chessboard, pulling strings behind the scenes, assuming no one will question him. But the Bible does not hide what he did. It does not excuse it. 

In a world shaped by power and patriarchy, we have a long history of recasting victims as perpetrators, convincing ourselves that those who suffered violence must have somehow “invited” it.  We want to believe that such persons somehow played a role in the violence inflicted on them. So the familiar story unfolds, phrases like: “She knew better than to bathe naked in such a public place.” “It's her fault for tempting the king!” These narratives allow us to look away from the abuse of power and instead place the blame on those with the least power to resist it. This is how the world silences marginalized voices, especially the voices of women. When we allow Bathsheba’s story to be told only through David’s failure, we participate in that silencing rather than in the truth-telling work of God.

The biblical narrative refuses to play into the worldly narrative. Scripture refuses to let Bathsheba’s name be buried. And God refuses to let her story end in silence. In fact, it is through Bathsheba’s line that the hope of the world will come. The Bible does not name Bathsheba as “David’s wife”; instead, she is remembered in Matthew’s Gospel as “the wife of Uriah.” That designation stands as a permanent marker of the injustice done to her and as a quiet indictment of the violence that shaped her story.

Beloved, those of us who have suffered from someone else’s sin need to hear that, like Bathsheba, your story matters! God refuses to forget or gloss over your pain. Advent calls us to reframe our remembering. The coming of Christ is not about the denial or dismissal of the harm we have endured. It is not about rushing past the pain or sanitizing the story to make it more comfortable. No, the light of Christ shines directly into the shadows, into the places of injustice, grief, and silence. Redemption is at hand.

Redemption does not erase what Bathsheba suffered—but it does refuse to leave her there. In the later chapters of the story, Bathsheba emerges not as a footnote, but as an advocate.

David, meanwhile, is forced to live with the consequences of his actions. His family is fractured. One son is dead. Others are competing violently for the throne. The kingdom itself is in turmoil. It is in this moment, when David’s grip on power is weakening, that Bathsheba steps forward.

David acknowledges that the throne is not ultimately his, but God’s. He declares that Solomon must become king. And Bathsheba does not flee from the mess surrounding that promise. She works within it. She confronts David’s lingering attachment to power and exposes Adonijah’s deceit. More than that, she challenges the very system that once rendered her powerless.

When Bathsheba refuses to allow Adonijah to take what is not his—to seize power, women, and authority without consent, she pushes back against the very logic that once violated her. She resists injustice in the ways available to her, insisting that what happened to her must not be repeated.

In doing so, Bathsheba becomes not merely one who endured harm, but a steward of God’s promise. She could have withdrawn. She could have chosen silence or self-preservation. She didn’t choose the pain, but she chose not to disappear from the story. With courage and clarity, she stayed, and God worked through her. With wisdom, timing, and courage, Bathsheba speaks. She acts. She advocates for her son, for the kingdom's future, and for a different use of power. And through her advocacy, God’s promise is carried forward. The line of the Messiah continues, not through unchecked power, but through truth, courage, and a woman who would not be silenced.

So often we would look at a messy situation like this and think it was irredeemable. We would reflect on David’s adultery and his murder of Uriah and think nothing good could ever come from this family. Despite this, it wasn’t the end of the story. Bathsheba becomes the mother of Solomon. Through Solomon, she becomes an ancestor of Jesus. God’s eye never left Bathsheba or her pain. Instead, God’s grace was at work, bringing promise out of the messy situation. Grace doesn’t gloss over the mess. It enters the silence, sits with the grief, and still whispers, “Even here, I can bring life.”  And isn’t that what we’re longing for this Advent? To believe that life can come even here in our own places of loss and betrayal, in the grief we can’t name, in the silence that’s settled too long over our stories? Bathsheba’s story gives us that hope.

And Bathsheba’s legacy doesn’t end with Solomon. Her story stretches forward, rippling through the generations, until grace takes on flesh once more. Down the family line, God’s grace was at work in another messy situation. The echoes are hard to miss. A woman whose circumstances invite judgment. A pregnancy that sparks scandal. A situation that could have easily gone another way. But in both Bathsheba and Mary, we see women at the center of God’s saving work not because of how others define them, but because of their faithfulness, their courage, and God’s grace. A young unwed mother was pregnant. The gossip line was at work. Can you believe that Mary cheated on Joseph? Will anybody ever take her as their wife now? 

Yet Mary knew the truth. God was at work in her life. The government decided that the whole world would be registered in a census. Joseph and his fiancée had to journey to Bethlehem, his ancestral hometown, to be counted in the census. There was only room for them with the animals in an area attached to a home. Despite knowing what could happen to her, Mary declared, “Let it be with me according to your word.” God never stops working through our mess; we just have to be courageous enough to say yes to God.  Bathsheba didn’t get the life she planned. But even in the pain she didn’t choose, she remained faithful. And God honored her voice, her resilience, and her legacy. Some of you know what that feels like, living in a story you didn’t write. Take heart: God sees you. God’s grace is already at work.

So maybe the question this week is: where is God asking you to stay in the story? Not to be complicit in injustice—but to remain open, to keep trusting, to believe that your voice still matters. Maybe you carry a story no one else has fully heard. Maybe your pain has been spiritualized, minimized, or dismissed. Maybe you’ve been told to “move on” long before you were ready. Maybe you’re standing in the ruins of someone else’s sin, wondering if God still sees you. Maybe you feel like someone else’s choices have rewritten your story. Maybe you’ve left a situation for one reason or another, and you don’t know how to take the next step. If that’s you, Bathsheba says, you are not forgotten. Your dignity is not erased. Your place in God’s story is not canceled.

The messy Christmas story reminds us that God’s grace is not ours to question. As United Methodists, we believe that God’s grace goes before us. We don’t have to know it even exists. God loves us enough to go before us and make the way for us. God meets us where we are, welcomes us with open arms, and continues to transform our lives. Much like David, we cannot hide from God. Bathsheba reminds us that if we are open to God’s grace at work in our lives and our families, God doesn’t look away. God will continue to transform our lives, our families, our church, and our community. 

May we be the kind of community where no one’s pain is glossed over, where every story matters, and where God’s grace is made real in how we love, how we listen, and how we make room for one another. So this Advent, the challenge before us is not simply to admire Bathsheba’s story—but to live differently because of it. We are called to be a people who tell the truth, even when that truth is uncomfortable or disruptive. We are called to resist easy stories that smooth over the rough edges, and instead practice the kind of listening that honors pain, protects dignity, and bears witness to hope. We are called to notice the voices we’ve overlooked, the stories we’ve misnamed, the silences we’ve accepted in our families, our communities, even our church.

This week, I invite you to ask yourself: Whose story am I tempted to explain away instead of honor? Where have I protected power instead of people? What pain have I rushed past that God might be calling me to stay present with?

And as a church, the questions are just as urgent: Will we be a place that moves too quickly toward resolution—or one that honors the long work of healing? Will we uphold appearances or pursue justice? Will we echo the world’s gossip or join God’s truth-telling work?

Because this is where Christ comes. Not in palaces, not through sanitized stories or perfect families. Christ is born into our mess, into pain not yet healed, into stories still unresolved that others tried to bury. God comes through women like Bathsheba. God comes through stories the world would rather forget. God comes where dignity has been denied, never looks away, and says: “This, too, is holy ground.”

May we become the kind of people, and the kind of church, who make room for that coming. Who make room for truth. Who make room for grief. Who make room for one another. And in doing so, who make room for Christ.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.