Pestilence

[Left: Coronovirus] 
“Go and say to David, ‘This is what the LORD says: I offer you three alternatives; choose one of them, and I will inflict it on you.’” Gad then went to David to inform him. He asked:  “Do you want a three years’ famine to come upon your land, or to flee from your enemy three months while he pursues you, or to have a three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider and decide what I must reply to him who sent me.” David answered Gad: “I am in very serious difficulty. Let us fall by the hand of God, for he is most merciful; but let me not fall by the hand of man.” Thus David chose the pestilence. Now it was the time of the wheat harvest when the plague broke out among the people. 

The LORD then sent a pestilence over Israel from morning until the time appointed, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beer-sheba died. But when the angel stretched forth his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD regretted the calamity and said to the angel causing the destruction among the people, “Enough now! Stay your hand.” The angel of the LORD was then standing at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. When David saw the angel who was striking the people, he said to the LORD: “It is I who have sinned; it is I, the shepherd, who have done wrong. But these are sheep; what have they done? Punish me and my kindred.”  2 Samuel 24:2, 9-17)

Readings from 2 Samuel are head-scratchers.   The LORD is mean and angry.   The LORD kills as a drastic form of punishment.  In this case, the death of 70,000 people was David’s punishment who directed God’s anger away from himself and onto his people.  David chose pestilence although he thought God would be merciful.  Not in this instance to be sure.

David then had a change of heart calling out to the LORD to punish him and his kindred – not the innocent sheep.  A bit too late David for that decision.   Seventy-thousand innocents perished.  Then again, he trusted in God’s mercy, but there was none.

How often do we expect, or at least hope, that our sins will be easily forgiven?  We expect mercy so we put off making the right choice from the start.   We cross our fingers and assume all will be well.  Perhaps we’ve let others take the blame for our sins by making them our scapegoat.  

Today’s reading reminds us never to delay acknowledging our sins and taking that punishment whatever it might be.  We’re never to blame others for our misdeeds and faults.  Letting others face the music we’ve orchestrated means we’ve chosen pestilence - not honor.

Deacon David Pierce