In my first few years in Seminary, all those years ago, I struggled mightily to learn Hebrew. I gave up. I found it very difficult, too difficult. It’s written in a completely different, and odd, alphabet, and it's written backwards. There are no commas, no semicolons, no capital letters, and no periods. It is therefore just one huge sentence, one, comprising the entire Old Testament. And there are no vowels. Seems to me that a language needs a few vowels. Well, there are vowels, of course, but they are secret, they are not indicated, you just have to know what they should be. I gave up, and to this day I am glad I did. I just didn’t have the patience for the peculiarities. Never did learn much, but I remember a snippet here and there from what I did learn. And I remember today’s story. The one presented in our First Lesson. It is ... memorable. In English it is dramatic enough. In Hebrew it is staggering. Ata Ish. Thou. Art the Man. Ata Ish. A lone prophet stands up and says to an all-powerful King: Ata Ish. Thou art the man. Nathan the Prophet has told David the King a little story. Before the story gets started, David has been busy and bad. He sees a beautiful woman and wants her. Problem is, she is married. In Judaism, that was a problem, even for a King. Moreover, she is married to one of David’s most respected, most able, most loyal Army Officers. David secretly tells the man’s Commanding Officer to put the soldier, Uriah, in the front line, in the most exposed possible spot in the next available battle. Uriah, the brave and obedient soldier, is killed. Immediately. And David marries the man’s widow. Perfect. But then, in walks the prophet, Nathan. He tells David a sweet story that ends sadly and badly and even the King finds its heart-rending. A rich man has a guest drop by, and needs to give him dinner. The rich man has so many sheep he can't count them. But instead of taking one of those, he snatches the only sheep a very poor man has, a lamb that the poor man loves, and treasures, and regards almost as his child. The rich man grabs this lamb, and serves it to his guest. David is aghast at such an act, furious, ready to spring into action against that loathsome rich man. And declares he should die for having done such a thing: “As the Lord lives, the man should die!” He should die. And Nathan, the prophet, standing alone in the palace points his finger at King David and says two Hebrew words: Ata Ish. Thou art the man. And mighty Kind David, is horrified to realize what he has done, and he does repent, mightily and sincerely and from the bottom of his heart. When can we, when should we, when must we, say that to ourselves, before someone says it to us, before some Nathan steps forward in our lives and says what must be said. Ata Ish. It was you. “Now Therefore ...” Let us say resolve to say that to ourselves first. Because I have done this, because I have said this, Now Therefore ... and then, a brief moment to think about the consequence of what we have done, or in Prayer Book language, "what we have left undone". Ho, and when, and to whom have we done something wrong, so wrong, that some courageous prophet would be justified in stepping forward and saying, "Ata Ish! Thou art the one!" - you, yourself, why have you done this thing, that is so wrong? So wrong that it seems that you despise the word of Lord? Or, perhaps less dramatically in view of doubtless less dramatic sins, the question asked is: How, why, wherefore have we done this thing the makes it seem to a prophet and to ourselves as though we have, if not despised the Word of the Lord, at least paid too little regard to it. “Now therefore”, we say to ourselves and then look at, consider, the consequences, fully and directly, and yes, I suppose, prophetically. So much of the world today seems to me to suffer so much and so often from so many refusing to take responsibility, to accept the consequences of their own actions. What they have, themselves, done or left undone. We live in a Blame Culture--blame everyone else, or in some deviant awareness, blame ourselves, yes, blame ourselves-- mightily. Too mightily. Which in its own way, from the view of God who created, redeemed, and sanctified us and who loves us, is just as bad. Blaming others--bad. Spiraling down into blaming ourselves in a degrading over-done way is also wrong, also shows that we despise or at least do not take seriously the word of the Lord and his often repeated and genuinely meant expressions of love and acceptance and forgiveness for us. He says of a prostitute, wiping his feet: Her sins are forgiven, for she loved. Yes, we have sinned. Have we loved? Then we are forgiven. Unlike many a fire-and-brimstone preacher, seemingly feeling called or at least pleased to denounce people, to wag a finger and fault-find further, I find what is needed by serious Christians is just the opposite--you have done the scolding yourselves, you have wagged your own finger at yourself long enough, too much, you need to remember who you are, whose you are, what the word of God says about you and to you. He loves you, forgives you and saves you from the consequences of your sin, and redeems your life from the grave. He did that for a prostitute. He even did that for a king, for David and his more sordid sin of killing a man in his service so he could steal the man’s wife by making her a widow and thus do it legally, though not morally. And a prophet reminded him, Ata Ish. Even then, even then, with David and that horrendous sin, God forgives and restores. David will face consequences--consequences of his own making and he will have to accept and endure them. David will always face strife and struggle. And heart-break. But he will not die, though he deserves to. Surely that means, for us, that a straight-forward acknowledgment of our guilt, a confession of our sin, a brave and honest facing of the "Now Therefore..." aspect to our actions, will mean that we too will be forgiven, rescued, saved, redeemed, and ought not to torment ourselves with guilt and shame and lingering doubt. After sorrow and regret and repentance, and much love, we move forward remembering that God loves us and continues to regard us as precious and worthwhile and dear in his sight, and justified by his Christ and reckoned righteous by his love It may well be, and it so seems to me, that you need a prophet to tell you that--to point a finger at you and point out how good you are, how well you doing, while never ignoring the admitted sins and shortcomings we all engage in, cause, create, and suffer from. A prophet should speak a comforting, encouraging word as well, and probably more often, than the word of judgments and condemnation. But all of that hinges on us, each of us being our own Nathan in the silent secrecy of our hearts - admitting Ata Ish - we are the one, why have we despised the word of the Lord by doing something that was evil in his sight? And then we move on from that to accept, as David did, pardon, remission, forgiveness after we have openly and honorably faced the consequences of our own "Now Therefore." And all the while we need to keep ourselves, and our souls, well away from a paralyzing guilt that compounds the error and shows in its own peculiar way even more contempt for the Word of the Lord and the gracious promises he makes to us, and the sweet, tender, heart-breaking forgiveness he offers us. Yes, we need the prophets, even the scolding ones, and they probably speak to us, most likely in our own voices. But we also need the preacher who will also remind us that we are saved, not condemned, loved, not despised, regarded by him as lovable, not contemptible. Yes, Ata Ish. Yes, we are the one--the ones who have done this thing and he is the one who will forgive us if we are sorry, and if we love. Though indeed there may well be consequences for us that will remain, as there were for David, that real cost of things that cannot be changed despite our sorrow. But those consequences still cannot change or effect, now or ever, his love for us, his abiding, steadfast, merciful grace, given in love, to us. Love for each and everyone, no matter what. Love for you. Yes you. Ata Ish.