Pentecost
11
August
12, 2012
2
Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
It’s
a pretty well-known story, the tale of the prodigal son. In the Gospel of Luke, it is a story about a
son who thought that he knew better than his father, so he set off on his own
with his share of the inheritance and eventually comes to his sense while
sitting in a pig stall getting ready to fight the pigs for their food.
The
story of Absalom and David found in 2 Samuel is not that story of
the prodigal son. I hesitate to even
call Absalom prodigal…wayward probably works a lot better.
Here’s
what the lectionary has caused us to miss:
Shortly after the power play that David pulled to take Bathsheba as his
own, which resulted in her husband Uriah’s death, David’s oldest son, Amnon,
raped David’s daughter, Tamar. David was
furious with Amnon for what he had done, but we are never told that David took
any action to punish his son for what he had done. Infuriated by the incident and David’s lack
of action, David’s third son, Absalom, took matters into his own hands and
killed Amnon two years later on an evening when Amnon had had a little too much
to drink. After killing his brother,
Absalom fled from Jerusalem
and remained away for three years, during which time David began to yearn for
him. Upon Absalom’s return, David
forgives him…but Absalom wasn’t quite done with his mischief making just
yet. Absalom returned to Jerusalem with a plan to
take over for his father, and he worked for four years to usurp his father’s
throne. Eventually, he was successful,
being crowned King at Hebron and forcing David
to flee Jerusalem
to preserve his own life. Then, as a
visible sign to the people that Absalom was now in charge of things, Absalom
made it a regular practice of laying with David’s concubines in public.
Sounds
like a really great kid, doesn’t he? The son that every man dreams of having
one day, right? Not so much….
After
Absalom usurped the throne, David sent one of his trusted friends into serve on
Absalom’s court and spy on him, but otherwise, David took a pretty passive
stance on the whole thing, trusting that the Lord would take care of him in the
future, regardless of whether he was on the throne or not. Eventually, however,
David does muster an army together to go in and take back David’s place on the
throne…and this is where our reading from this morning comes in. David’s army has requested that for his
safety, David not be allowed to go into battle.
They reasoned that if people didn’t know who they were and things didn’t
go according to plan, they could slip out easier than if David was with
them. David agrees to this, but makes
one plea in the presence of his men…and that was to deal gently with his son
Absalom. That’s his only request before
sending the troops to battle.
It’s
a very interesting request that David makes…for the troops to deal gently with
his son. A son who killed his brother,
usurped his father’s throne and attempted to murder his father in the process,
slept with his father’s concubines and did everything he could to make a
mockery out of his father to prove that he was the one in charge now. Absalom had not only become a political and
military enemy, he had become a threat to David’s very life. And yet, in this moment of preparation before
battle, David chose to be a father before he was a king and to request that the
life of his son be spared.
As
a person who is not a parent of a human child, I don’t know that I get it 100%.
I know that throughout my entire life I have been reminded by my own parents
time and time again that there could never be a reason for them to stop loving
me. But I also am aware of family
situations where parent/child relationships have been broken and estranged for
reasons that are nowhere near as severe as throne usurping, attempted
murder…even though the betrayal felt in those broken relationships may feel
that severe in the moment, or even years down the road.
So,
in the aftermath of the great betrayal and rebellion of Absalom, I see vast
amounts of grace in David’s request that his son be treated gently by David’s
army. But as it turns out, it was the
forest that first dealt harshly with Absalom, followed by David’s disobedient
men. Joab disobeys David’s orders and
has Absalom killed after finding him stuck in a tree by his hair, and when
David is informed of this by the second runner, we see in the end of our text
not the joy of a king whose enemy has been vanquished, but the grief of a
father who loved his son dearly and without condition. David was not a perfect man, he was actually
a bigger scoundrel than we call him on.
There were times in his life, especially after the incident with
Bathsheba where David was anything but a man after God’s heart…but here we see
a man who gets it, who put down his crown to cry out in lament for his
son.
But
there is also a glimpse of something bigger, as if the story of David and
Absalom were to serve as a parable for readers of the Hebrew Scriptures in the
same way the parable of the prodigal son reached Gospel readers. I see in the story of David and Absalom, a
representation of the story of God and God’s people.
All
throughout scripture and beyond, we have seen a relationship between God and
God’s people that has been rocky, to say the least. Time after time we have rebelled against God
and betrayed God.
We
have fought ill-gotten religious wars in God’s name,
We
have murdered our brothers and sisters and treated others like they were less
than human,
We
have replaced our heavenly father by placing our trust in money, in our jobs,
and in ourselves,
We
are fighting a culture war brandishing weapons of fried chicken sandwiches and
waffle fries while 1 in 5 children in this nation go to bed hungry at
night.
Over
and over we have done things as acts of rebellion against our heavenly father
that we never should have done and have caused great damage to our relationship
with our creator. And the great irony of
the whole thing is that in the midst of the great amounts of pain that we
humans have caused each other and our heavenly father throughout the years,
God’s love and faithfulness remain steady and unwavering. Despite all the ways that we have been God’s
wayward children, God’s love for us has been so deep…God’s desire for us to be
protected from all the wrongs in the world so great, that God took a huge
barrier out of our way by sending Jesus to come among us, show us the love of
God in the most tangible of ways, cause some holy trouble by eating with the so
called “wrong” people, and went to the cross so through that act we could be
freed from our sin to have the boldness and confidence to call out to our
heavenly parent and know that we will be heard.
David
was an imperfect man with a rebellious son, but in a story of a father’s love
for his wayward son, we see God’s love for us, God’s wayward children and a
faithfulness that is unwavering.
So,
carry on God’s wayward daughters and sons, there’ll be peace when we are done,
lay your weary heads to rest, don’t you cry no more. Amen
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