O My Son!

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

2 Samuel 18:6-15; Matthew 27:45-54

February 3, 2014 • Portage First UMC

In the 1990’s, a political crisis erupted in the state of Israel, and while such things aren’t unknown in that part of the world, this one happened to center around a man who had been dead for centuries. Shimon Peres, then the Foreign Minister of Israel was accused of slandering this man’s name during parliamentary debate, and his words caused there to be three motions of “no confidence” votes against the government. Worse, it was an election year, and the coalition government was afraid that this controversy, over a man long dead, would have devastating effects on their chances, so they urged Peres to make a public apology. He would not, though he did say he did not intend the comments the way they were taken. The man he supposedly slandered? King David, Israel’s ancient monarch. His actual words, spoken in the debate, were these: “Not everything that King David did, on the ground, on the rooftops, is acceptable to a Jew or is something I like” (Goldingay, 1 & 2 Samuel for Everyone, pgs. 159-160). Well, I would agree with Peres. You probably would, too. As we’ve been looking at David’s story these last few weeks, we’ve discovered that, though he was without a doubt a great king and he was a “man after God’s own heart,” he was also very imperfect. He made mistakes, he sinned, he strayed away from God. In other words, he was human. He was a man who sometimes comes across as a great hero, or a great man of God, a warrior and a consummate leader. And at other times he is a cunning schemer or an incompetent procrastinator. David is the one who took on the giant Goliath, and he’s also the one who ordered the death of one of his soldiers so that he could take the man’s wife. He’s a puzzle, and in the story we come to this morning, we see that all to clearly, because in this morning’s passage, David has to deal with suffering—deep down suffering. The death of his son is only the tip of the iceberg.

As we know, David has certainly been no stranger to death, or tears. He’s no stranger to murder, to disappointment, or even to sin (Peterson, Leap Over a Wall, pgs. 193-194). And yet, nothing really compares with what he’s about to experience. When we left David last week, he was firmly established as the king of all Israel. When we pick up the story today in 2 Samuel 18, he’s fighting against a rebellion. How did we get here? The story really begins eleven years earlier. David had many children by multiple wives, but David seems to have not paid a lot of attention to what was going on in his household. Perhaps he’s too busy administrating the kingdom. Perhaps he thinks they’ll figure it out on their own. Perhaps he’s still trying to forgive himself for the mess with Bathsheba. Meanwhile, his children are growing up. His daughter, Tamar, is beautiful, and her half-brother, Amnon, notices her. In fact, he thinks he is in love with her, but he’s really just in lust with her. He lets his attraction consume his thoughts until he can think of nothing else. And then he rapes Tamar. And once he has gotten what he wanted, he sends her away. In fact, the writer of 2 Samuel says Amnon hated Tamar more than he had ever loved her (13:15). Tamar is a “desolate” woman (13:20), and then Absalom, Tamar’s brother, learns what Amnon did. So does King David, and he’s “furious,” but he doesn’t do anything about it. He doesn’t punish Amnon and he doesn’t seem to console Tamar. He just gets mad about it, but has no other response.

So Absalom takes matters into his own hands. Now, to be fair, he gave his father plenty of time to punish Amnon. Absalom plots and plans for two years, and then he brutally murders his half-brother. Absalom runs away, knowing he has done a horrible thing, and again, David does nothing. He wants to go to Absalom, but he doesn’t (13:39). For three years, Absalom lives away from the capital and his family. Three years in exile. Now it’s been five years since Tamar’s rape. Five years for Absalom to plot and plan and grow bitter.

After the three years, he is allowed to return to Jerusalem, but David refuses to see him. It’s not really forgiveness; it’s sort of a royal pardon. It’s an impersonal welcome, not a fatherly embrace (Peterson 196). For four years, Absalom lives in Jerusalem without seeing his father, without receiving any word of forgiveness. David would not give his son so much as a look. Maybe you’ve been in such a situation, where a family is broken over an action or a word carelessly spoken, where family members won’t speak to or see each other. Maybe the brokenness came from something even more serious, like abuse or criminal activity. Or perhaps you haven’t been in such a situation—if so, give thanks. A family is supposed to be the group that loves you no matter what, who cares for you when no one else will. To lack the support of your family is a devastating thing. If you haven’t been there, try to imagine what it would be like to be completely cut off from those family members you hold most dear, from the folks who have been there for you since you were born. That’s where Absalom is. Now, I’m not trying to excuse what he did, not by any means, but I don’t want to excuse David, either. David, who has been forgiven for crimes similar to what Absalom has done, now is determined to refuse his son what he himself has come to depend on (cf. Peterson 197). Did Jesus, perhaps, have this story in mind when he told us, “If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15)? Day by day, David denies Absalom forgiveness and love; he even denies his son his presence.

And so, Absalom begins plotting again. He spends four years planning, scheming, working his plan, winning the hearts of the people, until the time finally arrives where he feels he has more support than his father. Word comes to David, “The hearts of the people are with Absalom” (15:13). Absalom proclaims himself king, and David runs. He runs, oddly enough, back to the wilderness where once he spent so much time running away from King Saul. And there, he is once again an exile. His son has taken the kingdom from him, some of his officials have betrayed him, and people have even thrown rocks at him as he left town. They stood on the ridge above the road and yelled at him, “Get out of town, you worthless old man! You’re a murderer! You’re a dirty old man! This is what God has done to you because of your sin! Get out!” And you have to wonder if the stones or the words hurt more in those moments (cf. 16:5-8; Peterson 198-199).

The rape of Tamar led to Amnon’s murder. Amnon’s murder led to Absalom’s exile. And David’s silence led to hardheartedness on all sides. Somewhere along the way, even after his encounter with God after the Bathsheba affair, David has once again lost track of God. Now, I’m not saying that his neglect of his relationship to God caused his suffering or his exile; there are plenty of people in our world today, plenty of preachers even, who would say such a thing. But that’s not the witness of Scripture. Rather, the message of the Bible is this: everyone is subject to suffering. I’d really like to be able to stand up here and tell you that once you come to Christ, you’ll never have to suffer again. I’d like to tell you that a right relationship with Jesus guarantees a pain-free existence. But to tell you that, I’d have to lie to you. Following Jesus, worshipping God, does not exempt anyone from suffering, from hard times. The last time I checked, believers are in automobile accidents just as often as nonbelievers. We get cancer at the same rate as non-Christians. Studies indicate that divorce breaks up Christian families at the same rate as non-Christian families. And, as Eugene Peterson observes, “When you hit your thumb with a hammer, it hurts just as much after you’ve accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior as it did before” (194). Suffering and hard times aren’t an impersonal fate or a cut-and-dried moral punishment, either. In other words, you can’t say to someone, “Well, you’re suffering because you sinned.” if we do that, we're like the folks who were throwing rocks at David. It’s not helpful, and it’s not true. The truth is this: our world is sinful and broken, and sometimes we do get caught up in the consequences of our own sin and sometimes we get caught in the sins of others. Suffering comes because of brokenness, and for anyone to try to draw a straight line between cause and effect is not helpful. Undoubtedly, David knows why he’s now living in Mahanaim (17:24), but he’s not gone there to look back or feel sorry for himself. He’s gone there to move ahead with his life and see what might come out of his suffering. Unfortunately, for David, the outcome is a mixed bag, because in the midst of his recovery, there will be yet more suffering.

David gathers his troops and goes out to battle against Absalom and his army. David himself doesn’t go—and it’s not like last time, where he’s bored and hanging around the palace. This time, it’s at the advice of his general, Joab, based on David’s value as the king. In other words, if they get you, David, they’ve really won. Let us fight for you. And so David agrees, but as they go out to battle, he stands at the gate and tells them all, “Be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake” (18:5). What a strange command! After all David has been through, why would he tell them to take care of Absalom? Absalom is the enemy. He’s the one to be destroyed. He’s been undermining David’s rule for many years. He’s chased his own father into the wilderness. But remember, the wilderness is where everything else is stripped away, and we find we have only God to depend on. Once again, in the wilderness, David becomes more his true self, more the man God intends him to be. There, in the wilderness, in the midst of his suffering, David rediscovers compassion. “Be gentle with Absalom.”

It would be easy to look at what happens here and think of David as weak, that somehow compassion has made him a lesser man. But nothing could be further from the truth. Compassion takes a great amount of character, strength and courage. The word literally means “to suffer with,” to experience another person’s situation as if it were your own. For David, it means he understands—or is at least trying to understand—why Absalom has responded this way, and even perhaps take his part of the responsibility. Compassion means we might have to put aside our own desires, our own priorities—most likely even our own sense of what is right and wrong—and consider the situation of someone else. Compassion is more than feeling sorry for someone because they’re grieving or because they are hurting. Compassion is entering into their suffering. It’s Job’s three friends who come to sit with him. Do you remember the story of Job? He loses everything—his home, his children, his wealth, and then he gets a serious illness that causes him great discomfort. His wife tells him to curse God and die, but Job won’t do that. He asks why he should only accept good things from God and not difficult things. And then he has three friends who come and for a whole week, they just sit with him. They don’t say a word; they sit. They enter into his suffering. Compassion looks like that. Compassion looks like Mother Teresa, scouring the streets of Calcutta, India, looking for those who are dying, picking them up and bringing them back to her shelter so they can die with dignity. She took people no one else wanted, people no one else loved. Compassion looks like that. Compassion looks like medical personnel who ran toward the injured after the first bomb went off in the Boston Marathon last year. And compassion looks like a retired psychologist who lives across the street from Sandy Hook Elementary School. On the morning of the shooting in Newtown, he found six children sitting on his lawn. When he asked them what they were doing, one little boy said, “We can’t go back to school. Our teacher is dead.” So the man brought them toys and juice while he tried to find out what was going on. When a news reporter commended him later, he said, “Being a psychologist had nothing to do with it. I responded like a grandfather” (Yancey, The Question That Never Goes Away, loc 395, Kindle edition). Compassion looks like that.

And compassion looks like two men, sitting together one evening. One lost his son a number of years before, and the other has a daughter who is very, very ill. There are no answers, but compassion calls us to enter into the suffering of the other. Compassion looks like this.

VIDEO: “November Christmas: Dealt a Bad Hand”

“Be gentle with Absalom.” Compassion looks like that. Unfortunately, Joab is much more pragmatic than David is. When word reaches him that Absalom is caught in a tree, Joab goes after him. It appears that Absalon was riding through the forest where the battle is taking place, and somehow got his head caught in the branches. Most scholars think it was that his long hair, which he was very proud of (14:26), got tangled in the branches, while the mule he was riding kept going. And Absalom is left there, literally “hanging between heaven and earth” (Youngblood, “1, 2 Samuel,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 3, pg. 1019). His mule, his royal mount, leaves him behind, which becomes a symbol of Absalom losing the kingdom as well. Joab comes upon him and thrusts three spears into his heart, then he makes way for ten other men to come in and abuse the king’s son, making sure he’s really dead. The body is taken, then, thrown into a pit and covered with rocks. Today, outside the walls of Jerusalem in the Kidron Valley, there is a monument called “Absalom’s Tomb.” It sits across the valley from the Temple Mount, and in past times, it was the custom for Jews, Christians and Muslims to throw a stone at the tomb anytime they walked by. Now, the monument itself is empty; there is no body buried there. It’s also not the monument referred to in verse 18, as it was actually built sometime in the first century (Knight, The Holy Land, pg. 94), but the symbolism is still powerful. In spite of David's compassion toward his wayward son, people throughout the centuries have treated Absalom as a villain.

But David cannot. When word reaches him of Absalom’s death, the Bible says David was “shaken” (18:33). He goes into a private room and weeps, calling out, “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!” It has to be one of the most heartbreaking verses in all of Scripture, but it’s a cry that flows out of a compassionate heart. And I believe with everything that is in me that, in that moment, David reconnected with God, the God who had never left him, the God he knew to be faithful in all things. Why do I believe that? One, because at that moment, David is most reflecting the compassionate heart of God. He has entered into the suffering of the world, practicing compassion toward someone who really doesn’t deserve it. And two, because God knows what it’s like to lose a son.

In our Gospel lesson this morning, we read of the death of the Son of God. In Matthew’s account, there are all sorts of signs in the world that something is not right. As Jesus hangs on the cross—between heaven and earth—he feels forsaken by God the Father. When he cries out one last time, the curtain in the Temple that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the space is torn in two—from top to bottom. Tombs break open. Dead men rise and wander into Jerusalem. Can you imagine what that was like? “Didn’t we just have your funeral last week?” There’s an earthquake, and all sorts of things. God’s grief at the death of his son impacts the whole creation, so much so that one of the hardened Roman soldiers standing near the cross says, “Surely he was the Son of God!” (27:54). Now, you may want to quibble with me over the timeline and how time works with God, or what God knows ahead of time, but I don’t want to argue that with you. I only say this: the book of Genesis tells us that from the moment of the very first sin, God knows he will have to send a savior, to rescue the people, someone to crush the serpent’s head (cf. Genesis 3:15). So God knows what it’s like to mourn the death of a son.

And out of God’s great compassion, he comes near us in times of suffering. In fact, we learn things when we suffer we could not learn any other way. David is a different king because of the suffering and the hardships he’s been through over these years. You probably know people who have had priorities shifted because of difficult times. Suddenly, the cancer comes or the death happens and the job isn’t so all-powerful or all-important as we once thought. The crisis comes and suddenly we realize that much of what we value won’t last. So, as people who have been through times of suffering like David, how do we then respond to those who are going through it right now?

I spoke with a respected mental health counselor this week (okay, so it was my wife!) about how people generally respond in times of suffering, and there seem to be three general responses. There are those who are uninvolved, who stand on the sidelines and simply wait until it’s over. These are the folks in Jerusalem who didn’t really care who was king, as long as they didn’t have to get involved. So they supported neither David nor Absalom, nor did they learn anything from the experience. Compassion was not important, so they simply stayed on the side and made no difference to anyone. These are the folks who simply exist, who don’t care beyond their own world.

A second response is found in those who intensify the pain, the suffering. Sometimes these are folks who set out to intentionally do harm to another, but by and large these are the folks who say things they mean to be comforting but are not. In Congregational Care, we talk about eight things not to say to those who are suffering, and to be perfectly honest, a lot of times we say these things because we don’t know what to say. We’re uncomfortable with silence, and so we say things just to fill the void. As you heard in the video, sometimes people say things that even push people away from God. They don’t mean to; they mean to be comforting, but some things we say simply are not. Here are the eight things we go over in Congregational Care, along with a few somewhat cynical responses: “God must have needed him in heaven.” (Yeah, well, I need him down here.) “I know just how you feel.” (No, you don’t. And it’s not about you, anyway.) “God will give you another child.” (That is horribly insensitive. Even if another child is born, that will never fill the void of one who is lost.) “God told me he’ll heal you.” (Really?) “Time heals all wounds.” (Not always.) “God must me trying to teach you something.” (This is an incredibly arrogant thing to say, and it’s also patronizing, as if you know their life better than they do.) “If you do what I did, then you’ll be much better.” (And who made you the expert?) “My aunt Mildred had the same problem…” (And yet every situation is different, and every person is different.) We’re not called to package people’s pain or somehow explain away their suffering, as if we could (Bill, online article in CCM files). We’re called, instead, to learn compassion and to enter into the other’s pain.

That brings us to the third response: the ones who restore. Remember, the word “compassion” means to “suffer with.” To sit with the other person like Job’s friends did. To gather together with those who are hurting like the disciples did in the Upper Room after the crucifixion. The Gospels tell us that they went back to the last familiar place, the place where they had shared dinner together Thursday night, when Jesus was still with them. They came together, a bit in fear and more seeking comfort from each other. No one else knew really what they had been through. So they came together and offered compassion to one another. There is a “fellowship of sufferings” out of which, often, the most compassionate response can come. That’s why, as a part of our Congregational Care Ministry, we’re going to begin offering a series of classes that are aimed at different types and stages of grief. We want to create safe places where you can come together to find healing and hope. The first class will be starting in April—which isn’t as far away as you might think!—and will focus on a book called “Beyond the Broken Heart.” Compassion looks like people who help restore one another.

You see, compassion is not about writing a check or trying to make someone hurry through their suffering. The story of the Bible, from the Old Testament to the crucifixion of Jesus, is that redemption and healing and hope come not by going around the difficulty but by going through it. Compassion requires face-to-face contact, human contact, knowing someone else cares enough to sit with you, to listen to that story for one hundredth time, to pray for and with you. Our Congregational Care Ministers stand ready to be that person for you, to offer compassionate care. And compassion also sometimes comes in a sharp word from a trusted friend. Joab has been David’s general for so many years, and they have developed a relationship that’s rooted in deep trust. That’s why Joab can come to him and tell him he needs to pull it together. The troops are thinking of deserting because they hear him mourning Absalom, the man they have just risked their lives trying to protect David from (19:1-8). Now, Joab's words may sound unkind, but it’s really a compassionate and caring response. Joab knows he can speak this way to David because of the trust between them. Sometimes we need a Joab in our lives for all those times when we can’t see beyond our own suffering. Sometimes compassion looks like a sharp word, but if the word is spoken at the wrong time or without that deep trust, it can be devastating. The main goal in any act of compassion is to help us see how God can use even this, even our suffering, even our pain. God can use it. God didn’t cause it. God didn’t kill Absalom. But God can use our suffering, our hurt, our wounds. God can use even this.

Leo Buscaglia, who was professor of special education at USC, was once asked to judge a contest to choose the “most compassionate child.” The contest would be based upon stories of caring or service submitted by parents, relatives, or friends. Buscaglia read many stories, but the one he chose was a four-year-old child who lived next door to an elderly man who had just lost his wife. One day, he was peeking through the fence and he saw the old man in tears, so the little boy went through the gate, climbed up on the widower's lap, and sat there for a while. Later, his mother asked the boy what he had said. “Nothing,” he responded. “I just helped him cry.” Compassion looks like that. Let us pray.