O Absalom! (Sermon)

“O Absalom!”

2 Samuel 18

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/9/15

         Absalom is David’s son. So one can really feel the pathos in David’s lament. In fact, it is enough to make most of us want to grab someone we love and hold on for dear life.

There is more to the story, though. Absalom’s death is no isolated tragedy. It represents a culmination of years of one family’s lustful treacheries, incestuous violence, poisonous revenge, and shameless treason. And all this dysfunction stems from the family’s basic bankruptcy: Their failure to learn the admittedly difficult, but life-giving and healing and art of forgiveness.

         Let’s remember highlights from the backstory.

         Not long after David claims kingly power, power claims the king. Upon seeing the beautiful Bathsheba, David sends servants to find out who she is. He learns that she is the wife of Uriah, one of one of David’s military leaders.

‘Bring her to me, anyway,’ says the king.

A month later, Bathsheba sends word to David that she is pregnant. David immediately sends for Uriah, planning to get the husband to enjoy a little R&R at home with the wife, thereby covering the king’s entitlement-fueled betrayal. Faithful to his fellow soldiers and oblivious to the state of affairs, Uriah refuses to take time for things his men cannot enjoy. Desperate, David arranges a front-line assignment for the cuckolded warrior. Had Uriah volunteered for that post, it would have been a suicide mission. On David’s order, it becomes murder.

Later, when David’s children are grown, his son Amnon takes a shine to his own half-sister, Tamar, who is a full sister to Absalom. With the help of his servants, Amnon orchestrates some alone time with Tamar. After forcing himself on his sister, Amnon does the predictable thing. He throws Tamar out with duplicitous loathing.

In a cruel culture that faults women for suffering sexual violence, Tamar must take a profound risk. She must reveal her shame to someone – someone with enough power either to protect her or kill her. She tells her brother, Absalom. He takes her in, and immediately begins to plot the assassination of Amnon.

         With Tamar’s defilement irrevocably avenged, Absalom must flee Jerusalem. Three years later, David invites Absalom to return, but it takes the father two more years to welcome his fratricidal son back into his presence, and to offer forgiveness. The two meet, but it is too little, too late. David’s forgiveness only releases Absalom to his next mischief.

         Finally free to move about, the stunningly handsome and charismatic Absalom begins a subversive campaign. He tells disaffected Israelites, Boy-O-Boy, if I were king, I’d sure take better care of you than David does.

(Is it just me, or does that sound familiar right now?)

After four years, the son asks the father for permission to go to Hebron so that he might make good on a promise to God. It is a ruse, of course. At Hebron, the site of David’s anointing, Absalom gathers a majority of Hebrews and declares himself king of Israel.

         Outnumbered now, David flees Jerusalem. After two-and-a-half chapters of political espionage and prophetic intrigue, we get to the story of Absalom’s brutal execution.

Staring up at the ravaged, lifeless body of the king’s son swinging from a tree by his thick hair, Joab, one of David’s principal commander, who has just done what David publically asked him not to do, sends a lowly Cushite to break the news. Messengers who bring the report of a king’s personal tragedy are often killed. But hearing of his son’s death, all David can do is to heave his cries of overpowering grief and devastating guilt.

         “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

         There is a fascinating observation in this story. It invites reflection into the often furious realities of life. The storyteller informs us that when David’s and Absalom’s armies meet: “The battle spread over the face of all the country; and the forest claimed more victims that day than the sword.” (2 Samuel 18:8)

         The primordial forest of vengeance, envy, resentment, and greedy power reduces virtually everyone to predator and prey. And a combatant knows for sure which one he is only at the moment when he takes a life or loses his own. And if he survives that moment, everything may change the next.

         It seems to me that as long as individuals and communities choose to homestead in the disorienting forest of vengeance, envy, resentment, and greedy power, we will continue to deal violently and deviously with each other. As long as the powerful benefit from these fearful and one-sided arrangements, we will call them “good,” our Manifest Destiny. And we bequeath our arrogant and destructive ways from one generation to the next.

         References to “the sins of the fathers” begin in Exodus 20. The second commandment links inherited misery to the worship of idols – an idol being any tangible thing or personal bias which we elevate to the status of Mystery, and to which we grant creative or redemptive power. Kingly authority is an example.

         When Israel demands a king so that they will be “like other nations,” the prophet Samuel tries to talk them out of it.

Think carefully about this, he says. A king will only lead you deeper into the primordial forest of vengeance, envy, resentment, and greedy power. If you become like other nations, you will find yourselves demoted from God’s Image Bearers to predators and prey. Worldly kings live by fear and by sword. They will regard you and your children as Cushites, as renewable and expendable resources. But suit yourself.

When Absalom, David’s physically beautiful son, dies in that forest, something in all of Israel dies. “O my son Absalom…Would I had died instead of you!” David’s lament becomes God’s lament. From this moment on, Israel begins to realize, ever so slowly, that Yahweh is far more than a projection of their own jealous pride. She begins to realize that being chosen by Yahweh has nothing to do with being entitled. Yahweh has chosen Israel to serve as a visible witness to all of creation, a witness to the eternal strength of grace, a strength manifested most frequently, most memorably, and most transformingly in the gift of forgiveness.

         Forgiveness is not about dismissing past offenses and animosities. To give and receive forgiveness is to hitch our wagons to the open-ended future of Love.

         The first death and resurrection of Jesus happens at his temptation. After facing down his own internal David and Absalom, Jesus returns from the wilderness – from the primordial forest. He returns, cured of any desire to live as a fearful, vengeful predator.

         At that first resurrection, God cries, You are my son, my beloved son!

From that point on, Jesus lives as prey, and he does so willingly. To predators, his grace smells like weakness, so they come running. Yet even when the predators kill the Son, the Father reveals his relentless commitment to forgiving grace.

         And on Easter morning God cries, O Humanity, my child! I have died and risen that you might live! O Humanity, my child, my beloved child!