David and Absalom

Church of the Incarnation

Nov. 14, 2010

II Samuel 15:13-16; 18:9, 14b-15, 31-33

Gospel: Luke 15:11-13, 17-20

The families we grow up in affect how we develop and who we become.  As we mature, we slowly begin to make our own choices.  We keep some of what we liked.  We reject the rest.  And on another level it shapes us in ways that are largely unconscious.

Take my family as an example.  Stephanie grew up with a very affectionate and sensitive father - soft spoken and encouraging.  I grew up in a house where speech was loud, coarse and sarcastic.  Weathering the verbal assaults of others was both a daily necessity and a badge of honor.  Needless to say, we haven’t yet found the sweet spot of how to communicate well with one another.  Or again, I find wrestling with the boys on the living room floor after dinner to be a quite natural way to wind down the evening.  Stephanie finds it not such a great way to cap a day.  In my family, wrestling - with a little side-dish of verbal abuse - was the safest way to both work off a little energy and to show affection.  Stephanie’s family communicated by . . . talking!  We’ve been married 16 years, and we are still discovering how deeply our lives are shaped by our respective families.

In the mess of all our memories, we remember scenes with our parents.  And deeper than the particular memories is a basic emotional touchstone for how our parents make us feel.  For some, those memories and emotional points are warm and happy.  For others, not so much.  Regardless, they affect how we pursue our own lives of work and friendships.  They also affect the way we imagine and relate to God.  

In Scripture, God is pictured as “father,” as the head of a family, as a kind of parent.  Part of growing up into spiritual maturity is learning to make distinctions between your own family’s dynamics and the way Christians talk about and live with God.  When we pray to “Our Father in Heaven,” this is NOT an invitation to project our own parents up onto a screen in the sky.  This is tough to learn.  And it doesn’t just happen automatically when you turn 21 or 31 or 41.  There are adults who have a hard time making progress in the life of faith because they are still relating to God as if God were simply a larger version of their parents.  And there are ten and twelve year olds who get it - that naming God as father is to speak in poetry, and it pushes language past its limits. 

David as Father

So let’s return for a final time to the life of King David.  As a father, David was an unmitigated failure.  At Hebron, where David reigned in the South for seven years, he had six sons by six women.  Then in Jerusalem, David fathered eleven more sons.  Solomon - David’s successor - was the fourth of those eleven.  That’s a total of seventeen sons, born to about as many women.  He had daughters too, of course.  But daughters don’t matter much in ancient Israel.

Amnon and Tamar

So David’s family was large, and good looking.  David was ruddy and handsome, and he collected wives who were beautiful as well.  One of his wives was Maacah, the beautiful princess of a nearby kingdom called Geshur. With Maacah, David had a daughter, Tamar, and a son, Absalom.  The narrator says of Absalom, “Now in all Israel there was no one to be praised so much for his beauty as Absalom; from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him” (14:25).  His sister Tamar was so beautiful that her half-brother Amnon couldn’t stop thinking about her.  “David’s son Amnon fell in love with Tamar.  Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her” (13:1-2).  

What unfolds next is a scene that echoes David’s rape of Bathsheba.  Only this rape is incestuous.  Amnon pretends to fall sick.  He convinces David to have Tamar cook food for him..  From there the scene unfolds with cinematic progress towards an ugly ending.  When Tamar comes to feed him, he grabs her.  She pleads with him not to take her by force.  But Amnon is beyond listening.  He was stronger than she, and so he wins the fight.  The psychological dynamic that unfolds after this physical assault is even worse.  After the deed is done, he hates her with a hatred stronger than his initial desire.  And against her pleading, he sends her away in disgrace.

Here is what the text reports about David, the father to both Amnon and Tamar, the one tricked into making the whole thing possible: “When King David heard of all these things, he became very angry, but he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn” (13:21).  David’s failure to defend his daughter’s honor, and his failure to confront and punish his son Amnon, is damning and inexcusable.  And this failure unleashes a cascade of forces that will wreck his family and the people of Israel for years to come.

Absalom’s Revenge

The text tells us that Tamar lived “as a desolate woman in Absalom’s house” (13:20), and that “Absalom hated Amnon” (13:22).  For two years these half-brothers did not say a word to one another.  And David, the father, does nothing.

After two years, Absalom invited his father David to a feast celebrating a good year in the wool business.  Absalom kept large flocks of sheep.  David said no, I don’t want to burden you with my whole retinue, but you have my blessing.  Absalom then asked David specifically, “please let my brother Amnon go with us.”  Absalom presses him, and David relents.  David is duped again.  At the feast, Amnon gets drunk, and Absalom’s men strike and kill him.  Absalom does what his father refused to do.  He steps up and acts like the father the family needs.

David gets word that Amnon is dead.  And Absalom flees the country.  He is the prodigal son who leaves his father, and goes off into the far country.  There he lives in the agony of exile, waiting for a word from his father.  And he waits for three long years.  And he hears nothing.  Now, to be fair, the text does tell us that “The heart of the king went out, yearning for Absalom.”  Well, OK, maybe he did.  Yet he never communicated with Absalom.  Never sent word for him.  Never acknowledged that Amnon raped Tamar and he did nothing about it.  Never told him he missed him.  Never invited him home.  Never forgave him.  He was the father who never opened the door to starting something new with his prodigal son.

Absalom’s Rebellion

And David’s inability to connect with his exiled son creates a psychological drama that ends tragically for both of them.  Finally, after three years, David’s counsellors convince David that Absalom should be allowed to return home.  So David reluctantly, and half-heartedly, sends Joab to bring Absalom back to Jerusalem.  Here are the only instructions David gives his counsellors: “Let him go to his own house; he is not to come into my presence” (14:24).  

So Absalom returns to his house in Jerusalem.  But he is not welcomed back home by his father.  He never sees his father.  After two more years of this cruel silence, Absalom grows desperate.  Twice he makes requests to see his father.  Finally, he burns the fields of Joab.  It’s a violent threat - and it works.  Joab manages to secure for him a meeting with his father.  Absalom knows that this is a dangerous strategy.  But he can’t bear the punishing silence.  He wants to force his father to either kill him or forgive him.  

Here is how the text describes the crucial scene:  “So he came to the king and prostrated himself with his face to the ground before the king; and the king kissed Absalom” (14:33).  We might be tempted to read David’s kiss as a gesture of acceptance.  The text suggests otherwise.  We see Absalom’s posture - he is face down, begging for his father to forgive him and receive him.  And not a single word from David.  Five long years of silence.  And now finally they meet and still, only silence.

Something snaps in Absalom.  He begins to gather chariots and horses and followers.  Over the next four years Absalom wins over the people and plans a conspiracy, but David knows nothing.  When David gets word of the rebellion, it’s too late.  So David flees Jerusalem with his few remaining loyalists.  The picture of David leaving his capital of Jerusalem is poignant: “David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered and walking barefoot; and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went” (15:30).  

In the battle between David’s loyal troops and Absalom’s militia, David makes a request of his military commanders: “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom” (18:5).  He wants to quell the rebellion.  He wants those who conspired with Absalom killed.  But he asks them to protect his son.  David’s forces win.  And the camera zeroes in on a chase scene -- David’s military commander Joab has spotted Absalom trying to escape through the wilderness on his mule.  In the chase, Absalom’s mule runs under an oak tree, and the branches catch Absalom by the neck, and there he is, “hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on” (18:9).  Joab thrusts three spears into Absalom’s heart.  The the rest of Joab’s men surround the helpless Absalom and finish the job.

The text pictures David, back at Jerusalem, anxiously pacing at the city gates, waiting for word about Absalom.  For five long years he withheld his love from Absalom, and now it’s too late.  Word finally arrives that Absalom is dead.  “The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!  Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (18:33).  This is David the poet and singer.  This is the David who composed and sung eloquent laments for Jonathan and Saul.  Now he can only weep, repeating his son’s name over and over again.  This is a father in pain.  This is a father who has lost his son.

The Problem with Father Language

The story of David’s failures as a father bring into focus a real problem.  For many people, fathers and families call to mind the experience of pain and brokeness.  For others, fathers are tyrannical and oppressive.  If God is a father like David, I think all of us would say, “no thanks.”

So what should we do?  Really, as a church, what should we do?  This question about how to name God is enormously important for our spiritual lives and for this community.

One extreme would be to do nothing.  Change nothing.  Keep on calling God “father” and don’t ask questions.  Keep using predominately male imagery and male pronouns for God.  And if that language alienates people, tough.  Because God’s a Guy!  In the words of Sarah Palin to Harry Reid, “Man up!”

The other extreme would be to simply abandon talking about God as a father.  Try to get rid of the metaphor.  Don’t ever sing or pray to God as father.  And try our best to avoid the biblical stories that use father language for God.

Between those extremes there are several healthy ways to move forward.  

Perhaps using male pronouns less would help.  Replace “God himself” with “God Godself” whenever possible.  It’s a little awkward, but we can learn to say “God gives Godself to us in Jesus Christ” instead of “God gives himself . . . ”.   We can sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” instead of “Praise him . . . “.  This might help remind us that God isn’t male.  God isn’t an inflated version of our dads.

Perhaps we can do a better job of foregrounding female and motherly metaphors for God.  This would at least unsettle the many male metaphors, and make clear that God is no more male than female.  Or that God is just as much female as male.  Many of you know that I have a deep appreciation for feminist scholarship.  But to be honest, we don’t need external critics for help on this issue.  The Bible is very clear: God is a Mother just as much as God is a Father.  All throughout the Old Testament God is described as a Mother who nurtures and cares for her children.  The primary image in the New Testament for new life in Jesus Christ is that of new birth.  Obviously, that birth imagery assumes that God is the mother who gives us birth.  And let’s not forget.  Jesus tells three parables in Luke 15 - in the first God is compared to a shepherd.  In the third God is compared to a father of difficult sons.  But in the second, God is pictured as a woman sweeping a house, looking for a lost coin.

Perhaps most important is the traditional Christian confession that God lives beyond the limits of our language.  God is NOT a “Person.”  God is God.  And God is radically unlike everything we can know or experience.  That means that all the ways we talk about God are poetic.  God isn’t a large person who lives in the sky.  God is the creative ground and source of all that exists.  Yet God freely chooses to be made known to us in Jesus Christ, and in the gift of Scripture.  So we are invited to speak of God, to name God, to sing and pray to God with a variety of metaphors.  But our language is always poetic and provisional.  

God as Father

We inhabit a storytelling tradition.  One of Jesus’ strategies for helping us imagine the arrival of God’s newness is to tell stories about fathers.  There is something about father-stories that can illumine and open for us a whole new life.  Of course, if you never mature in the faith.  If you continue to hear these stories in a wooden way, as if God is “literally” a Father, you are dealing with a manageable idol and not with the wild and untame-able mystery of God.  

But if we can hear Jesus telling us a story about a father of two difficult sons - this can bring us into a wonderful experience of God’s love.  We are the ones who have left home and gone our own way and lost everything.  We are the ones who will continue to do so.  And every time you get sick of your life and decide to come back home, you have a father who’s already waiting on you, out in the middle of the road.  And when you’re just a speck cresting over the horizon, this father comes running.