Mourning Victory
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33

August 13, 2006


I now know where I was on December 6, 1959. I have remembered what I was doing, I just did not remember the date. I was watching the play “Absalom, My Son” on General Electric Theater. It was a studio play of the Biblical story of David and Absalom on Sunday night national TV. I doubt seriously whether such a theme would be allowed on any of the network channels today, yet that play was introduced by the regular host for General Electric (“progress is our most important product”), Ronald Reagan.

Burl Ives played the role of King David, Patricia Medina was Bathsheba, John Gabriel was Absalom, and John Abbott played Nathan. Only Ives is a recognizable name to me now, but I vividly remember watching the strange play. Absalom was hung up by his hair on a tree obviously located on a bare sound stage, hazily suggested rather than graphically portrayed as was the custom then. King David was in clear agony and mourning for his lost son as the curtain closed. This was performed in the style of a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy in which the tragic result, apparent to all participants and viewers, appears inevitable, a moving train these human beings find impossible to stop. It is the oldest, most human kind of story in which the central character is the cause of his own downfall. Tragedies involve and entangle the emotions and reflections of the audience in the sadness and disaster usually of a great person. You can never be neutral in the midst of a tragedy.

We are not unaccustomed to tragedy and do not need to visit a cinema or the Globe to watch its acts and scenes unfold. The problem is that the term “tragedy” has been overused to the degree it is difficult to distinguish what is authentically tragic or not. Moreover, there are so many events competing with our minds and emotions for the title of tragedy, that we come to expect tragedy and so no longer perceive anything as particularly tragic. September 11, the July 7th bombing of the London underground, Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Indonesia, the Israeli-Hezbollah war, the Iraq and Afghanistan civil wars all crowd our sensibilities so that it is easiest to view all of life, our entire human existence as tragic. Is God too a tragic figure?

The fact that this story follows the David and Bathsheba debacle is not random. The Lectionary guys selected this snippet of a long saga (2 Samuel 13-19) to fill out the prophetic words thrown at David by Nathan, a divine declaration of the way it’s going to be. “Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house.” This is not going to be the kind of Biblical story we tell to children. This will be too much like the stories we hear around us today to be our beloved Bible.

The tragedy belongs to David, not his son Absalom. And yet, it’s not David’s fault or due to his actions and causing. But it is his problem and that’s the tragedy.

Perhaps it really began with David having a lot of children by a number of wives. That will always do it! His oldest son Amnon lusts after his half-sister Tamar who is the full-blooded sister of Absalom, the third son of David. David is tricked into sending Tamar to Amnon who pretending to be ill then proceeds to rape her. Worse, an all too real reaction occurs as Amnon now despises Tamar for what he has done and wants to get rid of her. Absalom finds out and sees to it that Amnon is assassinated by his henchman. Absalom retreats into exile, but eventually is allowed to come back to Jerusalem, though he is banished from David’s presence until an emotional reunion.

That reconciliation just seems to give Absalom the boldness of other ideas - and Absalom is not a nice person. He cunningly built a little side consulting service with plaintiffs before the king. He would solve their problems and gradually acquired a huge following. Absalom went to David for funding to gather for a major worship service at Hebron, the first capital of David’s kingdom, and gathered his own kingdom of Israel. A messenger made it back to David, “The hearts of the Israelites have gone after Absalom.”

David knew what this really meant, and he picked up lock stock and barrel and left for exile. He left only 10 concubines to look after his house and the Ark of the Covenant. If God wanted David to rule, God would permit him to see it again. Oh, and one more person, David’s close friend, Hushai the Archite, who wanted to flee with David. David asked him to stay behind - like a mole in all the spy novels - and undo Absalom’s reign from within.

It is no wonder that this episode found its way onto television, for the screen play was already written in chapters 15-18 of 2 Samuel. Hushai the Archite was able craftily and credibly to confound the advice of Absalom’s wise adviser, and with messengers and spies scurrying about all over the Holy Land, Absalom found himself trapped. “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom” was David’s final instruction before the climactic battle began.

Absalom was supposedly caught by his long hair in the low branches of a tree. One of the soldiers reported this to Joab, the general of David’s army. The soldier remembered David’s fatherly concern, but Joab saw only the most dangerous enemy and quickly went to make certain Absalom was killed.

Victory that day for David. Victory, it seems, ordained and blessed by God. But for David, it was the death of his son, a death he wished had been his. The narrator tells us, “So the victory that day was turned into mourning for all the troops, for the troops heard that day, ‘The king is grieving for his son’” (2 Samuel 19:2). David’s genuine love becomes the tragedy.

Though it is his suffering that transforms the whole messy scene and makes us take notice. David’s suffering over Absalom doesn’t wipe out the violence and make it all better, but it does change the character of all that has happened. Remember that we don’t read this story without another story in mind: that Jesus suffered and was defeated and out of mourning for Jesus came victory. If David had simply and efficiently done away with the Absalom insurrection, we would just shake our heads sadly, but because David suffered the loss of his son so deeply, we shake our heads knowingly.

There are many who still ask, “How can this be the Bible?” The expectation of the Bible is that of a gentle teaching and leading toward a disciplined life of righteousness and love. “Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.” That’s what we expect of the Bible and Gospel. But as I remind many a couple being married, these gentle words were spoken by Paul to a congregation fraught with conflict and power struggles, sexual immorality and the tyranny and discrimination of the rich over the poor. The best kind of love seems to arise and flourish in the worst of times.

This is where we are standing: in 10th century B.C. and in the 21st century A.D. If you and I are going to attempt to live faithfully the Christian life, we have to live it amidst what is happening in the Holy Land, at Heathrow Airport and the London Underground, at Whitewood, Saskatchewan, in Baghdad and Kandihar, and perhaps even in the pews of a Corinthian congregation. David’s agonized struggle against his own son Absalom is not an aberration of the Biblical story - it is our story still.

David has been a horrendous sinner, but as the narrator declares, “Some time passed.” It’s not that the past is completely forgotten, but life goes on, no longer in paralysis. It is not David’s fault about the derelictions and violence of his sons, and is really not aware of what they are doing, and yet he is unwittingly involved in facilitating every part of their diabolical plots. He is the father helping out, but he helps in his own undoing, something hinted at by Nathan.

But once the danger is clear, David wakes up and shrewdly puts everything and everybody into motion. He is brilliant and is fortunate to have some loyal brilliant friends. There is never a moment in which we feel sorry for Absalom about whom nothing redemptive is ever mentioned.

God is barely mentioned in the story, and certainly not in the details. And where God is supposed to be acting on behalf of David, you really can’t see how it is happening. There is a tension throughout between the calculated moves of Joab and the compassion and personal love of David. We prefer David’s compassion, but he wouldn’t be alive without the other.

“You must be wise as serpents, but innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16) advised Jesus, and that is our tension, our struggle, our religious way of life still today. It is not a choice - let’s be clear - it is that the serpent and the dove have to coexist, and that will never be easy or routine or formulaic. It is when you are caught between the serpent and the dove, when you are torn between the practical and the personal, when you are convinced you have to decide between contrary values of life, that is where God tends to quietly interrupt.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan