October 21, 2018 “Father’s Pain” – II Samuel 18:19-33

II Samuel 18:19-33, Kingdoms pp. 163, 164
“Father’s Pain”
October 21, 2018 – Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

The soap opera digest reads: “Tycoon Darin sleeps with Brittany, whose husband Eustice is away on active military duty. When Brittany discovers she is pregnant, Darin arranges Eustice’s death. Darin then marries Brittany. Darin’s oldest son by a previous marriage, Arnold, rapes his half-sister Tara. Another son, Albert, is furious with his brother Arnold, but conceals his anger. Darin is angry when he hears about it, but does nothing. Two years later, Albert murders Arnold at a party, then runs, fearing his father’s anger. Darin gets a text message that all his sons died at the party, but one of his managers arrives to correct the mistake. Despite what Albert did, Darin misses him. One of Darin’s business partners, Jeremy, arranges a reconciliation between Darin and Albert, but at the last minute Darin backs out and refuses to meet with Albert. Albert then conspires to take over his father’s business. Darin relinquishes the business and accepts forced retirement. Jeremy murders Albert and brings Darin back to run the company again. Despite Albert’s conspiracy, Darin mourns for him.”

It could be a soap opera or a delightfully tawdry, sordid mini-series. But you do not need to look any further than the copy of Kingdoms or the Bible in your hand this morning. This is the story of the saddest chapters in David’s life. It is the Bible’s most graphic depiction of the fact that sin is an infectious disease. When David committed adultery with Bathsheba, he brought a germ into his household and created an epidemic.

You may have guessed who Darin and Brittany and Eustice are: David, Bathsheba, and Uriah. For the rest, Arnold is Amnon, the oldest son of David. On page 153 of Kingdoms, II Samuel 13, we read how he secretly loved Tamar, Tara in my soap opera, his half-sister. She was the full sister of Absalom, David’s third son, Albert in my imagination.

Frustrated, Amnon raped Tamar. In those days a marriage might have come of such an act, but Scripture says that afterward, like many rapists, Amnon hated her more than he had loved her. So Absalom took his violated sister into his home and protected her. He bided his time, then invited all the king’s sons to a sheep-shearing party. When Amnon was drunk, Absalom ordered his men to kill the rapist.

In discussions about these pages from Scripture, some of you wondered about David’s reaction to the rape. On page 154, all it says is that David “was very angry.” But he didn’t do anything. One wonders if all the death and pain to follow might have been avoided if God’s anointed leader had only forcefully denounced and punished sexual assault in his own family.

So some of us asked why David failed to act. Maybe it was because Amnon was the oldest, the heir to the throne. Like in our own government and in the church itself sometimes, sexual misconduct was ignored for political reasons. But perhaps another cause of David’s inaction is that, because of Bathsheba, he had no moral ground on which to stand. Accused by David, all Amnon would need to do is remind his father of his own assault and adultery with the wife of another man.

It’s a reminder that our sins have consequences. They sow seeds which sprout later. When we imagine that our financial cheating or our pornography or our secret jealousy and hatred really isn’t hurting anyone else too much, we need to remember that the disease is growing like a flesh-devouring bacteria. It will eat up our own souls and spread to the souls of others. That’s what happened in David’s family.

Absalom expected his father to be angry. He, third-born, had murdered the first-born. In the middle of page 155, the end of chapter 13, we learn that David continued to love Absalom. Despite rape and murder, David’s fatherly affection is strong, as it often is with parents whose children do wrong. For better or worse, God has placed in us an inclination to love our children even when they behave like jerks.

To understand David and Absalom, you need to know about Joab. He was a general of the army, but also David’s hatchet man. He was a political schemer of the first order. Whenever a dirty job needed to be done, Joab did it, whether David ordered it or not. He was not afraid to get his hands bloody and often decided for himself what was best for David and for the kingdom. There are always people like Joab in government. Maybe you can name a few in the capital today.

David’s love for Absalom remained even as the breach grew wider. Joab use that love to manipulate David. First, he maneuvered to bring Absalom back into the king’s good graces. But David still had some moral compass. Despite his love for his son, he could not accept murder of a brother and heir to the throne without losing his people’s respect. So Absalom returned to Jerusalem, but was refused admittance into David’s presence. Finally, after two years, there was a sort of reconciliation.

The bottom of page 156, chapter 14, shows us Absalom in Jerusalem after the reconciliation. He settled in. He was handsome and charismatic. He had gorgeous long hair. Picture Chris Hemsworth playing Thor. He would cut his hair and the locks would weigh in at about five pounds. He has children, including a beautiful daughter whom he named after his poor raped sister Tamar.

The name of his daughter is a clue to what follows. Absalom never let go of the past hurts. He waited two years to kill Amnon. David’s half-hearted reconciliation also sticks in his heart. He never forgets. He never forgives. So he planned his own political maneuvers. He started planting seeds of a rebellion.

We call the process Absalom followed a campaign. On page 157, chapter 15, he got himself a chariot and rode around with fifty men running in front of him, making sure everyone would know his handsome face and recognize his hair. He stood by the road to the city gate, waiting for people bringing a case before the king. He would stop them and, like a clever campaigner does, listen carefully. Then he told them what they wanted to hear, “You’ve really got a strong case here.” Then he slipped in a dig at his father, “It’s too bad the king doesn’t have anyone to hear it.” Then a little self-promotion, “I wish I were the judge. Then… I would give them justice!” Sound familiar from politicians today?

Absalom had some social smarts too. He pretended to be humble. He literally kissed up to everyone. Thus we read, “and so he stole the hearts of the people of Israel.” The result was open revolution. After four years, Absalom gathered followers outside the city. Even David’s most trusted advisor, Ahithophel, went over to Absalom’s side.

When David saw the force arrayed against him, he conceded without a fight and fled his palace into the country. Absalom entered Jerusalem and took over his father’s kingdom. It gets even more complicated. Absalom was advised by Ahithophel to pursue David immediately and finish him off. However, another advisor suggested gathering forces and waiting for the proper moment, which, you might imagine, fit well with Absalom’s tenacious tendency to wait and plot. But it was his downfall.

David had time to escape over the Jordan River and gather an army. He organized three companies led by Joab, Joab’s brother Abishai, and a man named Ittai. As commander in chief, he would lead them into battle against his son. But his men would not let him. What’s the point if David gets killed? They made him stay behind as they went out to meet the rebels. So in front of all the troops, David states his first priority. On page 162, chapter 18 verse 5, he directs the three commanders, “For my sake, deal gently with young Absalom.” For all that is happened, the son still has a place in his father’s heart.

It’s a gruesome battle. The rough wooded country claims as many lives as the fight itself. David’s forces are victorious. In the midst of all that death is some dark humor. Running away, Absalom rode a mule through the forest. That magnificent head of hair got caught in the branches of a tree. He was left hanging while his mule kept going. A man from Joab’s company found Absalom stuck there and reported to his general.

Ignoring what David ordered about Absalom, Joab asked why his soldier hadn’t killed him. The reward would have been ten shekels of silver. The man replied that even a thousand shekels would not be enough to go against the king’s direct order not to harm his son. Joab had no such scruples. Going to the tree, he stabbed Absalom with, not one, but three daggers. It’s the end of Absalom. We come to today’s text, which we should read now.

“Oh my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom!” There is no king here. The man walking up the stairs is not a victorious general. David is now only a father. The rebellion is forgotten. The kingdom does not matter. His tired army is ignored. All he cares about is a lost son. A little further on, we read that Joab took him to task for being so sentimental and making his people feel bad on a day when they should have been celebrating victory.

There is something terribly wonderful here in David’s loss and pain, his pain as the father of a son now dead. In this moment David is no different from those of us who have felt pain on account of our children. His words cut right to the heart of how we may sometimes feel: “If only I had died instead of you! O Absalom, my son, my son!”

Growing up, I had asthma. So did my sister. Treatment for it was not like today. There were many nights when one or both us would lie in bed, with a humidifier running nearby, struggling to breathe. Our mother would sit in a chair beside us or lie in bed in the next room, listening to our wheezes scrape in and out of little lungs, praying for our chests to loosen so we could fall asleep.

For a long time, all I understood was the pain I felt from asthma. It frightened me and kept me from activities I wanted to do. It hurt. What I did not realize was the hurt it caused our mother. Years later it took only a couple of nights with my own daughter and her asthma to realize how my mother must have felt. Mom told me, but it made no impression until I felt it for myself. Even knowing what asthma felt like, I would have taken Susan’s place. I would have gone through it again if it meant she did not have to. I learned that parents in such moments would willingly accept the place of their children. It would be less suffering to struggle with pain in our own bodies, than to see our child suffering.

Some of you know what I mean to be saying. You’ve sat by your child’s hospital bed waiting for a word from the doctor. You’ve stood by a window late at night, hoping to see your rebellious child drive in. Whatever pain he or she was in, yours was—in some mysterious way—even greater. It was the agony of helplessness, the pain of love which can do nothing. You couldn’t even be brave because it was not your bravery which was needed. Your strength didn’t count because someone else needed to be strong. There was nothing you could do and that was the worst pain of all.

That was David climbing the stairs to his room over the city gate. He was completely helpless in the face of his son’s pain and death. He hoped to protect him, to shield him from consequences, but it had not worked. Now all he could do was cry out in despair, wishing he might have taken Absalom’s place, that he might have died instead of his son.

Perhaps everyone experiences David’s feeling in one form or another. Maybe not for a child, but for a sister or brother, for a friend, or for a spouse. In that reversal of roles that comes in the second half of life, you may feel it for your own father or mother. Whoever it is, you know this aching desire to relieve their pain by putting yourself in their place.

If you can feel David’s pain, then you are feeling the pain of God. Our deepest feelings teach us about the One whose image we bear. Peter Berger called such feelings “signals of transcendence.” When we experience them, they point us to something higher and greater. In our pain as humans loving other humans, we feel the mystery of God’s love. We feel the Father’s pain.

If there were no other lessons here, it would be almost enough to realize that, however deep your hurt for the sake of a person you love, the love of God the Father brings Him the same kind of hurt for your sake. The Father sits by every sick bed, waits by every window, mourns over every grave. He loves His children without measure and they bring Him sorrow in like proportion. If nothing else, there is comfort here in the fact that God, more than anyone, knows how David felt for Absalom. He knows how you feel in the same kind of moments.

The hardest question for faith is pain. Pain makes us doubt. Science and history and philosophy can ask tough questions about Christianity, but it is suffering that demands an answer. In this potboiler story from David’s life is a brilliant answer: Whatever the pain, God the Father feels it. He takes it on Himself like you take on the sorrows of the ones you love. He knows and shares it all.

It would almost be enough to know that God feels our pain. It would be nearly sufficient just knowing the Lord’s heart shares our sorrow. But the glory and the grace is that there is still more here in God’s Word. God is greater than David. He is not helpless. You never hear God saying, “If only…” like David weeping in his bedroom. God can and did do what David only wished. The king of Israel could merely cry, “My son! If only I had died instead of you.” The God of Israel says to us, “My children! I have died instead of you.”

We read it from Jesus Himself this morning, Mark 10:45, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” It was there in our text from Hebrews 5 too, Jesus offering His prayers with loud cries and tears on our behalf, feeling our pain and taking it on Himself. God the Father did what David the father could not. Through the gift of One Child who was Himself, He took the place of all His other children. On the Cross, God Himself died for your sin and for your pain.

There is more than comfort here. There is hope. There is the sure hope that God in Christ Jesus takes upon Himself all the sorrow and pain of our lives. In the infinite love and goodness of God, there is room enough to swallow up all that pain as though it had never been. I know because He did it for me.

This text was one of the first I ever preached, maybe my third or fourth sermon, delivered in my college years in a tiny Baptist church in Topanga Canyon. I chose the text, not really thinking much about why it moved me. But I see pretty clearly now that the absence of a father in my own life drew me toward a story about a father who loved his son as much David loved Absalom. And it drew me beyond that to recognize how much God my Father loved me and what it might mean to be a father someday. God took the pain of my own father’s absence and transformed it into a desire to be a good father myself.

Like our love does for us, the love of the Father brings Him pain. His heart breaks in the same places ours do. But His pain brings us hope. For the pain of the Father is the end of pain and the beginning of joy. His heart is the one heart that cannot be broken forever. He can bring all breaking hearts into His own and heal them there by the gift of His own suffering. The love of God in Jesus is your hope because it is love that really has taken your place, really has suffered in your stead. Here is a Father whose love can truly take away the pain of His children. His love is our hope.

I assure you of that hope today. Part of the reason the Bible records all this history of David’s family is to make clear how and why Solomon followed David. God took David’s sin with Bathsheba, his weak handling of his sons, his own pain as a father and used it all to insure that the next king of Israel would be a wise man. God does the same sort of thing in our lives, working out in His plan in ways we may not understand at the time, but bringing good out of all the evil and pain.

We heard Hebrews 5:8 and 9, that Jesus the Son learned through what He suffered and was perfect, so that “he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” We hope in Him because His is the greatest love of all. His love not only made Him take your place in death. It caused Him to be raised from the dead to give you a place in His life. In the eternal life of Jesus, you have the hope of a life with God beyond all hurt and sorrow. Our Father’s pain went far beyond what ours can. He died and rose to life for you so that you can live too. Trust in His pain. Trust in His life. Trust in His love.

Amen.