Download Absalom, My Son, My Son - St Martin-in-the

Tenth Sunday after Trinity
12 August 2012
Absalom, My Son, My Son
A sermon by the Revd Dr Sam Wells
Readings: 2 Samuel 18 (abridged); John 6.35, 41-51
Have you ever had the feeling that we live in two worlds? The first one is full of stuff, of making a
living, making relationships, making a home, maybe making a family, of hobbies and TV and gossip
and plans and ideas and passions and wonderings and disappointments and failures and anger and
laughter. The first one is so absorbing, most of the time, that we assume it’s the only one. But then
in crashes the other world. Out of the blue a person you thought you could stake your life on says,
‘I’m sorry, there’s no nice way to say it, I hate hurting you this much, but… I’m leaving.’ The doctor
says, ‘I’ve got some bad news. The scan shows the tumour’s malignant.’ The phone rings, and a
quavering voice says, ‘There’s been an accident… you’ve got to come… I’m not sure she’s going to
make it.’
At such moments a cave opens beneath you in some kind of automated open sesame routine and
you start to fall. And you just don’t know how far you’re going to fall because at the start, when your
knees buckle and your hands go to your face and the dislodged horror crunches in your brain, it
feels like you’re going to fall beyond forever. What’s happening is that you’re entering that second
world, that terrifying, all-consuming reality where the usual certainties are suspended and terrible
things can happen unexpectedly and dizzying news is coming at you and you have no way of
digesting it or imagining life within it or knowing if there’s anything solid you can be sure of.
And in this world people sometimes feel a profound sense of outrage or unfairness and ask ‘Why
me?’ – but maybe what they’re saying is that they’d spent their whole life successfully navigating the
first world and they’d done it so well that they’d pretty much persuaded themselves that the second
world didn’t exist, or happened only to other people, or at the very least couldn’t hurt them. But
now it has, and it all seems so cruel and brutal and painful. But also intense and real and true in a
way that the first world maybe never did. It’s like entering into a whole different texture and depth
of life. Like a parallel world. It’s in the nature of finding yourself in the second world to doubt you
could ever inhabit the first world again. And to be amazed at all these people wandering around
you, absorbed in the first world, apparently oblivious to the very different existence the second
world represents.
Our Old Testament lesson today tells the story of how one man who controls armies and rules a
growing kingdom crashes through from the first world to that second. King David wins a battle, but
ends up doubled-up with grief, because the battle was with his rebellious son: and his rebellious son
is killed.
The story’s like a film studio: it shifts perspective, showing us camera angles that add texture and
dimension to this second world, offering us panoramas of pain and hand-held close-ups of grief.
Look at David, biting his nails to the quick, waiting for news, torn between the ache of a parent and
the authority of a king, celebrating his triumph as a monarch while facing his failure as a father.
David, the story tells us, is sitting between two gates. When it comes to terrible news, news that’s
thrown you instantly from the first world to the second, I bet you can recall instantly where you
were when you heard it. David was between two gates, at the crossroads of his life.
And it’s in the nature of bad news for the telling to get in a tangle, and somehow to add a twist to
misery itself. There’s a desperate search for the best way of communicating the painful news.
Ahimaaz is the son of one of David’s closest advisers. He volunteers to describe the events to David.
But Joab, one of David’s generals, sees only the military side of things. Once before, when David
wanted Bathsheba’s husband Uriah killed in battle, Joab sent news to David that the battle was won
and Uriah was dead. On that occasion David shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘War is war.’ Now
Joab says, ‘What’s the difference? Like last time, the battle’s won – but this time it’s Absalom that’s
dead. Send a regular soldier, a Cushite, don’t make a big deal of it.’ Joab, perhaps deliberately, sees
David as a commander only, and not as a father. It’s like he’s telling David to pull himself together
and drop the self-pity and face his responsibilities.
But Ahimaaz outruns the Cushite. So it’s Ahimaaz who comes before David and has to decide how
to break the news. Thirty years ago, when Rowan Atkinson was just becoming famous, and he was
trying out the routines that later reappeared in Mr Bean, I went to see his one-man show. The
highlight was a spoof Shakespearean masterclass, demonstrating four ways to be a herald with
news. He started by acting a messenger bringing good news, which he did with an exaggerated
flourish of glee and celebration. He then did a messenger bringing bad news, which he did by
slinking in like a snake, and dropping a message on the table before slithering out. His next
challenge was to do a messenger bringing bad news that he thinks is good news. He had us all
falling out of our seats in his confusion: you can imagine the jerky movements and the anxiously
twitching eyes, sending multiple messages at the same time. By the time he got to a messenger
bringing good news that he thinks is bad news it was about the funniest thing I’d ever seen.
But it’s not so funny for Ahimaaz. Ahimaaz knows David has a record of killing the odd messenger
who’s brought bad news. Is this good news or not? He starts by proclaiming victory. But then
David cuts to the chase. ‘Is it well with the young man Absalom?’ Feel the weight of that question.
Ahimaaz pauses… and bottles it. I wonder if you’ve ever done that. A person has looked at you and
asked for the truth and you’ve thrown a smokescreen over it, telling yourself they can’t handle it –
when the truth is that you can’t handle it, and can’t bear to be around to witness their reaction to it.
Ahimaaz just plain loses his nerve. We all dread this situation. The truth is, there isn’t a good way
to tell bad news. How much damage do we do to those we love by our instinct to hide from them the
truth? So David’s left in that awful limbo, with a strong sense that there’s gruesome news that no
one’s prepared to tell him. Finally the Cushite arrives. David finds the courage to ask the question a
second time; and this time the Cushite spills the beans. Absalom’s dead. David’s world has caved
in.
David is totally and utterly devastated. In a daze he repeats the same words over and over again.
‘Absalom’ he says three times. ‘My son’ he repeats no less than five times. Absalom my son, my
son. Oh my son Absalom. The more he realizes his son can’t hear him, will never again hear him,
the louder he shouts his name. I find this the most vivid passage in the whole Bible. Finally David
speaks from the very bottom of his utterly broken heart. ‘If only I had died instead of you’. This is
the powerlessness of grief. No gesture whatsoever, not even laying down his own life, will make it
better. This is his parental instinct – to put himself between his son and suffering. Every impulse
to protect the one he loves, even at terrible cost to himself – David finds all those instincts thwarted.
‘If only I had died instead of you, he says.’ But it’s too late.
David had the courage to ask a question. I want to ask a different question. Why is this story in the
Bible? Put another way, What are we to do with our experiences of bottomless grief? I have three
suggestions.
On its own the death of Absalom is a desperately sad story. But its being in the Bible means it’s not
on its own. It is part of a larger story. This is a story in which horrible things do happen, by
misadventure or perversity. But those ghastly things are placed within the broader canvas of the
unfolding story of salvation, in which God’s people are commissioned yet find themselves in slavery,
are set free and come into a covenant relationship with God and yet still stray and are taken into
exile, to return only partially, whereupon God comes among them in Jesus and throws wide the
possibilities of their friendship by dismantling the power of death, overcoming sin, and opening out
everlasting companionship to all people. Thus the death of Absalom is a terrible setback, but is in
the end part of a larger victory.
In the context of this larger story, and this is my second suggestion, it becomes possible to tell the
truth about the death of Absalom. David wasn’t a perfect king or a saintly man. He spoilt his son
Absalom to the point where Absalom knew no boundaries and declared war on his father, dying by
consequence. Even in this episode David gets his role as king and his personal investment as parent
horribly tangled up, and it wouldn’t be any kind of a surprise to see him jeopardizing his nation’s
well-being in the vain hope of winning back his son’s regard. We’re reluctant to tell the truth in the
face of death because we fear the truth will be so terrible that horror will have the last word. But in
the light of the larger story we can find the courage, and the words, to tell it as it is. And in the light
of the larger story, in which human sin and stupidity are finally transformed by God’s sacrificial
love, we can slowly, tentatively, begin to align ourselves less with hatred and resentment and more
with that very same process of transformation.
And finally, being in the Bible means the story of Absalom derives its ultimate significance in
relation to the story of Christ. When we read in this story that Absalom was ‘left hanging between
heaven and earth’ we’re alerted to another son whose death left him hanging between heaven and
earth. Reading of David’s grief for Absalom deepens our compassion for God the Father’s agony at
Christ’s death on the cross. ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!’ says David. ‘Would that
I had died instead of you.’
Listen to those resonant words, filtered through the lens of Calvary. Think back through your life
and linger on a grievous moment that’s written on your soul. And now insert the name of the one
you loved and lost into this story. Hear Jesus saying that name so precious to you, ‘My child, my
child, my beloved child. Would that I had died instead of you. Oh my child, my beloved child.’ And
feel the wonder that Jesus did die instead of us.
That’s the cross. T he cross is God seeing all the grief, all the folly, all the mixed-up loyalties and
motives, all the agony of loss, and saying, ‘My child, my child, my beloved child. Would that I had
died instead of you. Oh my child, my beloved child.’ Look at the cross, and hear those words:
‘Would that I had died instead of you.’
Inhabit this story of David and Absalom. In it see your own story. And through it find salvation, by
entering the broken heart of God.