Homily: Just a Man

Homily in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida, Sunday, August 9, 2015. Text 2Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 (Second Reading), the Rev. Tom Weller

When my Kristen was a little girl, I read a story to her every night at bedtime. If it was a Bible story she liked to ask when I was done, “What’s the moral of that story, Papa?” and I always managed to draw something out of it for her.

This summer 2015 we are reading stories, good old-fashioned Sunday School Bible stories from our childhood. These are true stories from the Court Historian who was there, and they are filled with life and bloody adventure, victory and pathos. I love the stories for themselves more than for the moralizing lessons we try to draw out of them, although every story does have an assuring word from the Lord. The stories of David that we are reading this summer stand up as exciting for themselves alone; but every story still has numerous things to inform us.

The tragedy of David and Absalom is the most heartbreaking event in David’s life. God’s all time favorite, David is a fierce warrior, a passionate lover of women, an adulterer, at times a brutal king (though perhaps properly so for his day and age). But he is vulnerable with his children, and nowhere is David the Mighty King no more or less human than the rest of us than in today’s story where he is brokenhearted and in desolating grief that his son Absalom has been slain, against his strict orders to his generals Joab and Abishai and Ittai: “Be gentle with my son Absalom for my sake.” If you love me, he is telling them, spare my son. And yet far out of David’s sight, Joab himself pierces three spears into Absalom’s heart, and then calls in ten young men to strike down and finish him off, killing the young prince anyway, then throwing his body into a ditch and piling it high with stones.

If you know the story, Absalom has taken up arms against his father David, overthrown David — seized his throne and taken his father’s women in the most literal sense — bringing to fruition God’s word through David’s chaplain, the prophet Nathan, when God was so appalled at David’s adultery with Bathsheba, murdering her husband Uriah the Hittite, and taking Bathsheba to be his wife. And so David has punishment coming as the Lord promised, “Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. For you did this terrible thing secretly in the dark of night; but I will do this before all Israel, in the light of day.” David’s chickens have come home to roost.

But like any man, David loves a son. David loves Absalom more than all the Lord has given him — more than his wives, more than his throne, more than his own life. “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” But the boy is dead, and the story of his rebellious treachery is irrevocable: David is broken, and today we’ve read the most gut-wrenching scene of all Bible stories.

The story began, as you know, with nightmare in the family, Absalom's older brother raping Absalom's sister, and Absalom killing him for that and fleeing into exile. Part of the story of course is David’s recalling Absalom from exile and then ostracizing him, and in return Absalom’s treacherous treason which brought all this about; and also that even though twenty-thousand men died on this terrible day of today's story, David grieves not for the loyal men who gave their lives for him, David is bereft only for his son Absalom who was David’s enemy in the battle. Only a parent could understand such love.

And then a part of the story that we do not see today is David’s generals, furious with him, angry and disgusted because he shows no gratitude for the sacrifices that so many have made in his behalf, only nursing his own sorrow.

David is the most beloved king in the history of Israel and Judah, but he is first a father, a daddy, a parent, and in that we find our own personal commonality with one of the great figures of civilization, Christianity, and our heilsgeschichte: more than warrior and hero, David is deeply loving and only human, no less human than you. Perhaps this is the main thing we can draw from scripture this morning, that these heroic Bible figures who seem larger than life, are ordinary stock like us: David a shepherd, poet and musician from a family of plain and simple folk, living life in answer to God’s call, is neither more nor less male, neither more nor less human, neither more nor less a sinner, neither more nor less subject to pain and sorrow, hurt and aging, neither more nor less subject to the anger of God and the ravages of life. This vigorous, manly king will come down to his deathbed old and shivering cold, wrapped in blankets, unable to get warm. But today he weeps, King David weeps, racking sobs of inconsolable grief. “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” 

On that day of battle and for all time, the greatest king in Bible history is one with every parent who ever lost a child or a loved one. From Genesis the blood of Abel murdered in the field, to those we ourselves have loved and lost, to, as C. S. Lewis puts it, every Son of Adam and Daughter of Eve who will die today, we are one in humanity with David the warrior king. And this is so not only with David but between us and every man and woman who managed to star in a Bible story: sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, we are all in this life together.

For all the warring and fighting and killing in battle, David, as we shall see before summer is over, will come through this grief to rise again, return to Jerusalem and reclaim his throne that Absalom had usurped. David the Shepherd king, beloved of God whose sins, like ours, were forgiven when he repented and returned to the Lord — David lived out his life as king. 

The bloody postscript is that, in yet another story of ultimate irony in God’s will, King David was succeeded by Solomon, David’s son by Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite.

 What’s the moral of that story, Papa? 

As before and always, printed to honor a promise to a friend.