It Takes a God (sermon, August 2, 2009)

2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33
Luke 15:11-24

On a September day in 1999, Mary Anne Mayer came home to find a Marine recruiter sitting at her dining room table with her son, Stan. Mary Anne was astonished. The only thing she knew about Marines came from books and movies, and a Marine was just about the last thing she had ever dreamed her sensitive, artistic, thoughtful son would become. She was so surprised and overwhelmed, in fact, that she practically started crying right there in her kitchen. The recruiter apologized and left, but he came back again and, despite his mother’s objections, Stan signed up for the Marine reserves.

And it actually turned out okay, for a while. Stan managed to balance college and the Marines and Mary Anne breathed a sigh of relief that her worst fears and concerns hadn’t been realized...that is, until September 11, 2001. After that fateful day, it was two more years before Stan’s unit was finally sent to Iraq, but eventually he did go. This is what Mary Anne wrote about the day Stan left for Iraq:

“I cannot possibly describe what it feels like to send your child to war. It’s a bizarre explosion of fear and pride, helplessness and strength, anger and acceptance. Surrendering, I placed Stan in God’s hands, and asked our parish priest to bless him before he left for Iraq. As I placed the blue star in our window, I finally understood the hearts of all the mothers who had gone before me throughout history.”

Each day that Stan was in Iraq was agony for Mary Anne. He was, of course, constantly on his mother’s mind and in her prayers. Miraculously, he survived with minor injuries when his Humvee was hit by a suicide bomber in an SUV filled with explosives. Then, three months later, Mary Anne was driving around town, listening to the news on the radio, when she heard that fourteen Marines from her son’s unit had been killed that day. Somehow, she managed to drive herself home, where she sat by the phone, praying it would not ring, terrified of the sound of a car coming up the driveway to deliver the unbearable news. (1)

When I read Mary Anne’s story, this was the part that made my blood run cold. How can a parent survive those moments -- moments that must seem like decades -- when you don’t know whether your child is alive or dead? I’m sure some of you have endured such anguish, whether it was because your child was at war or on drugs or had missed her curfew, again. Such is the anguish, no doubt, that King David must have endured while he waited, encamped in a place called Mahanaim, to find out whether his son Absalom would survive the battle raging in the nearby forest. The awful twist in David’s story, however, is that the battle in which Absalom fought was a battle which, if he was honest with himself, David would have to admit he caused.

It all goes back to last week’s story when David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then arranged the murder of her husband, Uriah. The prophet Nathan delivered to David God’s promise to raise up trouble against David from within his own family, and that’s exactly what happened. David’s first-born son, Amnon, lusted after his half-sister, Tamar. He wasn’t just attracted to her, he was consumed by his desire for her. Finally, he got her alone and raped her. Then, of course, as so often happens when our sinful desires are satisfied, he was filled with loathing for himself and for Tamar, and he cast her aside.

Amnon may have been immune to Tamar’s grief and despair over having been physically violated, but her brother Absalom was not. He took his devastated sister into his home and allowed her to live with him. When King David heard what had happened between Amnon and Tamar, the Bible says that he became very angry, but he refused to punish his firstborn son. Absalom, on the other hand, was furious with his brother, and he spent the next two years plotting his revenge. Finally, he invited his brother Amnon to a great feast and, when Amnon had consumed plenty of wine, Absalom ordered his servants to kill his brother. Then, fearing the consequences of his action, Absalom fled from his father and his country and stayed away for three long years.

Seems like this ought to qualify as “trouble within David’s family,” don’t you think? And maybe, just maybe, the trouble might have ended there if David could have truly forgiven Absalom and welcomed him back home. Actually, at the end of 2 Samuel chapter 13 it looks like that might happen. The text says that after Absalom was gone for three years, David’s heart went out for him and he yearned to see his son for he was now consoled over the death of Amnon -- not over it, necessarily, but ready to have back the son who was still alive.

But, as Eugene Peterson puts it in his wonderful book about David, at this point in the story, David “made a major contribution to his own later suffering: he refused to see Absalom.” He may have forgiven him in his heart, but he didn’t forgive him in person. Absalom was allowed back into Jerusalem, but David refused to see him, to put his arms around him and kiss him and look him in the eye and forgive him.

*****

Last week I had the opportunity to take my four year-old daughter, Sarah, to her first musical. It was a performance of the first act of the Broadway musical “Into the Woods.” The first act is more or less appropriate for young children, since it retells some of the most beloved fairy tales: Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella. The second act is all about what really happened after all of those stories ended “happily ever after,” and let’s just say there’s nothing very “happily” about it. But this musical was only the first act and it was billed for young children, so I thought Sarah would be fine.

And she was fine. I wasn’t. It’s funny how you see stories differently at different stages in life. Watching these familiar tales unfold, I was astonished at how much suffering was in them: the poverty and despair of Cinderella, the danger and violence of Little Red Riding Hood’s encounter with the wolf in the woods, the fear Jack felt when a giant chased him out of the sky.

The awareness that this musical was really written more for adults than children hit home as the actors sang the final song. Listen to some of the lyrics:

Careful the things you say,
Children will listen.
Careful the things you do,
Children will see.
And learn.

Children may not obey,
But children will listen.
Children will look to you
For which way to turn,
To learn what to be.

Careful before you say,
"Listen to me."
Children will listen. (2)

Well after that, I was scared to say anything to Sarah. What a terrifying thing it is to be a parent and realize that children not only see all the awful things we all say and do from time to time: they imitate them!

Well, this is exactly what happens with David and Absalom. David takes what he wants with Bathsheba and schemes a cover-up plan that ends with a murder. And so, like father like son, Absalom takes justice into his own hands when David won’t punish Amnon for the rape of Tamar and has his brother killed. Then when David refuses to reach out to Absalom and offer genuine forgiveness, Absalom learns that forgiveness is optional, and so the trouble in David’s family just goes on and on.

Suffering the deep wound that only a parent is capable of inflicting on a child, desperate for the love and mercy only David could give him, Absalom’s heart finally hardened against his father, the same way, it seemed, David’s heart had hardened against his son. Two years after Absalom had returned to Jerusalem, David finally agreed to see him. Absalom bowed before his father and king and David kissed his son...but it was too late. Something in that encounter must have only hardened Absalom’s heart further, because after that, he started plotting against David in earnest, slowly, deliberately, the same way he plotted for years against Amnon.

And then, one day, after building up a following among the Israelites in Jerusalem, Absalom stages a coup, proclaims himself king, takes over Jerusalem and forces David and his loyal followers to flee the city. A battle ensues. After his men convince him that he is too valuable to participate in the battle himself, David commands them not to harm Absalom, and then he waits.

Like a mother whose son has gone to war, he waits. Even though it may have been his sin that caused all of this, I don’t doubt that David had all the emotions of Mary Anne Mayer and every other mother and father whose child is on the front lines of battle. When the awful news finally comes to him, David’s cry is one of pure anguish and despair, the cry of every parent who has lost a child: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! I should have died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

It’s awful to read, to hear, to speak, that kind of grief. Awful, most of all, because David knows it’s his sin that set all this in motion, although that was never what he intended. And let me be clear here, in case you think I’m saying that Absalom’s death was God’s punishment for David’s sin. It wasn’t a punishment and it wasn’t from God; it was, quite simply, the awful consequence of David’s actions, not just his adultery and murder, but his inability to reach out to Absalom after he murdered Amnon, his inability to extend grace and forgiveness when he had the chance.

Eugene Peterson asks us to imagine what might have happened in this story if, when Absalom returned to Jerusalem after three years of exile, David had received him the way the father in the story about the prodigal son received his son back home -- running out to meet him, looking like a fool, and throwing a huge banquet in his honor. How might things have turned out differently if David could have done that?

That kind of forgiveness takes a God. Over and over again, God forgives the very worst of what we can say or think or do. While our children watch and listen all too diligently to us, our everyday actions usually prove how mightily we fail to imitate God. Yet imitating God is exactly what Jesus calls us to do. “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.” The story of the prodigal son is not a story of a human father, it is the story of a heavenly father, but it is also a story of hope and possibility, of what the reconciliation of family members might look like if we spent less time rehashing old wounds and more time imitating God’s forgiveness.

What might that look like in your life, in your family? What possibilities might open up if you reached out to the brother with whom you never saw eye to eye; if you extended forgiveness to the daughter who took advantage of you one too many times; if you made an effort to see your parents as human beings, with their challenges and wounds, instead of seeing two people who willfully set out to make your childhood miserable? Maybe there is no trouble like that in your family, but I’d venture to say that each one of us has someone in our lives that we have been unable to forgive or at least to treat with compassion rather than hard-hearted judgment -- even if that someone is a stranger halfway around the world. Forgiveness like that is a long process, but it has to start sometime. This chapter in David’s story is a lesson in what the end might look like if we fail to look and listen to God and imitate what we learn.

“Oh, my son, Absalom, my son, my son! Would I had died instead of you!” Well, David couldn’t die for Absalom, but the Son of David, the Son of Man, the true Son of God, could -- and would -- die for all of us, that we might know, with full assurance, that the suffering of parents who lie awake at night worrying about their children, and the sorrow of children who never feel fully loved or accepted by their parents, the anguish of families everywhere as full of trouble as David’s messed-up family -- Jesus died that we might know that our suffering is not the end of the story. It’s not the end of the story even if, in our lifetime, we can’t ever manage to extend forgiveness to the son or daughter or sibling or parent or friend or enemy who has hurt us the most. For all of us, even David, the end of the story is God running toward us with wild abandon, welcoming us home with an extravagant banquet, receiving us into the heavenly family where grievances and differences are cast aside and forgiveness and love reigns. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. online excerpt from The Year Our Children Went to War, by Janie Reinart and Mary Anne Mayer, Gray & Company Publishers, http://www.wksu.org/news/story/23777.

2. Into the Woods, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim