Hilton Head Island, SC – July 12, 2015
The Chapel Without Walls
II Samuel 15:1-12; II Samuel 18:28-19:8
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And the king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absolom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” – II Samuel 18:33
The King And We: 5)The Shattered Royals
Anna Karenina is the novel about a very unhappy woman and her very unhappy husband and family. It is not as long as War and Peace, but according to Miss Holstein, our senior year literature teacher in high school, it was the second greatest novel ever written, after Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Whatever Miss Holstein said I tended to accept as incontrovertible fact; she was very persuasive. When we started our study of Tolstoy’s powerful and psychologically astute story of some upper class urban Russians, she first called attention to the opening line: “All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
The story of King David and his royal family is one of intense unhappiness, punctuated by a rape, murders, coup attempts, and near-regicides. In order to understand everything I read earlier in the service this morning, you need briefly to hear about a few key incidents which preceded these other episodes. David had several wives, and by each of these wives he had several children. David was only the second of the kings of Israel, and there was no established legal or cultural succession to the throne. In other words, nothing guaranteed that any of David’s sons would become the next monarch after David died. (Daughters presumably need not apply.)
However, having no clear system of royal succession did not prevent David’s sons from jockeying for position, in the event of their father’s early or late demise. It happened that David had a son and a daughter by one wife, who were named Absalom and Tamar, and another son by another wife, named Amnon. Amnon became infatuated with Tamar, and he wanted to have sex with her. She did her best to deflect him, sternly telling him, “No, my brother, do not force me; for such a thing is not done in Israel” (II Sam. 13:12). It hasn’t been done in most societies from the dawn of humanity, either, and Amnon knew it. But he forced his will on Tamar anyway.
When Absalom heard about it, he developed a permanent cold hatred for his half-brother. But he did nothing right then, telling Tamar he would settle the score eventually. Two years later, when Amnon had drunk too much wine, Absalom ordered some soldiers to kill him, which they did. Then it was reported to David that Absalom had killed all of David’s other sons as well, which was not true. In fear Absalom fled, but he gathered troops to himself and threatened to overthrow David, and that part I read. The kingdom was teetering on anarchy, and David knew it.
Tamar and Absalom should have told their father what Amnon had done, but they didn’t do it. Thus did matters get out of hand. David should have known that there was tension between Absalom and Tamar and his other son Amnon, but he did not pick up on it. It reminds me of a recent Non Sequitur cartoon in the paper. A man and woman are sitting at the registration desk for the “Tolerance for All Parade.” The man says to the woman, as a Ku Klux Klansman arrives at the desk with a glowing torch in his hand, “Well, I’m off to lunch, so I’ll let you handle this one, Doris.” The caption in the cartoon says, “The Art of Delegation.”
Absalom delegated the soldiers to slay his half-brother, not wanting to get his own hands bloody. When Absalom attempted to round up enough soldiers to overthrow his father, David delegated his commanding general, a man named Joab, to deal with the conspiracy. David did not take to the field himself. It went on for ten years or so, with Israel not knowing who truly held power. In the end, Joab finally cornered Absalom, and he and his soldiers killed the king’s son.
After the duplicitous and vengeful Absalom had been slain, a messenger came to tell David about it. David had never been able to bring himself to command his rebellious son to be destroyed, and so he eagerly asked the messenger, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” The messenger voiced what was obvious to everyone loyal to David and what should have been obvious to David, “May the enemies of my lord the king, and all who rise up against you for evil, be like that young man” (II Sam. 18:32). Then David plunged into his famous and heartfelt if also misplaced lament, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (18:33) The verse is so well known that it became the title for what many consider to be William Faulkner’s complex masterpiece novel, O Absalom!
The Bible doesn’t fill in many of the biographical details we would like to have explained in this royal tragedy. Why, knowing that his son was trying to drive him from the throne, did David not swiftly take action against his son’s treason? Was Absalom his favorite son? If so, why? How could he favor an offspring who wanted him dead? Who can explain why any parents have a favorite child? It is a recipe for potential if not actual disaster! No sensible parents should ever favor one child above the others, but in every generation it happens all too frequently. And for reasons which are never explained but are merely reported, it happened with David and Absalom. When it came time to name his successor, David did not accede to anyone’s advice except that of his wife Bathsheba, who prevailed upon David to name her son Solomon as the next monarch after David died, which apparently was not what David wanted. But of that more next week.
For all the fact that we constantly hear much about “family values,” it needs to be noted that the values held dear by every family are usually very complicated. Anna Karenina and her husband had a fractured relationship, but the relationship of Anna and Count Vronsky turned out to be equally, but differently, fractured. For anyone who might have multiple wives, as David did, there would almost certainly be difficulty and complexity in the relationship between him and his several wives and his many children. Nowhere does it suggest God commanded David to drop such a complicated burden upon himself; David did that all on his own. Nevertheless --- and here is where the Bible is very specific --- God never abandoned David in the midst of his shattered royals, nor did David ever abandon God. David may never have understood or owned up to how much of his troubles he brought upon himself, but he always knew where to go for help when he felt overwhelmed with the calamities which constantly befell him. The Psalms of David express the deeply felt convictions of a man engulfed in adversity for his entire life.
Recently I read the autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. Nobody had a more complicated marriage than she and FDR. The marriage was such that almost no one would ever rationally seek to duplicate it. Nevertheless, providentially it turned out to be a huge blessing to the United States of America and to the world. Franklin could accomplish politically what Eleanor never could have done, and Eleanor accomplished in frenetic activities what Franklin never could have done because of his severe physical limitations. They were a great, if also a very fractured, team.
There are values which derive from a family dynasty, especially for maintaining political power. But there also are disadvantages. What if we have another President named Bush, or, for that matter, another one named Clinton? In other countries there have been multiple Kims, Assads, Gandhis, Aquinos, and Castros. And how has all that worked out?
It is bad enough when ordinary families come unglued. Fathers are at sword’s point with sons, mothers are estranged and silent with their daughters, siblings erupt, generations are broken.
It can be far worse, and much more public, when ruling families disintegrate. It was never the same for David after Tamar had been raped and after Absalom took vengeance on his half-brother for what Amnon did to his sister, or when Joab ruthlessly put Absalom to death. No one can go through events like that without permanent psychological or theological scars.
It does have to be like that. With patience, love, and understanding, families can face the inevitable challenges which come their way, and yet move through the hardships to better and more productive times. According to Joe Kennedy, Sr., Joe Kennedy, Jr. was supposed to be the President, but a World War II plane crash obliterated that plan. So the father turned his attention to his second son. Had history been kinder, or at least a little gentler, the third and/or fourth sons might also have lived in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Ronald Reagan was estranged from his children for many years, but by the time he died, their relationship had become much better.
I knew a man who had established a very thriving and profitable business. He had three children, two older daughters and a younger son. All three children were brought into the business, but he felt the son had more of the necessary skills to continue the business than did the daughters. Before he died, he made explicit provisions for the son to become the next CEO. Perhaps he had a premonition, because the father died instantly in an automobile accident several years ago. The son has greatly expanded the business, and it is thriving as never before. The daughters have accepted the prescient wisdom of their father, and all is well in the family.
What do we do to maintain strong family ties? Better yet, what do we do to prevent our families ties from becoming frayed?
Was David too consumed by affairs of state to notice what was happening in his family? If so, was that acceptable? Obviously not. Furthermore, men are more likely not to pick up on important signals within the family than are women. Mothers may be more attuned by nature and by the maternal role to observe tensions which may be building up. Traditionally, fathers may be too occupied with their occupations to notice the events that occupy the time of the members of their family. If that happens, however, they have no excuse, because no one, least of all God, forced them to be devoted mainly to their work rather than to the workings of their family.
How do family members treat one another? Are they respectful and considerate of one another, or do they act like some of the characters they see on television sit-coms, whose situations are often more pathetic than comic? Do they realize that each has a major stake in the success --- or failure --- of all the others?
The other night Lois and I watched a movie on television called Strange Relations. It was about a New York psychiatrist named Jerry who discovered he had leukemia. His adopted mother, who raised him as a Jew, told him his birth mother was a young Catholic girl from Liverpool, England. Jerry went to England to find her, hoping he might also find some siblings who might be willing to give him a bone marrow transplant.
The plot has drama, pathos, personal discoveries, and humor. In the end, Jerry’s two brothers are not a match for him. Jerry explains to his birth mother how a bone marrow transplant works, if the conditions are right. He pours a line of salt on the table, illustrating the mother, and then a line of pepper, representing the father. When the salt and pepper are mixed, the match may work from one sibling to the next, but not necessarily so, Jerry said, mixing the two lines together. However, because the blood tests showed neither of Jerry’s blood brothers could be a successful bone marrow donor, Jerry was going to die, and he knew it.
Jerry’s mother looked thoughtfully at the mixed condiments. Then, hesitantly but with unexplained intensity, she asked what would happen if both the father and mother were actually salt, utilizing his analogy. She then quietly told her family, including her new-found son, that when she was a young teenager, her older brother, the apple of his parents’ eyes, had sex with her, forcing himself on her. When the parents learned of the incest, incredibly they were angry at their daughter, but not their son. They blamed her, and absolved him. And in order to keep anyone from knowing what had happened, they sent their daughter away to have the baby, and then to put it up immediately for adoption. So Jerry’s birth mother asked if she might become a donor for Jerry in his life-and-death situation. The last scene shows the two of them being wheeled together to the operating room to see if there might be hope in what had appeared to be utter hopelessness. As they disappear into the O.R., we are left wondering.
Every family has its secrets. Some of them are good, and some definitely are not. Who gets along with whom, and why? Who doesn’t get along with whom, and why? If there are serious differences, are they irresolvable? With God’s help, is anything irresolvable? Didn’t Jesus say that with God all things are possible? If that is true, wouldn’t it mean that broken or strange relationships in families could be repaired, if immense effort were expended? Nothing is better than a close family, and nothing is worse than a distant or estranged family. But who creates the closeness, and who creates the distance? Is anything in any relationship unalterably fixed, or can everything be changed, if enough effort is expended?
Most families have problems, to one degree or another. If serious differences exist within families, it is never too late to repair our familial fences.
To me, the amazing thing about David is that despite all the heavy baggage we are told about him in I and II Samuel, he still is reckoned by every biblical writer who addresses the issue to be the greatest and most exemplary of the dozens of kings of Israel and Judah. It certainly is highly significant that it is claimed the Messiah must be related to David and his family. The Anointed One of God can’t be just anybody; he must be a son of David.
Despite his sins, despite his misjudgments and his mistakes and his miscalculations and his misinterpretations of God’s will, David was always loyal to God. Loyalty to God may be the most important virtue cited throughout the Bible. Perhaps it trumps every other virtue.
If we are loyal to God, we also must be loyal to God’s entire family, and to our particular family. And that means parents and siblings and children and aunts and uncles and cousins, and also in-laws or even outlaws. We must not allow our families to be shattered. And should it happen, we must do everything we can to repair the damage. All happy families may be like one another, but not all happy families look as happy on the inside as they may appear from the outside. At their worst, families can be awful. At their best, they can be wonderful. It is we who make them what they are. With God’s help, let us make our own family the best we can be.