Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
David Part 9
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad you're here, and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Hit the commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2:This is an exciting day for us here at Commons because we are going to finish our summer series. And also, like Bobby alluded to last week, this Sunday marks one full calendar year for Darlene and I here at Commons. And this has been a great year from joining our incredible team and meeting some of you, learning some of your stories, thinking of all the worship nights and the dinner parties and popsicles and Father's Day doughnuts and stampede pancakes on the street and dreams of an East Side parish. We have learned to call this community our home, and a huge part of that feeling comes from the sense of space that we feel here. Space that welcomes us and invites us into the way of Jesus, which for all of us is a way that challenges and coaxes us toward a healthier, more authentic version of ourselves, and we've certainly found that.
Speaker 2:And maybe our community is new for you. Perhaps you're settling in or you're trying to, and I hope that you can feel that same invitation I'm talking about into a space of honesty and passion with Jesus at the center beckoning you to step a little bit closer if you can. So as we turn today to David one more time, we're gonna look at the story of his third son, a guy named Absalom, and the events pick up right after the tale of David and Bathsheba that Bobby worked through last week, was a complete mess and debacle. Wouldn't you agree? Yes.
Speaker 2:I love how Bobby took the illicit heat and the searing heat of those scenes and reminded us of how that heat can singe us all. How the challenge of making and keeping promises is like a thermostat in our lives where our attentiveness to the even the smallest commitments acts as a form of redemption and recovery in our lives. And the wonder of looking at David's life specifically is that we're able to glimpse the beauty of God's gentle resuscitation of a human heart, all while seeing how devastating the damage is when we live carelessly and without divine love at the core of our being. And I hope you were provoked by Bobby's words, but I also hope that you were reminded to make and tend gentle commitments that hold a life together. And with these simple things in mind, we're gonna turn to the final page of the final act.
Speaker 2:But before we do so, let's pray together. Gracious God, we're thankful today for the expanse of your story in scripture and for the privilege of declaring and hearing this story in community and how sharing that story here, it gives us life, and it draws us into the mystery of extending that life into our city and world. And I pray that you would help us today as we stand on the edge of another year together. Grant us courage to live with hope and truth extended against the powers of cynicism and control all around us. I pray too that you would shape us by your holy spirit so that we can reflect your great affection with clarity and humility.
Speaker 2:In this moment, as we wrap up the story, remind us of the beauty that comes through a life yielded to you regardless of how broken it can be. We pray these things in the name of Christ. Amen. So as I said, our story picks up immediately following David's violent and appalling use of power last week. Bobby left off showing us an image of David rightfully leading God's people again after his recovery back with a sword on his side.
Speaker 2:He takes and captures an enemy city in that scene and the last phrase of second Samuel chapter 12 tells us this. It says that then he and his entire army returned to Jerusalem followed closely by the beginning of second Samuel 13 that says this. In the course of time, Amnon, son of David, fell in love with Tamar, the beautiful sister of Absalom, son of David. There's a couple things right off the top here. First, I think that a much better way to start this sermon would be to dim the lights, have the screen fade to black, and then have the prophet Nathan's prophecy to David fade onto the screen.
Speaker 2:Why did you despise the word of the lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own. This is what the Lord says, out of your own household, I'm going to bring calamity on you. And then with an impending sense of dread like a Coen Brothers film, the opening scene would start. Because the truth is is that what we're gonna work through today, and in fact, all of Absalom's story has to be filtered through Nathan's doomsday pronouncement.
Speaker 2:As readers, we should be on edge because we know something is going to happen. I'm gonna come back to that in a second. What we also have to note is that the text tips us off with the use of this idiom in the course of time, And this is a common device that's been used frequently in second Samuel and it's meant to serve as a transition marker, yes, but it's also meant to help the reader hear the following tale as part of a continuing story. And we might pause to acknowledge here that an episode is rarely just an episode. And what we're about to read is connected to what just happened or what was just said or what has been happening for a while.
Speaker 2:And this is an important admission for us to make in the shaping and scope of our own lives, that whether we like it or not, the occurrences of our lives are woven together. I think that for many of us, this is a reality we push back against because I mean, think about how often we try to distance ourselves from some aspect or time or episode in our past. Whether it's through the careful tailoring of our social media archive, right, just getting rid of a certain relationship so that it's completely out of the frame of reference, or maybe just even in the simple commitment to get up and move on. Or think about how we construct our history with things like resumes or CVs, pulling out certain episodes for emphasis while completely ignoring the fact that we actually did work at a go kart track and sell knives door to door? Awkward.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying that this kind of editorial discretion is bad. I'm just saying that we can have a tendency to not do the hard work of recognizing how a difficult season or experience plays into our present, how the hurt or abandonment or self centeredness of a previous episode doesn't just disappear because the setting and characters of our life have changed. And the scriptures do this often. They remind us that like the grand story they're telling, our lives are a creative whole. And so what this means for our story today is that the scene that I'm about to read to you is directly connected to the preceding events.
Speaker 2:And the English translators, they don't really help us with this as clearly as the Hebrew syntax does because they help or the Hebrew syntax helps us to see that Absalom is actually the protagonist here. The Hebrew translates roughly, and happened thereafter. Absalom, David's son, had a beautiful sister named Tamar, and Amnon, David's son, loved her. And in this language, we are tipped off to the inextricable link between the preceding story about David and his sons. And we pick up here that sense of dread I mentioned a minute ago because we can sense the connection that author's making, the fact that David's actions are continuing to produce fallout in the other characters of this story, and we can sense the sinister quality that of what we're about to read.
Speaker 2:And I don't have time to flesh out all the detail of what happens, but here's the basic gist so we understand Absalom's complexity. As I read to you, Amnon, who is David's oldest son and presumably the heir to the throne, he develops feelings for his paternal half sister Tamar, who is Absalom's full sister. And with startling efficiency, the author tells us how Amnon manipulates and conspires to isolate Tamar, first asking her to sleep with him, and then when she denies him, exposing his moral depravity as she as she rebukes him, he rapes her. And, again, our English translators, they squirm with the terminology here, and they shield us with these loaded words, he forced her. And this is a brutal opening sequence for a scene.
Speaker 2:And given all that we've been through in this series together, wouldn't be surprised if you're completely desensitized to the violence and distress that it lays out. And as we watch the scene, we're forced to see it in context because the author is pulling no punches. He's showing us how David's not so hidden life and sin and penchant for taking what he wants. It's playing out in the lives of his children. Remember, out of your own household, I'm going to bring calamity on you.
Speaker 2:This is the story that we're introduced to Absalom. He arrives in the immediate aftermath of this terrible encounter. He comforts his sister and invites her into his home because she's now socially maligned because of her experience. And we're gonna look at Absalom here in a moment, but it's important to note how David reacts to these events. The text says this.
Speaker 2:It says, when king David heard this story, he was furious. And this isn't the first time that David is described as having a quick fuse. In fact, you could argue that it's one of his impulsive or that his impulsive knee jerk reactions are one of his character markers, the kind of thing that he would include in a list of strengths in a job interview. We see we see hints of it all over the place in his frustration with the Israelite army when they wouldn't fight Goliath or in his angry response at being insulted by this man named Naboth in, first Samuel 25 or in his fierce execution of the slave who comes to tell him that Saul is finally dead. And we can see, actually, while the text may not valorize David's harsh responses, it does hold him up as a model for justice seeking.
Speaker 2:He's quick to be bothered and disturbed by imbalance and victimization, and he's moved to action when others are being or others are offending or abusing or stepping over the line, which is what makes this phrase so telling. Because we're used to seeing David angry. We're used to seeing him respond, but then the text drops off. David was furious, but he does nothing. And this is what we're looking at today, this tension between passivity and action.
Speaker 2:Because for all of his exploits, for all his gutsy battlefield performances, for all of the heroics and bold leadership of God's people in this moment, David is frozen. He's captive to his anger and what lies underneath it. And we don't really know what's going on here. The text doesn't make it clear. Later Greek translators of the Hebrew manuscripts tried to offer a caveat by putting in an insertion where it says something like David didn't wanna hurt or punish Amnon because he was the oldest and he loved him.
Speaker 2:And to be honest, this interjection doesn't make it into our English bibles because it's not that reliable. But what I will say about this statement is that it hints at an aspect of David's character that we'll return to at the very end today, that his affection stayed his hand, that broken as it was, his heart actually cared for his children in this mess that he had made. Maybe, like Walter Brueggemann suggests, David himself is so compromised by his own past that he can do nothing. Or maybe he's just older and he's learned not to trust his immediate gut reaction. He just mellowed out.
Speaker 2:Or maybe he's just old and he doesn't care anymore. We don't really know what's going on. Either way, the story is calling for a response, for a just and compassionate actor, for someone to reflect the divine in some way. And I wonder if this doesn't ring true for us. Because our mistakes, when we betray those that we care for or we fail to meet expectations, be they our own or others, these things have a way of undermining our capacity for courage, our willingness to be honest, and our desire to take risks of vulnerability and openness.
Speaker 2:And one of the easiest ways to know that this is happening in us is when we fear being asked the question, who do you think you are? Or if we find ourselves asking that of ourselves. And guess what? Sometimes our missteps and our harmful actions mean that we have to earn trust again. Fair enough.
Speaker 2:But while it may terrify us to be honest or intentional in the face of a doubting friend or partner or colleague because we really are the last person who should be saying anything, passive withdrawal is often not the alternative we should take. This is an instance where I think David's life instructs us inversely, where we might learn from doing the opposite. Because here's the deal, Absalom steps into the gap created by David's silence. Where David lets offense occur without recourse, the text tells us that Absalom spends two years scheming and plotting revenge for his sister. He conspires, and as it as if the domestic disaster isn't bad enough, he has his half brother murdered in cold blood.
Speaker 2:And in fear of the repercussions, he takes off, and he lives in exile for several years. And the text tells us that David longed to go to Absalom after his grief for Amnon faded. But, again, he ultimately does nothing until through the efforts of those close to him, he sends for his son, inviting him home but with strict instructions that they never see each other. And, again, this awkward arrangement gives us we get no explanation for it. It's as though David agrees that it isn't right for Absalom to be in exile, but he isn't about to reconcile with him.
Speaker 2:And for all that David teaches us about how to mirror and engage the divine, he's a train wreck when it comes to relational maturity. His reaction here is it bears the marks of that common manipulative strategy of someone giving someone the silent treatment, right, or mixing in a little bit of what we call ghosting these days to act as though everything's good and then to cut off personal contact or to give a coworker or partner or even a casual acquaintance the impression that we're open to them only to ignore and avoid them. And here again, we see these themes of passivity and action and how, like David, our withdrawal and inaction in this situation, it actually speaks volumes about our intentions. Passivity sometimes feels like the right option because direct conflict is avoided, but ultimately, it has the capacity to create all kinds of chaos in our lives. At any rate, David brings Absalom home, but he refuses to restore their familial relationship for two year.
Speaker 2:And, again, Absalom contrasts with David here. He's finally had enough of this, and in order to get an audience with his father, he does the most bizarre thing. He lights something on fire. This is it's such a crazy moment because there's a dark Michael Scott quality comedy to this action. Like, I'm not getting my way, match light, pause, and it bursts into flames.
Speaker 2:And everybody's looking at him like, why is he doing this? And for the record, I'm not suggesting that you light someone's stuff on fire when they stop listening to you in the future, but in the end, his ploy works. And the story goes that. Then the king summoned Absalom, and he came in and he bowed down with his face to the ground before the king, and the king kissed Absalom. There you go.
Speaker 2:Looks like everything's been resolved. Reconciliation complete. Move on to the next story. Except that's not how this goes. Here, the story starts to shift under our feet, and it reveals what Absalom has been doing all along.
Speaker 2:And like a series of flashbacks in a film, we start to catch on to the malevolent intent that has long been present in his son. We read of their reunion, and then it immediately says, in the course of time, Absalom provided for himself a chariot with horses and 50 men to run ahead of him. And that might not sound significant. Right? He just got a new armored car and a bunch of armed bouncers to go everywhere with him.
Speaker 2:It's no big deal. Right? No. No. No.
Speaker 2:This is code for, and now Absalom started to posture as the king. And in telling Absalom's story, our narrator picks up a theme present throughout David's life, our human predisposition toward faulty leaders and heroes, how we valorize them, and how we're often duped. Because Absalom is described as being good looking. He's got a luxurious mullet, a la 1986, and he's highly persuasive. And with this physical description, the narrator signals to us as he has done with Saul and with David, this is the guy people are gonna love.
Speaker 2:And sure enough, the text tells us that he stole the hearts of the people. And by this, it doesn't just mean that he captured their desire for political change, but he means that they were deceived and that their will and their power and their agency as people in the empire, it was now misguided. In broad daylight, at the gates of the city, Absalom makes himself publicly available to resolve legal disputes in the stead of the king, all while inferring that David isn't doing his job. And perhaps here we note again how the story of David and really the story of Israel as an empire, it serves as a warning to us because we're always searching for heroes, for leaders, for someone who can personify what we desire and long to be, or for someone who might show us how to acquire what we want. And if we're not wary and wise in that search, we may find ourselves being disillusioned with the failed promises of that person or even participating sometimes in systems or institutions that don't represent what we really think is important.
Speaker 2:Because all of Absalom's conniving and grasping for power is an example of a glaring literary contrast here. Because we as the reader should be able to recall, think back to the story of David as a child, how he's chosen by God, how he becomes a military hero in his youth, how he marries the king's daughter, and yet with all of this going for him, he refuses to mobilize his influence. He refuses to undermine the authority of the king to take what isn't yet his to have. And, certainly, it's appropriate for us to say, hey. David didn't get everything right.
Speaker 2:Sure. His hotheadedness gets him into trouble. But in the key moments, in the times and places where he could have fast tracked Saul's demise, David withdraws. He's passive. He steps back.
Speaker 2:And as this contrast with Absalom comes to mind, it helps us to speculate as to why David doesn't act as Absalom consolidates his power in full view of the entire nation. Why doesn't David lash out and defend what belongs to him? Are we again being told how power should be acquired and handled? How in God's economy of character, power should be used? And to be honest, the answer to those questions lies in the continuing story because Absalom lays a plot for a full blown coup.
Speaker 2:And in an act of brazen ambition, he has himself declared king in a place called Hebron, which is the same city where David was made king. And this is a blatant statement of I intend to replace you. And this action gets Absalom a bunch of support from the northern tribes of Israel and from one of David's closest advisers, which means to us as readers, this is a significant threat to David's life, and the action picks up here. David actually runs, flees from the city. And as he runs, Absalom comes, occupies Jerusalem, and consolidates his claim while planning how he's going to capture and kill his father.
Speaker 2:And the text outlines several war room conversations, how Absalom ultimately is deceived and doomed by the advice he receives and how David out in the wilderness again is sustained by the generosity of his subjects and his own shrewd leadership. It's so interesting to see how a return to the wild places rejuvenates the life of this old king. But before we see the conclusion of this story, I wanna look at something that happens to David as he's running for his life. The text says that people are crying outside the city and then we read, Zadok the high priest was there too and all the Levites were with him, were carrying the ark of the covenant of God. And they set down the ark of God, and Abiathar offered sacrifices until all the people had finished leaving the city.
Speaker 2:Then the king David said to Zadok, take the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the Lord's eyes, he'll bring me back, and let me see it in his dwelling place again. But if he says, I am not pleased with you, then I am ready. Let him do to me whatever seems good to him. And this is a curious moment because as an act of support for David, the religious establishment has brought the ark of the covenant to him.
Speaker 2:And this is a practice we've seen earlier during the Hebrew conquest of Palestine in in the book of Joshua and in the ongoing wars with the Philistines in first Samuel where the ark, which is the symbol of God's presence and power, It's carried like a talisman to boost the army's courage and to communicate to everybody. This is where God's favor rests. And David calmly says, leave it here. In this moment of betrayal and uncertainty, David acknowledges the ambiguity of God's purpose in his life. And instead of grasping at the symbols and structures of power that might consolidate his claim to the throne, that might help him defend what's rightfully his, he relinquishes them.
Speaker 2:And at first glance, this looks like maybe a rerun of his earlier inaction, right, where fear and insecurity are paralyzing him, but the continuing verses tell us this. No. David actually continues to go about the business of leading his followers in the middle of this chaos. He strategizes and he labors to ensure a hopeful outcome. And I think there's a massive insight for us here.
Speaker 2:Because when we take a literary approach to this story, as we've talked about throughout the series, it's easy for us to project a form of certainty and security onto the key characters. Where? Because God has said something or because the narrator has told us that it's gonna be a certain way, it's easy for us to remove these stories from their very human underpinnings, where we gloss over the cost of living life on all of its confusing terms. And that's not where we live. Right?
Speaker 2:With a bird's eye view of our own experience, where we can just blindly and glibly assume that God's in control? No. We're often blindsided by our weakness and our failure or the inability of others to keep their promises or the sheer weight of global forces that threaten and harm and destroy. And in the face of those things, there's a kind of fatalism that starts to shape our imagination and our perspective where, like writer and priest Henry Nouwen wrote, we live as passive victims of exterior circumstances beyond our control. Now what happens when we look at David's actions here is we catch a glimpse of a similar moment where fatalism was rejected in turn for a fragile trust in God's good character and a tenacious commitment to work in the light of that goodness.
Speaker 2:And that moment comes to us in the story of Jesus, the son of David in Matthew's gospel chapter 26, where in the face of betrayal, rejection, and looming death, Jesus prays to his father, not as I will, but as you will. Now Jesus' prayer here doesn't model a benign submission to a predetermined path where we might see ourselves just resolving to passivity in the hardest times of our lives. No. Jesus serves instead as a profound example of what it means to trust God's goodness despite the possible outcomes. And in these simple words, Christ expresses an objective and an intention and then he goes and he lives the remaining hours of his life teaching and healing and forgiving those who were harming him.
Speaker 2:And even more clearly than David, Jesus shows us how relinquishing power and control in our lives isn't fatalism. It's a profound statement of trust and intention to live in the light of God's presence. Because we can control the varied factors of our lives. Right? Our strained relationships are unfulfilling or unfruitful career paths, our struggles with addiction or loneliness, despair.
Speaker 2:And for many of us, the strain and the burden that we feel would be lifted if we merely acknowledged our limits. Quietly offering our limited strength to God before continuing to work and strive and create as we should knowing that we can't determine all of the outcomes. And this is something we see in one last turn to the text. The brewing civil war in Israel culminates in a single battle Northeast of Jerusalem. Before sending his troops out, David asks them to have mercy on his son.
Speaker 2:And chaos ensues and David's army prevails in a massacre and Absalom is violently murdered as the scene closes. And you'd think that this victory for God's chosen one would inspire celebration and relief in the text But instead, as news comes from the battlefield, the prevailing images of God's shepherd king, not concerned with his political position, but with the well-being of his rebellious son. And when he hears that he's dead, David breaks down and he weeps, and he says, oh, my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom, if only I had died instead of you. Oh, Absalom, my son, my son. And it's in these profoundly emotional words that we complete our journey through the story of David.
Speaker 2:And, yes, it does seem like a bit of a downer, but that's not the whole picture because there's something profound here for all of us. There's a power in the weight of these stories because the depth of their tragedy forms the frame and the canvas on which the ancient God of the Hebrew people paints a portrait of mercy and kindness and unflinching loyalty. It's here that we see God's great affection for those who turn toward him, his mercy for those who long to be different and yearn for rightness but can't seem to do it because of their own self destructive tendencies. And these discoveries in the story of David mean we don't have to valorize David because he offers us a model that we could never reach. No.
Speaker 2:We come to appreciate David because he appears in the story as our ally, woefully broken and yet fiercely loved by God. He's trustworthy not because of his accomplishments, but because of how deeply he fails and feels and trusts the divine. And we see this in his relationship with Absalom. Because as God's character in the story, David fails by being withdrawn and impulsive and unwilling to seek justice. He faces betrayal and rejection by those he counted on and cared for greatly.
Speaker 2:And yet at the end of it all, he attempts to trust God for the outcome while working and striving for right. But in the end, the story is marked by the image of a grieving father willing to love actively and sacrifice power despite the cost. And so in those places of your life marked by passivity and fear because of mistakes you've made, may God give you strength again to stand and contend for yourself and for others. And in those places of testing, perhaps through betrayal and hostility and rejection, I pray that God's holy spirit would grant you courage to resist fatalism and work for outcomes marked by hope. And in your places of imperfection, may you live today with a sense of God's presence drawing you near even as David did.
Speaker 2:Let's pray. Gracious God, thank you for these weeks where we have stood in awe of this expansive story of one human life. Thank you for the many ways that it teaches us and prods us and provokes us. Not to valorize David and make him a hero where we wanna model ourselves after him, but, no, to see him as son ally in our own stories, one in which we can say that we are invited not to live with passivity and fear, but that we are invited to trust you in all of the uncontrollable outcomes that we face each and every day. I pray that you would help us as we stand on the verge of a year together as a community and as many of us stand in the face of transition and change and challenge.
Speaker 2:Give us strength to follow you and hear you even as David did. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen.