O My Son!

2 Samuel 18:6-15

September 4, 2022 • Mount Pleasant UMC

It has become commonplace for politicians of all stripes to say things they shouldn’t have said, and then to apologize or retract the statement once the public outcry reaches a certain level. It’s one tactic people use to get their message out there and then appear to be apologetic. Such a thing happened several years ago in Israel when the then-foreign minister said something that many thought slandered another man. It was so bad that there were motions of “no confidence” votes against the government based on this statement. This minister, however, would not apologize, though he did say he did not intend the comments the way they were taken. The man he supposedly slandered? King David, Israel’s ancient monarch, dead for centuries. Here’s what the foreign minister said: “Not everything that King David did, on the ground, on the rooftops, is acceptable to a Jew or is something I like” (Goldingay, 1 & 2 Samuel for Everyone, pgs. 159-160). Well, I would agree with that; you probably would, too. As we’ve been looking at David’s story these last few weeks, we’ve discovered that, though he was without a doubt a great king and he was a “man after God’s own heart,” he was also very imperfect. He made mistakes, he sinned, he strayed away from God. In other words, he was human. He was a man who sometimes comes across as a great hero, or a great man of God, a warrior and a consummate leader. And at other times he is a cunning schemer or an incompetent procrastinator. David is the one who took on the giant Goliath, and he’s also the one who ordered the death of one of his soldiers so he could cover up his own sin. He’s a puzzle, and in the story we come to this morning, we’ll also see that David had to deal with suffering—deep down suffering. The death of his son is only the tip of the iceberg.

David has certainly been no stranger to death or tears up to this point. He’s lost his best friend and an infant son (Peterson, Leap Over a Wall, pgs. 193-194). And yet, nothing really compares with what he’s about to experience. When we left David last week, he was firmly established as the king of all Israel. When we pick up the story today in 2 Samuel 18, he’s fighting against a rebellion. How did we get here? As with most parts of David’s story, it’s rather complicated, but you read the highlights this week if you keep up with the Scripture readings. David had many children by multiple wives, so it was probably hard to keep up with what was going on in his family. Maybe he’s too busy administrating the kingdom. Maybe he thinks they’ll figure it out on their own. Maybe he’s still trying to forgive himself for the mess with Bathsheba. Meanwhile, his children are growing up. His daughter, Tamar, is beautiful, and her half-brother, Amnon, thinks he is in love with her. He’s really just in lust with her, but his attraction consumes his thoughts until he can think of nothing else. So he rapes Tamar, and once he has gotten what he wants, he sends her away. In fact, the writer of 2 Samuel says Amnon hated Tamar more than he had ever loved her (13:15). Tamar is now a “desolate” woman (13:20), and then Absalom, Tamar’s brother, learns what Amnon did. So does King David, by the way, and while he’s “furious” (13:21), he doesn’t do anything about it. He doesn’t punish Amnon and he doesn’t console Tamar. He just gets mad about it, and does nothing.

So Absalom takes matters into his own hands. Now, to be fair, he gave his father plenty of time to punish Amnon, to do something. Absalom plots and plans for two years, and then he brutally murders his half-brother. Absalom then runs away, knowing he has done a horrible thing, and again, David does nothing. He wants to go to Absalom, but he doesn’t (13:39). For three years, Absalom lives away from the capital and his family. Three years in exile. Now it’s been five years since Tamar’s rape. Five years for Absalom to plot and plan and grow even more bitter.

After the three years, he is allowed to return to Jerusalem, but David refuses to see him. It’s not really forgiveness; it’s sort of a royal pardon. It’s an impersonal welcome, not a fatherly embrace (Peterson 196). For four more years, Absalom lives in Jerusalem without seeing his father, without receiving any word of forgiveness. David would not give his son so much as a look. Have you experienced family brokenness, where there was a word carelessly spoken or an action taken that separated people, where family members won’t speak to or see each other. Maybe the brokenness came from something even more serious, like abuse or criminal activity. Or perhaps you haven’t experienced that—if so, give thanks. A family is supposed to be the group that loves you no matter what, who cares for you when no one else will. To lack the support of your family is a devastating thing. If you haven’t been there, try to imagine what it would be like to be completely cut off from those family members you hold most dear, from the folks who have been there for you since you were born. That’s where Absalom is. Now, I’m not trying to excuse what he did, not by any means, but I can’t excuse David, either. David, who has been forgiven for crimes similar to what Absalom has done, now refuses to give his son what he himself has come to depend on (cf. Peterson 197). Did Jesus, perhaps, have this story in mind when he told us, “If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15)? Day by day, David denies Absalom forgiveness and love and he denies his son his presence.

And so, Absalom begins plotting again. He schemes, he works his plan, he wins the hearts of the people, until the time finally arrives when the poll numbers are trending his way. Absalom proclaims himself king, and word comes to David, “The hearts of the people are with Absalom” (15:13). David (understandably) runs back to the wilderness where he spent so much time running away from King Saul. He is once again an exile. His son has taken the kingdom from him, some of his officials have betrayed him, and people even threw rocks at him as he left town. They stood on the ridge above the road and yelled at him, “Get out of town, you worthless old man! You’re a murderer! You’re a dirty old man! This is what God has done to you because of your sin! Get out!” And you have to wonder which hurt more: the stones or the words (cf. 16:5-8; Peterson 198-199).

The rape of Tamar led to Amnon’s murder. Amnon’s murder led to Absalom’s exile. And David’s silence about all of it led to hardheartedness and suffering on all sides. There was a common belief in those days that the ones who were loved by God would not suffer; oh, wait a minute, that belief is still alive and well today, centuries later. But that’s not the witness of Scripture. Following Jesus, worshipping God, does not exempt anyone from suffering, from hard times. The last time I checked, believers are in automobile accidents just as often as nonbelievers. We get cancer at the same rate as non-Christians. Studies indicate that divorce breaks up Christian families at the same rate as non-Christian families. And, as Eugene Peterson observes, “When you hit your thumb with a hammer, it hurts just as much after you’ve accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior as it did before” (194). The other side of it is we can’t say to someone, “Well, you’re suffering because you sinned.” If we do that, we're like the folks who were throwing rocks at David. It’s not helpful, and it’s not true. The truth is this: our world is broken, and sometimes we get caught up in the consequences of our own sin and sometimes we get caught in the sins of others. Suffering comes because of brokenness, and for anyone to try to draw a straight line between cause and effect is not helpful. Undoubtedly, David knows why he’s now living in Mahanaim (17:24), but he’s not gone there to naval gaze or feel sorry for himself. He’s gone there to move ahead with his life and see what might come out of his suffering. Unfortunately, for David, the outcome is a mixed bag, because even in the midst of his recovery, there is more suffering.

David gathers his troops and goes out to battle against Absalom and his army. David himself doesn’t go—and it’s not like last time, where he’s bored and hanging around the palace. This time, it’s on the advice of his general, Joab, based on David’s value as king. He basically says, “If they get you, David, they’ve really won. Let us fight for you.” And so David agrees, but as they go to battle, he stands at the gate and tells them, “Be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake” (18:5). What a strange command! After all David has been through, why would he tell them to take care of Absalom? Absalom is the enemy. He’s taken the throne, and chased the king (his father) into the wilderness. But remember, in the Bible the wilderness is the place where everything else is stripped away, where we find we have only God to depend on. So in the wilderness, David again becomes the man God intends him to be. In the wilderness, in the midst of his suffering, David rediscovers compassion. “Be gentle with Absalom.”

Some would look at what happens here and think David has gone soft, that somehow compassion has made him a weak man. Nothing could be further from the truth. Compassion takes a lot of character, strength and courage. The word literally means “to suffer with,” to experience another person’s situation as if it were your own. For David, it means he is at least trying to understand why Absalom has responded this way, and even perhaps (finally) take his part of the responsibility. Compassion means we might have to put aside our own desires, our own priorities—most likely our own sense of what is right and wrong—and consider the situation from another viewpoint. Compassion is more than feeling sorry for someone because they’re grieving or because they are hurting. Compassion is entering into their suffering. It’s Job’s three friends who come to sit with him. Remember Job? He lost everything—his home, his children, his wealth, and then he gets a serious illness that causes him great discomfort. His wife tells him to curse God and die, but Job asks if he should only accept good things from God and not difficult things. And then he has three friends who come and for a whole week, they just sit with him. They don’t say a word; they sit. They enter into his suffering. Compassion looks like that. Compassion looks like Mother Teresa, scouring the streets of Calcutta, India, looking for those who are dying, picking them up and bringing them back to her shelter so they could die with dignity. She took people no one else wanted, people no one else loved. Compassion looks like that. And compassion looks like two men, one who lost his son a number of years before and the other who has a very sick daughter. Compassion looks like this.

VIDEO: “November Christmas: Dealt a Bad Hand”

Much of the time, there are no answers, but compassion calls us to enter into the suffering of the other. “Be gentle with Absalom.” Compassion looks like that. Unfortunately, Joab is much more pragmatic than David is. When word reaches him that Absalom is caught in a tree, Joab goes after him. It appears Absalom was riding through the forest where the battle is taking place, and somehow got his head caught in the branches. Most scholars think it was his long hair, which he was very proud of (14:26), that got tangled in the branches, while the mule he was riding kept going. And Absalom is left there, literally “hanging between heaven and earth” (Youngblood, “1, 2 Samuel,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 3, pg. 1019). His mule, his royal mount, leaves him behind. Joab comes upon him and thrusts three spears into his heart, then he allows ten other men to abuse the king’s son, making sure he’s really dead. The body is thrown into a pit and covered with rocks. Today, outside the walls of Jerusalem in the Kidron Valley, there is a monument called “Absalom’s Tomb.” It sits across the valley from the Temple Mount, and in past times, it was the custom for Jews, Christians and Muslims to throw stones at the tomb anytime they walked by. The monument itself is empty; there is no body buried there. It’s also not the monument referred to in verse 18, as it was actually built sometime in the first century (Knight, The Holy Land, pg. 94), but the symbolism is still powerful. In spite of David's call for compassion toward his wayward son, people throughout the centuries have treated Absalom as a villain.

But David cannot. When word reaches him of Absalom’s death, David is “shaken” (18:33). He goes into a private room and weeps, calling out, “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!” It has to be one of the most heartbreaking verses in all of Scripture, but it’s a cry that flows out of a heart transformed by compassion, by “suffering with.” And I believe this is the moment David reconnected with God, the God who had never left him, the God he knew to be faithful in all things. Why do I believe that? One, because at that moment, David is reflecting the compassionate heart of God. He has entered into the suffering of the world, practicing compassion toward someone who really doesn’t deserve it. And two, because God knows what it’s like to lose a son.

Out of God’s great compassion, he comes near us in times of suffering. In fact, we learn things when we suffer we could not learn any other way. David is a different king because of the suffering and the hardships he’s been through over these years. We all know people who have had priorities shifted because of difficult times. Some say that the pandemic has caused all sorts of shifts, not the least of which is the “Great Resignation,” where people are looking for more meaning in their work than they did before. Others have faced serious illness and realized material things aren’t so all-important as they once thought. The crisis comes and suddenly we realize that much of what we think matters just doesn’t. We are significantly shaped in the times of testing, in the times of suffering and struggle.

But how do we respond to others who are going through such times? Well, some folks we might call the uninvolved, those who stand on the sidelines and simply wait until it’s over. These are the folks in Jerusalem who didn’t really care who was king, as long as they didn’t have to get involved. So they supported neither David nor Absalom, nor did they learn anything from the experience. Compassion was not important, so they stayed on the sidelines, making no impact beyond their own little world.

Others intensify the pain, the suffering. Some folks set out to intentionally harm others, but by and large most people just end up saying things they mean to be comforting but are not. Sometimes we say these things because we don’t know what to say. We’re uncomfortable with silence, and so we say things just to fill the void. As you heard in the video, sometimes people say things that even push people away from God. Maybe they don’t mean to; they mean to be comforting, but some things we say simply are not. Things like…

• “God must have needed them in heaven.” (Yeah, well, I need them down here.)
• “I know just how you feel.” (No, you don’t. And it’s not about you, anyway.) 
• “God will give you another child (or spouse).” (That is horribly insensitive. Even if another child is born, or another marriage takes place, that will never fill the void of one who is lost.)
• “God told me he’ll heal you.” (Really?)
• “Time heals all wounds.” (Not always.)
• “God must be trying to teach you something.” (This is an incredibly arrogant and patronizing thing to say, as if you know their life better than they do.)
• “If you just do what I did, then you’ll be much better.” (Everyone is different, and not everyone heals the same way.)
• “My aunt Mildred had the same problem…” (But your friend is not your aunt.)

Bottom line: we’re not called to explain away someone else’s people’s pain or suffering, as if we could. We’re called, instead, to practice compassion, to enter into the other’s pain.

That brings us to the best response: the ones who restore. Remember, the word “compassion” means to “suffer with.” To sit with the other person like Job’s friends did. To gather together with those who are hurting like the disciples did in the Upper Room after the crucifixion. The Gospels tell us that they went back to the last familiar place, the place where they had shared dinner together Thursday night, when Jesus was still with them. They came together, a bit in fear and more seeking comfort from each other. No one else knew really what they had been through. So they came together and offered compassion to one another. There is a “fellowship of sufferings” out of which, often, the most compassionate response can come.

You see, compassion is not about writing a check or trying to make someone hurry through their suffering. The story of the Bible, from the Old Testament to the crucifixion of Jesus, is that redemption and healing and hope come not by going around the difficulty but by going through it. Compassion requires face-to-face contact, human contact, knowing someone else cares enough to sit with you, to listen to that story for one hundredth time, to pray for and with you. And I know I harp on this, but that’s why it’s so important to be part of a small group that knows you, that cares for you, that loves you even on your worst day. If you want or need to get connected with a group like that, see Hannah Peters and she will take care of you. Compassion comes with proximity. 

Compassion might also come in a sharp word from a trusted friend. Joab has been David’s general for so many years, and they have a relationship rooted in deep trust. That’s why Joab can tell him he needs to pull it together. The troops are thinking of deserting because they hear him mourning Absalom, the man they have just risked their lives protecting David from (19:1-8). Joab's words may sound unkind, but Joab knows he can speak this way to David because of a long history of trust between them. Sometimes we need a Joab in our lives for all those times when we can’t see beyond our own suffering. If the word is spoken at the wrong time or without that deep trust, it can be devastating because the main goal in any act of compassion is always to help us see how God can use even this, even our suffering, even our pain. God can use it. God didn’t cause it. God didn’t kill Absalom. But God can redeem our suffering, our hurt, our wounds. God can use even this.

Leo Buscaglia, who was professor of special education at USC, was once asked to judge a contest to choose the “most compassionate child.” The contest would be based upon stories of caring or service submitted by parents, relatives, or friends. The winning entry was a story of a four-year-old child who lived next door to an elderly man who had just lost his wife. One day, he was peeking through the fence and he saw the old man in tears, so the little boy went through the gate, climbed up on the widower's lap, and sat there for a while. When he came home, his mother asked the boy what he had said. “Nothing,” he responded. “I just helped him cry.” Compassion looks like that. Let us pray.