A Father’s Day Tale

June 21, 1992

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Scripture: II Samuel 18:1-15; 24-33

It’s Father’s Day, so I’d like to tell you a story. It’s a Bible story, but that doesn’t surprise you, I’m sure. Shall I start with the moral, or end with the moral? Let’s leave the moral for a while, if you don’t mind. The story, just as story, just by itself, is a good place to begin.

David was the King---a great king, a glorious king, a powerful king, a charismatic king...so great and glorious and powerful and charismatic that from that time on, from that time right to the present day, the Hebrew people have looked back on his reign as the apogee of their history.

They had other great kings, but no one like David. He was the king by which all other kings were measured. He was the king “par excellence”, the one who subdued the Philistines, the one who unified the nation, established Jerusalem as the capital, brought the Ark to the city, brought peace and prosperity, and added a touch of color and class to the times.... David was the king.

His date with destiny began early... you remember.... As a boy, he had fought that unforgettable battle with the giant, Goliath of Gath, and laid him out cold, with faith, courage, and a split-fingered fast ball. As a youth, he had soothed the melancholy of troubled King Saul, by playing on the lyre when the kings’ moods were out of control and no one else could handle him.

Later, he earned his reputation as a warrior and a leader of men... earned a reputation as a ladies’ man, too. They say he had red hair and eyes that danced.

Saul’s daughter certainly found him attractive. She chased him until he caught her, as they sometimes say. Actually it was just like in the movies. He pursued and won and married the princess, thus becoming the heir apparent to the throne. The Brothers Grimm couldn’t have invented a better plot.

But you can forget the fairy tale parallel after that. Once he became part of the king’s family, he earned everything he got. Saul quickly turned against him... JEALOUSY... the green-eyed thing. He’d come too far too fast. The people, the common people loved him too much. Saul couldn’t stand it. Out on the street they would sing a song: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his TEN thousands....”  My Stars! It just about drove ol’ Saul out of his gourd!

Besides, has there ever been a father who really believed in his heart that the man who married his daughter deserved her? That hasn’t changed much through the years. All of it together, coupled with the king’s emotional fragility, anyway, made for bad blood in the palace. One day Saul actually threw a javelin at his son-in-law and missed him by just a hair.

David at that point, not unwisely, split the scene, as it were, before he got split....HE FLED FOR HIS LIFE, AND BECAME... AN OUTLAW.

For 12 years, he lived out in the hills, those rough, Judean hills around Hebron... you can still walk out there among them.... He lived mostly in caves, mostly off the land, cultivating friends where he could, gathering around him a band of faithful soldiers, a kind of ancient Semitic Robin Hood... or maybe Jesse James... alternately keeping just out of Saul’s reach, and fighting the Philistines, the common enemy.

His popular support only grew, and when Saul was killed in battle--the Battle of Mount Gilboa, failing on his own sword rather than allowing himself to be captured alive---it was probably his finest moment.... When that happened, David intuitively and quickly, moved into the vacuum.

With skill, tact, diplomacy, luck, and what the Hebrews call “chutzpa”, he declared himself available for a convention draft. No question he had the delegates. They elected him on the first ballot.

Oh, admittedly, he did have to dispose of a couple of opponents first, who stood between him and his goal. That could have been a nuisance.... He did it discreetly, with much public lamentation, reminded everyone that he WAS, after all, Saul’s son-in-law... and before you could say “Bubs-your-uncle”[1], DAVID WAS THE KING.

He was a better king than Saul. He was a better MAN than Saul, but he wasn’t perfect. The MORAL? Not yet. Let’s keep going.

Our source for this period of his life, by the way, is a remarkable journal that has come down to us and been incorporated into our Bible. The author, presumably, was somebody in the King’s court... had to be, a contemporary, an eye-witness... he knew too much for it to be otherwise. The journal is usually referred to as “the Temple Diary”, and it’s the basis for most of the Book of Second Samuel. We wish we knew the name of the chronicler---we don’t---but he/she/whoever, was a sharp, astute historian, a good note taker, keen eyes in observation, and fair in judgement. He “tells it like it is”, to coin a phrase, not glossing over embarrassments, but laying it out for us to see. It only makes us respect the integrity of our Bible more. He admired David, obviously, respected him, loved him, BUT HE DIDN’T TRY TO WHITEWASH HIM.... He paints a picture we can believe, warts and all are there, and the warts, the flaws are glaring.

You can talk all you want about David the king, AND HE WAS GREAT. You can talk about David the warrior, and David the musician, the sweet singer of songs, and David the lover.... it’s all true, but on this Father’s Day, I have to say to you in all honesty that there’s not a lot of positive stuff you can say about David the father. Isn’t that sad?

May we focus on that part of the record a little more closely? It’s not a pretty picture, to tell you the truth. It’s painful and poignant, but it’s devastatingly incisive...and powerfully relevant. We’ll come to the moral in time.

At the height of David’s prestige and power as King of Israel, a great king, there was born to the royal family a son... Absalom. The mother was not Saul’s daughter, I need to tell you, I suppose, but if you don’t mind, we’ll not get into the sticky subject of polygamy in the ancient world this morning.... Another Sunday, perhaps.

Absalom, by all accounts, was a beautiful child, an exceptionally beautiful child. He had long, flowing hair, radiant features, bright, sparkling eyes.... He had everything in his favor, everything going for him a child could ask for, a good name, a good mind, good looks, attractive personality... material blessings. If ever a child could be said to be born with a silver spoon in his mouth, surely that child was Absalom.

But you can already see the dark cloud ascending in the background, can’t you? Like many a father before and since, David spoiled the boy, spoiled him terribly. The Record leaves no room for doubt. He doted on him, he petted him, babied him, showed him special favoritism, even though there were other children. David gave him everything he WANTED, but almost nothing he NEEDED. And as the years went by, Absalom grew into manhood, outwardly a splendid specimen of a man, but inwardly, a rotten, self-centered personality.

AND MAYBE IT HAD TO HAPPEN.... given that start, in that setting, under those circumstances, maybe it was inevitable, a time bomb, ticking away, waiting to explode.

One day it did. That ugly incident involving Amnon, his half-brother. I know there was

justification.... You can read about it in the 13th Chapter of Second Samuel, if you want the details. It’s sordid, I warn you, worse than Hard Copy, or a Current Affair[2]. The Bible doesn’t pull punches. There was justification, but not THAT much justification.

Consumed by revenge and hatred for what he had done to his sister, Absalom had his henchmen murder Amnon...at a dinner party, of all places...and then he fled the country before his father found out. (Now this is a Bible story----I’m telling it straight out of the Book!) Absalom left the country.

For several years he stayed away, and David missed him terribly. Everybody around the king knew he missed him. They could see it in his face; they could see it in his eyes.... What Absalom had done was terribly wrong, but he was still his boy.

Yet for some strange reason, David did nothing. He was somehow immobilized. He took no initiative, either to locate Absalom, or to bring him home. Maybe he didn’t know exactly what to do. Maybe he didn’t want to admit the truth. Maybe it was a kind of perverse pride that kept him from reaching out a hand of reconciliation....

Maybe the pollution of power does that to a person.... Wasn’t it Lord Acton who said, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."? Maybe that’s involved somehow.... I don’t know. At any rate, we’re a long way here from the Father in Jesus’ unforgettable parable, running up the road to throw forgiving arms around his wayward son...... We’re a long way from that.

David didn’t do anything. After giving his son everything, he had nothing to give him. He missed him, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to him.

Even when his soldiers, who probably understood the King better than anybody, convinced him to let the boy return to Jerusalem, he permitted it only with the proviso that Absalom not be allowed into his presence. For 2 full years, father and son were within a stone’s throw of each other, but never so much as a word passed between them.

Are we ready for the moral yet? There’s still more.... The plot thickens.

The young man never got over that rebuff. His father’s attitude was so changed. There was nothing solid he could push against. He brooded, pouted, mate his heart out. He let it twist and churn inside his viscera. His brooding led to scheming, and his scheming to revolution.

“What goes around, comes around”, they say. Absalom tried to do to David what David had done to Saul. He took his complaint to the people. He set up a post at the city gate, and bad-mouthed his father. He encouraged resentments, cultivated the sore-heads, stirred up the malcontents, until he had an army of malcontents. There are always those ready to buck the system, even when the system is basically sound. Absalom was attractive, articulate, persuasive. David was a great king, but pretty soon, the son had a following....AND IT GREW. I don’t suppose David was worried at first. Why should he have been? What was there to worry about? A bunch of hoodlums, a street gang? What could they do? BUT SUDDENLY, THERE IT WAS... out of control, running loose, a civil insurrection, in its ugliest form. IT WAS serious, the most serious threat his kingdom ever faced, and his own boy was the motive power behind it.

Finally, all hell broke loose... the army of the son against the army of the father,

a bloody, miserable little war, with friends, and neighbors, and families torn apart and pitted against each other. David had to take action, and he almost waited too long.

The son was no match for the old man on the battlefield, of course. David was past his prime, but he had forgotten more about war than Absalom ever knew. He started slowly, but when he did move, he moved with a vengeance.... He divided his troops into three parts, one third under Joab, one third under Abishai, and one third under Ittai the Gittite.

Isn’t that a wonderful name, Ittai the Gittite? Don’t you love to say “Ittai the Gittite”? Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, saying Ittai the Gittite. It usually comes as a great surprise to Nancy, who says that on balance she really would rather have me snore....

But do you remember who else was a Gittite? Gittite means “from Gath”, the Philistine city of Gath. Of course. It comes back, doesn’t it? Goliath, the giant, his old enemy, had been a Gittite. Now a Gittite, from Gath, was a trusted  general, fighting FOR David. That’s how far he had come. David was a great king.

You can see it reflected in the way his troops felt about him. David dressed to go with them into battle, to be with them out on the battlefield himself. His soldiers restrained him. There may be no greater evidence of the loyalty he inspired among those who loved him than right here....

“No, please”, they said. “You stay back. You’re too valuable, much too valuable. If we flee, they won’t care about us. If half of us are killed, they won’t care about us. But you’re worth ten thousand of us. Stay in the city and send us help from there.” That’s how they felt about him. He was a great king.

But it wasn’t as king he issued the final instructions to his officers before sending them out into combat. It’s a deeply moving moment. His final word to them was spoken as parent.

It’s not David the general we see in that scene. It’s David the human being, David the man, David the father. It’s hard to read the words even from this distance, without having your voice break. Drawing his generals aside, but in the hearing of the whole army, he spoke to them quietly out of the burden of those years of inconsistency----back and forth, doting and discipline, too much and too little, lavish presents and lavish neglect---can you feel the emotion of it? “Deal gently, for my sake, with the young man Absalom.”

My God! His kingdom is on the line, his very kingdom. But what is a kingdom compared with a child?

Are we ready now for the moral? Maybe we’re getting closer.

The battle was quickly joined... quickly begun and quickly ended. It didn’t take long once it got underway. We’re not talking Gettysburg here, or Waterloo. It was no large scale, programmed campaign, just a sudden, bloody guerilla attack, dirty, brutish, and short. The veteran troops of the king were too much for the ragtag insurgents. The Book says 20,000 were killed, though that’s certainly an exaggeration. The winning side always overcounts the casualties of the opposition.

Absalom’s forces were outflanked and routed, and Absalom himself, trying to escape through the forest, on the back of a mule, caught his hair, that beautiful, pampered hair, remember?---- caught his hair in the branches of a low hanging oak.

What an exquisite irony. But how often it happens...the very thing we’re proudest of, the very thing in which we place the greatest stock, the very thing we feel surest about.... THAT CAN SO EASILY BECOME OUR DOWNFALL.... or, as here, our HANGUP.

Absalom, somehow, in flight, got those beautiful flowing locks inextricably tangled in the branches of a tree, and there he hung, in helpless suspension, until old hard-bitten Joab, disregarding the king’s earlier plea, rammed a spear through his dangling body.

Is it the end? For Absalom, yeah. But not for David.

Shift the scene now, back to Jerusalem, back to the city, where David waits. Somebody’s got to tell him. Can you see him in your mind’s eye? Can you see him as he waits? What a vivid picture it etches on the imagination.

THERE IS THE KING, on top of the gate, the highest vantage point in the city.... He looks out to the east, across the Kidron Valley.... some of you have been there, beyond the Mount of Olives, as far as he can see, to the distant horizon... straining his eyes, mopping his brow, waiting for news of the battle. “They also serve who only stand and wait”, wrote Milton. In some ways there no harder job in the world. If you’ve ever paced a hospital corridor, or sat by a telephone, hoping it would ring, and hoping it wouldn’t.... or chewed your fingernails waiting for a child to come home... you know.

Maybe David already knew. Maybe in his heart he already sensed the outcome. Maybe there was a kind of intuition, or telepathy that conveyed the inevitable to him across those miles.

I have an idea he’d already recognized the truth by the time the messenger arrived... You couldn’t fool a man like David for long.

I wouldn’t presume to put myself in his shoes during those interminable moments... you don’t presume on another’s privacy if you have any decency, certainly not a king’s, but as he agonized, and sweated, and waited, I wonder if he wondered...... I wonder if he remembered the boy’s first tooth, or his first step, or how he looked in his first grown up suit..... I wonder if he might have asked himself, WHAT IF I HAD SAID NO to him more often when he was younger instead of indulging his every whim.

What if I had spent more time with him? What if I had given him more of myself, instead of all those things? What if I had been more of a father and less of an authority?

I wonder if he might have asked himself, Why couldn’t I have gone to him when he got into trouble and needed me. Why couldn’t I have reached out to him when his actions so obviously were an attempt to get my attention? Why couldn’t I have listened instead of always having to talk?

I wonder if he wondered as he waited about what might have been, and about what could have been, and about what should have been? They ushered the messenger in when he came. He was panting with heavy exhaustion. He had run all the way from the battlefield. Poor man. He tried his best to save the bad news for last, to tell the king about the glorious victory, how the kingdom was still secure... but the king cut him off short... “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” I’m sure he knew by then. If only he could have asked that question 20 years earlier.

To me there’s no more heartbreaking scene in the whole Bible than the scene which

follows, when David’s worst fears are confirmed....Well, maybe there’s one. WHEN THE HEAVENLY FATHER WEEPS OVER THE DEATH OF HIS SON ON THE CRUEL CROSS OF CALVARY.

David is shattered, devastated, reduced to uncontrollable tears. Who can even look at it unblinkingly? THE KING HAS WON, BUT THE FATHER HAS LOST, AND THE VICTORY IS NOT WORTH THE PRICE.

“Oh, Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son. Would that I had died for thee. O Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son.”

Are we ready now at last for the moral? Are you kidding? The story speaks for itself.

--

[1] A British phrase that means “and there you have it.”  There is a longer version as well that means the same thing: “Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your granny.”

[2] These two TV shows came out during the late 80s/early 90s and were considered tabloid television, sensationalizing the news.