Fathers and Sons

Sermon for Sunday, August 9, 2009 Buck Mountain Church

Lessons:

2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51

We say history repeats itself, and there is, sadly, too much evidence of the truth behind that warning. I think what actually happens is that we humans continue making the same mistakes, from one relationship to the next, even from generation to generation, until we are finally willing to learn the lessons life so readily provides us. The learning of those lessons may, in fact, be the substance of what makes life worth living. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems that we have to be beaten over the head by our issues before we take notice of them. Until we become aware of the need for change, change cannot happen. As Robert Frost put it, "Our very life depends on everything's/ recurring till we answer from within."

Parents, either as role models or as guides, can be the most powerful teachers we ever have. As I sat down to work on this sermon on Wednesday evening, I received a collect phone call from the young man I correspond with in prison. J. is 26 now, and he has been in prison since he was 18 for doing something pretty dumb on his 18th birthday. If he had still been 17 or had been fortunate enough to have a more merciful judge, he would have been out of prison 4 years ago. As his luck would have it, he was given 22 years in prison, while his partner in crime, who did exactly the same thing J. did, received a reasonable 3 year sentence from a different judge. J. is a bright young man, with a caring heart and an inquiring mind. He is taking college classes by correspondense and tutoring his fellow inmates. Our letters and conversations often center around matters of conscience, of religion and spirituality.

Knowing that I would be working on this sermon, I asked J. about his father and their relationship. He simply said that he misses his dad and is grateful for having the father he had. J.'s father, who left him and his mother when he was a boy, has died while J. has been in prison, and I fear there was never a peaceful closure to issues between the father and son. I have known J.'s mother for years, so I have my own perspective on this young man's tragic circumstances, and I believe J.'s reckless behavior can, at least in part, be traced to his need to get his father's attention. In his young eyes, his dad, who told stories of his own youth as a rabblerouser, must have seemed like a larger-than-life hero. The more J. tried to impress his dad, the more his dad rejected him, or so it seems to me. Now with his father dead and J. lingering in prison, that wounded relationship will never have a chance to heal.

Father and son. How many stories have been passed down through the ages about that powerful, primal relationship? There are expectations on both sides that can be impossible to meet. Our story today from 2nd Samuel of the great King David and his rebellious son Absalom is a tragic example.

We continue the story of David, many years after last Sunday’s episode of a young king’s lust for the beautiful Bathsheba. As our vicar noted in her sermon last week, David admitted his guilt and accepted responsibility for his actions. His contrition and his status as the favored one resulted in God’s allowing him to remain king. God’s mercy towards David is good news for all of us. However, even though God showed mercy to David in the face of an egregious sin, the consequences of that sin played themselves out in succeeding events. Sin has a way of creating its own punishment. The fabled apple, as we know, does not fall far from the tree.

Years have passed, and David is now an old king, with many grown children by different wives. That sounds like potential trouble, doesn’t it? His eldest son Amnon becomes obsessed with lust for his half-sister Tamar, and he schemes to get her. After he traps and rapes her, Amnon is filled with disgust for her and sends her away in disgrace. Absalom is her full brother, and, outraged on Tamar’s behalf, he vows to get revenge on Amnon. Their father David does nothing to intervene.

You might assume that Absalom would simply storm off and beat up his brother Amnon, but that is not Absalom’s way of doing things. For two years he stews in secrecy, then invites Amnon to his house for dinner, where Absalom orders his servants to kill the honored guest, who also happens to be his brother and the king’s son. After committing this crime, Absalom leaves the country for three years, but David, who misses him, is convinced to let him return to Jerusalem.

Then Absalom, who is described as being the most handsome man in all of Israel, a man much beloved by the people, plots to overthrow his aging father and grab the throne for himself, and he nearly succeeds. Our lesson today joins the story at this point, when David’s generals are heading out to pursue the rebellious prince. In the hearing of others, the old king gives these orders to Joab and Abishai and Ittai: “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.” But Absalom’s pride will prove to be his ironic downfall. His long, thick, beautiful hair is caught in tree branches as he rides his mule beneath them, and he is left hanging there by his hair. That’s where Joab and his armor-bearers find Absalom and deal with him in the traditional way for those who are considered traitors: they kill him without qualms.

Surely David, that old warrior, should not have been surprised. Yet he grieves mightily for his lost son, more than we see him grieve for the death of the child born to Bathsheba. Maybe he now fully recognizes the wages of his own sin, the way the consequences of his past have moved out around him over the years like concentric circles, like waves moving outward from the source of their disturbance.

The scene of David’s grief is for me one of the most touching scenes in the Old Testament: ‘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 Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!"’ Like the endlessly forgiving father in Jesus's parable of the prodigal son, David doesn't care that his son betrayed him; all he sees is that a promising young life has been wasted. If he could have had one more chance to speak to Absalom, he might have used words very like St. Paul's words in today's letter to the Ephesians: "Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you." Absalom's downfall began with justified anger towards his brother, but that anger consumed him and transformed into arrogance and contempt for his father and the law.

Those words of David, grieving his lost son, "Absalom, Absalom," were used by William Faulkner as the title of the novel that I believe is his masterpiece. As usual with Faulkner's work, the novel is a complicated, multi-layered story, set as a conversation between two young men, sitting in their dorm room at Harvard and trying to make sense of Southern history. Quentin Compson, who is also a main character in The Sound and the Fury, tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, a Mississippi plantation owner who made a fortune by crooked speculation during the post-Civil War years. Sutpen's ill-gotten fortune and his family are destroyed by a conflict between his two sons--half-brothers, one white and the other black. The tragedy of brother in enmity with brother and the failures of their father match the biblical archetype of the story of David and Absalom. History repeats itself in such enmity. But hatred and division are not part of God's plan for us. The children of mankind are intended by our heavenly father to live in peace with one another.

Whether it is between a father and son, or mother and daughter, or father and daughter, or mother and son, the relationship between a parent and a child is, to say the least, a complicated thing. Very few of us manage to play our role flawlessly, on either side of the relationship coin. I cringe when I think of the ways I disappointed my parents or failed my son.

But it is this very relationship of parent and child that the Lord God of the Universe chose to enter. There is much for us to learn from the way God embodies both roles. Explaining the Trinity is beyond my abilities, but at the very least, when we speak of the Father and Son, we are supposed to think of them as one being. Last winter, a friend of mine from my spiritual direction class who is the youth pastor at her church told me a child’s explanation for the Trinity. The child said to her that speaking of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit reminded him of the way his mother was several different people in one. She was the daughter of his grandma and the sister of his aunt as well as his mother. I like that explanation as well as any I’ve ever heard. The prism through which we view God determines what we see and experience of the Divine.

So what does Jesus show us about God? God chooses to enter our world as one of us, as a weak and helpless infant born to a family of modest means, and in so doing, he shows us we are in no way separate from Him. Jesus, the incarnation of the Father, is our brother. He usually speaks of himself as "the son of man." He also says he is the bread of life, "the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die." Bread is the most basic of foods, and grain is often the one crop or commodity that keeps poor people from starving. Jesus knew that those listening to him would understand the fundamental connection between bread and life. Going without bread for many people could mean death. Jesus is saying that what God has to offer is not something imaginary or expensive or hard to find, but something very much a necessary part of everyday life.

Jesus also tells us that all we have to do to receive this bread from God is ask. "So I say to you, ask and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you... Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" [Luke 11: 9-13]

When our earthly relationships fail us, as they are bound to do from time to time, we need but turn towards God for what we seek. That divine spark of the eternal that resides in Jesus Christ also resides in us; we are his brothers and sisters, the children of a Father who will not fail us. The lovely collect for today offers the prayer we seekers need: "Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

Susan Hull