David is persistent in his over-indulgence
of his children. He asks Joab to “deal gently” with Absalom – which has put
Joab and his troops in grave peril! No wonder Joab chides him later to get his
act together and recognize who’s been fighting with him.
Robert Barron, always
brilliant and wise, notices David’s soft spot with his sons, and asks a
surprising and wonderful question: “Does David’s ‘weakness’ for his children,
his sentimental failure to exact true justice in their regard, in fact not represent
the deeper and higher judgment of God?” Wow. A lack of tough love, an
overabundance of mercy on children in need of discipline: does this mirror the
heart of God? Like God, David relentlessly loves those who fail, who rebel
against him.
The battle is a cruel one. The thick woods
claim more victims than the soldiers and weapons, reminding Barron of the
Wilderness Campaign during the Civil War, and then reminding me of
Passchendaele in World War I, where the mud caused a high percentage of the
casualties – as if nature itself conspires with the God who is left unmentioned
to effect the outcome.
The searing emotion of Absalom’s dramatic
death: wow. Absalom’s hair, certainly a symbol to his followers of his potency,
and probably a sign of his narcissistic vanity, becomes his undoing – like Samson!
His royal mount leaves him suspended in the air – a picturesque image of his
unseating, his being dethroned. Hard not to think of Judas, dangling from a
tree.
David, perhaps with the same heart as the
father in Jesus’ story of the prodigal son, does not pump his fists in victory.
His grief is beyond measure. In The Lord of the Rings,
King Théoden, learning of his son Théodred’s death, grimly declares “The young
perish, the old linger… No parent should have to bury their child” – and David’s
sorrow is even more harrowingly complicated since his son died while in revolt
against his own sorry leadership. Or to shift the cause, and gender mix,
consider the profoundly riveting and then funny scene where Sally Field plays
the mom who lost her daughter in Steel Magnolias – which
illustrates how a raging questioning is more faithful than a pious claim that
God’s will was done.
Barron points out the way David has
changed, how the accumulation of losses has taken its toll on him – or how this
loss was more brutal: David, who was so very eloquent when Saul and Jonathan died
(2 Sam. 1), now is reduced to nothing more (or less) than moaning his son’s
name over and over.
Preaching on such a text: resist the
temptation to find a moral. What would it be? Don’t start a civil war? Those
who grasp for power are undone? I think the Bible invites us to hear stories of
real people, truly important people, how things unfold – and tragically so very
often. We do not find stories of sweet, well-behaved families that pray and are
blessed by a generous Lord. And so there
is room in the Bible for people like… me, you, all of us.
Ephesians 4:25-5:2. Our Epistle, as is generally the case, has
more of an obvious moral, take-away or theological lesson. How counter-cultural
and subversive, in a day like ours, is Paul’s admonition to “Speak the truth”? So elusive, so rare, so despised – and our
listeners have even come to believe truth is a phantom, a fantasy, or is no
more than my private truth, my ideology.
Harry Frankfurt wrote what is for me the most important book for
preachers to read: On Bullshit – which explores
(he’s a philosopher, so it’s an intellectual riff) the dominant mode of
communication, and expectation in our culture. The bullshitter, Frankfurt
points out, isn’t a liar. He doesn’t care about truth at all; it’s just a
matter of talking somebody into something, so you say whatever. People
experience this all the time, and they have their BS antennae out when you’re
preaching too. And you’d best beware of the nagging temptation to be a BSer in
the pulpit.
Paul counsels us: “Do not let the sun set
on your wrath” – which is often parroted as great marriage advice. Not a bad
idea – as lingering upsets do fester and grow rapidly like kudzu. But Lisa and
I have figured out that sometimes, waiting overnight for things to chill before
settling a disagreement might not be the worst idea – instead of plunging in
while feelings are at fever pitch. The key is the commitment to iron things out
and not let wrath win the day.
“Be imitators of God.” The medieval notion
of the imitation of Christ is resurrectable, but tricky. For years people wore
WWJD bracelets – but many were clueless about what Jesus would in fact do.
Better to imitate the way St. Francis imitated Jesus. He listened to the Gospel
being read, and that was his to-do list for the day. So he took no cloak for
the journey, he sold all and gave to the poor, he touched lepers.
My favorite article I’ve ever published
(in The Art of Reading Scripture) was about Francis’s stunning imitation of Christ – prompting G.K. Chesterton to
suggest that “it is very enlightening to realise that Christ was like St.
Francis.” As I suggested in my piece, “Mimicry is hardly a faithful copy, or
even a desirable posture. I can hear my son filing suit against his sister from
the back of the van: ‘Daddy, she’s copying me!’ And yet, for precisely that
reason, ‘imitatio’ is helpful. We can muster no better than a failed
approximation of Christ, in laughable, faltering ways.” The Greek verb, mimetai, is kin to our “mime” – a mimicry
that is cool, but laughable too. So is
our imitation of Christ.
Our Gospel reading, John 6:35-51, has been
covered in my previous blog on the entirety of John 6, with details for this
week there too.
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My new book, Worshipful, now has an online study guide with video clips.
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