Sermon: "Everything Sad is Becoming Untrue," August 8, 2021

"The Death of Absalom," Pavimento di siena, 16 century

Preacher: The Rev. Ryan Slifka
Scripture: 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33

Today's scripture is from the Old Testament's Second Book of Samuel. This book is part of what's often referred to as the “historical books.” These books trace the early history of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as nations, and their kings. While they focus on big events like wars, battles, international intrigue, they're surprisingly personal. A friend once described these sections of the Old Testament as “soap-opera-y” on account of the twists and drama. It's definitely true here.

Here we have King David, the figure who looms largest over the Old Testament. Israel's most prominent King, the original Messiah—the anointed one—blessed and chosen by God. Here we arrive at the tail end of a rebellion against him. And the worst part of it is that the leader of the mutiny is Absalom—David's own son. That's the soap-opera-y part. The leader of the rebellion was none other than... dun dun dun... the son of the king. The big reveal.

Now, this rebellion's been years in the making, and based on David's own unwillingness to act. Seven years prior, David's other son Ammon raped his sister, Tamar. David did nothing to redress this despicable assault on his daughter. So Absalom took matters into his own hands, killing his brother Ammon for the violation of his sister. David may have done nothing, but Absalom did too much. So David punished him for his brother's murder by sending him into exile for three years. Eventually, David's nephew Joab convinced Absalom to return home. But David still refused to see his son for two more years, still bitter about Ammon's murder.[i]

All of this, though, served to push Absalom further and further away. While David was giving him the silent treatment, Absalom spent his time stewing away. Plotting, scheming. Part of it's resentment towards his father's weakness in not protecting his sister and inaction in punishing her rapist. But the other part is undoubtedly his dad’s rejection. Anyone who's experienced this here knows that there are few wounds that sting as much as being shut out or forsaken by the people who gave you life. So take David's perceived incompetence, add a spit-in-the-face of fatherly unfairness, and you've got a revolutionary ready and willing to wage war against the God's own dynasty. And he finds plenty of others with similar grievances to join on in.

Unfortunately for Absalom, though, the rebellion fizzles out. David's seasoned soldiers crush Absalom's guerrilla fighters. And we have this semi-comical scene where Absalom flees into a forest and gets either his hair or his head caught in some branches. Then his donkey takes off without him, leaving him tangled in the tree, feet dangling below. I say semi-comical, because any comedy in the situation immediately evaporates when Joab—David's nephew—and ten other soldiers each take their turns knifing the helpless traitor as he suspends midair.

Now, if you were paying attention, you'll have noticed that David actually ordered that his son be spared. “Deal gently with the young man,” said David to his generals. So David's response to the news isn't entirely surprising.  The news shatters him completely. He falls to the floor, weeps, calling out his name “Absalom, my son, my son!” Over and over again. In spite of his son's betrayal, David still loved him and hoped to keep him alive. It’s that parental love that can withstand and transcend the worst king of disappointment.

This loss is almost too much for him to bear. In fact, he says he'd rather have died himself. “Would that I had died instead of you,” he cries, “...O Absalom.” David may have won the battle, kept the kingdom, claimed victory. But the cost was steep. The cost was this son, who he loved. It apparently wasn't worth it. And, I mean, David's not entirely innocent in the situation either. David's inaction stoked Absalom's anger. David's cold shoulder might have been meant to teach him a lesson but only fuelled more resentment.  So compound loss with guilt and shame and he’d trade anything, he'd give anything for his son to live again. Even his own life.

Like I said, these stories are deeply personal. They may be about ancient kings and generals and battles and drama. But it's pretty real, and in that way they're also about us. Those of us who have lost a child will know exactly what David's going through, whether that loss is literal or metaphoric. The despair, the suffering, the bargaining. The regret for failures, guilt over lost opportunities to set things right. The desire to die, the willingness to die yourself if it meant reversing it. We always thought we had more time until we didn’t. This is the absolute depth of human hurt. And it doesn't have to be the loss of someone we love. Maybe we've failed as parents, or how we’ve screwed up our lives or dropped the ball. maybe we've blatantly hurt or betrayed someone else, maybe, maybe, maybe. If we don't have something like that, we probably just haven't lived long enough. But we all have something we'd give anything to fix, reverse, to set right.

The problem is, of course, that we can't. Nothing David could do would bring back his son or reverse the past. Not even his dying could bring his son back. I remember sitting in at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Vancouver 8 or 9 years ago, and hearing an elderly indigenous woman talk about her son's suicide. He'd struggled with a lifetime of alcohol and drug abuse, much of it used as a way to escape the trauma and shame he'd felt after being abused in a Residential School. Though she appreciated the apologies made by the churches and Canadian government, “all the apologies in the world,” she admitted, “can do nothing to bring back my son.”

 Some things in life are simply irreversible, irreplaceable, un-fixable. There's nothing we can do that will ever make them right.  No matter how much we want to, no matter what we're willing to give, even our own lives. It's a bit of a harsh truth, but that's exactly what it is. The truth. And you know—it's one that atheists and Christians alike agree on. We're on the same page on this one.

Believers and non-believers alike are all on that same page. There are past events that we can not repair, transgressions we can not atone for, lives we can't restore. On this we're on the same page.

The difference, I suppose, is that the people of Jesus don’t think that page is the last one in the human story.

The great American Minister and novelist Frederick Buechner included Absalom in his dictionary of Biblical characters. In it he points out that even in its harsh assessment of things, David's story of loss and regret points us to a whole other chapter in human life.

When David wished he had died instead of Absalom, Buechner writes. When David wished he had died instead, “he meant it, of course. If he could have done the boy's dying for him, he would have done it. If he could have paid the price for the boy's betrayal of him, he would have paid it. If he could have given his own life to make the boy alive again, he would have given it. But even a king can't do things like that. As later history was to prove, it takes a God.”[ii]

Of course, the “later history” Buechner was talking about is the New Testament. And the God he's talking about is the God we meet Jesus Christ.

This is the conviction at the heart of the Christian story. Jesus is called the “son of David.” In fact, Jesus is “great David's greater son.”[iii] Simply because he does everything that David should have done. Jesus does exactly what David longed to do, but couldn't. He does what Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, and Moses reached for but always felt short. He's what you and I wish to be, long to be, but can't muster up the courage or strength. The argument of the New Testament writers is that in Jesus Christ, God herself lived a full and true human life, fulfilling all righteousness. That in Christ on the cross, God himself absorbed the full consequences of human sin. And in dying the death we were owed in our place, he wiped away all past transgressions in an act of cosmic forgiveness. And then, in his resurrection, Jesus conquered death itself, bringing the hope of new life to both the living and the dead by the power of the Spirit.

David may not have been able to wipe away his past sins, nor those of his self-destructive son. And there wasn't anything he could have given to bring his son back. But God can. God can, and in Christ already has. Not just for David, but for every human being who's ever set foot on God's green earth or got their foolish heads caught in a tree. Dying for the sake of our living.

So what does this all mean? Well, at its heart it means two things.

First of all, it means that you are forgiven. Full stop. I mean, we say this a lot. But that's only because it's so hard to believe and internalize. Whether it's betraying someone who loves you or pushing away and alienating a child who needs you, you are forgiven. Whatever is holding you in guilt and regret, it has been unravelled, whatever pain and punishment you deserve or think you deserve, it's already been paid. This doesn't mean that you're going to magically feel better, and it doesn't mean that you'll be saved from the consequences of your actions or the actions of others in the future. But it does mean that nothing you have done is final or fatal. In the eyes of God your slate has been wiped entirely clean on the cross of Christ. It means you're forgiven. The guilt and regret you feel now isn't the end. It need not dominate your life any longer.

And the second thing it means flows from the first. It isn't the end for you, because in the end it's all been undone. You've been given the hope that one day all things will be set right. This is what Jesus' resurrection means. All injustice will be overturned. Swords to ploughshares, hatred to universal brother and sisterhood. All tears wiped away. David's longing to hold his son again one last time. Your longing to see your mother, your father, your friend one last time. The lives of children ended far too soon, lives scarred by too much suffering. The resurrection proclaims the beautiful promise that everything set in the cold steel of history will one day be melted down and will be forged anew by the love of God. Even death itself will be undone, and has lost its sting. I'm reminded of the Lord of the Rings, where the wizard Gandalf comes back to life and his companion Sam Gamgee asks him, “Does this mean that everything sad is going to come untrue?”[iv] If the resurrection is true, that’s what it means. That everything sad's becoming untrue... One day the great knot of pain and loss will be untied for good by the grace of God. Easter was just the first tug on the string.

Friends, it's true that not even the greatest among us can reverse history. Not even the wisest, most righteous, most penitent among us can fix the past or erase our guilt for our past deeds nor lift the heaviest weights on our hearts. And not even the greatest among us can give anything to bring back from the dead. This is true.

But there's something even more true. The good news is that God can. Not only that God can, but God has in Jesus Christ. It means that you're forgiven. No sadness is terminal. You and I have, our world has a future. May this sink into our bones, may you experience the true freedom of forgiveness, and the hope of new life. Because Christ has died and is risen everything sad is becoming untrue.

Let us pray.

 You, oh God of our ancestors, are holiness.
You, oh God of Israel, are justice.
You, oh God of David are the redress of all wrongs,
the setting of all things right.

The beauty is, though, that you do so as the crucified One.
Not through the clenched fist of punishment,
nor the distance of a well-meaning bystander,
but by the might of your forgiveness,

The true strength of your own broken body
given freely for our sake, for the life of the world on the cross of your beloved Son.

By your resurrection power,
smash the chains of our guilt and regret,
heal our shame, relieve our pain,
and most of all help us to live boldly and freely in the light
of the hope of your world to come,
that temple of your pure presence that we long for more than life itself.

Free us to make amends for our wrongs, to learn from our past mistakes,
to do better, and to know better,
to give of ourselves more freely,
more fully, and more faithfully,
simply by knowing how the story ends...

With every tear wiped away…
and everything sad becoming untrue.

AMEN.

[i] Background and interpretation on the text is mostly from Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel: Interpretation for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox, 1990).

[ii] Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who (San Francisco: Harper One, 1993), 1341

[iii] “Hail to the Lord's Anointed,
great David's greater Son!
Hail in the time appointed,
his reign on earth begun!

He comes to break oppression,
to set the captive free;
to take away transgression,
and rule in equity.”

John Montgomery, “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,” 1821.  https://hymnary.org/text/hail_to_the_lords_anointed

[iv] “’Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?’ ‘A great Shadow has departed,’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (chapter 4, Book Six).