My Son, Would I Had Died

By

Reverend Litton Logan

August 13, 2006

Scriptures:

2 Samuel 18:5--9 (NRSV)
 The king ordered Joab and Abishai and Ittai, saying, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.” And all the people heard when the king gave orders to all the commanders concerning Absalom.

⁶ So the army went out into the field against Israel; and the battle was fought in the forest of Ephraim. ⁷ The men of Israel were defeated there by the servants of David, and the slaughter there was great on that day, twenty thousand men. ⁸ The battle spread over the face of all the country; and the forest claimed more victims that day than the sword.

⁹ Absalom happened to meet the servants of David. Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak. His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging^£ between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on.

2 Samuel 18:15 (NRSV)
¹⁵ And ten young men, Joab’s armor-bearers, surrounded Absalom and struck him, and killed him.

2 Samuel 18:31--33 (NRSV)

³¹ Then the Cushite came; and the Cushite said, “Good tidings for my lord the king! For the LORD has vindicated you this day, delivering you from the power of all who rose up against you.” ³² The king said to the Cushite, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” The Cushite answered, “May the enemies of my lord the king, and all who rise up to do you harm, be like that young man.”

³³ 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!”

Sermon:

            The books of I and II Samuel tell the stories and legends of the Hebrew people during that period between their being a loose, often quarrelsome and barbaric federation of tribes, and their becoming a monarchial nation with all the abuses, oppression, corruptions that such a thing accords. These two books contain the religious, social, political, and economic machinations of an emerging nation and its leaders.  Often we read these founding histories and chronicles of the Israelites, in a rather naïve and pious way.  To read the books of I and II Samuel as pious history or to read them as just history with inaccuracies is equally naïve and inaccurate.  These books in our Bible show human immorality, depravity, abuses of power and authority at its worst. Often in these books, God’s absence seems blatant only to be found as a low vibration of divine presence that works in all things—in spite of human wickedness—to bring about God’s saving presence. On other occasions in I and II Samuel, we see people rise to the heights of moral and ethical behaviors. Truly, the books I and II Samuel give us a candied look at human nature at its best and worst.  

          I want to tell you a story I remember hearing growing up about a man torn between duty and responsibility to the public he swore to serve and his love for his son.  It is a relative modern story but it is an old story also. It is a story that I assume to be either factual or to have a large measure of fact in it. It could be classified as one of those moral parables grounded in fact but elaborated on over time.

          It is a story about a sheriff in a South-Central Mississippi county, whose son was involved in a series of home invasions.  When the evidence became conclusive that the Sheriff’s son was one of the thieves, the Sheriff sent his deputies out to his home to arrest the youngster.  The boy was handcuffed and escorted to the patrol car amid his mother’s angry and pleading protestations. As the young man was being booked, the mother arrived at the Sheriff’s office in all the fury of a mother grizzly bear.  She demanded that her son be released; this was some horrible mistake. She commanded her husband and his deputies to release her son, immediately.  The Sheriff took his wife and gently, but forcibly escorts her out of the booking room with soothing and comforting assurances that things would be okay.  The next day the Sheriff posted bail for his son and the lad went home to await his trial. 

          Eventually, the nineteen-year-old pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in the State penitentiary at Parchment, MS. He would only serve 18 months before he was paroled.

          Each week the boy’s father and mother visited their son in prison, and each time they left, it became harder and harder to leave their son in that horrible place. On one visit, the mother of a now gaunt, prison-seasoned young man whose youthful countenance had been lost amid the despair of such a repository of human failure, broke into tears and cried, “My son, My son, I would give my life to spare you this hurt and humiliation!”  The father, solidly and stoically, said, “And, you would have stolen from him the lessons of his choices.”   With big tears running down his ruddy, life-weary face the Sheriff patted his wife’s hand, forced a smile at the boy, and said, “My son, we will all get through this and hopefully be better people for it.  Hang tough son, hang tough.”

          As a young boy listening to that story, I became aware for the first time the demands and responsibilities of a parent.  The thought that my father would let me go to jail if I did something wrong because it was the right thing to do was an insightful warning that all young people should experience.

          Today we have heard scriptures read about another father, King David, as he cries out in paroxysms of grief and remorse at the death of his rebellious son, Absalom.  Absalom’s death came at the confluence of many people’s choices, mistakes, and arrogance, but in the final analysis, his death was set into motion by Absalom’s choices alone.

          The story of Absalom, David’s third son, begins with the event of the violation of his sister by his half-brother Amnon, the first-born son of David.  After two years of biding his time over the injury to his sister, Absalom got his half-brother drunk at a party and had some of his servants kill him in retribution for the crime against his sister. (Through out this story we will see the central characters getting others to do their dirty work for them)

          Absalom fled from his crime and hid out with his maternal grandfather for a few years.  Eventually, through the maneuverings of Joab, David’s sister’s son and David’s confidant and military commander, Absalom was allowed to return to Jerusalem but not allowed back into the king’s court.  This situation was intolerable for Absalom. On three occasions, Absalom attempted to petition Joab to influence David to lift the ban. On two of these occasions Joab refused even to see Absalom.  Finally, Absalom got Joab’s attention by burning one of Joab’s barley fields. Joab relented and petitioned the King to have Absalom’s disbarment from court lifted and he was successful.

          However, it did not take long for an angry and vengeful Absalom to set into motion a conspiracy and rebellion, ostensibly because he thought he was heir apparent to the throne of Israel, not Solomon.

          Absalom in the course of time mounted a rebellion causing David to flee Jerusalem.  Absalom was encouraged by some of his advisors to violate publicly his father’s concubines, to pursue his father and his warriors, and to kill them all.  However, David had loyal spies at court and learned of the plan.  David mounts a counter attack on Absalom’s forces routing them and killing many.  David, who had been counseled by Joab to stay away from the fight, gave strict orders that Absalom not to be harmed.

          As we heard today, Absalom meets some of David’s troops and whether fleeing the battle or taking up a different position he got his long hair entangled in an oak tree and was drug from his mule.  Absalom hangs in the air suspended between being a prince and a traitor; life or death.  Joab, contrary to David’s orders, puts three spears into Absalom.  However, Joab’s armor bears are credited with the actual kill.

          Upon notification of Absalom’s death, we hear David’s anguished cry, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

          As the story will later tell, David declares a time of mourning.  The people, who were loyal to him, fought for him, won the day for him, are made to feel bad because of the outcome of the rebellion.  Later, Joab will admonish David for this dive into self-pity and grief at the expense of his duties as King and Commander-in-Chief.

          O David, O David, would that you had been more concerned about your son earlier and provided him with the proper example you may have shaped his character more benevolently. 

David, as much as there was something extraordinary and divinely at work in his life as a military and political leader, his personal life was nonetheless a mess.  David sets the stage for the misery in his personal life with Absalom through his examples of violence, subterfuge, adultery, and murder by proxy.

          As I think on these scriptures about a father’s failures and his grief, I can’t help but think about how at times we serve our love and our vested interests in our children at the expense of justice as well as  the proper moral, ethical, and intellectual education of our kids.  We live under the romantic notion that true love and caring are supposed to be blind to character defects and sin to the detriment of our children and to society. 

I have seen parents go charging off to jump the teacher, the coach, the police, and other authority figures when their children get into trouble.  Somehow these people in authority have nothing better to do or of such poor quality that they are picking on their kids.  Therefore, we have a lot of young people today who fear nothing, respect nothing, including themselves, all because their parents  in some misplaced sense of parental concern or in an attempt to rescue their failed parenting place themselves and their resources between their children and the consequences of their actions; concomitantly, stealing from them the education of their choices.

          I have known many angry, self-destructive young people, who cannot live in a free society because no one cared enough about them to teach them or model for them, good decision-making skills and good life values, nor hold them accountable for their actions.  Many of these kids end up in prison, mental health facilities, or marginally productive in life all because their parents were more interested in themselves and in appearances than in their parental responsibilities. 

          I have listen to social workers, psychologist, and other so-called experts attempt to make me and other decent hard-working people feel bad or guilty because other people’s children turned out bad and harmed society, while our children turn out well.  Yes, there is a corporate dimension to moral responsibility.  Yes, we are to be concerned and helpful to those less fortunate, but not at the expense of compromising our life standards and values.

I challenge any one to trace from cover to cover in the Bible the element of personal responsibility for one’s choices. The story of the consequences of personal choice starts with Adam and Eve and ends in the book of Revelation with a warning and a curse on individual who defraud these words of prophecy.  Examine scripture and see that the downfall of nations lie in the downfall of individual moral, ethical, and spiritual choices, as the individual becomes the nebulous “they” of society.   Please, know this: God will forgive all sins of the truly repent person, but God will not cancel out the consequences or the compounding effects of bad or sinful choices no matter how much we lament and cry out.

          We see this clearly in my opening story and in the story of Absalom.

          The lessons are many in today’s scriptures, but the one I want to bring home most succinctly is this:  God forgives the sins of the repentant heart as we see frequently in David’s life. God will bless and hold open almost limitless avenues of blessings the repentant heart excluding those options closed off by a person’s earlier choices.  However, God cannot nor will not cancel out the consequences of bad living or sinful choices at the physical, mental, spiritual, or social levels.   Those consequences will remain as the scars of educational memory, nightmares, or criminal records.

          In closing, let me share two terrible stories with happy conclusions that I heard at a minister’s retreat as told by a retired hospital chaplain: A hospital chaplain is asked by the charge nurse to talk with a young woman of twenty-two, who was due for surgery the next morning.  The chaplain knocked on the woman’s hospital door, went in, and introduced himself.  After some pleasantries, the young woman got straight to the heart of the matter. She wanted the chaplain to pray for a miracle for her.  Due to numerous cases of STDs resulting in scaring, etc., she was to undergo surgery that would preclude her ever having children.  She had wanted to have children some day and now wanted a miracle to reverse the damage of her life style.  She was truly repentant and promised to be a good person in the future.

          After registering the misery, the regret, and despair on her face, the chaplain sat down next to her bed and asks her to tell him about herself and what brought her to this point in her life.  She talked well into the afternoon and told a very sad, tragic and an all too familiar story for many young women.  Finally, with tears in her eyes she said it is was no one’s fault but hers, she knew better; what was done, was done. The chaplain assured her he would be around before her surgery for prayer, and he would stay with her until she went in the operating room, and be there when she came out.

          This chaplain goes on to recount that several months later; he sat with a family whose father was in intensive care dying of lung cancer.  The youngest child, a woman in her early twenties, and he gathered the rebellious child of the family, asked him to lead the family in prayer and to demand that God cure her father.  The Chaplain said certainly he would have prayer but first tell him about her father; it was obvious she loved him deeply.  As the story unfolded he as a good man, good father, good husband, and a decent moral and charitable person.  He was just one of those solid, salt-of-the earth folks.  He was, however, a very heavy smoker—two to three packs a day for fifty years.  The Chaplain and the family had prayer and he asked God to be merciful to this man and his family and where it was possible, all things considered, let there be healing.

          The young woman came through surgery and the last thing the Chaplain heard of her she was a counselor in a rape crisis center and going to college to get her undergraduate degree in early childhood development. 

          The elderly man died sometime during the night after the Chaplain had met with the family.  Some years later, the Chaplain now retired was doing pulpit supply in a town in western Kansas.  As he stood at the back of the church greeting people, a woman in her early forties ask, “Do you remember me?”  The old Chaplain looked at her, she was familiar, but he couldn’t retrieve face and name. He told her she looked familiar, but he couldn’t recall who she was or their meeting.  She reminded him of her father’s hospitalization, their prayer time, and her father’s eventual death.  She had been an art major in college at the time of her father’s hospitalization, but after her father’s death, she changed majors and was now a doctor in the regional hospital’s oncology department.

          As the story goes, when the Sheriff’s son got out of prison he entered college and eventually went to seminary and became a Baptist minister and later a prison Chaplain  

          King David had a long and productive life; he turned many of his early mistakes into wisdom of rule.

Romans 8:28 (NRSV)
²⁸ We know that all things work together for good^* (or in all things God works for good) for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8.28 Other ancient authorities read God makes all things work together for good, or in all things God works for good)

          God will call out from the best of us and the worst of us in to a life in God’s service not matter what we have done or been.   If we will submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s leadership and use the educational elements of our experiences, we can become living textbooks of experience and faith.

Let us diligently apply ourselves to studying, to teaching, and modeling the ways of God to all those who are looking to us for moral, spiritual, ethical, and social guidance. 

May none of us ever have to cry, “My son, my daughter, would I had died.”  Let us live for our children, our grandchildren, and our nation by embracing the ways of Christ in every aspect of our life.

          In this vein of God’s forgiveness and blessing in spite of some of our choices let me share with you a truism I live by--Sometimes life dumps a load of manure in our lives, which is just the way life is and that is just the nature and consequences of some of our choices.  However, we can allow that manure to remain in an ugly, stinking pile or we can with God’s help spread it liberally through out our life and our relationships and grow beautiful roses. I know this because I stand here among some beautiful roses.