ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL – SUNDAY 12 AUGUST 2012
The 2005 film, Capote – tracing part of the life of Truman Capote and starring
Philip Seymour Hoffman - ends in devastating fashion, with Capote reeling from witnessing a state execution – an exercise of the death penalty that Capote is forced to admit he wanted to occur. The final screen of the film bears the following salutary warning: “Beware of wanting something too much, or you will surely get it.”
That warning is one that the nation of Israel would have done well to heed. In the weeks since Trinity Sunday, in a series of readings from the books of Samuel, we have been tracing the story of Israel’s desire to be like other nations and to have a king. At the beginning of the series we heard Samuel’s graphic prediction that a king would bleed the nation dry, demanding the best of the nation’s produce and resources for himself and his household, and claiming the services of the nation’s best sons and daughters for his own fields, vineyards and armies.
“And in that day,” warns Samuel, “you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
But the people don’t listen to Samuel and, when they persist in their demands,
God relents and tells Samuel to set a king over them.
In the succeeding weeks we have been hearing the highlights of the stories of
Israel’s earliest kings. Samuel’s warnings prove to have been prescient. In the very next Sunday’s reading we heard that God was already regretting the decision to make Saul king over Israel, and over the last three Sundays the Old
Testament readings have traced the least edifying events of David’s reign. First we heard the chilling story of David’s seduction of Bathsheba, wife of one of
David’s soldiers, Uriah the Hittite, and of David’s murder of Uriah once it becomes clear that Uriah won’t assist David in covering up his tracks.
This morning’s story has some curious parallels with the Bathsheba story, and has its roots in events that take place immediately following it. In 2 Samuel 13
(five chapters prior to this morning’s reading) David’s oldest son Amnon also develops a lust for an unavailable woman, his half-sister Tamar, the sister of his brother Absalom, and he rapes her. When David hears of this he becomes very angry but he doesn’t do anything to punish Amnon because of his great love for his firstborn child. Two years later Absalom, Tamar’s brother, is still angry over the lack of justice for his sister and he arranges to have Amnon killed, and he flees. After a further three years, when David finishes mourning his firstborn,
Amnon, he begins to yearn for Absalom and eventually forgives him. But it is too late – Absalom’s heart has been irrevocably turned against his father, and
Absalom begins to plot to take the kingdom from him. Give or take a few battles and intrigues, these are the events that lead us to this morning’s reading.
Everything is in readiness for the final battle in which David will win his kingdom back from his treasonous son. David divides his army into three, and puts each part under the command of one of his trusted colleagues. These three persuade David that it is better that he not go into battle himself, as he is worth
10, 000 of his soldiers. David agrees to stay behind, but he gives the three division commanders, in the hearing of all the people, orders to deal gently, for his sake, with Absalom. What David doesn’t know, but the reader does, is that

God has already decided to bring ruin upon Absalom. The battle is ferocious and twenty-thousand men are slaughtered in a single day. That is an extraordinary number of deaths, but the text gives us a very curious detail – more of those lives, we are told, are claimed by the forest in which the battle is fought than by the swords that are wielded by the soldiers. In other words, it is God who is the real victor in this battle, and the forest itself is God’s agent.
The forest also claims the life of Absalom, in quite a graphic manner. Absalom’s mule goes under the branches of a great oak tree and Absalom’s head is caught fast. In a fabulously poetic turn of phrase the text tells us that Absalom is left
“hanging between heaven and earth”, while his mule continues on without him.
One of the soldiers sees this happen, and tells his division commander, Joab.
Joab asks why the soldier did not finish Absalom off when he had the chance, and the soldier replies that he could not have killed the son of the king, especially after having heard David’s special plea for Absalom’s life. Joab has no such scruples – expressing frustration with the soldier, he takes three spears and thrusts them into Absalom while Absalom is still hanging alive in the oak.
The reading we have heard this morning is the expurgated, or Readers’ Digest, version of the story and a number of details are missing, but eventually a messenger comes to tell David about his army’s great victory. But David cares nothing about the great victory, his only concern is for the well-being of his son,
Absalom. When he is told of Absalom’s death David is deeply moved and goes to his chamber over the gate where he weeps, “O my son Absalom, my son my son
Absalom, would I had died instead of you, O Absalom my son, my son.” David’s famous expression of grief has inspired many well-known musical settings, and our own hearts are moved in empathy for David over the loss of his son.
However, there are signs that the text itself has little sympathy for David’s plight.
You see, David got it wrong every step of the way. Back at the beginning, with
Amnon’s rape of Tamar, David was so focussed on his love for Amnon and his goal of keeping Amnon alive, that he forgot to show compassion for his daughter
Tamar, or for her brother, Absalom. Indeed David ignored Absalom for a full three years after Amnon’s death, even though it is arguable that in killing Amnon,
Absalom had only done what David himself ought to have done. By the time
David remembered his affection for his son Absalom it was too late – the die was cast, Absalom had determined to usurp David and God had determined to put an end to Absalom’s life, so that when the inevitable battle occurred David and God found themselves at odds. And when the battle was over and David had been both protected by God (the Kingdom had been restored for him) and punished
(Absalom’s life had been lost), David was so focused on his grief that he entirely forgot about his victorious soldiers who had gone to battle on his behalf, and his people who were ready to return their allegiances to him as their king. It wouldn’t have been so bad if David had exercised a little sensitivity and done his grieving in private, but he did it in public, in his chamber above the gate to the
city where the returning army and all the people gathering for celebrations could hear him.
Scholars tell us that there was probably a time when the David story ended pretty much at this point. The people got the king that they had so badly wanted,

but he brought with him wars and heart-ache, so bound up in his own failures and family machinations that he had no capacity for compassion for his people.
Beware of wanting something too much, or you will surely get it.
In some respects all of this background helps us to have a deeper understanding of the story at the heart of this morning’s Old Testament reading – in other respects it just seems to introduce innumerable complications and unfathomable subtleties. What are we, today, to make of this story? How is it ‘gospel’ for us, and how does it guide us in the living out of our faith in a 21 st century world? In a facile sense, I suppose, the story’s messages might be “children – don’t rape your siblings” and “parents – don’t play favourites.” But there must be something more for us here. One element of the story that is important for us, I think, is simply its very human messiness. ‘Great’ King David certainly did some great things, but we can take heart from the fact that he and other biblical heroes were human and flawed just as we are. They simply get it wrong over and over, but while they occasionally earn God’s frustration and even God’s punishment, they never entirely lose God’s love. David is so focussed on his own needs and wants that he loses sight of God’s will for him to be a gracious monarch and compassionate father, but God never loses sight of God’s responsibilities toward
David and God remains David’s champion and protector, passing the throne and the promises on to David’s son Solomon as God had promised.
Perhaps it is the danger of excessive ‘wanting’ that is at the heart of this morning’s story. Like Truman Capote, the people of Israel and David wanted something too much: for Israel, a king, and, for David, a son. In both cases they got it. But in each case the price was that they were so deafened by their wanting that they couldn’t hear what it was that God wanted for them and what God wanted of them. Like the biblical characters, we Christians get so focused on the things we think we want that we lose sight of the fact that the thing that makes us happiest is alignment with God. What God wants for me, in my experience, is far more wonderful than anything I’m capable of dreaming up in my own poor little mind. Over a number of years I believe that I have discerned that God wants me to mess about in the stories of the Old Testament and to share them with other people. That is, if you like, my vocation, and I have learned that doing it brings me greater joy and fulfilment than anything else I have done in my life. I wonder whether you have had a similar experience of discerning what it is that
God wants for and of you? If you have not yet had that experience, or, to use other language, found your vocation (whether that be to an ordained calling, to the religious life, or, like me, as a lay person) then I offer you theological education as one way of listening to God’s individual call to you. Theological education comes in many different shapes and sizes, and in ways that can fit everybody’s budgets. Whether you think that God may be calling you to ordained ministry or to the flower roster, to prayer or to academia, I would be delighted to chat with you after the service about how exploring theological education might help you to answer that call, might help you to come to your own rescue, if you currently find yourself hanging between heaven and earth.