How Did I Get Here? – Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost (2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33)
How did I get here? I imagine this is a question that we have all asked ourselves at one point or another in our lives. What led me to this situation? What did I do to deserve this? All variations on a theme. We find ourselves in difficult situations, unexpected situations, and we can’t believe that this would happen to us, or maybe its such a weird situation that we can’t imagine how anyone would find themselves in such a situation. It is a question we might ask ourselves in lighter moments and silly situations, or it’s a question we might ask ourselves in heavier moments full of pain or grief. It’s a question we might ask in moments of triumph, when we have achieved something or reached a pinnacle at work or in our personal lives. Its also a question we might ask in moments of tragedy, after we have gotten bad news or we have lost something or someone close to us. It can be a question that is rhetorical, or a question that we feel desperately needs an answer. And in that case, the answer can be straightforward, but often it will be more complicated than we might expect.
From our scripture reading this morning, we find examples of Biblical characters asking this question, “How did I get here?” First, we meet Prince Abasalom in just such a situation. Absalom is King David’s son. The scriptures tell us that he is a beautiful and charming man, with a luxurious head of long, flowing hair. Unfortunately, that long flowing hair has created a problem for him. We find him in today’s story stuck in the branches of a tree because that long, flowing hair has become tangled in the branches. This would certainly qualify as one of those absurd situations in life that leaves you going, “How did I get here?” This is one of those situations, where if we saw it in a movie, it would happen at the beginning of the film, and right when he gets stuck in the tree the picture would freeze on an image like what is printed on the bulletins. Then there would be a voice over read over the image, and you might hear Absalom say, “I bet you’re wondering how I got in this situation. Well, here is my story.” Then the movie would jump back in time so that we could watch the events that led to this moment. So, let’s do that now.
Today’s scripture reading from 2 Samuel 18 comes about six whole chapters after the events we read about last week, which ended in chapter 12. From David’s meeting with the prophet Nathan, where he is told God’s punishment for the incident with Bathsheba and Uriah, to this moment with Absalom hanging in a tree, much has happened, and Absalom is in the middle of much of it. We meet Absalom in chapter 13 along with a few of his siblings and half-siblings. We also meet Amnon, who is David’s oldest son and the heir to the throne, and we meet one of David’s daughters, Tamar. Tamar is Absalom’s sister, they have the same mother, and Amnon is their half-brother, he was born to a different mother.
Now that we are caught up on these new characters, lets take a look at Absalom’s story. A lot happens. The inciting incident is when Amnon rapes Tamar. Absalom finds out and is furious. He plots to kill Amnon, and one night at a party, he succeeds. After murdering his brother, the heir to the throne, Absalom runs away from Jerusalem and lives in hiding for a few years. Eventually David is convinced to let Absalom return to Jerusalem, although it is a few years more before Absalom is allowed to come into David’s presence. Like his father, Absalom is a charming politician and an accomplished warrior and he becomes very popular with the people. He soon starts an uprising against David and the King is forced to flee Jerusalem and Absalom conquers the city. So, now the two sides are at war with one another. Eventually, Absalom is tricked by some advisers who are still loyal to David to attack at the wrong time, which leads Absalom to be chased. During this chase he rides under a Terebinth tree and his long hair gets tangled in the branches. His horse keeps going, and slips out from under him, leaving Absalom hanging, suspended in the air. This brings us up to date on Absalom’s situation. Soon after, Absalom is killed by Joab’s men as he hangs defenseless in the tree. This timeline of events shows us how Absalom got in the tree, but not necessarily why he is there. And if we don’t understand the why, then we can’t really know the how.
Well, I’m sure some of the things that ran through Absalom’s mind as he was hanging in that tree revolved around what happened to his sister, and the choices he made because of it. He was angry about Amnon’s assault of his sister, and from that point on his plans and actions were driven by this anger and the desire for revenge. This extended to his father, David. When David found out that one of his son’s had raped one of his daughters, he was angry, but he did not do anything to punish Amnon. This was, after all, his oldest son and the next in line to be king. This couldn’t have sat well with Absalom. In fact, the Bible tells us that Absalom tried to invite David to the party where he planned to kill Amnon. David declined. So, we know that David had nothing to do with Amnon’s death, but we also have reason to wonder, why Absalom wanted him there. To be murder him? Or perhaps just to make David witness what would happen.
The Bible also takes time to tell us about just how handsome Absalom is, and how luxurious and long his hair was. And if you are wondering, “How long was it?” Well, the Bible tells us that the punchline is that it was so long that he only bothered to cut it when it got too heavy. All of this goes to paint Absalom as a proud man, perhaps even a vain man. A man with the charm and ability and self-confidence to attempt to overthrow his king. So, when we find him hanging there in the tree, suspended by that same long head of hair, that symbol for his pride and vanity, there may be the answer to how and why he ended up there. Absalom got in that situation because he was full of anger and pride. Like his father did with Bathsheba and Uriah, Absalom thought that he could take what he wanted and do what he wanted simply because of who he was and the power he possessed. In his last moments he is stripped of that power, suspended between heaven and earth, caught by his own pridefulness.
This scripture reading ends with another kind of “How did I get here?” moment. We end with a scene in which King David learns of the death of Absalom, his son. Upon hearing the news David falls to his knees in grief, and cries out to God. In moments of pain such as this, we often find ourselves asking, “How did I get here?” Although, perhaps part of David’s pain is that he does have some idea about how he got to this moment. He has an idea because it was laid out to him by God, through the prophet Nathan, the things that would befall him as punishment for his sins against Bathsheba and Uriah.
Indeed, a lot happens to David in the six chapters between what we studied last week and what we read today. And while David’s children are the primary movers of the story, David suffers many consequences as well. It begins when his child born to Bathsheba dies. David grieves but accepts this as punishment for his crimes. Later on, David’s daughter is raped by his oldest son. This angers David but he cannot bring himself to punish Amnon. Perhaps this inaction on David’s part contributes to Absalom’s anger, which leads him to murder Amnon. Now one of David’s sons has killed the other. As Nathan said, “the sword shall not leave your house.” David’s family is embroiled in violent conflict. David is angry at Absalom and tries to find him after he runs away, but eventually is convinced to let him return home. Of course, eventually Absalom attacks David and drives him out of Jerusalem. So, as God told him would happen, he lost his throne. Also, David left behind some of his concubines, and when Absalom took the palace, he found these women on the roof, and he took them for himself. Like David took Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. Check one more of David’s punishments off the list, his wives were taken, and what David did in secret with Bathsheba was done to him in broad daylight.
So, the author of 2 Samuel would answer the question of how David got to this moment by pointing us to the adultery with Bathsheba and his plans to murder Uriah, and show us that it connects back to his punishment for these actions, showing us that God’s punishment for David had come to pass. Of course, when we face moments such as this in our own life, when we are left waiting in suspense like Abasalom, or brought to our knees in anguish like David, or face another kind of difficult or unexpected challenge in our life, it is not always easy, or helpful for us to simply connect some dots and say, “This is God’s will.” Certainly not if we believe in a God whose justice involves the well-being and flourishing of all creation.
David had opportunities to respond to his children and his situations with love, but instead responded with anger and violence and grabbing for power. God may have declared a punishment for David, but the way he lived his life and the environment his children grew up in, did nothing to create a possibility for a different outcome. So, was David’s fate unavoidable because it was God’s will or because of the way David lived his life?
Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann notes that there is tension in this story, tension that he sees in the image of Absalom hanging in the tree, but is also represented by the situations and choices that face the characters. There is tension between “life and death, between the sentence of a rebel and the value of a son, between the severity of the king and the yearning of the father.” And now we see the tension between the ideas of God’s will and human choice. It is a tension that has been present throughout David’s story. How much of his success and failure can be attributed to God’s will at work in his life -at first in choosing him, favoring him and helping him become king, and then later in punishing him for his misdeeds- and how much should be attributed to the kind of man David was and the things he did and the way he lived his life? From shepherd boy to warrior to king to adulterer to father to mourner to old man. David was loved by God and chosen to do great things. David was also a man whose life was often violent, he spent much of his life acquiring and maintaining power, he often took what he wanted. He had many great successes and a few times in his life when he faced great sadness. It can be debated whether or not God’s direct involvement in David’s life led all these things to happen, or if David was just a certain kind of man whose actions would always lead to great triumphs and great mistakes. What I feel we can say for certain though is that through it all, regardless of the level of direct involvement, God was with David, and through it all David turned to God for help and for strength.
This is one of the lessons we can learn from David. No matter what situation we find ourselves in, or what circumstances have led us to ask “How did I get here?” we know that however we got here, God is here with us. Whether we believe our circumstances came about by our actions or by God’s will, God is here with us. Because we also know that it is God’s will to be with us. Whatever else we think God may be doing in the world, and whatever else God is actually doing in the world, God wants to be with us and wills us to seek God’s presence.
Which is something else we should remember about David’s story. After he mourned for Absalom, the civil war was over and it was safe for David to return home, to Jerusalem. For the first hearers of this story this was significant, because the first people to hear this account of David were Jews who had lived through the Babylonian exile, who had been forced to leave their home. They found hope in David, the king who always returned home to Jerusalem. Let us also find hope in this story, in knowing that if the choices we make -if how we got here- has lead us someplace where we feel far from home, far from God, we remember that God is with us and it will always be part of our story that we will find our way home.