Sermons

MORNING WORSHIP, ST. COLUMBA’S, PONT STREET
SUNDAY 11^th AUGUST 2024 11.00 A.M.
(12^th SUNDAY after PENTECOST)

“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!
Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

II Samuel 18:33

“Look at my boy! Isn’t he beautiful?”
It was an iconic, Olympic moment from London, twelve years ago.
Proudest of parents, South African, Bert le Clos, interviewed by BBC’s Claire Balding,
as they watched his swimming son, Chad, receive Gold Medal,
after defeating the incomparable Michael Phelps.
“Isn’t he beautiful!
Then, with a pat of incredulity of his middle-aged ample girth:
“How did he come from this? I mean look at me.”

Gold Medal moment for parenting – Paris 2024 – probably goes to Fred Siriex,
he of TV’s First Dates programme (possibly another sermon?)
He is the father of British Olympian diver, Andrea Spendolini-Siriex.
In the last fortnight Fred has ridden the full emotional rollercoaster;
a medal in the combined diving;
then, later solo competition, where she fared less well.
At the latter, TV captured the moment of parental consolation:
“It’s sport – some days you win and some you lose. You did brilliant.”
He shared a text he had received:
“Tell Andrea the whole country is proud of her.
My daughter wants to try diving now because of her. She’s a superhero.”
Before adding: “You did your best Andrea. Today, it wasn’t mean to be.”
Followed by a big hug.
As one journalist quipped: “She cried, he cried and the world cried with them.
And Siriex Senior comes back to London the unrivalled king of the Olympic dads.
A fine Games for the whole family.”

But what of biblical Dads? Unrivalled king, or not?
“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!
Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

The Old Testament reading, set by the Lectionary, offers only selected verses.
So, a little filling in is required,
both to explain the hostility between King David and his usurping son Absalom,
and to the presence of continuing parental concern.

The tragedy of Absalom goes back eleven years earlier –
though arguably father-son falling outs always have deeper roots, real or imagined.
Amnon, was half-brother to Absalom and his sister Tamar.
Amnon was infatuated with his half-sister.
Deploying trickery over a feigned illness he gets her alone and rapes her.
The King takes no real action.
Absalom is furious and impotent.
He plots a calculated revenge, and then murders his half-brother.
His father, David sends him into exile,
further stoking Absalom’s sense of injustice.

After some years in exile, he is permitted to return to Jerusalem.
However, his father studiously avoids him,
which must have taken some doing, given the size of the city and the royal court.
So, Absalom’s end to physical exile persists;
a daily shunning/humiliation, to an already bitter mind.
David refuses to reconcile or bestow mercy upon Absalom.

[It could have been different.
Envisage the father who ran – ran – towards the returning Prodigal Son,
in the parable of that name.
Instead, David’s remains rooted on the moral high ground –
perfect in righteousness, chilly in virtue.
Or consider that other parable –
the debtor who is let off a huge debt by his master,
but then extracts without mercy,
the much smaller sum from one who owes him.]

Absalom was of course part of the problem.
He was another, beautiful boy, which bestows its own dangers.
His famously luxuriant hair wondrously tipped the scales at the annual shearing.
Vanity, a sense of entitlement and the feeling
that his father had never really appreciated him –
mixed a corrosive cocktail.

Four years of plotting unfolded until seizing his moment,
Absalom unleashed a royal coup.
If his father excluded him – let his father be excluded.
There was no shortage of takers to follow Absalom’s cause.
Once more, as in times of King Saul,
David was required to flee for his life into the wilderness.

It seems that it took the wilderness, and the status of a fugitive,
to reawaken David.
At court in Jerusalem, amidst the business of being King,
refusing intimacy to Absalom, David lost intimacy with God.
Becoming less and less a father, his own humanity diminished.
Less passionate for God; less compassionate to others.

But in the wilderness, stripped to the bare essentials, vulnerable,
the Shepherd King rediscovers humility, prayer and compassion.
So much so, that by the time he marshalled his own troops
to take on the young pretender, his primary concern was the command:
“Deal gently for my sake, with the young man Absalom.”

The command is ignored.
How often warfare makes on its own rules.
Joab knew that David wanted his son’s life spared.
But the commander felt he knew what would be better for all concerned.
He also bore a grudge for Absalom setting light to his hay field, in a previous spat.
Better “cut off the head of the snake,” , be rid of the problem, once and for all.
With terrible irony, Absalom meets his fate in the forest of Ephraim –
his beautiful hair caught in the branches of an oak,
suspended between earth and sky – lynched by his own locks.

The news is delivered by foot to the King, waiting and watching in the city gate.
When the news is broken: The king was deeply moved,
and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, a Yale professor, wrote a profoundly moving book,
entitled Lament For a Son, following the death of his son, in a mountaineering accident.
In an early section he voices the anguish of the bereaved parent.

“It’s so wrong, so profoundly wrong, for a child to die before its parents.
It’s hard enough to bury our parents. But that we expect.
Our parents belong to our past; our children belong to our future.
We do not visualise our future without them.
How can I bury my son, my future, one of the next in line?
He was meant to bury me!” (Lament for a Son pp16)

The death of his troubled and troublesome, beautiful boy,
draws forth that most famous lament:
“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!
Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

Belfast resident, Michael Longley, author of multiple collections of poetry,
winner of numerous literary awards; professor of poetry for Ireland 2007 – 2010,
is eighty-five this year – marked by the publication of a collection of his poems
from across six decades.
Thirty of those years were the period referred to as the Troubles.

He spoke recently about the poem “The Ice-Cream Man”
composed in response to one of the many deaths caused by sectarian violence.
On the same day, that an off-duty policemen was murdered
in the family ice-cream parlour on the Lisburn Road,
Longley had been admiring, and listing in his writer’s notebook,
the wildflowers of the Burren, an area of great natural beauty in County Clare.

Following the murder, Longley’s daughter went to lay flowers at the shopfront.
The poet-father wanted to acknowledge her action and add to it.
The resulting poem is framed by two lists –
firstly, the delight of a child reciting ice-cream flavours:

Rum and raisin, vanilla, butter-scotch, walnut, peach:
You would rhyme off the flavours. That was before
They murdered the ice-cream man on the Lisburn Road
And you bought carnations to lay outside his shop.

The second list – a liturgy perhaps –
the flowers and plants recorded in his notebook on that original day:

I named for you all the wildflowers of the Burren
I had seen in one day: thyme, valerian, loosestrife,
Meadowsweet, tway blade, crowfoot, ling, angelica,
Herb robert, marjoram, cow parsley, sundew, vetch,
Mountain avens, wood sage, ragged robin, stitchwort,
Yarrow, lady’s bedstraw, bindweed, bog pimpernel.

If you hear the poem read by Longley himself,
the list is haunting, heart-rending, perhaps defiant?
Is it there to gently distract/console the child?
Or to remind of a beauty that abides, despite the world’s cruelties?
Or is it an indictment of the wastefulness of war – all that is lost?
Maybe, it is all of these things.

In time Longley received what he described as a “very sweet letter” –
thanking him for remembering her son;
it was signed: Rosetta Larmer, the ice-cream man’s mother.
Of that short parental note, Longley says:
“It’s a sacred object in my life.”

“O Absalom, Absalom my son.”
It is impossible to ignore the regret and the love in David’s lament.
Raw material, enough alone to ponder in our prayers –
aware of the continuing death of sons and daughters,
near and far.

“Would that I had died instead of you!”
David meant it:
If he could have done the boy’s dying for him, he would have done it.
paid the price for the boy’s betrayal of him,
he would have paid it.
given his own life to make the boy alive again,
he would have given it.
(As another preacher once said):
“But even a king can’t do things like that.
As later history was to prove,
it takes the King himself. (Frederick Buechner)

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son,
that those who believe in him might not perish but have eternal life.”

ST COLUMBA’S, PONT STREET
SUN 16 AUG 2015

“God said to Solomon, “Because you have asked this (for wisdom),
and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies,
but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right,
I now do according to your word.
Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind…” I Kings 3:11-12

Last Sunday the Paris Olympics held their closing ceremony.
Fair to say, it was a mixed bag.
The joy of all those gathered athletes filling the stadium,
permitted a moment, to enjoy the moment,
released from the pressures of competitive sport.
This was uninterrupted joy and celebration of being Olympians.
Then the formal speeches of suited the organisation’s high heidiens.
Followed by a slightly obscure, not to say lengthy,
symbolic discovery of the buried Olympic rings
by a golden time-traveller returning to a dystopian future.

Then, something a little more accessible –
Tom Cruise – he of Mission Impossible –
abseiling spectacularly into the arena from great height, to claim the Olympic flag –
swiftly departing, by motorbike through the night streets of Paris,
mounting a transport plane, moments later to free fall (with parachute)
into California sunshine,
there, still grinning, swiftly conjuring up the Olympic circles,
on the famous Hollywood hill sign, icon of LA, the city of Angels.
This was definitely showtime –
The theatrical passing of the baton, one Olympic host city to the next;
a handover, a succession.
We ended with Snoop Dog and Dr Dre rapping on Venice Beach.
Which may whet your appetite for 2028, or not….

“Then David slept with his ancestors and was buried in the city of David. 
So, Solomon sat on the throne of his father David;
and his kingdom was firmly established.”

A royal handover/succession.
As we know, transfer of political power and authority can be rocky;
think disputed election results, or leaders that cling ever-tighter, to position and privilege.
Seemingly, our Old Testament passage gives an exemplary example.
This is how it can be done.
Solomon, worshipping at Gibeon, is visited by God.
While dreaming, the dream question.
“If I ask whatever in the world you want – what will you choose?

Solomon takes his time. First, acknowledges the blessings God towards David,
and David’s commendable qualities:
“You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David,
because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness,
and in uprightness of heart towards you;
and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love,
and have given him a son to sit on his throne today.”

The new king acknowledges his own need for some of that great and steadfast love:
“You have made your servant king in place of my father David,
although I am only a little child;
I do not know how to go out or come in. 
A myriad people and a mighty responsibility.
I can only do this with your help.”

This is prime-rib, biblical cuisine.
A royal, conscious of God, aware of the blessings he inherits,
modest about his own capabilities, eager to serve as best he can.
From which comes the request:
“Give your servant an understanding mind/a heart skilled to listen,
to govern your people,
able to discern between good and evil.”

Confirmation comes in God’s answer:
God says yes – and throws in wealth, honour and long life for good measure.
In time, the king’s reputation for brilliance spreads across the land.
Nobles travel from distant shores to hear his shrewd sayings
and witness his wise judgments.
His wealth and power grow beyond measure.
He maintains fleets of ships; trades in luxuries, gold, silver, and ivory;
builds gorgeous temples and palaces.
He pens the greatest wisdom literature of his time;
presides over the Golden Age of his kingdom;
Finally, he hands over the throne to his son after a peaceable reign of forty years.
That is probably what we know,
or think we know, of Solomon.

Inconveniently, that is not quite the full biblical testimony.
Scripture records that following the death of David,
the prince ordered the murder of his older brother – the rightful heir –
seizing the throne with blood on his hands.
To consolidate his power, he carries out the vengeance killings
that his own father had requested before his death.
Believing himself both wise and chosen by God,
he sets out to build the kingdom of his dreams.
His appetites are unbounded.
To finance this lavish lifestyle,
he levies taxes his subjects cannot bear
and conscripts thousands of people into forced labour.
To control knowledge,
he gathers the surrounding world’s wisdom traditions to himself.
To satisfy his desires,
he takes for himself seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines.
To quell his spiritual restlessness, he constructs pagan shrines
and offers worship to gods who demanded child sacrifice.
By the end of his reign, his people are mutinous,
and following the example of their own king
they can no longer differentiate between idolatry and worship.
Upon his death, civil war that would last for decades
breaks out across the land.
The kingdom splits in two;
the famed king’s once-golden dream dissolves into chaos.

Solomon, and David his dad before him,
are far from paragons of piety or virtue.
On the contrary, they are bloodily ambitious, reeking with revenge,
promiscuous with their subjects and their gods.

We are left to conclude: The Solomon of the Bible – the complete Solomon –
is a very human being – a paradox;
blessed with wisdom, often choosing foolishly;
committed to service, yet shackled to his appetites;
devoted to God, but attracted to idols;
a bible royal – neither to be whitewashed, nor dismissed.

Which raises the question: Why is he there, in such prominence,
along with so many other flawed biblical celebrities?
One commentator reflects:
The Bible rarely says, “Be like this character.”
Rather it says, “You are this character.
Now, what do you propose to do about it?”

Might Solomon interrogate us about our own moments of transition?
Whether it is the taking up of responsibility, or the passing it on.
Where do we stand in life’s succession plans?
Are we intent on the glittering prizes, or aware of our own limitations?
Do we pray for a discerning, listening heart
or something that looks like less hard work?

For me, what seems helpful about Solomon’s dream encounter
is his own sense of place in the proceedings.
At his wisest, he appreciates he is part of a larger history.
He/we, rest on the shoulders of those whose labour and effort
have made our presence possible.
Though the road ahead for Solomon will evidently be a very mixed bag,
in this encounter at least, there is a truth glimpsed –
that power is not meant for permanent possession.
In the end, the throne does not belong to Solomon;
he is simply its steward for a while.

That insight has an echo with meditation, composed by Bishop Ken Untener
on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Bishop Óscar Romero on March 24, 1980,
entitled A Future Not Our Own.
You may recognise it from the Congregational Pastoral Letter sent last year.

“It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s
grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Psalm 90:12So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.