Game of Thrones, Game of Grace
8-9-15 (Proper 14 / Ordinary 19B Semi-Continuous)
2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33; John 6:35, 41-51
TRIGGER WARNING: This sermon contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors. Tamar is/was a victim whose story should be told and honored - as such, I have not avoided stating her victimization for what it is.
Drama. Violence. Incest. Political intrigue and scheming. Surprising betrayals. Injured family members seeking vengeance and justice. A civil war that divides kingdoms and raises new kings. It’s the kind of story that makes for a high entertainment television series! In fact, these elements are the very things that drive the hit HBO show Game of Thrones. From April to June for the last five years, people have been glued to their television sets watching the great houses of Westeros battling it out, trying to determine who will sit on the Iron Throne, who is the rightful king, which of our favorite characters is going to meet their grizzly end next and how it’s going to happen. We’ve read the books, watched the show, discussed theories and what we think is going to happen… and once again we wait, except this time it’s even harder, because the next book isn’t out, the next season won’t be out until the spring, and the only thing we have going for us is our own imaginations.
But as we turn to the text from 2 Samuel this week, something really sticks out: we don’t need to wait for the next book or season to come out to get our fill of the stories that have excited us so much in Game of Thrones - we can find much of the same excitement, intrigue, and drama in the pages of our own Bibles. There are even dragons - just look in the book of Revelation!
The story we start to explore today is much more complex than the verses the lectionary picks out: Absalom was David’s third son, and one of his favorite children, as well. He was loved among the people of Jerusalem. But then everything changed - his half-brother, Amnon, who was David’s eldest son and heir-apparent, fell in love with their sister, Tamar. Amnon’s obsession with his own half-sister becomes so unhealthy that he ends up raping her and then casting her away in disgust. Quite understandably in this situation, Absalom is furious. David himself is angry at the situation, but because he loves his oldest son so much, he does nothing to punish Amnon, either. Absalom bides his time for two years, planning and waiting for his moment to exact vengeance and get justice for his sister, before he finds his moment and orders his servants to kill Amnon.
Absalom’s actions against his brother ignite a rebellion that leads to a civil war. The kingdom of Israel is divided; David flees into the wilderness, taking as many of his own loyal followers and members of his household as he can, while Absalom usurps the throne and proclaims himself the king. In just a short span of time, David’s world has been turned completely upside down - he is reaping the fruit of God’s promise through Nathan. Once again, we see how the mighty have fallen, and it is David’s house, David’s dynasty that suffers for his indiscretions.
And yet in the midst of this civil war, even as David flees the city and begins the process of trying to recapture his throne… David shows a kind of grace that is only reflective of the grace God has shown to David already. David walks past people who curse his name, who throw rocks and dirt at him, and he accepts their cursing in the hope that by being cursed now, God may repay him with blessings later. David asks his three generals, men who are actively seeking to gain him back his throne, including Joab, who has a personal grudge himself against Absalom, to be gentle with the boy and to show him mercy. And when Joab and his troops do nothing of the sort, when they report to David that the son who openly rebelled against him, who killed his oldest son, who sought to take justice into his own hands… when they report to David that Absalom is killed, David responds in what we know now to be a very characteristic fashion: he does not celebrate his victory, but mourns all the more for his son’s death, even to the point that he wishes that he could have given his own life in his son’s stead.
If you’re looking for the kind of scene that looks like it was ripped right from the pages of George R. R. Martin, you wouldn’t have to look much further than this. In a world of dysfunctional families, violence, and political maneuvering, David’s line here fits in perfectly with the other great houses of Game of Thrones. And it’s a story that, for all its complexity, all its problems, speaks to us in some powerful ways. On the one hand, David serves as a cautionary tale: we see what happens as David disobeys God’s own commands, we see that God is faithful to God’s warnings as well as God's promises, and we see that David is also humbled and willing to accept his punishment as a part of his own repentance. David’s actions - with Bathsheba, with Uriah, with Tamar and Amnon, and with Absalom himself... all of them lead to the place where we leave David as he weeps for all that he has lost, for all that could have been, for all that never was. And as David weeps, he surely hears the words of Nathan the prophet still echoing through his haunted, haggard thoughts: “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house. . . I will raise up trouble for you from within your own house.”
And yet, there is also a profound element of grace, of love, and of profound sadness at work in this tale as well. Even in the midst of all of David’s failures, in the midst of all of the consequences that those failures have brought about, we still see the greatness of David’s own love for his children - and the depths of pain that the loss of each one of them brings to David’s soul. Frederick Buechner puts it eloquently in his book, Peculiar Treasures: “When they broke the news to David, it broke his heart, just as simple as that, and he cried out in words that have echoed down the centuries ever since. “O my son Absalom, my son, my son;' he said. "Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son" (2 Samuel 18:33). 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.”
The wish of the father that he could give himself in his own child’s stead, the grieving and sadness over rebellious children who doom themselves to their own fates… it’s an image that carries over into the Gospels, where the Father not only loses his son again, but simultaneously does give himself in his children’s stead through the offering of his own son, his own self. Jesus tells the crowds gathered around him that he is the bread of life, the bread that comes down from heaven. In the midst of the dysfunction all around him, in the midst of a world that is broken and hurting, God becomes flesh in Jesus Christ, comes to the earth, lives among us, loves us in our midst, and gives himself that we might live.
There’s a phrase that gets repeated time and time again in the Game of Thrones series: “Winter is coming.” It’s a grim, but realistic phrase uttered by many of the characters acknowledging the darkness that looms ever on the horizon - things may be good now, but Winter is coming. Yet as people of faith, as people in the house of the Cross, our phrase is “Jesus is coming.” And in that phrase, we find hope. We live in a world marred by dysfunction, a world marred by violence, by victimization, by injustice. We live in a world that is desperately in need of grace, of the example of people who do the opposite of what is expected of them, who grieve for defeated enemies, who weep for lost loved ones even in acknowledging the brokenness of their relationships. But it is only in the light of Christ, only in the experience of being drawn by Christ to the Heavenly Father, that the endless cycle of dysfunction can truly be broken. Jesus is coming. To God be the Glory. Amen.
2 Samuel 18: 5-9, 15, 31-33; John 6:35, 41-51
TRIGGER WARNING: This sermon contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors. Tamar is/was a victim whose story should be told and honored - as such, I have not avoided stating her victimization for what it is.
Game of Thrones, Game of Grace
Drama. Violence. Incest. Political intrigue and scheming. Surprising betrayals. Injured family members seeking vengeance and justice. A civil war that divides kingdoms and raises new kings. It’s the kind of story that makes for a high entertainment television series! In fact, these elements are the very things that drive the hit HBO show Game of Thrones. From April to June for the last five years, people have been glued to their television sets watching the great houses of Westeros battling it out, trying to determine who will sit on the Iron Throne, who is the rightful king, which of our favorite characters is going to meet their grizzly end next and how it’s going to happen. We’ve read the books, watched the show, discussed theories and what we think is going to happen… and once again we wait, except this time it’s even harder, because the next book isn’t out, the next season won’t be out until the spring, and the only thing we have going for us is our own imaginations.
But as we turn to the text from 2 Samuel this week, something really sticks out: we don’t need to wait for the next book or season to come out to get our fill of the stories that have excited us so much in Game of Thrones - we can find much of the same excitement, intrigue, and drama in the pages of our own Bibles. There are even dragons - just look in the book of Revelation!
The story we start to explore today is much more complex than the verses the lectionary picks out: Absalom was David’s third son, and one of his favorite children, as well. He was loved among the people of Jerusalem. But then everything changed - his half-brother, Amnon, who was David’s eldest son and heir-apparent, fell in love with their sister, Tamar. Amnon’s obsession with his own half-sister becomes so unhealthy that he ends up raping her and then casting her away in disgust. Quite understandably in this situation, Absalom is furious. David himself is angry at the situation, but because he loves his oldest son so much, he does nothing to punish Amnon, either. Absalom bides his time for two years, planning and waiting for his moment to exact vengeance and get justice for his sister, before he finds his moment and orders his servants to kill Amnon.
Absalom’s actions against his brother ignite a rebellion that leads to a civil war. The kingdom of Israel is divided; David flees into the wilderness, taking as many of his own loyal followers and members of his household as he can, while Absalom usurps the throne and proclaims himself the king. In just a short span of time, David’s world has been turned completely upside down - he is reaping the fruit of God’s promise through Nathan. Once again, we see how the mighty have fallen, and it is David’s house, David’s dynasty that suffers for his indiscretions.
And yet in the midst of this civil war, even as David flees the city and begins the process of trying to recapture his throne… David shows a kind of grace that is only reflective of the grace God has shown to David already. David walks past people who curse his name, who throw rocks and dirt at him, and he accepts their cursing in the hope that by being cursed now, God may repay him with blessings later. David asks his three generals, men who are actively seeking to gain him back his throne, including Joab, who has a personal grudge himself against Absalom, to be gentle with the boy and to show him mercy. And when Joab and his troops do nothing of the sort, when they report to David that the son who openly rebelled against him, who killed his oldest son, who sought to take justice into his own hands… when they report to David that Absalom is killed, David responds in what we know now to be a very characteristic fashion: he does not celebrate his victory, but mourns all the more for his son’s death, even to the point that he wishes that he could have given his own life in his son’s stead.
If you’re looking for the kind of scene that looks like it was ripped right from the pages of George R. R. Martin, you wouldn’t have to look much further than this. In a world of dysfunctional families, violence, and political maneuvering, David’s line here fits in perfectly with the other great houses of Game of Thrones. And it’s a story that, for all its complexity, all its problems, speaks to us in some powerful ways. On the one hand, David serves as a cautionary tale: we see what happens as David disobeys God’s own commands, we see that God is faithful to God’s warnings as well as God's promises, and we see that David is also humbled and willing to accept his punishment as a part of his own repentance. David’s actions - with Bathsheba, with Uriah, with Tamar and Amnon, and with Absalom himself... all of them lead to the place where we leave David as he weeps for all that he has lost, for all that could have been, for all that never was. And as David weeps, he surely hears the words of Nathan the prophet still echoing through his haunted, haggard thoughts: “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house. . . I will raise up trouble for you from within your own house.”
And yet, there is also a profound element of grace, of love, and of profound sadness at work in this tale as well. Even in the midst of all of David’s failures, in the midst of all of the consequences that those failures have brought about, we still see the greatness of David’s own love for his children - and the depths of pain that the loss of each one of them brings to David’s soul. Frederick Buechner puts it eloquently in his book, Peculiar Treasures: “When they broke the news to David, it broke his heart, just as simple as that, and he cried out in words that have echoed down the centuries ever since. “O my son Absalom, my son, my son;' he said. "Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son" (2 Samuel 18:33). 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.”
The wish of the father that he could give himself in his own child’s stead, the grieving and sadness over rebellious children who doom themselves to their own fates… it’s an image that carries over into the Gospels, where the Father not only loses his son again, but simultaneously does give himself in his children’s stead through the offering of his own son, his own self. Jesus tells the crowds gathered around him that he is the bread of life, the bread that comes down from heaven. In the midst of the dysfunction all around him, in the midst of a world that is broken and hurting, God becomes flesh in Jesus Christ, comes to the earth, lives among us, loves us in our midst, and gives himself that we might live.
There’s a phrase that gets repeated time and time again in the Game of Thrones series: “Winter is coming.” It’s a grim, but realistic phrase uttered by many of the characters acknowledging the darkness that looms ever on the horizon - things may be good now, but Winter is coming. Yet as people of faith, as people in the house of the Cross, our phrase is “Jesus is coming.” And in that phrase, we find hope. We live in a world marred by dysfunction, a world marred by violence, by victimization, by injustice. We live in a world that is desperately in need of grace, of the example of people who do the opposite of what is expected of them, who grieve for defeated enemies, who weep for lost loved ones even in acknowledging the brokenness of their relationships. But it is only in the light of Christ, only in the experience of being drawn by Christ to the Heavenly Father, that the endless cycle of dysfunction can truly be broken. Jesus is coming. To God be the Glory. Amen.
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