A Complicated Love
Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, Toronto, August 11, 2024
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
One of my own teachers reminded students, a biblical text is troubling because the things in the text are still problems today. There are difficult themes in this passage: betrayal, violence, powerlessness, estrangement, untimely death, grief. These are unresolved issues in life and theology—they haunt us. Our work is unfinished. When we are confronted by a passage like this, it is an opportunity to participate in an unfolding and unfinished relationship with God, to acknowledge again, the terrible things that people can do and the complexity of God’s love towards us. In a text like this any hint of a loving God or God’s will seems to be absent and what we mainly see are the consequences of people making terrible decisions in complicated situations trailed by violence and grief.
David is a complicated figure, an underdog, a sensitive artist, also a bully, and a violent man who harmed others through his own misuse of power. A man who experienced the painful consequences of his violent and misguided choices. And yet somehow, God’s anointed and a man after God’s own heart. I want us to hold onto two things as we work with this difficult passage –it does a disservice to the biblical witness to read a book like 2 Samuel in a way that filters out some of the difficult parts of human experience. So, number one, we’re going to be honest with the pain and brokenness of this text, and number two, alongside the pain, there is more to David and to Israel and to humanity in general than these most terrible experiences. God is at work even here.
Today’s text is part of a larger story of Israel’s development as a nation and David’s leadership; these developments are steeped with God’s presence and powerful love. It is also part of a complicated backdrop of war and conquest between Israel’s armies and surrounding groups and a tragic chain of terrible choices and consequences unfolding in David’s family. By the time we reach this point in the story there are no good choices. Things have become terribly complicated. Our scripture today picks up in the midst of an insurrection unfolding against David led by his own son, Absalom.
There is more to David and to Israel and to humanity in general than these most terrible experiences. God is at work even here.
Several chapters back, another of David’s sons, Amnon, sexually assaulted Absalom’s sister Tamar and discarded her like trash. Absalom became sick with rage and a desire for vengeance. He seethed and plotted for two full years. Then he arranged a trip for all his brothers as an opportunity for his servants to kill his brother, Amnon as an act of retribution. Absalom’s rage was also directed to David who in all that time had not acted for justice for Tamar. Following the assassination, Absalom fled to his mother’s relatives in a neighboring kingdom. David mourned, first for his dead son, and then his absent son. David sent his commander Joab to bring Absalom back to Jerusalem, but they remained estranged and did not see each other for two years. This standoff couldn’t go on forever, and so Absalom came to David. He threw himself on the ground and the King kissed his son. For David at least, it seems that the past was behind them. But Absalom was still stoking a smoldering rage.
The Bible describes Absalom as a charismatic person and really good looking. The kind of guy that people want to believe in, want to follow. One of those people with loads of potential and a big chip on his shoulder. Also, the Bible tells us that he had great hair. You know those shampoo commercials with brunette waves, bouncy shiny curls? Yeah, that was Absalom. Absalom not only was a naturally attractive person, he also worked at it. He cozied up to the people of Israel whose needs were not being met by their king. Absalom stole their love and loyalty away from his father.
He then asked David for permission to go to Hebron to offer sacrifices to God And from there, he mounted an insurrection to usurp the throne. David flees Jerusalem and a civil war breaks out between those who are loyal to David and those who have gone with Absalom. David stays behind when the armies meet in battle, but he loves his son. And so, he warns his commanders to “deal gently with Absalom.” The Bible tells us that the battle was bloody and difficult, fought in the thick forest of Ephraim. The victory came to David’s troops. The forest claimed more lives than weapons that day –20,000 lost their lives. Among them was Absalom.
Absalom with his ridiculously good-looking head of hair got caught in a tree while his mule rode on. When David’s loyal commanders come upon him with his glorious hair tangled in a tree, there is no mistaking who this is. They disobey the orders and kill the king’s son. Maybe they felt that David’s love was his weakness, a weakness that would bring them only more pain and trouble. There are no angels here, no heroes. This is the harsh reality of deep violence and war. David’s heart breaks.
The songwriter Pierce Pettis imagines David, remembering his beautiful child who bounced on his knee and giggled in the palace, who had grown up always watching, impressionable. His death—at least in part—is the fruit of David’s own sins David’s cries echo over the gates. Oh Absalom, my son, my son, would that I had died instead of you. David’s life is complicated, but his words are the words of any parent who has lost a child. These are the words of too many in a world where we lose too many children.
In June, we observed the 80th anniversary of D-Day—a decisive and bloody battle, a huge operation that marked a turning point in the Second World War. A group of frail men, some of them over 100 years old, stood flanked by world leaders and journalists. Long ago they left the beaches of France and they have lived most of their lives in farms, quiet suburban streets, and peaceful cities, but they are forever marked. It is almost impossible for most of us to imagine what it would have been like. There is no glory in war.
Lush bouquet of vibrant, coral-hued poppy flowers with dark green leaves, arranged on a dark, blurred background
D-day itself was brutal. In the midst of fog, strong winds and rough sea, nearly 150,000 soldiers invaded the beaches of Normandy, France and nearly 10,000 were captured, wounded, or lost their lives.1 The largest sea to land invasion in history, the soldiers came ashore under heavy gunfire onto beaches covered with mines, barbed wire, and metal stakes. The German defenses were fierce. The goals for this allied mission were not met until weeks later when they gained control of a key continuous piece of the French coast.
With wars unfolding in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, I was struck again with the complicated calculus required by leaders trying to do what they could in a terrible situation. A trusting relationship between commanders and troops is necessary for military action. Commanding officers love their troops, they care about them deeply and yet at the same time must calculate the value of military targets using something that is beyond calculation: A tally of human life.
The allied troops didn’t have superior technology or weaponry or intelligence but were willing to spend enough lives to take control of key land. In hindsight, historians say this marked the beginning of the end of that war. But not the end of war itself. Not the end of parents crying out for their lost children.
Violence and love twist together in so many human experiences. We live in a world where too many people in difficult and complicated circumstances continue to work out a horrible calculus. People experiencing domestic abuse debate the complicated and terrible consequences of staying or leaving a relationship. At the southern border in the US, mothers and fathers have decided to undertake extreme risk to their lives and their children’s lives as they flee a situation that they judge to be worse than treacherous conditions, lack of food and water, dishonest smugglers, thieves, and endemic violence. This complicated twist of love and violence is one of the most broken parts of human experience and boy does it show up in our text today.
Around the same time we marked the anniversary of D-Day this summer, we also marked the death of one of the most important theologians of the last century. Jürgen Moltmann, theologian of hope, whose hope was born in the aftermath of the second world war. Born in 1926 in Germany, Moltmann grew up in a secular home with literature and science as guides and conversation partners When he was drafted into the German army, he brought Goethe’s poems and Faust as comfort.
He writes about the night when his theology began: He was an air force auxiliary in a battery at the center of Hamburg, when he survived an intense bombing that killed the friend standing next to him at the fire predictor. That night he cried out in a lament not unlike king David, “My God where are you?” “Why am I not dead too?”2 The complicated weight of grief and torment continued as the war dragged on. He was captured, taken prisoner, and held in several labor camps until the war ended.
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, most of Europe was rubble. German prisoners of war languished in camps. In the austere setting of a Scottish camp, young Moltmann grappled with his survival. He writes that he had lost hope and a stricken heart, haunted by nightmares of “the tanks that overran him and the faces of his dead friends. Goethe’s poems had nothing for him; “his dreams fell to pieces…what was the point?”3
He was seized by hope and began to find the courage to live again.
And then came the worst moment in the camps, when he and his fellow German prisoners were confronted with pictures from Auschwitz. The pictures were hung all over the huts where Moltmann and hundreds of others spent their days. Confronted with the truth he despaired, “Is this what we had fought for? Had this generation been driven to their deaths so that the concentration camp murderers could go on killing and Hitler could live a few months longer?”4 He was overcome by deep depression over the destructiveness of war, captivity without end, and profound shame.5
Open Bible with Rays of Light Shining Through a Peaceful Earth Toned Watercolor Atmosphere Inspiring Contemplation and Spiritual Faith
Moltmann would have rather had a few cigarettes, but instead he was given his first Bible by an army chaplain. He stumbled upon the psalms of lament and found the words of his own heart, he writes, “They called my soul to God.”6 Then he came to Jesus’ suffering and death, and felt deeply known and held. In his words, “Christ was the divine brother in distress who takes the prisoners with him on his way to resurrection.” He was seized by hope and began to find the courage to live again. He writes, “This fellowship with Jesus has never left me since. I never decided for Christ, but I am sure that in the dark pit of my soul he found me. ”⁷
We do not have easy answers to the complicated loss and grief in this biblical text or cries of grief that echo in our world today. But we do know this: We have a God who is moved by the cries of people in pain. We have a God who has promised to find us in the darkest pits of our souls, to hold and limit and ultimately redeem all the anguish, all the pain, all the brokenness so that this pain is not the final verdict on human life.
David dealt with his grief and uncertainty through prayers—prayers that clung to the truth of God’s deepest promises. The same prayers that brought comfort to Moltmann as he languished in a Scottish prison camp. In deeply broken situations, when we are caught up in a chain of terrible events, faithful choices are complicated—sometimes it feels like you have no choice at all and then our cries join David’s and Moltmann’s and generations of faithful ones who call upon God,
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
I wait for the Lord; my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,⁸
Worship and devotion are exemplified in the spiritual illustration of a man praying fervently on a delicate watercolor background
The difficult situations we face in our world are complicated—they are beyond our understanding. But so is the love of God! Bad decisions and rash choices are not the final verdict on David. The final verdict on David is the everlasting love of God. Against all logic God chose David and loves David. No matter what bad choices David made, God’s love stays with him. This does not mean that David and his family did not experience the consequences of their actions, our text bears witness. God’s complicated love shows David his sin and doesn’t give up on him. God’s love is not content to leave him in sorrow and brokenness. God’s love seeks restoration—David responded recognizing his brokenness, his limits, seeking forgiveness and repair, experiencing God’s love even after tragedy.
David’s descendant, Jesus, shows us a different way of stewarding love and power than David, a different way of being king. Jesus takes on the most painful and complicated parts of human life: betrayal, violence, powerlessness, grief, even death itself. Jesus chooses to enter into the complicated brokenness of love and violence in peace. In Jesus, God’s power does not violently overthrow the powers that conspire against him, Jesus does not flee from Jerusalem. He does not send an army to seek retribution or kill those who betrayed him. God allows God’s own self to become broken. God’s power-in-weakness makes war unnecessary. God’s power is love. God’s powerful love is self-giving, self-emptying, and self-offering.
We struggle to grasp, to name, to understand God’s love. It exceeds our capacity. This kind of love feels rare in our world. Yet even in the most seemingly forsaken places it is present. Remember the two things that are true: We dare not deny difficult parts of human experience, and these experiences are not the verdict on what it means to be a human.
In some of the most broken places we see glimpses of the way of Jesus—a way to model God’s profound forgiveness, God’s complicated power, God’s vast love. Back in the in the camp for German prisoners of war, a group of Dutch Christian students visited. Moltmann was afraid because he had fought in the Netherlands at the battle for the Arnhem bridge; he had probably killed some of these people’s relatives and friends! But these students told them: Christ is the only bridge on which they could cross. Without Christ they would not be talking to them at all. They shared what was true: their war experiences of Gestapo terror, destroyed homes, the horrible loss of their Jewish friends.
In some of the most broken places we see glimpses of the way of Jesus—a way to model God’s profound forgiveness, God’s complicated power, God’s vast love.
Yet, Moltmann and the other prisoners were also told that this wasn’t everything. They too could stand on the bridge that Christ had built between them.9 They could confess and release their guilt and ask for reconciliation. Moltmann writes, “For me, that was an hour of liberation. I was able to breathe again, felt like a human being once more.”10 Moltmann’s life from then on, turned to God. He studied scripture and theology. He became a pastor ministering in the aftermath of war, a professor guiding others to ministry, and an author of enduring theological works.
In his final years he was involved in a ministry of friendship that some would find very complicated. A colleague involved in this ministry shared this story after Moltmann’s death: Jürgen Moltmann served as a mentor, informal pastor and friend to an unlikely theology student, Kelly Gissendanner, the only woman on death row in Georgia. Because he understood what it was to be a prisoner, his theology and faith connected with Kelly. She wrote him a letter and a lively correspondence continued between them. Moltmann was so impressed with Kelly that he visited her in prison when he travelled to Georgia to lecture. He remained her friend until her execution, writing powerful words of assurance, comfort and promise.
In his last letter to her, Moltmann assured her that she was a sister in Christ, not reducible to the worst things she had done. That what Jesus says to the thief on the cross, he says to her at her moment of execution, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” “Not in three days, not at the end of days. … This is the ‘Today’ of the eternal God, God’s eternal presence. God has embraced you already. … And the risen Jesus is waiting for you on the other side. You are expected.”11
Friends, God’s complicated love didn’t give up on David, it didn’t give up on Jürgen Moltmann or Kelly Gissendanner and it doesn’t give up on us. God’s love is not content to leave anyone stuck in grief, despair, and shame Christ is the bridge between our most deeply broken places and the promises of God’s profound and everlasting covenant of love. A complicated love that we can never unravel or fully comprehend.
1. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/d-day-and-the-battle-of-normandy-plain-language-summary?gad_=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw1emzBhB8EiwAHwZZxYbBOtjlzzh5kZE8GszNltgcjYZMRlj49PFd_bQSlBpd_q682B8dTRoCPtkQAvD_BwE
2.Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life, (Fortress Press, 1997), 2.
3.Moltmann, 4.
4.Moltmann, 4.
5.Moltmann, 4.
6.Moltmann, 5.
7.Moltmann, 5.
8.Psalm 130.
9.Moltmann, 6.
10.Moltmann, 6.
11.Jenny McBride, “Remembering Jürgen Moltmann. https://politicaltheology.com/remembering-jurgen-moltmann/
Joni Sancken holds the Butler Chair of Homiletics and Biblical Interpretation. Her recent work brings preaching into dialogue with trauma studies and conflict transformation. She holds a PhD from the Toronto School of Theology and has taught preaching to seminary students for 16 years, serving at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and for a decade at United Theological Seminary before coming to VST. An ordained pastor in Mennonite Church USA, she is committed to non-violence and supporting pastors across diverse contexts. She is the author of Stumbling Over the Cross (2016), Words that Heal (2019), All Our Griefs to Bear (2022), and co-author of Getting to God (2023).