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Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
Such great characters. King David teaches us about the importance of seeking God in all things.
Seeking God
Oh, I wish we had a ton of time because these are such great characters here. They come, they weave through the story. This is not the only time we see Shemei, for example, the man who’s out cursing David and throwing rocks and dirt at him.
But I want to focus on David because there’s a connection in today’s gospel that I think is important for us to recognize. Certainly, King David was a great man. We’ll see in the Old Testament that he is lauded repeatedly for his greatness. But David was a broken man, too. We saw it not too long ago in his, I would argue, rape of Bathsheba.
And while we don’t know from this particular story why, David was a bad father. Absalom didn’t become Absalom without the help of David. David ignored the sexual abuse of one of his daughters. Absalom pleaded for his father to do something and he didn’t. And Absalom never recovered.
And what’s interesting is that in very few instances, today is one, but there are very few instances where David refers to Absalom as his son. He’s that boy. That boy, Absalom. Maybe David was so angry at being confronted with this evil that he couldn’t bring himself to say it. In fact, the only time David shows deep emotion for his son, two times, that I can think of, this is one.
Although we don’t know if he’s crying over the broken relationship with his son or the loss of his kingdom. And when Absalom dies, where he refers to him as my son, my son, my son Absalom. That’s what happens in our life. But David is a good example in another way, because even though he was not a good father, even though he was difficult in certain moral decisions that were sinful, he never lost sight of his relationship with God.
He goes back to God. He sees the world through the eyes of God. It’s unheard of that a person, this Shemei, would be allowed not only to curse the king, which would be bad enough, but to threaten the king, albeit with rocks and stones, probably not the most difficult weapons of the day. But David recognizes that he’s in a situation of his own making.
And that’s what’s important about sin. Sin creates situations for us, which put us into situations of our own making. Family is a critical point, and that’s the connection with the gospel.
There is this man who has been terribly possessed by multiple demons, who’s freed. Jesus is in a Gentile area. We know that, first of all, because you don’t herd swine if you’re Jewish. We see that, in fact, in the prodigal son, where things are so bad that even the swine are better off than the prodigal son. So we know that there are instances where Jesus was in deep Gentile territory. This is it.
The territory David is in with this Benjaminite, Benjamin, father of Saul, northern kingdom, David’s southern kingdom. There was always this tension between the two. So why is this important? It’s important because it’s understandable then why there would already perhaps be some hostility against Jesus when he’s in this area, and how much more so when he puts the evil spirits into the swine and ruins the livelihood.
You can understand why their reaction was not so great. But with all things, there’s a message. And the message is that when we follow the way of God, even if things don’t appear to be working out, we have this deep and abiding relationship that leads to something eternal.
You see, these people in the northern kingdom should have been Jewish, but they weren’t. They weren’t. They left their religion. Hence, this is where this comes from. But what then does the man, Jesus tell the man who’s been freed, what does he tell him to do? Be a witness where you are. Don’t follow me. Go home. Make clear to your family all that God and his mercy has done for you.
That’s where it begins with all of us. Now, we can’t just do ministry to our family because, well, we can’t. We have to go out into the world. But if we don’t become authentic witnesses for those we love the most, then there’s absolutely no way we’ll become authentic witnesses for anybody else. for anybody else.
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