August 12 Sermon Notes @ Samuel 18, Eph. 4:25-5:2

August 12 -2 Samuel 18. Eph 4:225-5:2 In Highway Patrolman, Bruce Springsteen sings of two brothers. One is a police officer and one criminal. Toward the end of the song, the patrolman considers his conflicting impulses and lets his brother flee across the Canadian border. “Man turns his back on his family, well he just ain’t no good.” Of ocurse, he is angry chasing his brother in trouble again, but another set of feeligns captures the highway patrolman. Eph. on anger quotes Psalm 4 .(see Lerner-) Anger needs to be acknowledged. Denying its presence seems to tend to feed it, and it runs underground and pops up at unexpected moments. I have heard some couples say that we have never gone to bed angry. (Here I shall pause a moment to let people write in their own jokes). Anger needs to be handled with care and does not need to be nurtured. It does not need to simmer on the stove. Words and deeds done in anger can be so destructive to a relationship. If anger is allowed to fester, unacknowledged, it can poison a relationship as surely as a misdeed. The letter goes further and urges us to get rid of/put away/ bitterness, rage, malice,wrangling/brawling and slander. Notice some are internal vices, some are expressed in word, some in physical action. they are forms of anger. We learn to accept that anger arises, indeed, it is a good diagnosis into our hot buttons. the test is how that anger gets channelled, controlled, and used. I don’t hear the phrases as much but we used to say to fly off the handle, or count to ten when angry, hothead. We try too hard to give vent to anger and not enough trying to keep it from getting the best of us. Nathan predicted family dissolution in response to David’s destruction of Uriah’s family. In part Absalom’s insolent rebellion stems from David’s failure to properly avenge Absalom’s sister when she was raped by another of David’s sons, Amnon. Absalom’s act of revenge got him exile, so his anger seethed and he started to plot his father’s downfall. David’s sympathy for Absalom seems to overwhelm any other feelings, as we note the seeming absence of anger in David. what we witness is heartbreak. We don’t get a hint that he is angry at a full scale rebellion by his son. A civil war has started, and his general is furious that his personal concern for his son outweighs his public grief for a divided nation. I wonder if Jesus used this story as a bit of a model for the prodigal story. There too the father is scanning the horizon for the lost son. In our story, the fretful king paces on a wall , but this time he is not scoping out a Bathsheba bathing. From the tower spies messengers but not a returning son. Maybe David cannot be angry as he reflects on his failures as a parent, as a king, as a man. Quite simply, he cannot forget that Absalom is his son. Faulkner wrote a novel inspired by our reading, Absalom., Absalom. In any age, are there more heartbreaking words than would that I have died instead of you, my son, my son. Could those very words been uttered by God on Calvary? What the OT called God’s wrath is another word for speaking of God’s heartbreak.Can you not hear God saying o my son, my son, would that I had died instead of you, my sin, mys? Do we not hear the echoes of that heavenly cry when we review the circumstances of the last Supper and its aftermath? what would it say of God to not be angry at what we do to each other? Over and over, that anger does not get the last word, but restoration does.