Wednesday • 8/23/2023 •
Wednesday of the Twelfth Week After Pentecost (Proper 15) 

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:145–176; 2 Samuel 18:19–33; Acts 23:23–35; Mark 12:13–27 

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92) 

Welcome to Daily Office Devotions, where every Monday through Friday we ask how God might direct our lives from that day’s Scripture readings, as given in the Book of Common Prayer. I’m Reggie Kidd, and I’m grateful to be with you. This Wednesday in the Season After Pentecost our readings come from Proper 15 of Year 1 in the Daily Office Lectionary.  

What love learns from Absalom’s very bad hair day.  

Absalom’s is a sad, sad tale — and the narrator of 2 Samuel calls our attention to David’s lament over a son who did not deserve his love, and whom he had not loved especially well: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33).  

The poignancy of David’s lament is exquisitely captured by singer-songwriter Pierce Pettis in his song “Absalom, Absalom”:  

Come and smear me with the branches of that tree 
Hyssop dipped in innocent blood to make me clean 
Let an old man's broken bones once more rejoice 
Oh Absalom, you were my little boy 

Chorus: 
Absalom, Absalom 
My son, my son, my son 
Caught in the tangles of deceit 
Hanging lifeless from that tree 
Absalom, Absalom 
My son, my son, my son 
Caught by the tangles of your hair  
The fruit of my own sins to bear 
Oh, Absalom 

You were the laughing boy who bounced upon my knee 
You learned to play the harp and use the shepherd’s sling 
Always watching, my impressionable son 
Oh Absalom, what have I done 

You were watching when I took a good man’s wife 
And gave the orders for his murder, just to cover up the crime 
All the vanity, cruel arrogance, and greed 
Oh Absalom, you learned it all from me 

(I mention also, thanks to my friend Michael McLeod’s recommendation, the haunting choral setting of David’s lament by composer Eric Whitacre, “When David Heard.”) 

Yesterday, we pondered what lessons about faith and hope we might glean from the image of Absalom hanging on a tree suspended between heaven and earth. Today’s lament by a broken-hearted father invites reflection on the love of a greater Father.  

According to the Bible’s story line, when our original parents — God’s dearly beloved children — took a bite from the forbidden fruit, the moral universe got knocked off its axis. Sin began to taste sweet, and goodness unpalatable. Evil looked good, and good evil. Wrong seemed right, and uprightness wrong side up. We’ve all learned the same lessons Absalom learned from David: “All the vanity, cruel arrogance, and greed.” As Paul put it in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  

What it took to put the world back on its axis was the “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood” (Romans 3:24b–25a). What that atoning sacrifice cost was our Heavenly Father watching his Son suspended on a tree between heaven and earth “so that he might become firstborn (by virtue of resurrection) to many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:29 my rendering).  

The staggering truth is that our Heavenly Father, who loves his own Son infinitely beyond what we could possibly imagine, loves us to that same infinite extent. Our Father loved us enough to surrender his Son to death and evil and hell for three days and three nights so he could regain fellowship with us for eternity.  

It is a plan the mystery of which may forever elude us. But the Bible tells it as the One True Story. It is the human race’s story — not just of the Absaloms among us, but also the Tamars and even the Amnons. And it is our story, never better told than in the words of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (KJV).  

Be blessed this day,  

Reggie Kidd+