David is suffocating underneath the weight of his anxiety and fear. With every question he places before his father’s face the coils seem to tighten and like a sledgehammer they are pounding him further and further into the dust: “How many….; How many….; How many….” Their designation, the faceless “many”, is immensely troubling, given the circumstances. David’s own son, Absalom, is bearing down on him, attempting to tear the crown off of his father’s head. So overcome with sadness and fear, David cannot bring himself to name his own son; it may be that his name would cause him to choke or it may be that the reality of this rebellion is so horrendous to him that his own son has become a phantom to him, a nameless horde. David had no problem shouting at Goliath, but the giant coming to attack him cannot be named and David is the one running this time.
Matched by his son’s rebellion is the fact that he has been exiled from his throne. At his anointing David had been established by the deafening shout of his father upon Zion, his father’s place of dwelling. David and his father ‘dwelled’ together, engaging in conversation much more intimate and lengthy than we have been provided. His father obviously looked upon him as a perfect son of instruction. David needed to merely ask and the nations would be subdued. This dialogue was David’s heart (a heart, after God’s own), and the power that moved his blood through his body.
How much things have changed. Whispers come to him from the dark that his god (his father) has abandoned him, and who would not think so? To be chased from the throne his father placed him on must mean that his father has removed his protection. His throne had become merely a chair. David is beset on both sides: betrayed by his son and apparently abandoned by his father as well. His heart is contracting. And this near-death experience is rooted in a much deeper level. When David was anointed he was called from watching his sheep. Like every king David’s identity as king was his being a shepherd of his people. When he was anointed, this was no private ‘salvation’. He was anointed as the protector and establisher of a nation and David carried within his heart a concern for his people that was as profound as a shepherd for his defenseless sheep. This is why David had a “heart after God’s own”. It was marked by an absolute sense that God’s people were his people, that their fate was his fate and that their protection was his shepherding. To be abandoned by the one who gave him the power to protect these sheep meant the sheep had been allowed to wander, subject to the grinding teeth of wolves.
No wonder David cannot close his eyes and enter his rest. Like some cascading failure David is finding himself outside of every blessing and indication of his father’s presence. His own son has risen up against him, he has been torn from his throne and his people are likely to be destroyed. Now, time is seeming to drone on, moment after horrible moment with no reprieve. Man begins in his sleep. David knows that when creation is blanketed in night, man is supposed to sink down as well to be (re)created. He knows that the day is only beginning when he closes his eyes. The day begins (not ends) in darkness. Man must first be almost dead-like before he can open his eyes. David’s eyes, though, cannot close. Creation itself is in rebellion against him.
Without warning David is provided assurance. David, the poet, awakens and creates an image of utter beauty. His father is for him a circular shield. Perfectly drawn, this vision of protection meets and conquers the sense of the encircling coils of fear, anxiety and doubt. Whereas before the whispers emerged from behind David’s back—whispers directly challenging David’s god’s protection—now David is assured that his father will not only provide him with a circular shield; he will be that shield for him (both attackers are met head on: the approaching horde and the sense of fatherly abandonment).
Everything is falling back into place. The source of David’s anointing—the very place he has been exiled from—will be the place of his answer. His father’s house will again be his son’s house and provide for him the protection he seeks. And, most poignantly, David lowers himself to the ground and shuts his eyes. Sleep washes over him and he is allowed to ‘enter his rest’ and be recreated. The night, that time of utter and complete vulnerability, had before been the source of his vigilant terrors. It now becomes the source of his peace. The day has finally begun.
With the day half spent, the sun rises and with it the anointed king of Israel. With this spreading light we hear words that before were impossible. And they are words that could only be spoken after a long period of deathlike immobility and passivity. The many are still the “multitudes” but their ability to force David’s head into the dust has been utterly revoked. Fear has fled from David as profoundly as sleep had fled from him before. He calls, with an assurance that the word “hope” hardly conveys, on his father to rise up like the arc of covenant as it makes its way before Israel on the way to battle. David has again risen and goes out to do battle with Goliath. He is still a giant; his dreams were no figments. But, with his father’s assurance, he knows that he and his sheep have now found their protector and the source of their strength.
And what a transformation. We hear here the words of a loving, devoted and honoring son who gives to his father all the glory of the victory that is soon to be his. Not only will his father now be David’s protector and circular shield so as to enable his son to sleep, he will be the one who silences every taunt of the Lord’s abandonment by smashing the jaws and teeth of all of those who taunted David. In David one sees the future breaking into the present. The fact that his father goes with him to battle is the guarantee that his enemies will be, and are already, overcome.
And now, blessings descend, not just upon David, but upon his flock. They were the ones David experienced dread and concern over. With David’s rebirth in the morning, they too have been reborn and blessed.
No comments:
Post a Comment