Sometimes you haven’t really got words to say what needs to be said and tonight’s reading from 2 Samuel 13 is a really good example of that. I’ve never been to Auschwitz but I know that many people who have been there come out unable to say anything. Just watching Schindler’s List had that effect on me and when I saw The Passion of the Christ at the cinema it was the same. You just come out speechless.
It is never fair to compare suffering with suffering because everyone’s pain is real and unique; but the distress for those who are crushed and broken in their sexual identity seems doubly cruel. People who are afflicted in this way are hurt not just by the offences themselves but by the fact that the pain that results often has to be endured alone. Victims of this kind of abuse often feel suffocated. They feel there is no possibility of speaking with anyone else about what they’re going through – because they are threatened with violent reprisals or because of taboos, or because of the shame they feel or the false guilt they carry.
And I wouldn’t be a Christian today if I did not believe that in Jesus Christ there is healing, there is freedom, there is salvation and there is hope. Jesus is the way out. He alone promises and delivers, to all those who call on him, a new morning and a better tomorrow. Listen to what God said to a beaten-up, humiliated, discouraged and uprooted people in Jeremiah 29.11-13: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
Autopsy of Sexual Abuse
The passage of scripture that we read just now reminds us that the Word of God gives it to you straight. It doesn’t dress things up to look pretty when they’re not. The Bible isn’t, and never was, a nice anthology of feel-good fairy stories. It tells you the truth about the dark side of human nature. It doesn’t cover it all up. You have here in 2 Samuel 13 an autopsy of sexual abuse and it’s ugly.
This sad and shocking tale of the incestuous rape of Tamar has the merit at least of showing us that God never sweeps outrages like this under the carpet. Even though Tamar’s family tried to bury this degrading event God does not forget or make light of this young princess’s pain. He defends her honour down the ages in exposing in his word her half-brother’s treachery and cowardice. 2 Samuel 13 is an autopsy of sexual abuse. It is a devastating, four-stage study of incestuous lust.
As is usually the case with sin, it all begins in your head. That’s why you’ve got to fill your mind with praise, with truth, with the revelation of who you are in Christ – the Bible says “Be renewed in your mind” and “Set your minds on things that are above, not on earthly things” – why? Because sin always wants to plant itself in the fertile soil of your thoughts. Once there it’ll grow like bindweed and it’s a devil to get rid of.
For Amnon here everything begins with his thoughts. Like an unsuspecting novice trying to swim in unsafe tidal currents, he quickly gets dangerously out of control the moment he lets passing thoughts become obsessive. Notice how his behaviour becomes compulsive. He’s eaten inside, he drives himself mad, his untamed passions torment him. He allows himself to become a frustrated loner, a voyeur. Maybe he’s the kind of sad individual with no real friends who, in our day, would pass his time in and out of sex shops and erotic cinemas in the red light areas of our cities.
Because for him, for Amnon, women are little more than objects. Notice how haunted he is by the fact that the target of his desire is out of reach in v2. “Amnon became so obsessed with his sister Tamar that he made himself ill. She was a virgin, and it seemed impossible for him to do anything to her.” There she is, in all her youthful and innocent beauty. But she’s his half sister, so the law forbids him having a relationship with her, and that propels him towards the next step which I call guile. Guile; it’s the deviousness that plots in the background and hatches a plan.
For Amnon, Tamar is no longer a young girl he might love. She is, in his infatuated mind, a trophy he must win. Verse 2 says he was obsessive. In his mind he stalks her. He pursues her. He is a predatory hunter and she is in his sights. He starts to create and develop strategies to trap his prey. He actively seeks wily partners in crime. Like many compulsive offenders, this is true of many like paedophiles, who groom and charm their intended victims; Amnon too becomes increasingly manipulative until, at last, in v6, he lies in wait for her, ready to strike.
The next stage is the implementation. Having laid his trap he sends the servants out of the room, eliminating all risk of possible witnesses against him. It’s an ambush. Amnon locks all the exit doors and lunges like a hawk on his prey, who has no chance. She protests and dissents but he turns a deaf ear. There is no pleasure here for him, no tenderness, no love, no delight. It’s simply a raw, lustful conquest, nothing more.
Princess Tamar, for her part, gives five good reasons in these verses why he should not have sex with her.
1) She says to him loud and clear in v12 that she is withholding her consent. She doesn’t want it. “No, my brother! Do not force me!”
2) She protests that what is about to happen is just not right either socially or morally. “Such a thing should not be done in Israel. Don’t do this wicked thing.”
3) She cries out despairingly in v13 that the consequences for her will be irreparably tragic. “What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace?” In that cruel world, she’ll be seen as damaged goods, no one will go near her and her life will be ruined.
4) When that fails she tries to convince him that the fallout for him will be just as dire. “What about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools in Israel.” You’ll be a pariah, an outcast…
5) Finally, in her desperation, she tries to negotiate with him at the end of v13. “Look, please speak to the king; he will not keep me from being married to you.” You know, perhaps he will find a loophole somewhere and authorise a marriage between us.
In fact, it’s not sure at all that David would have given his blessing to a marriage between these two, but she says anything just to get him to change his mind. The law in Leviticus 18.9 is clear; “Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere” and David would have known that.
Anyway, v14 shows the grim outcome; “He refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her.” Any of those five protestations should have been amply sufficient to dissuade Amnon from what he did – but he was inflamed with passion and didn’t hear a word.
The last stage is the fallout. And, when you think this was a real life, that it really happened, that Tamar really suffered disgrace and dishonour for the rest of her life, this is almost unbearable to read.
From v15 onwards Amnon completely rejects her, finds her disgusting to be with and wants nothing more to do with her. This is the same young woman he would have died coveting just a few minutes earlier. But now, having oh so ‘manfully’ conquered an unsuspecting and defenceless virgin girl, he now treats her like rubbish and throws her away.
Tamar was absolutely right. She could see that this was going to have consequences that magnified hugely the actual crime. “What about you? You will be like one of the wicked fools in Israel.” She’s talking to a prince. He’s 3rd or 4th in line to the throne. She’s saying your name will be dirt forever throughout the land. In fact, Amnon’s actions that day set off a ticking time bomb in his family. In just two years Amnon would be dead, killed by his half brother Absalom, in a revenge attack.
What about Tamar? Well, her life is spoiled and it is spoiled forever. In her culture and in her day she would be whispered about and treated as damaged goods. Her hopes of marriage will have vanished. The dust and ashes on her head in v19 are a symbol of mourning and grieving. She is sobbing uncontrollably. She tears her royal robe. This is self-loathing behaviour. She has lost everything that was dear to her; her innocence, her self-respect, her security, her trust in others, her hopes of a loving relationship.
This is an open wound. And to rub salt into it, in v20, Absalom dismisses her tragedy as if it were of no consequence. “Be quiet for now, my sister; he is your brother. Don’t take this to heart.” That’s cruel! “Don’t say anything” says Absalom. How many victims of sexual abuse have had to hear that from a family member? “Don’t talk about this to anyone.” Yes, do! Your suffering is too heavy to carry alone. “It’s your brother” says Absalom. “We are family. It’s just a little family secret, no one need know about it.”
That’s another classic lie told to victims of incest and it’s so false. As long as the truth stays locked up in shadowy cupboards the torment and humiliation never heal. The moment you expose your secret pain to God’s light and love is the moment healing can start. “Don’t take this to heart” says Absalom as if Tamar had only lost a glass bead from a cheap necklace. She has lost everything. We don’t know how old she was. 15? 16 maybe? All her life was before her and now it’s spoiled forever.
The French Charity TPMC who defend the rights of victims of domestic and sexual abuse say this: “When a child is a victim of sexual brokenness the effects are alarming. Threatened with reprisals if they tell anyone the truth, children bottle everything up and endure their maltreatment silently; physical violence, sexual assault, fear of beatings, rejection, abandonment, swearing and subtly destructive words. They are unable to inform on their parents out of family loyalty. The facts are therefore minimised or simply denied.
That is exactly what we find here in this horrible story. The author of the crime, Amnon, becomes inhuman - he can’t love like a normal person any more - he is actually repulsed by beauty and disgusted by intimacy. But the victim of the crime, Tamar, is sent off into a grief that she is condemned to endure alone. She is a prisoner both to her aggressor and to her own crushing sense of shame.
The Family
It is very significant that this sordid episode in 2 Samuel 13 takes place in the context of the family home. 80% of sexual abuse takes place at home and involves a close family member. Recent research suggests that 1 girl in 8 and I boy in 10 are victims of some kind of inappropriate advances before the age of 18. I girl in 25 and one boy in 33 are victims of rape or incest. For these children the risk of becoming involved in drugs is seven times greater and the suicide rate is ten times higher.
Incest is, of course, an extreme case. But someone’s sexual identity can be damaged and scarred by other means. A mother who dreams of having a little girl and who gives birth only to boys and dresses them up in pink to console herself may have no idea what psychological damage she is doing to her sons. The father who is desperate for a son, never has one, and who expresses that regret to his daughters will hurt them deeply.
The dominant mother who wears the trousers at home and who stifles her husband will deprive her sons with a positive, healthy model of masculinity to emulate – and is much more likely to drive them to seeking masculine intimacy in adulthood than would otherwise be the case.
Or what about the distant and austere father whose lack of affection and affirmation pushes his daughter into seeking intimacy with anyone – and who falls pregnant before finishing her GCSEs?
The family as God intended it should be the safe place; a refuge, a place of emotional security, full of good and healthy things to emulate. For many people you meet and know and work with it just the opposite. And that is almost certainly the case for some of you here too.
It’s Not fair!
A second thing that this story shows is that it’s not fair. It’s not just Tamar’s youthful beauty that is so tragic. It’s not just that she had an obsessive stalker for a half-brother. It’s not just that he raped her. It’s not just that he rejected her and hated her afterwards. But it’s so perversely unfair that it was she that ended up as the untouchable outcast and not him. It’s not fair that she had to bottle up her justified anger. She the innocent party is violated in a way that spoils her life forever and he gets off relatively lightly. And it’s not fair!
There is a cry from the heart that says, “Lord, why didn’t you stop this? Why didn’t you step in?” Were you deaf to Tamar’s cries for help? Were you deaf to mine? Why does God do nothing? It’s not fair…
No. For all those who are victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse, those who have had a poor parental model or who have a love deficit in their family it just isn’t fair - and if there is anyone here tonight who can relate to any of that I am so sorry that happened to you. It wasn’t your fault. It shouldn’t have happened and it is not fair on you that it did.
No one knows really why God does not always intervene to stop suffering and why sometimes he does a great miracle. I wish I could and I believe that one day, in eternity, we will know and understand. Or we’ll be so overcome by the power of God’s love and the depths of his wisdom that we won’t need to. All I can say here is that God did not intervene either when his loved and only Son was bruised and beaten and humiliated and insulted and slain by thugs.
Conclusion
Imagine you are an eye-witness of the passion of Jesus Christ. What do you see? Jesus is stripped of his clothes and chained to a whipping post. He is flogged again and again with leather whips. Each one has bits of bone or wood tied to the end which open up the flesh on impact. You see muscle and bone appear as Jesus’ arms, legs and back tear badly.
You see him led out to a courtyard where men jeer at him and press an ironic crown, with thorns like 6-inch nails, down on his head. They dress him up as a king. And then they stand in a circle pushing him back and forth to each other. They smack him in the mouth, they punch him in the ribs, they pull his beard, they draw phlegm and spit at him.
Then you watch as they load the horizontal section of the cross on his already butchered shoulders and back. His strength is failing and he can hardly walk straight. But he carries it until he drops to the ground, the heavy crossbeam falling on top of him.
Finally he arrives at the execution site. They strip him a second time. They stretch him out on a wooden cross and drive ten inch nails into his forearms. It tears his median nerve sending severe, burning pain like an electric shock up his arms and into his spinal nerve. After his arms they twist his knees and drive one spike through his two ankles between the tibia and the Achilles tendon. It is unspeakably bloody and almost unwatchable. The pain is excruciating. In fact, that’s the origin of the word ‘excruciating’; from the Latin ex (out of) and crucia (cross). Out of the cross comes unspeakable, unimaginable, unbearable agonies and Jesus took it all.
The cross is then lifted by ropes and the vertical beam drops into a hole dug in the ground. Hanging there in the stifling midday heat, thirsty, in shock, left for dead by his friends, exposed to the watching crowd, tormented by his gloating enemies he hangs there in indescribable pain and aloneness.
This is the biggest “it’s not fair” ever and somewhere at its heart is the key to all the others
Because it’s the spiritual pain – being torn away from the eternal affection of his Father and carrying the weight of all human sin – that sends Jesus to his death so quickly.
The Lord of glory has become the dustbin of the world; rejected, hated, deserted… Unwanted on earth, unwelcome in heaven – and unfit for either. And the Bible says a horrible, nauseating and absolutely disgusting thing about Jesus Christ. It says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5.21). He loves you – to death.
That’s where Jesus carried the sin of the world. That’s what we’re going to remember and walk in the power of tonight when we share Holy Communion. He died for all the wrongs we have done – and for the wrongs done to us. It’s there that he took the full blow of Tamar’s wretchedness – and all the injustices you’ve suffered. Jesus has died and is raised so that there is a future and a hope for you. And it’s by his wounds that we can be healed.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 21st June 2009
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