Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today, the Old Testament reading, 2 Samuel 18:19-33, recounts the story in which King David hears of his wayward son Absolom’s death.

David’s grief manifests itself in this particularly poignant lament. Undoubtedly, part of David’s sorrow stems from his relationship to Absolom. The parent wishes he could have done something, anything, to have produced a less tragic outcome.

On the other hand, I am reminded of something a wise person once told me: that he was afraid of living somebody else’s life — even of dying somebody else’s death. The notion, as I understand it, is that God designs the pathway for each of us towards sainthood, towards a full realization of our created potential, but that it’s possible for us to stray from that path and get lost in a place where were never supposed to be.

That’s a sobering, even frightening thought, and I wonder if David wrestled with this idea as he grieved the death of his son.

I suppose a lament like David’s can resonate with all of us, for in it we feel a kind of kinship with both father and son — and a kind of sorrow over our own failures and at the lost opportunities in our lives.

A particularly famous and evocative setting of this lament survives from the English composer Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656), which is here sung beautifully by the Gesualdo Six in the Ely Cathedral Lady Chapel.

Yours in Christ,
Justin