Good News for Tamar - a reflection from Lizzie Laferton
Sunday morning’s passage was one you would probably not choose for a visitor’s first sermon. Our series in 2 Samuel saw us arrive at chapters 13 and 14 and sit with Tamar in the ugliness of that household as the consequences of David’s sin play out in his family. It’s not a passage we rush to, I imagine, but (as Tim reminded us) is nevertheless God-breathed and of value (2 Timothy 3:16).
I particularly appreciated that Tim began his sermon by listening to that young woman, focusing on Tamar’s words in 13:12-13, paying attention to her faithfulness and integrity as alone, shining voice among men who are unfaithful and godless in various ways. It’s all the more striking for how quickly she vanishes from the narrative – her very silence thereafter reflecting that she is discarded by one man, shut up and shut away by another, and essentially abandoned by a third.
But her experience hasn’t disappeared: only this week I have found myself in conversation with a friend who shared her concern about someone else’s marriage, in which an atmosphere of control and criticism has contributed to a wife feeling “unlovable”. There are Tamars – desolate and lonely – all around us.
How I longed for a healed heart for that woman. How I longed for her to know herself infinitely loved. I found myself feeling grieved for her and grieved for Tamar and wanting to preach to myself the good news in chapters 13 and 14 for the Tamars of this world.
The following reflections on that subject are tentatively offered. Yes, I know what it is to feel very vulnerable as a woman and I’ve had a couple of unpleasant moments, but I have experienced nothing like Tamar. Nor do I have experience of giving the sort of wise pastoral care and counsel needed by those women who have. So, please know I’d be very ready to hear correction or nuance or advice. This is a long way from claiming to be any sort of authority or all there is to say on the subject. But in case it’s helpful to hear a woman’s thoughts, here’s what I’ve been pondering since: three bits of good news about God for Tamar.
There Is a Better Brother
There is One who stands shoulder to shoulder with us and invites us to call God “our Father in heaven”, who calls us to share the status of child of God. And that brother is an infinitely better brother than Amnon. Whereas Amnon, like his father David, “loves”, sees and takes, abusing his power to seize what is not his, Jesus – he of divine power – does not treat his status as God as something to use to his own advantage. Instead he loves – truly loves – witha self-giving, self-sacrificing, self-abasing love.
There is One who meets our suffering with compassion and attentiveness. Whereas Absalom’s counsel to grief-stricken Tamar in 13:20 seems to add up to, “Keep quiet, don’t dwell on it too much”, Jesus is the God who bids us cast all our anxieties on him because he cares for us. He is the God who invites us to approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Whereas Absalom’s motives appear mixed (in killing Amnon, he takes out the son who is ahead of him in the line of succession), Jesus’ heart is always pure. He is the God whose compassionate heart moved him towards to widow of Nain, who paused in his busyness to talk with the bleeding woman, to restore her and to reassure her that she was a precious daughter of God. As Hagar discovered, the God of the Bible is “the God who sees” women who have been mistreated (Genesis 16:13) and who moves towards them with compassion and care.
In the gospels we see the God who meets sin and sin’s effects with sinless grace, acts of wisdom, tears of compassion, words of comfort, and timeless teaching. He doesn’t say,“Don’t take your suffering to heart” but rather, “I know what it is to live in a world of sin and I can meet you in your time of need. I love you, I see you, I’m here for you.”
There Is a Better Father
As the one who prefigures the greater Christ, in 1 and 2 Samuel David shows us Jesus. Sometimes he foreshadows him in his strength, faithfulness, victory, compassion, forgiveness or suffering, and other times he points us to Christ Jesus by contrast. Certainly, from chapter 11 David makes us long for a better King than he is. But he also makes us long for the better Father.
As father to Tamar, Amnon and Absalom, David fails on two counts. Firstly, he fails Tamar by failing to exercise justice. As Tim pointed out, with David there is anger without justice, for furious as David is, there is no suggestion that Amnon is in any way punished or disciplined by his king and father (13:21). The same will never be said of God, for “he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). God will judge and punish all sin, either in the sinner or in Christ; there will be justice.
He sees every injustice and he cares about sin and its victims (as his responses to David in chapter 12 bear out). He acts and is always acting (as his sovereign hand seen throughout these chapters testifies). Our loving Lord and Saviour is never unmoved, never mired in indecision, never all talk and no action, never touched by temporary indignation, never distracted by the next problem. He is not like David.
Perhaps David had a sense of his own hypocrisy and felt keenly his lack of moral authority as a fellow perpetrator of murder and sexual sin. Perhaps that held him back in exercising kingly justice or even fatherly discipline. But if that is that is the case, it serves to emphasise asecond failing: he fails Amnon and Absalom by failing to teach them about grace and mercy.
Only a chapter previously we read of God’s rebuke to David, David’s repentance, God’s mercy and God’s discipline. How much David had to share with Amnon of repentance, of throwing himself on the Lord’s mercy! How much he had to share with Absalom about God’s grace, about forgiveness! If David’s polygamy, adultery and murder have both foreshadowed and led to his own sons’ sin, what a contrast with the Father who leads his children out of sin, who sets them free from slavery to it and who teaches his children to forgive as they have been forgiven. If David fails to show his sons the way of grace, what a contrast with the Father who offers life-transforming grace both to the victims and to the perpetrators of abuse and violence.
David fails his children. Our Father in heaven will never fail us.
There Is a Better Bridegroom
This is the point at which I feel myself wanting to tread with caution. Knowing God as our better Brother and Father is balm to many different people and in many different situations. To write specifically into the context of rape, however, feels uneasy territory for someone who is aware, as I am, that I do so imagining rather than knowing. But as I imagine all that Tamar might have been feeling and grieving, all the loss she faced, I find myself wanting to focus on Jesus as our better Bridegroom. Here’s why.
As I imagine what it might be like to be treated as disposable by Amnon – what that might do to Tamar’s sense of dignity, value, worth – it matters that Jesus is our bridegroom. United with him by faith, we enjoy an exclusive relationship of total commitment, a relationship of boundless love, unending grace, and self-giving. So when we come across the opposite, when partners let us down or strangers abuse us, it is good news that there is a better Bridegroom. There is One who says to us, “You have infinite worth”, who is only committed to our good, who loves us with sacrificial love, who knows everything about us and loves us without measure – loved us enough to die for us. When there is an Amnon whose evil treatment makes us feel worthless or expendable, there is a Beloved whose words and actions tell us the opposite.
As I imagine Tamar’s sense of loss as she mourned the marriage and family that wouldn’t be, experiencing all the societal stigma and shame that accompanied her experience in that culture, it matters that Christ is our Bridegroom. I want to remember the Bridegroom who doesn’t have to turn his back on his bride because of sin. Jesus is not ashamed of his people. I want to remember the women of the genealogies in Matthew 1 – the Tamar of Genesis 38, Rahab, Bathsheba – variously taken advantage of by men, yet honoured by God both in his salvation plan and in his word. Jesus’ plans for us and our future, his plans for what he will achieve through us – none can be undone by our own sin or the sin of others against us.
As I imagine what it was like to be cloistered away like Tamar, I imagine some of the lasting legacies victims might experience today – what effects sexual violence might have on future relationships: trauma, fear, mistrust, feelings of shame or uncleanness, barriers to intimacy…There are different ways of feeling trapped. So when sin against us impacts our view ofourselves and our relationship with others, it matters that Christ is our better Bridegroom. I want to remember that there is a Bridegroom who sees us rightly and whose word and Spirit can heal hurt, help us to navigate relationships with wisdom and grace, and grow us in in faith, peace and hope. I want to remember that there is a Bridegroom who is our ever-present companion and who draws close with gentleness, to give, not to take. I want to remember that there is a Bridegroom who drew close freely, to serve not to be served. If we struggle with a sense of shame, if we feel unclean, there is a perfect Bridegroom who moved towards those who were unclean, ashamed, outcast, who not only knows what it is like to experience shameat the cross but at that same cross also bore shame to take it away, who can both sympathise and heal. If we have been let down and fear being hurt again, there is a perfect Bridegroom who is incapable of doing evil to us.
All I can say now is that if you don’t have to imagine, if you know from past or present experience, if you are a precious and much-loved Tamar among us, please don’t suffer on your own. Is there a Christian sister you trust who you could talk with? I know Dorothy and Gilly on the pastoral care team (care@gracechurchwp.org) are ready to listen and walk alongside you.
And please know that I am praying as I type this that God will be good news for you in dark moments.
