an interpretive stone

Another Bible conference. Another obscure reference to Absalom.

Last May, you might remember, one man had asked about the kiss of Absalom.http://joeannasawatzky.blogspot.com/2009/05/two-kisses.html On Saturday, in the reports of small groups to the general assembly, a young woman unveiled Absalom's stone (2 Sam 18:18).

If you don't get the pun, you don't live in this part of South Africa. The woman's "unveiling" of an obscure part of scripture for me came precisely in the context of her using that verse as a justification for her cultural practice of "unveiling tombstones" for deceased loved ones. Although I think it can happen at the same time as the funeral, tombstone unveilings commonly occur some months to a year after the person's death. As many families do not have enough money for both the funeral and the stone, the stone often follows at a later date. At that time, the family will again hold some kind of service (one of our Committee members in the Bible School assures me that an unveiling is strictly a family event, just a small event, and need not involve the broader community or the church. In reality, people often do make a big deal of it).

At any rate, the young woman's comment irritated me. The topic for the day was eschatology, or the theology of "last things." Because most of our students are fixated not on eschatology in its sense as the goal of history/creation but as the destiny of their dead loved ones, I too chose to focus the lesson on its personal dimensions, that is, on so-called "personal eschatology". Closing the first session leading into small group discussion, I had left students with the question, "What is our responsibility toward the dead?" Now I was getting the answers from this young woman. First, "we bury them." Then, "we unveil tombstones". Both answers, of course, came not on their own but with a scripture verse thrown in for support. And therein lies my irritation.

If there is a scriptural justification for tombstone unveilings, this was not it. First, Absalom was not setting up a stone for a loved one; he was setting it up for himself, worried that he would die without a son to remember him. Second, who is Absalom, and why should we follow him? The young woman's answer showed little concern for these considerations. In the end, Absalom's practice in this verse has no more to do with the woman's own than the stone. And that, it seems to me, is no rock on which to build the house of God.

-Joe