We Mourn

This was my sermon from the first of July, on David's Lament over the death of Saul and Jonathan. I'm enjoying working through the books of First and Second Samuel, and the historical-critical questions that my study of it brings up. How sincere is David's lament, given that the deaths of Saul and three of his sons has suddenly cleared the path to the throne for him? How culpable is David, given that he had been fighting on the Philistine side for two years? Could the story of him being sent back from the lines be a cover-up by his supporters to protect David from the accusation of killing Saul? 

These are good questions for study, but not necessarily good for preaching. I don't address them in this sermon. I take the text for what it is, a lament, and ask what it is we do when we are brought to our knees by the loss of a friend and comrade?  With the recent experience in America of celebrity deaths turning into multimillion dollar industries, it's worth it to look at a different model for responding to loss.
 
...we mourn.

Ever since Samuel had come to the little town of Bethlehem and brought Jesse’s sons to the sacrifice, David’s life had become complicated. One day, he was the least among his brothers, not important enough to be called in for dinner, and the next he was the secretly anointed King of Israel, called to perform before Saul, the current king of Israel. Samuel had come to Bethlehem and anointed him, and the spirit of God rested upon him. From that point forward, his life was in danger.

            The more success he had, the more danger he found himself in. David became a warrior and led the armies of Saul, and Saul grew jealous. Saul sent him on increasingly more dangerous missions, hoping that David would fall by the enemy’s sword. He sets the bride-price for his daughter at 100 Philistine foreskins, thinking that surely David cannot survive the attempt. When that fails Saul sends his servants and his son Jonathan to kill his rival. 

            In Saul’s son Jonathan, however, he found a friend. Jonathan argued on David’s behalf with his father, and even achieved a reprieve for David, if only briefly. David was able to return, but uneasily, for he knew that Saul’s anger was unappeased. Soon enough, Saul him tries to kill him, and David flees as the spear which Saul had thrown quivers in the wall where he had just stood.

With his life in danger again, David goes to Jonathan, who protects him, warning him with an arrow that it is not safe for David to return to court. With nowhere to turn in Israel, David flees to Gath, Goliath’s hometown and a city of the Philistines. David is forced to live a double life. Not safe in Israel, David must hide his loyalty to Saul amongst his enemies, finding their cities safer than his own. David spends much of his life in hiding, always afraid and always moving, worried that Saul would find him and kill him, but succored and helped by Jonathan, who had come to be his closest friend.

Saul chases him across the land, so David and his mercenary band moved often, afraid wherever they went that they would be led into a trap. Jonathan loved David so much that he comes to David in hiding, in defiance of his father. He promises that David would reign as king, forgoing his right as Saul’s heir to David, the anointed one. This was the last David would see of his friend.

He walked on the edge of a knife, lying to the Philistines about who he fought to protect his homeland, aware that his alliance with Gath could be his undoing. When the Philistines gathered to battle Saul and the Israelites, David found himself on the wrong side. Luckily for him, the other Philistine kings didn’t trust him and sent him back from the battle. He was relieved from the burden of going out to battle against Saul and Jonathan and Israel.

The text from Samuel comes after the conclusion of this battle. The mighty armies of Israel have been defeated on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines routed the Israelites, killing many, including Saul and his son Jonathan. This news comes as sadness to David. It is a great defeat his nation, Israel has lost its king and has been delivered up to the Philistines. Saul, whom he had served, has fallen, along with Saul’s son Jonathan, David’s closest friend. In spite of the evident sadness which overcomes David, it is also a relief. David can finally return to Israel. He is no longer a man without a country. He no longer has to fear for his life every waking moment.

Indeed, as the one whom Samuel anointed, the path is clear for him to become king of Israel. But David has also lost his greatest ally and friend. Jonathan risked his life for David over and over again, interceded on his behalf to his progressively more unbalanced father. Jonathan even gave up his claim to the throne for David, such was his love for his father’s rival.

For David, Saul and Israel’s defeat is both a devastating loss and a soothing relief. He has finally found safety and security. And at the same time, he’s suddenly lost the only solace which brought him this far. It is a pitiable situation, to have lost his comfort at the exact time he had escaped his tribulations. What do we do when we experience loss that is both a burden and a relief? We mourn.

Loss isn’t something that we address all that often in our society. We certainly never address it unless we’re forced to. And then when we do, it is to push it away, or try to get over it, rather than acknowledge and accept our grief.  We suddenly find it particularly pressing to demonstrate that everything is “all right,” and we allow all our energies to be focused on that one goal. When confronted with grief we try to move past it as quickly as we can, as if grief is a sickness or a disease to be cured. And what do we have to cure it with? 

And even when we want to grieve, we cannot find the words. The pop psychology answer that everyone must grieve in their own way has left us with no way. We are so open to everything that we can find comfort in nothing. The platitudes and cliché’s that we throw around so freely offer us no comfort.

Leon Wieseltier was what they call culturally Jewish, a non-practicing Jew, when his father died. But he decided to recite the mourner’s Kaddish each week at his temple, not because he was brought back to belief, but because grieving by following the path of tradition and his ancestors was easier than trying to hack his own way through the jungle of grief.

In that spirit I submit to you David’s lamentation at the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. Walter Brueggemann explains that this lamentation, “this text is a noticing, and its noticing places hard questions before us.”[1] What permits one to notice the grief and loss of life around us? How can we break in on our muteness?” David does not seek answers, nor does he look past Israel’s defeat to the future. Upon hearing of the death of Saul and of his beloved friend Jonathan, David cries out in anguish, for Israel’s loss in defeat and the death of its king, and for his loss, in the death of his closest friend.

Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places!

How the mighty have fallen!

Tell it not in Gath,

proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon;

or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,

the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult.

You mountains of Gilboa,

let there be no dew or rain upon you,

nor bounteous fields!

For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,

the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more.

From the blood of the slain,

from the fat of the mighty,

the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,

nor the sword of Saul return empty.

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!

In life and in death they were not divided;

they were swifter than eagles,

they were stronger than lions.

O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,

who clothed you with crimson, in luxury,

who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.

How the mighty have fallen

in the midst of battle.

Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.

I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;

greatly beloved were you to me;

your love to me was wonderful,

passing the love of women.

How the mighty have fallen,

and the weapons of war perished.

While we are so often quick to seek to put things aright, while we hesitate to acknowledge our grief, or perhaps know no way of relieving that burden, David is naked with his emotion. He grieves aloud for his nation, for his king, and for his friend and brother Jonathan. The future, for the moment, is bracketed out. He worried not about what comes next but gives voice and acknowledgement to the right now experience of loss. David shares his grief with all Israel, and Israel shares their grief with David. It is a ringing proclamation of humanity in the midst of despair.

            What do we do when loss bears both burden and relief, both guilt and anger, sadness and rage?  We mourn. We do as David did, we notice, we acknowledge, we moan. We speak honestly in the face of death. Because though Israel is largely defeated, it is not yet silenced.

            And by refusing to be silent in the face of death, we proclaim that there is more to be said. That death is not the final word. The final word is God’s and it is a word of life. A word of resurrection, healing, and hope.

---

[1] Brueggemann, Walter. First and Second Samuel. Interpretation; A Bible Commentary For Teaching and Preaching Ed. James Luther Mays. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990, p. 218.

Wearing Saul’s Armor

I've been working this summer through the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel. This is my sermon on David and Goliath. While the story is a familiar one, it still has much to say (perhaps too much, was David spoiling for a fight?) to us about our lives today. There was a time when the church was a Goliath, a massive, monolithic entity that held a near monopoly on American's social, religious, charitable, and family lives. Now, we're a lot leaner than we once were, and need to relearn the strategies of David if we are going to continue to survive in an increasingly competitive world. Here's a link to the NRSV text for that day: 1 Samuel 17:38-54.

           The Old Testament reading for this week comes from 1 Samuel 17. It’s the story of David and Goliath. And reading it again this week reminded me of an article I read a couple of years ago, by Malcolm gladwell, talking about the Davids and Goliaths in our world (Here’s the link: www.gladwell.com/2009/2009_05_11_a_david.html) and how when the two clash, things don’t always go as expected.

            In the article, Gladwell talks about a 7^th and 8^th grade girls basketball team in Silicon Valley, consisting of a bunch of girls who weren’t exactly all star athletes. Many of them had never played basketball before. Compared to the teams full of experienced players who had been playing together for years (and winning), this team was quite the David. And like David, instead of challenging their Goliaths in the traditional strategies of warfare (or basketball), they chose to take an unusual tactic.

            Their coach was an American immigrant named Vivek Ranadivé. He grew up playing soccer and cricket, and though he understood the rules, he was baffled by the strategies that most teams employed. Much of each play is made up of choreographed formalities. The defense gives ground, jogging down to their end of the court to get set. The point guard walks the ball down the court, calling a play that the team has run hundreds of times in practice, carefully choreographed to get an open shot. When the offense reaches an appointed point, suddenly the defense starts to play again, matching up against players or defending zones, challenging passes and trying to block shots. What

Ranadivé realized was that the current strategy of basketball served to expand the differences between stronger and weaker teams. It expanded the influence of greater ball-handling skill, good shooting, well-executed play, and effective post-play (i.e. tall players).

When weaker teams played traditional strategies, they tilted the playing field in favor of Goliath. In short, when you go to battle fighting by Goliath’s rules, you’ve already lost. This is what Goliath wanted when he went in to battle David, right?  He wants to fight on an open field, with the weapons he’s been training with. He wants the fight to be one-on-one, where he won’t accidentally trip over a comrade, or get whacked by an errant spear thrust, or swarmed and overwhelmed by a bunch of people at once. He wants to tilt the field in his favor. This is the nature of Goliaths. When you begin to accumulate power and influence you use that power and influence to make things easier on yourself. You tilt the playing field in your favor.

            Now over the years the mainstream church has accumulated remarkable amounts of influence and power, and have managed to tilt the playing field in our favor. Business hours are constructed to fit the religious schedule, and blue laws once prevented business from opening on Sunday mornings helped encourage people to go to church. Often churches were powerbrokers within cities, in which everyone of significance was a member of a church, and nothing could be done in a town without their support. { In the 50’s and 60’s, which was the height of membership and success for mainstream churches, the church so dominated the local landscape that nearly every social function existed or operated through the church in some way. }

            However, many of the advantages that the church once held are evaporating. TV and Radio stations no longer give Sunday morning programming over to churches, making people a little bit more likely to find themselves on a couch instead of a pew on Sunday morning. Little League coaches no longer avoid scheduling practice or games on Sunday mornings. Prominent political and religious scandals have stained the church’s image, and young people grow up with a very different idea of who the church is than their parents did. In short, the Church is no longer the Goliath it once was. The playing field is no longer tilted in our favor.

            In spite of this change in the church’s status over the last 60 years, the church hasn’t adapted new strategies. The church continues to act as if it had the favored status and a dominant social position that it no longer holds.  We’ve attempted to freeze ourselves in time, acting as if we’re still in the fifties while the rest of the world has long passed into the 21^st century. Much of the liturgy that we use today was considered innovative when it first came into use, and instead of continuing to innovate in our liturgy, we’ve built walls around it and try to keep it from changing. Instead of searching for our own voice, however, we’ve chosen to wrap ourselves in the familiar. We still imagine that we have a monopoly on Sunday morning, instead of acknowledging that we’re competing against more other options and activities than we ever have before. We still believe that we have the moral high ground, instead of the reality that the church’s image in the public has been trashed by years of being used as a political football, and by scandals of every type and nature.

            In short, we’re like David trying to wear Saul’s armor. In our desire to pretend like we’re still what we once were, we’ve burdened ourselves with a century of baggage, and we’re weighed down by attitudes and approaches that now only serve to tilt the playing field against us. Should David have bowed to convention and worn the armor and used the weapons of King Saul, he would have lost the battle before he took the field. The armor was such a burden that he could barely walk. The shepherd’s strength and skill with a spear were nothing compared to Goliath’s. If David had come at Goliath with the spear and the shield, he would have been defeated without a doubt.

            David knew that he couldn’t approach Goliath with a traditional strategy. David knew who he was, and he knew where his skill lay. Instead of fighting the battle on Goliath’s terms, he tilted the playing field back in his favor. He went to battle unencumbered except for his sling, and pulled five smooth stones from the river. We know what happens next. He speeds up the game. He runs at Goliath, and before Goliath can take aim with his spear or swing his sword David has lept up and slung a rock straight at his forehead. Goliath is felled even before he has a chance to take advantage of his strength.

            As for that basketball team, instead of giving up ¾ of the court, Ranadive taught his inexperienced girls basketball team to take advantage of their strengths, instead of playing to the strengths of the Goliaths of the basketball world. They refused to give up the half-court, and pressed 100% of the time. Traditional teams didn’t know what to do with them.  They played defense so well that other teams often couldn’t get the first inbounds pass. And because they often got the ball right under the opposing teams basket, they never had to make long shots or run the crisp offensive plays the Goliaths were so good at. They went up by ten, fifteen, one time even twenty-five points. This team, which could hardly have expected to win many games, managed to make it all the way to the national tournament. They won their first three games, and ended up one game away from the national championship. All because they refused to play the game according to Goliath’s rules. They refused to put on Saul’s armor.            

            If the mainstream church is going to have a future, we have to stop assuming that the playing field is tilted towards us. We have to stop acting like a Goliath, and counting on our own strength and traditions to fight our battles for us. We will have to learn to behave more like David than Goliath. We’ll need to become unconventional in our desire to spread the Gospel. We’ll need to break the traditional rules of warfare, and even experience some condemnation and shame from those who would be more comfortable if we played Goliath’s game. We can no longer count on superior strength or numbers or societal protection or superior social status to call people to join communities of faith.

           

            Like David, we must recognize who we are and where our advantages are. We must embrace the communities that we are, instead of pretending to be who we were, and move into the future pressing every advantage that we have, trusting fully in God’s power to help us adjust to a new game, adapt new strategies, and tilt the playing field towards our own strengths and advantages. We just have to take off Saul’s armor.