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.
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