We continue our adventure with David, who, as you recall, has been anointed by God to become the new King of Israel to replace Saul. Last week, we watched as he found victory over Goliath of Gath. Now, this week we enter a new phase of David’s life as he prepares to ascend to the throne as the new king of Israel.
It has been a long, and dangerous journey. When David killed Goliath, he was hailed far and wide for his heroism, and this was a threat to Saul. In the meantime, David and Saul’s son, Jonathan, became very close friends. In fact, they became inseparable, almost like twin brothers from different mothers. They became closer than family… as close and dear friends can become… and their closeness bothered Saul too.
Saul wanted to keep David close at hand in order to keep a watch on him as his popularity with the people of Israel continued to grow. So, he brought David into the royal household to keep an eye on him. But Saul’s plans went awry very quickly. For one thing, Jonathan’s fondness for David grew quickly, and Jonathan could sense that his father did not have the best intentions for his friend.
Long story short, David ended up running for his life once Jonathan got wind of what was up with his dad. Jonathan did his best to protect his friend.
In the meantime, the Philistines regrouped and attacked the army of Israel and in the battle, Jonathan and his brothers were killed and Saul was gravely injured. His injuries were so great and his fear of being killed by the Philistines was so strong that Saul ordered his armor bearer to kill him so that he would avoid the indignity of death at the hand of his enemies. When his servant refused to kill him, Saul took his sword and committed the first act of suicide recorded in the Bible.
That is the backstory leading to our Old Testament text for this morning.
Once David has received word of the death of Jonathan and Saul, he leads the nation in mourning and lament over their death.
In the Jewish tradition, there is a prescribed period of mourning… it is the minimum amount of time that is expected for propriety sake, but it serves as the official time of mourning for all of the family and friends of the deceased. There is nothing that limits the time of mourning for as long as it may take, but the minimums are designed to give the family time to process their grief and hopefully work through their loss.
One of the problems that we have in our society today is that we have forgotten how to grieve. When a loved one is lost, there are many who try to comfort the survivor with platitudes that, all to often, don’t bring comfort, but bring more pain and sorrow upon them.
One of the best ways that we can help someone who is grieving is to give them the space to grieve. Give them the space to be angry at God, if necessary, and stand by them and support them in their grief.
I remember my Aunt Vola Mae and my Uncle Mac. They were married for 52 years. From what I understand, they argued incessantly for about 50 of those years. Imagine if you will, that Aunt Vola was Aunt Esther to my Uncle Mac’s Fred Sanford. If you get that picture, then you can understand what I’m trying to describe here.
When Mac died in 1986, it was after a brief illness, I seem to recall that from diagnosis to death was only about 2 weeks. And during those 2 weeks, Vola never left his side. Constantly caring for the man that I had only heard her refer to as “that old fool”… and that was when she was being nice to him.
I will never forget very early in the visitation at the funeral home, a long time neighbor of theirs told my Aunt Vola, “well, he’s in a better place” and my Aunt Vola lit into her “And you think that is supposed to make me feel better? Right now there is a hole in my heart that he filled ever since Olivia died (Olivia was their daughter who died shortly before her first birthday). All of the fussing that we did over the years was our way of coping with the death of our baby. You don’t know squat and I wish you’d just leave.” My aunt Vola died less than 2 weeks later… from a broken heart that had been held together for all those years by “that old fool.”
The book of Lamentations and the Psalms give us a window into the human condition. Alternate readings from Lamentations and the Book of Wisdom remind us that “God didn’t make death” that “God takes no delight in the ruin of anything that lives” and that “death entered the universe only through the devil’s envy” (Wisdom 1:13, 2:24 CEB). We are also reminded that in hardship and in death, “certainly the faithful love of the Lord hasn’t ended; certainly God’s compassion isn’t through” (Lamentations 3:22 CEB). Psalm 130 reminds us that God hears us when we cry out from the depths of our despair and our anguish, in the midst of our pain and our sorrow, and delivers us from all of that if we seek his face and rest in his amazing grace.
We are reminded that in the midst of our grief, God is with us. Ready to hold us. Ready to allow us to rest in God’s presence. Ready for us to rage and cry out and exhibit our grief in whatever way that we must so that healing may begin… so that wholeness may once again be ours. Our God is our help in ages past. He is our shelter when the stormy blast of life’s struggles and heartaches threaten to consume us in our grief, our anger, and our despair… and God in Jesus Christ is our hope for things to come.
Jesus tells us “I am the resurrection and I am life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. I died and behold I am alive forevermore, and I hold the keys of hell and death. Because I live, you shall live also.”
David placed his hope in the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When we are faced with uncertainty, when we are faced with a changing culture, and when we begin to face tremendous change in our lives and in the society surrounding us, we don’t need to fear… we don’t need to hunker down in our silos and act like we’re under attack… we don’t need to waste our time lamenting the fact that things have changed and perhaps not to our liking. In times like these we need to get to our knees, seek God’s will in our lives and then step boldly into the world, not to condemn the world… even Jesus didn’t come to do that (cf John 3:17), but to engage the world with the love of Christ… a love ordered by God, exemplified by Christ and enlivened and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Instead of getting on our soapbox and crying woe is me and woe to you who disagree, we should be bearers of Christ’s love to all people. And we should show them that we are Christians by our love, not by shouting out what we are against.
For too long, the church has been in a comfortable position. It was pretty much accepted that people were Christians, whether they were part of a church family or ever even attended church or not. Ever notice how many times you see in an obituary that someone was of the “Methodist faith” or the “Baptist faith”… pretty much a declaration that the last time that person set foot in a church was well beyond anyone’s memory and probably beyond several folks lifetimes.
For too long, we’ve had it easy, whether folks were in the pews or not. And for too long we have let cultural hot button issues as defined by the folks with the biggest and loudest mouths, especially here in America, define what was or wasn’t Christian… what sins were important and what were not. We’ve had too many voices shouting out about the unborn while turning a blind eye to those who are born, not caring about poverty, or justice, or mercy.
We’ve singled out homosexuality to be a major sin while ignoring the other things that Paul lists like gossip, slander, gluttony, and divorce. And in the process of all of this, we have made the church look hateful, intolerant, and irrelevant in the lives of too many people.
We have emasculated our witness by shouting about what we are against instead of lifting up what we are about. We have forgone the love of Christ and the idea of doing unto others as we would have them do to us, to become nothing more than crybabies who throw tantrums if we don’t get our way. It’s been our way or the highway, instead of pointing to Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life for far too long and it has got to stop.
We are called to love… period. Jesus declared that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church, but we have abandoned the message of Jesus for a message of condemnation and the world has seen the hypocrisy that is evident in such a stand.
So, as society changes around us, we don’t need to abandon Christ, we need to hold on closer to Christ with both hands and boldly share with others the risk taking love of Christ. We need to look to Christ for our inspiration and we need to love others as he loves us.
It might not be easy. It might even be painful. But no one has ever said that following Christ would be easy or painless. We may not agree with someone’s lifestyle, but that has never given us permission to act in a hateful way toward them.
Friends, if we live out our lives seeking to exemplify Christ’s love in all that we say and do, we will do more to change lives and hearts than we can ever begin to imagine. Our protests against what we see as another’s sin will never lead that person to Jesus. Our living as though Christ makes a difference in our life can make all of the difference in the world. Thanks be to God…
And Can It Be? 