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| David and Jonathan- Detail from a window at St. Mark's Church, Portobello, Scotland, 1882 |
From our readings today, this could be a
story about mourning. In both the readings from 2 Samuel and our Gospel from
Mark, mourning plays a prominent role. And after the last many days, readings about
mourning could not be more appropriate. Last week, we had the tragic murders of
nine people in Charleston, South Carolina, as Mike preached about last Sunday,
when he spoke so eloquently of our fears of facing the twin Goliaths of racism and gun violence.
In our reading from 2 Samuel today, Goliath
is long-dead. But in the years that followed that epic battle, one thing became
clear: the defeat of Goliath was not the sole problem that faced Israel. Just
as in our own society today, the killing of one fearful monster, or even two, does not solve all of our problems.
The defeat of Goliath by David did not
bring resolution or peace. The Philistines continued to attack Saul’s people years
after Goliath lay in his grave. Ultimately, the Philistines succeed in bringing
about the deaths of many of the best within Israel. And now, the people have
lost their king, flawed though he may have been, who was God’s anointed leader
over them. Even more tragically, Saul’s son Jonathan, noble, fierce, and pure
of heart, has fallen alongside his father.
David’s song calls upon Israel to mourn,
to understand who they are by what they
have lost.
In our own time, we know how to be outraged
and be bitter, but it almost seems we do not know how to mourn, much less how
to draw strength from our losses. We expect people to go through “stages of
grief” in a linear, productive fashion. We expect people to know when they are
supposed to mourn and get on with it, to face the reality of loss, like the
mourners in our gospel today.
The lamentation of David seeks to teach us
how to mourn. In the last week, though, we’ve seen another group teach us how
to mourn: the families of those nine saints in Charleston, who have modeled
forgiveness without surrender, who have sung songs of joy and grace, even from
their sorrow. They have refused to fill their hearts with hate, because they
know that there is still too much to do to address the racism and worship of guns,
those two Goliaths, that still stand astride so much of our country.
They remind us, as Christians especially,
that we live our lives in the understanding that love wins. Love always wins.
There is forgiveness and love in David’s
lament, too. At the end of Saul’s life, he had turned on David repeatedly, even
seeking his death out of jealousy. Yet David refers to Saul and his son as
“mighty.” Three times in David’s lament, he intones the now-famous words, “How
the mighty have fallen!” David could have sought retribution, but instead he
responds with a song of love and devotion.
David’s mourning is rooted in David’s deep love.
For David loved not only Saul, but
Jonathan. David’s love and respect for Saul may have been complicated, but his
devotion to Jonathan was NOT. In the many verses between last week’s reading
and this week’s reading, we see one of the most committed relationships ever
depicted in our scriptures, a commitment and loyalty that stand alongside that
of Naomi and Ruth, who were David’s direct ancestors.
David and Jonathan shared a deep commitment
of love and abiding fidelity to each other that was almost too deep for words. David’s
lament makes clear how very dear and precious Jonathan’s love was to him in
profoundly powerful and personal imagery:
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.
Listen to the description of Jonathan and
David’s commitment to each other in 1 Samuel 18:3-4:
Jonathan made a covenant with
David, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan
stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his
armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.
It is no surprise that same kind of imagery
is used to describe the vocation of marriage, which should also be based on
deep faithfulness, devotion, friendship, loyalty and honor. Jonathan honored
David and placed his own symbols of identity and rank on David. Their souls
were knit together. They wanted only the best for each other, and sought to
protect and uphold each other.
There’s a saying that “love is friendship
caught fire.” Love—real love—knows no boundaries, if it is founded upon
equality, honor, mutuality, and seeking the very best for your beloved, be they
friend, family or spouse.
We understand who we are by loving beyond
ourselves, by loving each other and thereby loving God. Love is the ultimate
act of bravery and faith, because it requires so much of us.
David mourns, because David loves. The love
that is celebrated and memorialized by David speaks to us across centuries and
boundaries with its beauty, its steadfastness, its depth. It is a kind of love
that we all hope to experience in some form in our lives. Even across the separation
of death, the love that David bears Jonathan endures, and in the depths of his
sorrow there also echoes gratitude for all that Jonathan was to him. By his own
admission, David’s love for Jonathan is one of the most important loves of his
life. The love endures even after Jonathan is gone.
We could say that our first and last
readings this week are about mourning. However, they are also, ultimately, about
miracles. They are ultimately about love.
Our readings this week show us many facets
of love. There is the devotion and honor David displays for Saul even in the
face of repeated betrayals. There is a love between friends and brothers who
love each other as much as they love their own souls, who are knit together
indissolubly—even beyond the grave. There is the love between Jairus and his
daughter. There is the love and compassion Jesus displays for the unnamed woman
who seeks his healing touch. True love can take root in family, friendship,
partnership, or matrimony.
And this week, we have seen legal
recognition of the great benefit of those who seek to love in our society. We continue to move toward the recognition of
real, devoted, self-sacrificing love for what it is—a blessing from God, no
matter what form it takes.
And so, we are brought from mourning into hoping
this week, as PrideFest bursts around us in St. Louis, as we celebrate the
recognition of marriage as a contract that grants legal rights and protections,
yes. But this decision proclaims something more: marriage is a covenant of
devotion, faith, and fidelity whose blessings and protections should be extended
to any two adults who are willing to commit themselves faithfully and honorably
to each other, forsaking all others.
The eagerness of two people to forsake all
others and form a new family is an undertaking that both society and faith
community have traditionally been called to witness and celebrate. Whether we
have ourselves been married or not, the willingness to unite ourselves to
another with pledges and hope in good times and in bad is something that stands
as a lesson to us all of the very real presence of God’s love for us.
Now it’s true that not everyone marries,
and that we are fallible human beings who often leap before we look. This
decision still does not grant full legal protection to our LGBTQ brothers and
sisters, nor does it protect them from hate and discrimination. But this is
another reminder to us to that truth we proclaim each Sunday: that love wins,
and when love wins, there are no losers.
It is an interesting twist of fate that
this court decision comes while the General Convention of the Episcopal Church
is meeting in Salt Lake City, and one of the topics they were already planning
to consider was the status of full inclusion of gays into the sacraments and
sanctifications offered by the Church. As many of us at Holy Communion know,
the prayer book allows the blessing of a civil marriage for same-sex partners, Many
of us rejoiced in witnessing this special rite at our diocesan cathedral just a
short month ago. But it is not allowed to be used everywhere, and it uses a
separate rite. The court decision this week renews the question of whether this
church recognizes fully the unions of couples, whether gay or straight, as true
marriages of heart, mind, and soul.
The laws of the land have suddenly, in one
swift stroke, raced past us, and we have both the opportunity and the pressure
thrust upon us to react prayerfully and faithfully in a church that NEVER moves
quickly—a church in which a prayer book from 1979 is still referred to as “new.”
“But we’ve always done it this way” has become such a reflexive response that
it should almost be engraved over the doors into our buildings—even though that
claim is not true.
Marriage has not ever always been done in one way or another.
Hopefully, we will move from discussion of “gay marriage” to understanding that
there is simply marriage, without qualifiers, and that we are called as the
church to make no distinction when it comes to real love, rooted in sacrifice,
a perilous undertaking in the best of times, and yet a joyous undertaking
rooted in the witness of the community of faith as the ultimate act of faith
between one human being and another.
This is a prophetic moment in the
church—or, rather, this is one of several prophetic moments to which we have
been called to open ourselves as a church in just a few short days. The events
in Charleston called us to confront issues of prejudice and equality, of life
and death—to stand before those giants unflinchingly, and ask ourselves what we
are going to do about it. The events of this week call us to do nothing less in
the case of not just tolerating but celebrating and embracing our lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgendered, and queer brothers and sisters.
It is time for us to understand that
sharing in the love of God is sharing in God’s very being. It is time to
understand that who someone loves is not a lifestyle or a choice, but it is
part of the very fabric of that person’s identity. The full expression of love
is how we participate in the life of God.
This is not about merely the body and the
way we express ourselves in the act of sex. It is about the soul, the soul that
seeks to cling to and be united with another in the most profound way possible.
It is about our call as a church to never respond with half measures in the one
great task we have been given by God—the task of loving each other, and
recognizing and erupting with joy and supporting those who choose to be united
in love and fidelity.
“No union is more profound than marriage,
for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and
family. In forming a marital union two people become something greater than
once they were…. Marriage embodies the love that may endure even past death. It
would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of
marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect so deeply that they
seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned
to live in loneliness, excluded from one of the civilizations oldest
institutions.”
In this statement we also see many of the
aspects of the deep love expressed between David and Jonathan, between Ruth and
Naomi, between the Bride and the Groom in the Song of Songs, between Christ and
his Church. Because love is love, in whatever form it takes. As the people of
God, we are called to witness and lift up the love that springs up in our
midst.
Our work here is not done. There is still
much to do to ensure full celebration and welcome of ALL people into the fabric
of our society. As the events of these last many days and months and years keep
proving to us, we are often defined by most clearly by how we love.
The love we are called to embody as
Christians is a hard road, much like marriage. It calls us to be willing to at
times sacrifice our own privilege in the name of something greater than
ourselves, something that draws us out of ourselves and reminds us that our
hearts cannot beat true if we don’t take the risk to open ourselves to the joy
and the danger and the uncertainty of love.
Love is our calling from God because it is
our life within God. The path of healing and living lies through being willing
to love again and again—love, in the fullest sense of the word, that bears all
things and hopes all things. Love that in itself is a miracle.
Amen.
