Saturday, July 7, 2018

More Than a Bromance


Series: Beloved Rascal
1 Samuel 17:55-18:5, 20:1-42
July 8, 2018
William G. Carter

When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father’s house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. 


There you have it, in black and white: the Bible affirms that two men can love one another and make a covenant to each other. Are there any questions?

For some people, this is a startling text. It’s like finding a pebble in the oatmeal. David has just accomplished the ultimate macho deed. With the simplicity of a sling, he has taken down Goliath, the fearsome Philistine giant. His valiant deed has chased away the Philistine army, at least for a while. It’s an impressive moment on the battlefield. King Saul askes his general, “Who is that kid and where did he come from?” Neither one of them know.

When David arrives to introduce himself to the royal court, the head of the Philistine still in his hand, Jonathan, the firstborn son of the king, take an instant liking to him. Actually it’s more than a “liking.” The storyteller says, “The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” When David moves into the palace at the king’s demand, Jonathan made a covenant with David, and the storyteller says a second time, “because he loved him as his own soul.” This is the word of the Lord.

It is no surprise to all of us who remember the family tree of David. He had a great-grandmother named Ruth. Ruth made a covenant with a woman named Naomi. They took a pledge to one another and said, “Where you go, I will go, and your people shall be my people.” Know how I know that? The lady preacher read that passage at my wedding fifteen years ago, as two divorced people pledged their lives to one another. I took her people as my people, and she did the same.

Now the objection may be sounded: if David had a great-grandmother who made a covenant with another woman, there must have been a man in the picture too, if only because David’s grandfather had to be born, in order for David to have a father. That’s true. Ruth married a man named Boaz. She did that after she made a covenant with Naomi.

If all this sounds confusing, I should point out that sometime after David and Jonathan made their covenant together, David married Jonathan’s little sister. Her name was Michal, and she was the first of his many wives. If that sounds weird, you should hear about the dowry her father demanded. All I know is this is biblical morality, and I don’t argue much with the Bible.

Is it possible for two men to love one another? Good question. It’s a question that makes some people twitch. As various societies and cultures have expanded and declined, there have been many ways that households have been formed and people have chosen to live together. In the past few weeks, I’ve come across three different people who were raised by their grandparents; the mother and father were nowhere in the mix. I also think of some unmarried people I know – Beverly in Manhattan, David in New Jersey – who felt God’s calling to adopt orphans as their own daughters. These have been costly commitments on their part, and a lot more courageous than something I would ever do. There are many different ways to construct a family, to build a household, and the Bible certainly reveals that too.

Again, the objection may be sounded: What about Paul and what he said to the anything-goes practices of the Roman Empire? A closer look reveals that most of those texts are addressing abuse and idolatry, hardly the same as covenant making.

Or other objectors harken back to the ancient purity codes of Leviticus, where the temple priests declared what was clean or unclean. Eating lobster, for instance, was considered unclean – a law that God Almighty later undermined in the tenth chapter of Acts. Touching a leper was also unclean, and Jesus himself stepped over that law to heal some lepers that he regarded as fellow human beings.

But let’s stay with David and Jonathan for a bit, because we must never talk about matters of the heart in the abstract, as if there are timeless principles or scientific propositions that govern what is “right” or “wrong” in human relationships. David and Jonathan are not theoretical principles; they are real people in flesh and blood who love one another. They have names. They have lives. And the Bible says they have souls.

Three times in the first verse of chapter 18, the Bible speaks of their souls touching one another. In our parlance, we might say they were soul mates, soul partners, or soul friends. In the old King James Bible, it’s translated, “their souls were knit together.” Now, that’s the essence of love.

Have you ever had somebody you’ve felt that way about? After he was sent to a boarding school as a teenager, the author Frederick Buechner describes his first friend that he made:

Like me, he was either no good at sports and consequently disliked them, or possibly the other way around. Like me – though through divorce rather than death – he had lost a father. Like me, he was a kind of oddball – plump and not very tall then with braces on his teeth and glasses that kept slipping down the short bridge of his nose and a rather sarcastic, sophisticated way of speaking that tended to put people off – and for that reason, as well as for the reason that he was a good deal brighter than most of us, including me, boys tended to make his life miserable. But it was Jimmy who became my first great friend, and it was through coming to know him that perhaps I was not, as I had always suspected, alone in the universe and the only one of my kind. He was another who saw the world enough as I saw it to make me believe that maybe it was the way the world actually was.[1]

It’s a brilliant description of how I’ve come to love many of the people that I’ve loved. There is a commonality, a shared space, a stunning realization that we are not alone, and that we don’t have to be alone. We are partners who share values and make commitments, seatmates on Spaceship Earth. What happens to one of us will alter what happens to the other one of us. In the days after Goliath the giant is defeated, Jonathan and David agree to get through life together.

This is the beginning of an extensive friendship, the longest recorded relationship like this in the whole Bible. It is a life-giving bond, and turns out to be a lifesaving one as well. Within just a few paragraphs of the text, King Saul, Jonathan’s father, becomes intensely jealous of David’s success. More than a few times, he takes a spear, throws it at the shepherd boy, tries to perforate him and pin him to the wall. Jonathan becomes David’s confidant and his advocate, which only drives Saul further toward insanity.

Some might suggest that is the true nature of the relationship. David is in need and Jonathan takes pity on him. Or, as is the case of many human relationships, it begins and develops out of mutual neediness, as two needy souls circle around one another. But the biblical text is repeatedly clear: “Their souls were knit together” (18:1), Or again, “Jonathan loved David as he loved his own life” (20:17). 

And after the terrible day when Jonathan and his father are killed in battle, David sings this lament, “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.” (2 Samuel 1:26). Yes, it’s there in the text; who are we to argue with the Bible?

I reflect on the deep friendships that I have known in my life, and I invite you to reflect on the friendships you have known. There are people that I’ve loved so much that I would walk through fire for them. How about you? And maybe the beginning of the relationship was relatively unimpressive: the teacher assigned you to sit by one another in English class, or you noticed the pretty eyes of someone in the dormitory lounge, or you met in the gym after work.

I think of my great friend Jim, who voted to approve my candidacy as a minister in 1981, has had second thoughts about it, and has been my roommate at countless preacher conferences since. Or my dear friend Virginia, lost to us all through breast cancer; she could complete my sentences and then try to improve them. Or my friend Al, the saxophonist, first a terrifying teacher, then a colleague, now an occasional employee and a true-blue soulmate. Or my wife; mutual friends tried to fix us up when we were recovering from divorces, and quickly discovered we didn’t need their help.

C. S. Lewis wrote a wonderful book on love. He suggests that God’s hidden hand is behind all of these relationships which first appeared to begin so randomly:

We think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting -- any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.[2] 

So David and Jonathan became good friends, soul mates, companions who truly love one another. In a real mystery, God brought them together. What a blessing that neither one of them had to negotiate the next few chapters alone!

Let this be a reminder to us all that love is the gift of God, the giving of God’s very essence to God’s own children. From time to time, we are nudged out of our isolation and our independence, and brought more deeply alive by those who reveal their beauty … and ours. I sincerely hope you have people that you love, without hesitation or restriction, and I deeply hope you know there are people who love you. Love is the greatest gift of God.

We give thanks for this gift, however love finds us, whatever shape it takes. Love is the gift that is so far behind our all-too-common tendency to conflict, division, and short-sighted judgment. So today, let’s simply affirm and celebrate the divine truth, that God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them (1 John 4:16).


(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.


[1] Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey (New York: HarperOne, 1991) p. 70.
[2] C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: HarperOne) p. 114.

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