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