July 5, 2009
For All That We Have Lost - 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI grew up in the country, in beautiful Campobello, South Carolina, and I grew up with dogs. In my neighborhood, dogs ran free. Leash laws and the like were unheard of then, everybody had dogs, and everybody – most everybody – related to each other’s dogs with persistent patience and forbearance. Because they ran free, though, sometimes they got in trouble. Sometimes they would run away. Sometimes they would get hit in the road. Sometimes they would get into something in somebody’s garage, like antifreeze, that would poison them. Consequently, my first experience with death was with my dogs. I loved my dogs. I spent all day with my dogs, especially in the summer, and when they died, as one most surely would every two or three years, I grieved. In fact, on one occasion, the whole neighborhood grieved.
We had this theory, though, that when your dog died, you would get another dog as quickly as possible, sometimes even the very next day. There is something to be said for closure, you see. We would cry a little bit, bury the dog, and then find another puppy (almost always a stray) and start all over again. There was an order to the whole thing, and an emphasis on looking ahead and not looking back. As I look back on that, however, it might not have been a great idea. There is also something to be said, after all, for grieving, for mourning, for looking back and acknowledging what you have lost.
This Scripture reading is in some ways a funeral. It was Saul’s & Jonathan’s funeral. Saul was the very first King of Israel. Jonathan was his son. They were both extraordinary leaders. Saul was at one time the best looking man in all of Israel. He had won God’s very heart, had God’s blessing, and served God and the people faithfully. For the first time in its history, all twelve tribes of Israel were united under one king named Saul. And for a long time, Saul was a great king who brought Israel prominence and prosperity it had never seen before. Israel’s future looked especially bright with Saul at the helm. It also looked bright with Jonathan in succession. But like all kings, Saul made some mistakes, and one mistake in 1 Samuel 15 cost Saul his kingship. So Saul, like many kings, went crazy for awhile. He got paranoid and fearful. He got drunk on his own power and got himself and Israel in trouble. In fact, at the end of 1st Samuel, the Philistines defeated Israel and one particular Philistine killed King Saul and Jonathan.
David, then, was sure to be king, and you would think that such a promotion would make him very happy. And not only that, but for the first time in years, David was finally safe. Saul had tried to kill David on numerous occasions, and David always slipped away. In fact, David had more than one opportunity to kill Saul, but he refused. So David and Saul were rivals to say the least. Now that Saul himself was dead, then, you would think that David would be happy. In fact, the Philistine who killed Saul and Jonathan was certain that David would be happy. But he wasn’t. David wasn’t happy at all. This particular moment was not about David or even Saul. It was about Israel, and Israel lost a great deal when it lost Saul and Jonathan. Even though we can look back in hindsight and see that Israel would indeed prosper again, neither David nor Israel could anticipate that. Saul’s death, then, was a time to mourn, a time to acknowledge what they had lost. It was a time to look back, to pause, to quit acting like they were super-human, and to be human for a change and to mourn. To be human, after all, is to mourn.
In those times of mourning, we see ourselves in very profound ways. I don’t know where ya’ll were on January 28, 1986, but I know where I was. I was in the music room of Spartanburg Day School in the 4th grade. The whole middle school assembled there that day to watch Christa McAuliffe fly into space on the Challenger. We all remember where we were then. I even remember Ronald Reagan addressing the nation on TV that night. I even remember this particular line from his speech: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, and slipped the slurry bonds of earth to touch the face of God.” I remember that like it was yesterday, and I’ll bet you do, too. And I will also bet that, if you’re old enough, you know where you were when you heard that Pearl Harbor was attacked, that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, that another plane had flown into the World Trade Center.
In all of those tragedies, we remembered. The whole world stopped. Don’t you remember? They were generation-defining moments in which not only did we mourn but, in that mourning, we remembered who we were. We focused – albeit for small time – on what was truly important. Unfortunately, those are the grand exceptions. We don’t do that very well as a society. We’re a forward-looking people, which is good. But sometimes, we need to look back, and remember, and acknowledge a few things. We are human beings, after all. We are the creature, not the creator. As such, we have a few connections, a few relationships with people and even with things that are important. And when we lose those connections, it’s only human to mourn, to look back and acknowledge in all honesty all that we have lost.
For every one of you here today, you have lost something or someone lately. Some of you have lost a parent, or a sibling, or a friend. At least this side of heaven, they are permanently gone. At least two of you here today are sending your children off to college. Life is changing, as it should, and you are losing something and you would be very wise to slow down and acknowledge your loss. Maybe you’ve lost your job. You’ve lost a sense of security and way of life on which you had come to appreciate and depend. Maybe you’ve lost your ability to drive, and therefore you’ve lost your mobility and independence, which is valuable to all of us. That doesn’t even mention what we have lost as a society. We might not realize this, but yesterday was the seventh July 4th we have celebrated since we have been at war. While you may not have lost anything personally, we as a society have lost a great deal in Iraq & Afghanistan. They had names, you know. Those people who have died over there on our behalf had names, and children and wives and husbands, and parents and friends. We would be wise, like David, to slow down and pause and acknowledge that. The dead have not died in vain, I hope, but we sometimes live like they have.
The writer of 1st Samuel devoted a whole chapter to Saul’s death. He also devoted a whole chapter to how David and Israel mourned Saul’s death. It must be important, then. This isn’t just some self-help, make-us-all-feel-good, glorified Dr. Phil show. It’s an instruction, I believe by God himself, to pause and to remember and to honestly mourn. Have you ever noticed when you read the Psalms how often the Psalmist implores us to remember? We don’t have the ability, after all, to forget. God might, but we don’t. And we’re not going to get that ability anytime soon. So until we do, we have to deal with the past and everything that happened there. “We can’t forget the past,” said William Faulkner. “It’s not even past.” David becomes King of Israel in Chapter 2, but not in Chapter 1. David remembers and mourns in Chapter 1.
I became the Student Pastor of Mooreville United Methodist Church in June of 2002. In May of 2002, I was in the army, and the following month, I was the pastor of a church. My biggest fear then was visiting people who were sick, especially dying. What was I supposed to tell them? So do you know what I did? I didn’t say anything at all. I let them do all the talking. And talk they did. I remember this one particular lady, this saint really, Katherine Jones. I visited Katherine at least every other week, if not every week. I would sit across from her while she talked. She told me about everything: about growing up in nearby Lott, about how her father used to take her there on a horse and buggy every Sunday morning to church and they would stop by the old store there and get the Dallas Morning News. She told me about her teaching years. She told me about her husband, Anson, who had died years before. I loved Katherine Jones almost like a grandmother. I remember thinking that I did her a disservice by not telling her anything. That’s my job, isn’t it? Pastors, preachers speak for a living, but I said very little. I just listened as she remembered her life.
She died in June of 2003 and I remember being so sad that she had died. And I felt guilty that I never said much to her. I went to a conference the following month, and in that conference the speaker told all the pastors and care givers there that when they cared for people at the end of their lives, the best thing they could do was to shut their mouths and listen. People need to be able to remember, and to the extent that a pastor can help them do that, that pastor is giving them an invaluable gift. We all need to be able to remember, to think about what happened, about who are, and what we have lost. Even though David was surely the next King of Israel, even he was not too great to pause and reflect and remember and mourn. And neither are we. Our culture never lets us slow down long enough. Our faith in God tells us to be counter-cultural and do it anyway. Our well-being, our health, our humanity, our faith implore us to put our busy and important lives on hold every now and then, and to remember, and to listen, and to mourn.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
