Revhipchick discusses her “conundrum of preaching” here and I confess I could relate to many of her comments about wondering about how to preach.

There have been many times where I felt tingly because I knew what I was preaching was so true and so focused, probably the best I could do as a human being trying to receive and channel the Spirit. And no one said anything afterwards. No one blinked. No one fell out into in the aisle, slain in the Spirit. No one shouted, “Amen.” So maybe I was wrong.

Then there are times when I feel like my examples aren’t meaningful to me, the connections are so-so, the upshot feels a little platitudinous and people love it. I see eyes surreptitiously wiped and receive comments days later about how people are still thinking about the sermon.

That’s when I know it’s not all me. It’s not even mostly me.

Yet, with preaching, it can feel a lot like mostly me doing the work.

I’ve asked people what they’d like to hear about. (Asking what you’d like to hear about is different that asking what you’d like to hear.) More history? Theology? Church doctrine? Modern parables? Explanations? Apologetics?

I think it’s easy to forget that, in the scope of history, it has only been a short time since the pastor had all the church power and made unilateral decisions. Though the work of the church has always been the work of God’s people, it’s only been a short time that all God’s people have been invited into that work. That all people are afforded access, to the best of their ability, to the tools of a Bible, dictionaries, histories, commentaries and… Wikipedia.

Preaching changes as people have more information. In a world of facts and time demands, the slow wait and mystery of faith can be frustrating rather than intriguing. A pastor’s dance through what we know to be true and what we believe to be true can seem like tap-dancing rather than honest admission. And, despite the best efforts of many, people still look for ways to assure themselves of having achieved salvation. (Or, in some cases, assure themselves of being in the process of santification.)

And preaching has to deal with all these realities.

Most preachers have a tune. A basic melody that undergirds their sermons. Overtime, you’ll see the wind-up and hear it comes…

Mine is this: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation. will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

All my preaching gets back to that. And, I hope and pray every time, that at least one person hears that, through the help of the Spirit, in their heart.

Our society, in general, does not deal well with grief. By our society, I mean mainstream, contemporary American society- the only location from which I am (semi-) qualified to speak. After the funeral ends, we may make a couple obligatory phone calls. We may make an effort to visit the bereaved. Yet, more often, we think about how we should do something, anything, and then it remains undone because we worry about what to say or what to do.

When we are grieving, we often are surprised at the length and depth and breadth of the feeling of loss. The world doesn’t stop turning and, yet, nothing feels right. Nothing will slow down to mark the time-stop we feel. And that feeling goes on for a long time.

That being said, we do at least have some ways of acknowledging the death of people and  more and more frequently there are rituals to marks the death of pets, changes in life, anniversaries of grief, etc.

Yet there are pockets where it’s very difficult to publicly acknowledge grief. There are situations for which there seems to be no ritual and, even if people want one- they’re not sure how to ask.

The main situation of which I’m thinking is miscarriage. The loss of a pregnancy- known or unknown.

The Mayo Clinic says 15- 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. Since a miscarriage is a spontaneous loss of pregnancy in the first 20 weeks, there’s no way to tell how many miscarriages may actually occur in the first weeks of pregnancy.

This means one in five (1/5) women who become pregnant in their lifetime will likely have a miscarriage.

When this happens, there are many mixed feelings.

If a woman is uncertain about her pregnancy, a little overwhelmed at the idea or her circumstances, the loss can make her feel guilty and, perhaps, a little relieved- which may compound her feelings of guilty.

A woman who has struggled to become pregnant may be devastated at the loss of a life she hoped would grow. She may wonder what’s wrong with her. She may second guess every move she made.

Even the most matter-of-fact woman who miscarries before she knows she’s pregnant may feel a wistfulness at what could have been.

And there are many, many, many other scenarios and reactions.

Often, we learn of the miscarriages experienced by the women around us after we have one of our own. (Or someone in our close circle does.) It’s then that the stories come out. Worries that have been expressed only to partners and spouses or sisters or mothers suddenly find the light of day.

Grief over a miscarriage is most frequently deeply personal and, usually, private. Yet, when we don’t occasionally discuss life events like this, people who experience them can feel alone. Not everyone is going to have the same experience and, of course, there is a time and place for discussion.

Still, there must be a way to speak of these kinds of things. To share our grief. To carry one another’s burdens, so that we reduce the feelings of guilt. So that we acknowledge that these things happen, frequently. We have to learn to sit with, stay with the grief until it ebbs. Not trying to wash it away with a slurry of easy comments, statistics or biological guesswork. We can speak truth to the power of this kind of grief- to its fellow travelers of fear, anxiety, guilt and hopelessness.

We may not like death, but we cannot pretend it doesn’t happen. By acknowledging the deaths and hurts that do occur in our lives, we can begin to put away the cloak of invisibility that doesn’t really work anyway. In walking with one another, we can come to a deeper understanding of what it means to live and to die together.

Creating God,

You are the God of what has been, what is and what will be. You know the potential within each of us. We believe that You grieve when we fail to reach that potential from our very first days to our very last. With the consoling presence of your Spirit, bring peace to those who mourn, assurance to those who are anxious, restoration to those who feel torn apart. Help us to sense your Presence in our lives and to share that same Presence with those around us. We ask all these things through Jesus Christ, through whom we are united to unfailing love, now and forever.

Amen.

AFTER THE TURBULENCE OF THE DAY

After the turbulence of the day,
thank you for sending the peacefulness of the night.
How blessed the peace of the night,
so still,
that the very tones
of mountain and skyscraper
lose their jutty, harsh aspect
and bathe in thrilling stillness.

Let us not ruminate upon
the disagreeable scenes of the day.
Let us not rehearse
injustices,
bitter, hard words,
coarse actions.

Mindful, Father,
of your infinite patience with us,
your infinite goodness,
we ask you to help us
never to harbour a single drop
of hatred, or resentment,
or bitterness
against anyone.

Fill us
with your limitless mercy.

— Helder Camara

Camara, Helder.”After the turbulence of the Day”.  Robert Van de Weyer. The HarperCollins Book of Prayers. HarperSanFrancisco, 1993. p. 82f

2005, taken by Julia (Dunlap) Seymour

At a recent ecumenical event, the following translation of the 23rd Psalm was used. It comes from the New American Bible.

The previous post about David and Jonathan got me to thinking about Saul. There is a certain sadness to the story of Saul. He’s anointed by Samuel to be Israel’s first king. (1 Sam. 9-10) Unfortunately, Saul can’t always follow God’s directions and doesn’t destroy the Amalekites with the thoroughness that God demanded and expected. (1 Sam. 15) His failure to trust and obey causes God to regret choosing him as king and God’s regret puts Samuel into mourning, because he had high hopes for Saul. (1 Sam. 15:10ff)

Long story less long, just before David enters the scene, we read the scene between Samuel and Saul, wherein Saul finds out what’s happened:

Saul said to Samuel, ‘I have sinned; for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, I pray, pardon my sin, and return with me, so that I may worship the Lord.’ Samuel said to Saul, ‘I will not return with you; for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel.’ As Samuel turned to go away, Saul caught hold of the hem of his robe, and it tore. And Samuel said to him, ‘The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this very day, and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you. Moreover, the Glory of Israel will not recant or change his mind; for he is not a mortal, that he should change his mind.’ Then Saul said, ‘I have sinned; yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me, so that I may worship the Lord your God.’ So Samuel turned back after Saul; and Saul worshipped the Lord. (1 Samuel 15:24- 31)

So David, our boy hero, makes his entrance into the story when Samuel anoints him and when he, subsequently, goes to soothe Saul’s troubled mind with his music. That’s right, David shows up to comfort Saul- the newly anointed consoling the one abandoned by God’s Spirit.

Did that last phrase seem a little harsh? Read on:

Now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, ‘See now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord now command the servants who attend you to look for someone who is skilful in playing the lyre; and when the evil spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will feel better.’ So Saul said to his servants, ‘Provide for me someone who can play well, and bring him to me.’ One of the young men answered, ‘I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is skilful in playing, a man of valor, a warrior, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence; and the Lord is with him.’ So Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, ‘Send me your son David who is with the sheep.’ Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine, and a kid, and sent them by his son David to Saul. And David came to Saul, and entered his service. Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer. Saul sent to Jesse, saying, ‘Let David remain in my service, for he has found favor in my sight.’ And whenever the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand, and Saul would be relieved and feel better, and the evil spirit would depart from him. (1 Samuel 16:14-23)

The spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and yet something remains to torment him. We could say that the understanding of the time was that the torment he experienced was God’s judgment. True enough, but while I’m loathe to place the framework of modern, Western psychoses on ancient stories, I’m inclined to say that our man Saul had God’s judgment and it made him capital Depressed. (You need to draw that out a little… DEE- pressed.) And so he moped around the castle, needing a faint soundtrack of New Age harps to go with his mood.

While Saul remains in the place of the king, he already knows, through Samuel, that he’s lost the Lord’s favor and he’s just waiting for his replacement. He’s a lame-duck king and he’s lost in a landslide through the only voter with power.

For the biblical story, the reminder is to hold God’s commandments close and to realize that distance in your relationship with the Holy is because of your actions, not God’s.

For our own interpretation, this story brings up another point with which to wrestle. If Saul is tormented by an “evil Spirit from the Lord” and we recognize his behavior as depressed (and later a little manic)- are we to believe that mental illness is caused by evil spirits or, even more difficult, by God?

Of course not, you say, “We know so much now about brain chemistry, post-traumatic stress, workplace anxiety, depression through life change, etc. How could anyone say God causes mental illness?” (And if Saul didn’t wasn’t affected by at least 3 out of 4 of those, I’ll eat a DSM.) In our modern context, we view mental illness as more organic than spiritual, even when it can have a spiritual dimension.

It’s important to remember that people struggle with mental illness, from what seems common place like depression or chemical dependence to less common things like schizophrenia or avoidant personality disorder. In that struggle, it is easy to feel abandoned by God, as well as those around you. When you can’t make sense of your world, there is an additional grief, which can make you feel like you’ve failed. If your world includes a system where in goodness is a reward from God, then your apparent not-goodness is either a curse or, at the very least, God withdrawing God’s blessing.

People of faith must be vigilant in love toward those around us, not always being aware of who longs for a song from the harp to soothe their soul and quiet their demons. Words of blessing are better than nosy questions. Specific offers of help are better than waiting to be asked or worrying over doing the right thing.

We look to Saul, who sank without the Spirit of the Lord. He struggled until, at last, he fell on his sword to keep from being humiliated in death at the hands of the Philistines. Even to the last, he fought for God’s people and, likely, for God’s favor.

We who believe that we are in God’s favor through Jesus Christ must remain ever vigilant to share that same good news with those around us who struggle, in whatever ways present themselves through the Spirit.

In our current world, “friending” is a verb and is sometimes applied to someone you know in passing. Perhaps more than in passing, but not always someone you know well. Consequently, as our use of a word changes, our understanding of the relating concept changes as well. As “friends” become more casual, it’s easy to forget the role real friends play in our lives, the closeness we can have with them, the pain we can feel at their betrayal, the true mourning we experience at their loss. When I think of the word friend, abstractly, I think of Anne Frank referring to Kitty (the addressee of her diary) as her bosom friend, which leads my thoughts to the Beloved Disciple (unnamed) reclining against Jesus at the last supper- a bosom friend, indeed.

Friends give us support, a place to vent, a new audience for our laughter and stories, a shoulder to cry on, a place to be ourselves. Even the most introverted among us has one or two people with whom to share.

In the Bible, there are no greater friends than David and Jonathan. There is a contemporary argument that they were lovers, that their friendship extended into the sharing of their bodies. There may well be a case to be made for that and it could be a good case, but I find interpreting them as friends to be more significant and more impressive.

Jonathan first sees David when the latter comes to make a report to Saul, Jonathan’s father, after killing Goliath. (1 Sam 18:1-5)

1 By the time David had finished reporting to Saul, Jonathan was deeply impressed with David—an immediate bond was forged between them. He became totally committed to David. From that point on he would be David’s number-one advocate and friend.

2 Saul received David into his own household that day, no more to return to the home of his father.

3-4 Jonathan, out of his deep love for David, made a covenant with him. He formalized it with solemn gifts: his own royal robe and weapons—armor, sword, bow, and belt.

5 Whatever Saul gave David to do, he did it—and did it well. So well that Saul put him in charge of his military operations. Everybody, both the people in general and Saul’s servants, approved of and admired David’s leadership.

David and Jonathan become close friends and confidantes, but Saul becomes frustrated and, then, angry with David’s popularity. Jonathan warns David of Saul’s plan to kill him and helps him escape, with the assistance of Michal (David’s wife, Saul’s daughter, Jonathan’s sister). (1 Samuel 20:1-4)

1 David got out of Naioth in Ramah alive and went to Jonathan. “What do I do now? What wrong have I inflicted on your father that makes him so determined to kill me?”

2 “Nothing,” said Jonathan. “You’ve done nothing wrong. And you’re not going to die. Really, you’re not! My father tells me everything. He does nothing, whether big or little, without confiding in me. So why would he do this behind my back? It can’t be.”

3 But David said, “Your father knows that we are the best of friends. So he says to himself, ‘Jonathan must know nothing of this. If he does, he’ll side with David.’ But it’s true—as sure as God lives, and as sure as you’re alive before me right now—he’s determined to kill me.”

4 Jonathan said, “Tell me what you have in mind. I’ll do anything for you.”

Jonathan tells Saul a lie about where David has gone. (1 Sam. 20:27-33)

27 But the day after the New Moon, day two of the holiday, David’s seat was still empty. Saul asked Jonathan his son, “So where’s that son of Jesse? He hasn’t eaten with us either yesterday or today.”

28-29 Jonathan said, “David asked my special permission to go to Bethlehem. He said, ‘Give me leave to attend a family reunion back home. My brothers have ordered me to be there. If it seems all right to you, let me go and see my brothers.’ That’s why he’s not here at the king’s table.”

30-31 Saul exploded in anger at Jonathan: “You son of a slut! Don’t you think I know that you’re in cahoots with the son of Jesse, disgracing both you and your mother? For as long as the son of Jesse is walking around free on this earth, your future in this kingdom is at risk. Now go get him. Bring him here. From this moment, he’s as good as dead!”

32 Jonathan stood up to his father. “Why dead? What’s he done?”

33 Saul threw his spear at him to kill him. That convinced Jonathan that his father was fixated on killing David.

David and Jonathan know that they will not be able to see each other again as David goes on the run to escape Saul. They have a tearful goodbye. (1 Samuel 20:40-41)

41 Jonathan gave his quiver and bow to the boy and sent him back to town. After the servant was gone, David got up from his hiding place beside the boulder, then fell on his face to the ground—three times prostrating himself! And then they kissed one another and wept, friend over friend, David weeping especially hard.

Jonathan and Saul are killed in the battle with the Philistines. When David hears, he is overcome with grief and composes a song (like you do). (2 Samuel 1:23-27)

23 Saul and Jonathan—beloved, beautiful! 


Together in life, together in death. 


Swifter than plummeting eagles, 


stronger than proud lions. 


24-25 Women of Israel, weep for Saul. 


He dressed you in finest cottons and silks, 


spared no expense in making you elegant. 


The mighty warriors—fallen, fallen 


in the middle of the fight! 


Jonathan—struck down on your hills! 


26 O my dear brother Jonathan, 


I’m crushed by your death. 


Your friendship was a miracle-wonder, 


love far exceeding anything I’ve known— 


or ever hope to know. 


27 The mighty warriors—fallen, fallen. 


And the arms of war broken to bits.

I suppose this is a good time to mention that I used the Message translation (Eugene Petersen) because I like the way it reads and it supports my thesis of the friendship between David and Jonathan. In truth, there does exist reasonable argument for an erotic relationship between them, the depth of their friendship (platonic) is more what I can relate to and what is revealed to me.

Sometimes we put too much expectation and weight on romantic relationships, thus making the relationship between spouses or sexual partners the life relationship with the most significance, only topped (or closely followed) by the relationship between loving parents and children. But there are other relationships that have meaning, for which we are willing to make sacrifices, in which we are spiritually bound to another person. Our sibling relationships and our friendships can also be among the most significant relationships of our lives.

I think, in Jonathan, David found a brother for his heart. In David, Jonathan found the man example of the man he wanted to be- apart from his father. The strength of their relationship, the depth of their love for one another, reveals a truth about the way God works. We do find, we do need, the family we create as much (and sometimes more) than the family we choose. It is by grace that our paths cross with those people and we’re able to recognize our kindred souls.

We like to think about the Bible as a family book and it is. But it doesn’t necessarily support the American 1950s ideal family. Instead, the Bible reminds us that we may find love, platonic love, agape love, in places where we do not expect it. And that kind of love has the same costs, perhaps more, than romantic love.

The story of David and Jonathan remains crucial to the biblical tale because it reminds us that we need friends, deep, close bosom friends, and that God blesses those relationships as well.

Today I spent the better part of 30 minutes trying to figure out what size shoes my 14 month old wears. He’s been wearing soft shoes, but I was looking for something a little sturdier and maybe snow boots. When we were in the infant/toddler clothes section, I realized that he no longer could fit into the little bitty shoes and we were moving on up to the shoe department.