MICHAEL SPENCER HERZOG                                                        28 June 2009

St Helena United Methodist Church

RELATIONSHIPS


Good morning, I’m Michael Herzog -- a Certified Lay Speaker from Napa First United Methodist Church.  Thank you for having my wife Mary and me today -- I enjoy getting away from home once in a while and coming back here to this lovely church.

I took a preaching class a few weeks ago to maintain my certification.  One of the topics up for discussion was whether or not to preach from the lectionary.  The Revised Common Lectionary recommends readings to be used in worship for every Sunday and holy day of the year.  There is an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, an Epistle, and a Gospel reading.   Personally, I like preaching lectionary passages.  Using the lectionary gets you through pretty much all of the Bible every three years  Although it might seem restrictive, there is still an element of choice with the lectionary.  

My choice today is to talk about the David story from Second Samuel.  Not that there’s anything wrong with preaching about curing a hemorrhage or restoring a little girl to life.  That’s good stuff.  But, one purpose of the sermon is to help us focus on God acting in our everyday lives.  And there is no better story to see that action than David’s.  I always enjoy going through the David cycle of readings.  It is a wonderfully complex and almost soap opera-ish story with love and hate and violence and jealousy and victory and defeat and loyalty and cheating and truth and lies  -- all the things that makes up our lives too, if perhaps -- I would hope -- in smaller doses.  

The David story is so good that it’s been lifted out of the Bible and put on the television screen as “Kings.”  I haven’t seen any of the shows.  There is this problem I have . . .  I have an allergic reaction to commercials and I’m not smart enough to be able to operate TiVo -- so I’m waiting for the whole series to come out on DVD so I can order it from NetFlix and watch at my leisure.

What I’ve read about “Kings” looks really pretty good.  The hero is David -- David Shepherd.  The King is Silas Benjamin.  The biblical King Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin.  Two of the king’s children are in the show, Princess Michelle -- the biblical equivalent of Michal, and Prince Jack who is the parallel of Jonathan. The religious leader figure is Ephram Samuels -- the prophet Samuel is the one who anointed both Saul and David to be King of Israel. I’m looking forward to seeing the whole series and looking for the biblical parallels.  A good story is a good story.

But, let’s get started by putting the biblical David into his place in history -- in time and place.  The time is about 1000 BCE.  Egypt and Greece and China were well advanced civilizations.  Rome would not reach its peak in power for more than another thousand years.  Saul, anointed by Samuel at the insistence of the people of Israel, was the first king of Israel.  Before Saul Israel was not a united country but a collection of tribes that was ruled by the “Judges.”  The Judges sound to me a lot like the Ayatollahs, the religious leaders who are so influential in Muslim countries.  One of the prophetic warnings against having a king was that the people would drift away from God -- and that was happening under Saul.  Samuel sought a new king to bring the people back to seeing God as central to their lives -- and not measuring success in secular terms.

Samuel comes to Bethlehem at God’s direction to anoint one of the sons of Jesse to be the next king of Israel.  Saul is still the king but he knows that he has lost favor with God and with God’s prophet, Samuel.

After the anointing David’s skill in playing the harp took him to Saul’s court to soothe the king in his fits of madness.  Later David fights Goliath, the giant champion of the Philistines.  He killed him with a stone from his shepherd’s sling.  After the ensuing battle the women came out to meet Saul’s triumphant return.  They sang, “Saul has killed thousands, but David tens of thousands.”  From then on Saul became very jealous of David and several times tried to kill him.  Jonathan, Saul’s son and David’s close friend, warned him to escape and David became an outlaw.  Saul hunted him without mercy. 

Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in battle against the Philistines and David was crowned the king of Judah at the age of thirty.  It is David’s lament at the death of his friend Jonathan that we read earlier from Second Samuel.  

>From the Scripture passages  we know that David was a good looking youth:  "Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome," it says.

David may be the original alpha male, the kind of man whose virile ambition always drives him to the head of the pack.  He is the first superstar.  He is an authentic sex symbol, a ruggedly handsome fellow who inspires passion in both men and women. 

I chose to call this sermon, “Relationships” -- so I suppose I’d better get to that idea before my time runs out and the alarm goes off. 

I believe that God sends various people into our lives -- and we into others -- with the potential for forming relationships.  Those human relationships are a gift from God.  A gift we sometimes fail -- or refuse -- to see. 

David is the youngest of eight -- eight male children -- sisters don’t even get mentioned.  Sorry about that.  The Scripture passages say that after David was anointed to be the future king, his brothers were jealous of him.  And it’s a common theme in Bible stories -- Cain and Able, Joseph and his brothers, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau -- it is the younger brother who is often resented by the older siblings but favored by the parents.

But . . .  what about David’s relationships? 

* David and what we like to call his family of origin:  When Samuel comes to anoint one of Jesse’s sons to become king, David is almost forgotten.  All the older brothers are brought before Samuel, one by one -- and Samuel says about each, ”No, the Lord has not chosen this one.  . . . No . . . No . . .”  Then, Samuel asks Jesse, “Are all your sons here?”  Oh, right -- there’s David, but he’s out with the sheep.  His father almost forgets about him -- and his brothers are bitter when he is chosen.  We can assume as the youngest that at least his mother loved him.  You know, Mom always liked you best.   We’d have to rank his homelife relationships pretty low.

* David and Samuel:  Samuel anoints David -- but does so because he feels that God has chosen David and that Saul is no longer fit to be king.  Not much of a personal relationship there.

* David and Nathan:  Later, it is another prophet, Nathan, who calls David to account for his reckless behavior with Bathsheba.  Negative relationship score here with Nathan.

* David and Saul:  At first David is Saul’s friend.  David’s music can calm Saul’s madness, but after David’s victory over Goliath and successes in battle, Saul becomes fearful of David’s popularity and tries to kill him.    Low on the relationship chart.

* David and Women:  There’s Michal -- one of David’s principle wives who was a daughter of Saul’s and a “gift” -- or more a “bribe” from the king in exchange for the death of a hundred Philistines.    Saul had hoped David would be killed collecting the prize but instead he slaughters twice as many Philistines as required.  Michal loved David more than her father and helped David escape from Saul’s plots -- but David treated her more as a bargaining chip in his ambition to become king of all Israel.  And then there’s David and Bathsheba.  David lusted after Bathsheba and had sexual relations with her and had her husband killed when his scheme to explain Bathsheba’s child didn’t work out.  Bathsheba was a possession -- something  that the King desired -- not a life partner, but a possession.  In all, David had eight wives and ten concubines.  I don’t know, but it sounds as though that arrangement was probably short on intimacy.

* David and the people:  David was a hero to the People of Israel.  He was cheered in the streets and was wildly popular.  He was their golden one.  But, hero worship is a fragile thing.  David was a larger than life legend and, I suspect, not a real person to his people.  It’s hard to have a meaningful relationship with screaming groupies.

* David and Jonathan:  If there’s anyone who seems as though he needed a true friend, it is David.  And he found that friend in Jonathan, King Saul’s son.  They were soldiers -- warriors -- together.  We can imagine that they had a “band of brothers” sort of relationship -- you know, an “I’ve got your back”  thing.  And, as the Bible passage puts it, “the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”  The two of them, David and Jonathan, made a covenant to each other.  (The covenant for soldiers now is, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”)  And everything that follows for them is a war story, and a story of love. There is lots of speculation about what this all means, “the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David.”  Some scholars have argued that this was a love story between the two royal leaders.  That David was gay or bisexual.  Others argue we are meant to see only a political alliance, and not a pledge of love.    

I don’t know what the relationship between David and Jonathan really was -- but the choice of words in David’s lament:  “your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”  I have to at least think of the possibility that there was a physical -- sexual -- relationship between the two men. 

We can’t know what the relationship between David and Jonathan was like -- and at some level, I don’t care. This description of “souls bound together” leads me to reflect on deep friendships - between people of the same or of the opposite gender.  Deep and profound friendship is a powerful and beautiful gift that is often undervalued.  Such a friendship takes work and it requires years to form.  It grows into a gift that may be deeper and stronger and more satisfying than any romantic relationship.

David had received many gifts from God -- the gift of courage, leadership, charisma, physical strength, physical beauty, and later great wealth -- and in Jonathan, the gift of a true friend.

Sometimes that sort of deep friendship can develop within a marriage.  It has in mine -- and I am grateful.  And if we are very fortunate there may be a person or two in our lives with whom we are bound -- soul to soul.  If that is so for you -- and I pray that it is -- you are greatly blessed.  You may not be the King of Israel, but you’ve got a friend.

I always think of the Carole King song -- especially the way James Taylor sings it -- when I think about friends:

    You just call out my name and you know wherever I am
    I'll come running to see you again.
    Winter, spring, summer or fall
    all you got to do is call
    and I'll be there . . .

   You've got a friend.



And if you do -- thank God.

AMEN