Saga: The Story of David: The Power of Loyalty
July 3, 2016
Dr. Tom Pace
I Samuel 20:41-42
Today we’re continuing our series on David and the life of David. I’ve preached on this story of David and Jonathan before and I always focused on the idea of friendship. But really, as I was reading it this time it occurred to me that there’s not so much conversation about friendship as there is about a very specific theological term which is covenant.
So we’re going to be looking at the concept of covenant today. There are three Scriptures there in your bulletin but we’re only going to read the last one together. So I invite you to take your bulletin and follow along as we hear the Word of God read from I Samuel chapter 20.
As soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside the stone heap and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He bowed three times, and they kissed each other, and wept with each other; David wept the more. Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of theLord, saying, ‘TheLord shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, forever.’” He got up and left; and Jonathan went into the city. (I Samuel 20:41-42 NRVS)
You can see that during July we are a little more casual. We don’t wear robes up here. I tell everyone to take one step down so if you wore a robe you just have to wear a suit, if you wore a suit you cannot wear a coat and tie. If you didn’t wear a coat and tie anyway, then you come in shorts, and if you’ve worn shorts before you can come in a swimsuit. Everyone just kind of makes one little step and we try to be a little more casual during the summer time.
So we’re anxious to talk about the concept of covenant today. Let’s pray together. O God open us up, open our eyes that we might see and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel. And then O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
I’ve always found it interesting that the Fourth of July is the only holiday that we call by its date. We don’t say “What are you doing for the 25^th of December?” We say, “What are you doing for Christmas?”
A lot of the holidays move around because they occur on different dates, but on the Fourth of July it’s on the 4^th of July. I know its technical term is Independence Day and we don’t call it Independence Day. Most people don’t. I think that may be because, and this may be a bit of a stretch, I think it may be because we recognize that we’re not all that independent.
I mean we’re independent of Great Britain. We broke free of the tyranny there. They certainly declared themselves independent from Britain, but that doesn’t mean we’re independent. I don’t know about you but I’ve been watching my retirement fund. And something happens over in the far corners of the world and you have to look it up in a map and you think, “Where is that place?” And suddenly I’m poorer than I was before.
We’re tied together, friends. Even the Declaration of Independence itself. So on July 2 they declared themselves independent. It took a couple of days to get the document written – Thomas Jefferson did most of that. And you’re probably familiar with the first words of the Declaration of Independence but I suspect maybe you’ve not heard the last words – the very end. Or maybe it didn’t connect with you. Here’s how it ends:
“And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
Even in the Declaration of Independence itself we acknowledge first, our dependence on God and second, our interdependence with one another. So these ways that we connect with one another, these covenants, there is that specific Biblical concept called covenant. And that’s what I want to wrestle with today.
Now we’re going to do that in the context of the story of David and Jonathan. I want you to give a running start at that because I want to keep the saga going through the summer.
David kills Goliath the Philistine, and Jonathan is King Saul’s son. That’s an important component of this story. Jonathan is King Saul’s son. And he sees David and immediately they have a connection, and in one of the stories he convinces his father to bring David into the household. David comes in, he’s successful in battle, and King Saul puts him in charge of all the armies of Israel. Then one day when they’re coming home from battle the women come out and they say, “Saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.”
As they hear the women say, that an evil spirit comes over Saul and he becomes jealous. And it all goes south from there. David is living in the house of Saul and Jonathan, Saul’s son, his best friend. Then periodically these evil spirits come over King Saul and he decides he needs to kill David. Jonathan stands up for him a few times and David flees, from the house then lives in a different city for a while.
Then finally it all comes to a head. David says to Jonathan, “Look, I want you to go in the house and tonight at dinner if Saul’s in a bad mood and seems like he wants to kill me, I need for you to come and tell me. Then I have to leave.”
So Jonathan goes in, and when Saul asks where David is, Jonathan stands up for him. He says, “Why are you so mad at David? He’s not done anything to you.”
Anger comes over Saul and he curses his son Jonathan and throws a spear at him to try to kill him – his own son. So Jonathan leaves the house and goes out into the field. He says to David, “You’re going to have to leave. This isn’t going to work anymore and you need to get out of here.”
So there’s this tearful goodbye, which we read just a moment ago as David leaves. Frankly, Jonathan never sees him again because Jonathan is ultimately killed in battle along with his father Saul.
Now here’s what I want us to understand here. It’s that all through this story this relationship between Jonathan and David is called a covenant. A covenant is a very specific Biblical term that means “an unconditional agreement between two parties.” It’s an unconditional promise.
A covenant is like a contract, except that a contract is conditional. “If you do this, then I’ll do that. If you don’t do this then I don’t have to do that.” A covenant is unconditional. “You do this and I’ll do that. If you don’t do this I still have to do that.” You’re saying, “I have made a promise – a commitment to do that.”
I want you to understand that a contract is about legalism, a covenant is about relationship. A contract is built on distrust. “I’m afraid you’re not going to do what you’re supposed to do so I’m going to put it down on paper.” A covenant is built on trust.
They are similar promises to one another but they have a very different feel and flavor. So this relationship between David and Jonathan – four times in two chapters it’s referred to a covenant.
So today I want us to learn about how we choose to be in relationship with others and how we choose to be in covenant. We have many different covenants. You have a family covenant, a covenant with your church family, a covenant with your workplace. You have covenant with friends. You have covenant with a neighborhood. You probably signed a homeowners’ association covenant where you promised to do certain things. We’re all part of what’s called the universal covenant, the covenant of humanity. We’re all children of God.
So we have this whole myriad of different covenants that we choose to live out relationships with. So what I want to do… I’m not going to follow exactly the notes in the bulletin because I did it the first time and it took 33 minutes. So I’ll follow a little different order. But there are really three different ways that he talks about covenant and I think they speak to three different things that we’re to do as we try to live out those covenants.
First is this – he says we “cut” a covenant. That means there’s a very specific act of making a covenant. I’ll just whip through the times that it’s listed there so you’ll see how crucial it is to this relationship. I Sam. 18 – which is in your bulletin – in verse 3 it says “Jonathan made a covenant…” The word there is literally “cut.” He cut an animal in half – in Genesis this is the picture – they would cut an animal in half and they would walk between the two halves of the animal. That would seal the covenant. It’s where we get the term we still use today, “Do you want to cut a deal?” This is a way of acknowledging this symbolic act of sealing a covenant with one another.
Here you’ll note it says that Jonathan stripped himself of his robe that was on him and gave it to David, along with his armor and his sword and his bow and his belt. There was always a symbolic act that seals the covenant. For Noah it was when God put the rainbow in the cloud as a sign of his covenant. When you get married we use a wedding ring as a sign of a covenant. There’s always some sign or symbol that seals that covenant.
A covenant is an intentional promise that we make. Now it can be an implied covenant. Like with the family – you didn’t pick your family. I suspect that with some of you you might have picked a different one if you got to do that. But it is your family you get to participate in the benefits thereof; you therefore have implied consent in that family.
If you go to the Astros game and get a ticket… by the way, how about the Astros? I talked about them before and they started to win. They were in last place and as I soon as I began to mention them in a sermon they’re now in second place. So I’ve taken all the responsibility. I think I should get some percent of all their salaries now. It wouldn’t have to be much and I’d be happy by the way.
So if you get a ticket to an Astros game and you look on the back of it, it says, “The use of this ticket constitutes acceptance of the terms and conditions of our agreement.” By choosing to use the ticket you are accepting the stipulations of this covenant.
When we choose to accept the benefits of living in this nation, we therefore give ourselves, imply a commitment, to that covenant. So we make a promise.
Here’s what that means for us: That the first essential element of living in covenant with others is keeping your promise. We keep our promises.
So Jonathan promised to David, “We will be in covenant forever – your descendants and my descendants.” Later in the story you’re going to hear that after Jonathan is dead King Saul is dead, Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth (how about that for a name)? He is disabled and David takes him into his household and lets him eat at his table, to say, “I’m going to honor the covenant I made with Jonathan to be in covenant with his descendants forever.” We keep our promises.
Al Sheen died of cancer when he was 55 years old. When he died his son Alex was a rising young engineer for a software company. He was in his twenties and the youngest manager of that software company with 1500 employees. He was sitting there after his father died trying to think about what he wanted to write for his father’s eulogy. He was going to speak at his father’s service. He recognized that his father, he said, “You know my father always kept his promises. I can’t think of a time when my father didn’t keep his promises.” He also remembered times when he had not kept his promises to his father. And how his father had responded.
So he decided to make that the theme of his eulogy. In fact that very night before the funeral he created a Facebook group that had a picture of him and his father on it and he called it “Because I said I would.” And as people called and asked where they could send flowers or make a memorial gift, he said he just wanted them to write down a promise on a piece of paper and give it to someone and keep that promise. They were to do that in honor of his father.
At the funeral he passed out little business cards that said in little tiny letters at the bottom, “Because I said I would.” And he told them, “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to write a promise on that card and I want you to give it to someone and then keep that promise. It might be “I will clean out the garage, or I’ll go to class every day, or I’ll quit drinking. Keep your promises.”
Ultimately Alex Sheen quit his software business and is the executive director of a nonprofit organization that sends out thousands and thousands of cards that say simply, “Because I said I would.” That’s the name of the organization – you can go look it up.
It’s important for us to keep the promises we make.
The first thing is that we cut a promise. The second component, I want you to see from the Scripture we read today. Chapter 20:42, “Then Jonathan said to David, ‘go in peace, since both of us have sworn in the name of the Lord saying the Lord shall be between me and you, between my descendants and your descendants forever.’”
So this isn’t just any covenant, it’s a sacred covenant. It’s a covenant in which God participates. The Lord will be between me and you. It’s not that the Lord separates me and you, it’s that the Lord is the glue that binds us together. It is that the love that we share with the one with whom we’re in covenant begins with God. It’s God’s love that we’re sharing.
Look, here’s the essence of this: That if we’re in sacred covenant with someone we treat them the same way that God treats us. What does that mean? Look, Alex Sheen is wrong about his father because Al Sheen did not keep all of his promises.
The truth is that I don’t know Al Sheen at all. He may have kept most of them but the truth is that none of us keep all of our promises. We can’t. Not only are we human and fallen beings but even beyond that, sometimes our covenants come in conflict with each other. We promise one thing to someone and another thing to someone else and both of the meetings happen on the same day at the same time. Which meeting will I go to? How do I do it? How can I keep both promises? I can’t.
Did you even hear the story? Remember, Jonathan had a covenant with David and he had a covenant with his family, Saul. So when those come in conflict what’s he going to do? Which promise is he going to keep?
Here was the fallout. Not only did he hurl a spear at him, but listen to the words. Man, these are tough. “Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan and he said to him, ‘You son of a perverse rebellious woman.’” (They always blame it on the wife!) “Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and the shame of your mother’s nakedness?”
He’s saying, “Look, you have broken this covenant that we have as a family.”
So how do we deal with that? How does God deal with us when we break those? Forgiveness. Forbearance. Grace.
So at the same time that a sacred covenant asks us to keep the promises we make, at the very same time it does that, it challenges us to offer grace and forgiveness and forbearance to others. To have both a radical demand that we keep our promises and a radical offer of grace at the same time. That’s what a covenant’s about.
You know the most common Scriptures for a wedding covenant – that’s what a wedding is –it’s a covenant – I Corinthians 13. The other is Colossians 3:12-17. Every pastor knows it. Verse 13 says, “Forbear one another… if any has a complaint against the other forgive. Just as the Lord in Christ has forgiven you.”
That’s the essence of covenant. We will treat others with the same forbearance – that means to cut each other some slack, to treat others with the same forbearance and forgiveness that God treats us.
I wonder if there’s someone in your life who has hurt you, someone who’s in covenant with you and they’ve let you down. They didn’t keep their promise. What would it take for you to love them the way Christ loves us? To forbear. To forgive. Those are the calls of what a covenant is.
Now here’s one last thing. The third image that we have for a covenant is from the beginning of chapter 18, the first time David and Jonathan have a connect. “Now it came about that when he had finished speaking to Saul that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David. And Jonathan loved him as himself.”
To be knit together is what covenant is about. No longer are we on our own. We are knit together.
I love the Olympics which are coming. They have some team sports and some individual sports. I’ve been watching the trials a little bit and all those great races. But the thing I like best, and I think the TV people know we like it best, because whenever someone wins their race the first thing they do is go to the stands and hug their loved one. They find their spouse, or their mom or their dad, or their kids, or whoever, and throw their arms around each other. Than you look at the face of their family and they’re as happy, if not happier, than the person who’s won. Why? Because they’re knit together. They say when they’re interviewed, “Oh, I didn’t do this on my own. I want to thank all my team mates and my mom who took me to gymnastics when I was four years old. My trainer who …” They recognize they didn’t do this on their own, they were knit together, they were part of a community. They were in covenant together.
Now look, sometimes it’s hard to be in covenant, sometimes it’s difficult. A man came to see me a few months ago. He was upset because he was in the oil business and the price of oil had collapsed and he was feeling the pain.
I thought he was upset because he was going to lose his house and his car and his standard of living would collapse. As I was talking to him he said, “I don’t care about any of those things. That’s not what this was about. I don’t care about those things. Do you know how many people I have to lay off? These people are my family. I love these people so much. I know that’s what I’ll have to do. But it’s breaking my heart.”
He didn’t say this, but what he was saying was, “We are knit together, this covenant of our workplace”
In our pathway here at St. Luke’s we talk about moving from seeker to believer, believer to belonger, belonger to disciple, from disciple to apostle. It all comes in different orders sometimes for different people. But to move from a believer to a belonger, sometimes people will come and they will sit here in worship and what they really want is to come and hear a good sermon. They want to have a connection with God in this place. It’s a holy place. They want to hear awesome music that speaks to their hearts. And they want to get up and go home.
And at some point in their lives something nudges them a little bit. And they think they want to move away from just that. “To be a real follower of Jesus means that I have to knit myself together with a community of other people. I can’t be alone anymore, I have to be in covenant.”
Rabbi David Wolpe is the rabbi of a synagogue in Los Angeles, a giant one. It’s a Reform synagogue. He wrote an article in Time magazine a couple of years ago that has stuck with me. I go back to it periodically to remind me that I shouldn’t give up.
It’s about the difference between being spiritual and religious. He’s talking about people who say, “I want to be spiritual, but I don’t want to be religious. I know God but I don’t want to join a church or join a synagogue because those people are hypocritical and all they want is money.” You can go on and on about what those situations are.
Then he goes on to say “No one who was spiritual but not religious ever built a hospital or a university or a school. It’s when people come together that they accomplish things like that.” Here’s how he closes, and I’ll read it to you. “Be part of a community. In short – join. Being religious does not mean you have to agree with all the positions and practices of your own group. I don’t even hold with everything done in my own synagogue and I’m the rabbi.” (I can identify with that).
“But it does mean testing yourself in the arena of others. No one expects those without faith to obligate themselves to a religious community. But for the one who does have faith, who has the intuition of something greater than ourselves, to hold that this is a purely personal truth, that it demands no communal searching or struggle, no organization to realize its potential in the world. That is narcissistic. If the spirit moves you to goodness that’s wonderful. But for too many, spirituality is a VIP card allowing to breeze past all those wretched souls waiting in line or doing the work. Join in. Together is harder but together is better.”
Together is harder but together is better.
It wasn’t easy for Jonathan to be in covenant with David. In fact, it broke his heart. It was harder but it was right.
Julie Ellerbrock, director of Children’s Ministry here at St. Luke’s, tells this story. It was in a former workplace. Tt got very stressful because something was happening. I don’t even know what, but it was very stressful. One of their team members said, “I need to go move my car in the parking lot.” She left to do that and never came back. So now if things get very stressful, someone will say, “I need to go move my car.” Then everyone laughs.
Did you ever feel like you just want to bolt? Like sometimes I think, “I want to get in the car and drive to Colorado, get a little cabin, and not talk to anyone. I’m going to turn away from my responsibilities and my obligations, all of those things that are just sometimes difficult and full of conflict.”
Maybe we all feel that way, here’s what I’ll tell you. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Together is hard, but together is better. It really is what makes life worth living.
Let’s pray. Lord God, you’ve called us to be together. Together with one another as families, together with each other as a church family. Together with our friendships and our neighborhoods. Together with this great nation. Sometimes it’s hard, God, we confess that to you. But we pray that you would give us the courage and the perseverance to keep our promises, the love to offer grace to one another. And that you would knit us together in the name of Christ. Amen.