Soulmate
1 Samuel 17:57-18:15, 10-16
Click here to view the full sermon video, titled "Soulmate"
PAs we’ve been talking about this summer series from First and Second Samuel, we’ve talked about how expansive this story is. Case in point, the cycle of Sunday readings offers us two choices today. The first is the story of David facing down the Philistine Army and its giant, Goliath. Even people who don’t know anything about the bible have some understanding of this story. It has become the ultimate sports cliché for announcers calling a game between a bigger, stronger, richer team or competitor, and one who seemingly has no chance. They’re seen as smaller, weaker, and less well-resourced. Popular writer and journalist Malcolm Gladwell even wrote a book about this dynamic, subtitling it, “underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling giants.”
Then there is the second reading that we’ll be hearing this morning, from 1 Samuel beginning with chapter 17, verse 57, continuing through chapter 18, verse 5 and picking up verses 10-16…
It would probably be easier to talk about David slaying Goliath than it would be to examine what comes next. But that is precisely why we heard this part of the story as well. What makes this a difficult text to examine is that it raises a question that has been the hot topic of scholarly debate for the past half century. Namely, what does it mean that the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and that Jonathan loved him as his own soul? Much ink has been spilled making the case that such language suggests a bond between David and Jonathan that is more than simple friendship, but rather romantic, or even illicit. Just as much ink has been spilled refuting such suggestions. Which raises the issue of how we bring to the bible whole sets of assumptions and expectations that are conditioned by more than the text itself. Because often the text is ambiguous and lends itself to more than one reading. If we’re someone who is made uncomfortable by homosexuality, then our negative assumption will argue for the bond between these two men to be close perhaps, but certainly not sexual. Likewise, if we’re someone who is hoping to find some biblical support or affirmation of gay relationships, then this language might sound like music to our ears. Meanwhile, I think there is more to this whole passage than simply the relationship between Jonathan and David, but having to do with how the purposes of God are both advanced and thwarted by something that has less to do with human sexuality and more to do with the things that isolate us from one another. But let’s back up a little.
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police raided The Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village. The raid was the catalyst for a six-day uprising as bar patrons and neighborhood residents clashed with police over the ongoing harassment they experienced for holding hands, kissing, or simply dancing with someone of the same sex. Thirty years later, in recognition of the gains made in gay rights since the Stonewall uprising, the month of June was designated as Gay Pride Month. Many people mistake Pride for an attempt to advance some kind of nefarious agenda. When in truth Pride is about so much more than sexuality. It is about identity. It is about being seen for who a person is without the kind of shame and derision that might otherwise drive them to hide their light under a bushel basket, or worse- end their life altogether. But here’s the thing. Pride isn’t just for the LGBTQ community. Because when homosexuality is stigmatized it isn’t just gay people who suffer. Which brings me back to David and Jonathan and how we understand the love that they are said to have for one another.
Multiple studies have documented what has come to be called an epidemic of male loneliness, or friend recession. In essence what it describes is the growing inability of men to form the kinds of deep friendships that everyone needs in order to navigate the ups and downs of life. Much of that has to do with the fear that deeper expressions of the human experience like joy, delight, vulnerability or sadness might make someone less of a man, a pansy, or gay. You hear it, right? There’s a heavy dose of misogyny in there as well. And these cultural messages that surround us can cause us to shut down whole parts of ourselves for fear. They can also cut us off from the very love God commands us to have for one another; a love, I would argue, God commands because it is essential to our well-being. When we are more fearful of how we are perceived than we are of our own isolation and loneliness, when we are more adamant in defending the relationship between Jonathan and David as definitely not gay than we are in learning what it might mean to have our soul bound to another so that we love that one as we do our own soul, we not only miss the plot, we do damage to ourselves and to the text.
And if we want to see what isolation and loneliness do to a person, we don’t have to look beyond this text, because it’s right there in the actions and behavior of Saul. In the text we didn’t hear, when David steps up to fight the Philistine champion, Goliath, Saul attempts to arm him as he would himself with a bronze helmet, a coat of mail armor, and a large sword. It’s one of the more comedic moments in the story, because David simply cannot walk with all that armor. He cannot move in Saul’s world as Saul does. He cannot be the warrior that Saul thinks he should be. None of it fits. David cannot be Saul. David will not be Saul. To expect someone to move through the world dressed up in the armor we think they need, maybe even trying to protect them from the danger we see, only serves to immobilize them under the weight of all that expectation. And when David is able to slay the giant without all that. When he’s able to fell the Philistine champion with a sling and five smooth stones because God is with him, and bring the head of Goliath to Jerusalem for the king to see, Saul recognizes something special and takes him into his home. But no sooner is David in his house then Saul turns on him. Saul could see what we already know, what we learned last week with Samuel’s visit to the house of Jesse. God has rejected Saul as king and David has found God’s favor. I think it would be a mistake to say that at this point Saul is doomed because God has somehow ordained it. Rather, it seems that Saul has already demonstrated a willingness to take shortcuts, a half-hearted obedience that is undermined by the selfish ambition of someone trying to hold onto power at any cost. Saul’s actions only serve to demonstrate what God has already seen. Meanwhile, David is the opposite. He takes the role he is given. Serving as the bearer of Saul’s armor that will never fit him. Playing the lyre for Saul to soothe a rage that will seek David’s life. David receives Jonathan’s love and with it his robe, his armor, his sword and his bow and his belt. David will not be clothed for battle, but he will clothed by this gesture of Jonathan’s love and devotion. The more love David receives-from Jonathan, from the women who sing his praises as a commander, from all Israel and Judah- the angrier Saul becomes. And the angrier Saul becomes, the more he isolates himself from the very love that would save him. It is a vicious cycle of self-sabotage that will lead to his downfall. Because in his the petulance of his rage and isolation, he also cuts himself off from the life-giving love of God.
We don’t need to know the intimate details of David and Jonathan’s love to see how Saul’s jealousy, fear, and deep insecurity in response to their love contributes to his undoing. It is what contributes to the undoing of any who would meet such expressions of love in the same way. Love is love is love is love. To distance or cut ourselves off from that is to distance and cut ourselves off from the source of life, the one who is with David. The one who is with us, in our going out and our coming in, in times of uncertainty and danger, just as we are and nothing less.