How the Mighty have Fallen
A sermon by Jamie Howison on 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 and Mark 5:21-43
Last week we had the story of David and Goliath, set at a time when David was still a teenaged boy. It marked his first meeting with King Saul, who—as you may recall—had lost his credibility in the eyes of God and of Samuel. The reader at that point already knows that David has been anointed by Samuel to be the new king, but Saul was entirely unaware of that fact. And now this week, we have David’s aching lament over the deaths of King Saul and his son Jonathan. So much has transpired between the stories; so much has been left out by the lectionary. Let me offer a brief recap.
After defeating Goliath, David had found himself taken into the royal household, where his deep friendship with Jonathan is formed. Saul is beginning to show signs of a very deeply troubled soul, marked by suspicion, jealousy, and rages of anger. The one thing that soothes him is when David plays his lyre, but even that begins to strain. Saul arranges for his daughter Michal to marry David, thinking it will be a way to keep an eye on this increasingly popular young man, but it turns out she actually loves David, which makes Saul all the more enraged. Eventually David has to flee for his life, and along with a group of his loyal soldiers begins a period of time when he is almost a Robin Hood sort of bandit. He even lands up in the pay of the Philistine king for a while, which is a kind of ultimate irony.
King Saul just keeps unraveling chapter by chapter, making several attempts to hunt down and kill David—the cat and mouse game complete with moments even Hollywood might not have come up with is exciting stuff. Eventually Saul even goes to consult a medium at Endor, asking her to call up the spirit of Samuel from the grave so he can ask for counsel. That moment reveals just how far Saul has fallen away from an Israelite faith in God; it unveils how utterly lost he has become.
And then the First Book of Samuel ends with another great battle against the Philistines, in which Israel is routed and both Saul and Jonathan die. From the midst of the battle Saul can see that they will be defeated, and he begs his armour-bearer to kill him, so that the Philistines “may not come and thrust me through, and make sport of me,” but the armour-bearer just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Saul then threw himself on his own sword, and when the Philistine soldiers discover his dead body they strip him of his armour and cut of his head, taking it back to their city in celebration of their great victory. It is a gruesome ending for a king who had once held such promise.
All of this occasions David’s lament that we read this evening: “Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places! How the mighty have fallen!” Some might find it odd that someone who had been so at odds with King Saul—hunted by him, attacked by him, loathed by him—could honestly lament with such passion.
Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
In life and in death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles,
they were stronger than lions.
O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul…
How the mighty have fallen,
and the weapons of war perished!
You can understand David’s grief over losing Jonathan, with whom he shared a deep and even passionate friendship. But Saul? Let me cite Walter Brueggeman at some length:
When Israel witnesses David in his grief, it sees David in his fullest, most faithful, most powerful form. The poem marks a deep, precious and hurtful moment in the life of Israel.
The poetry of grief looks past the rancours of father and son, the deception of the son and the rage of the father. Those gossip-driven tensions are now unimportant. Death has a way of permitting us to focus on the larger realities, to transcend the details of hurt and afront…
This singing is an act of lyrical skill and of political courage. It is also an act of stunning humanness. Here is the man utterly naked in his grief, which is also the grief of his people. David knows that in the loss of his king, his brother, his advocate, there is loss in which all of us lose.
There is in Israel honest singing in the midst of death. Israel is largely defeated, but not yet muted. (Brueggeman, Interpretation: First and Second Samuel)
David’s lament, in other words, speaks to the power of lament as a public act. The loss needs to be honestly named and the grief needs to be expressed, otherwise the people are muted. And to be muted in the face of such a loss is a kind of defeat all of its own.
Lament involves the courage to say aloud what is really going on, and that provides a fascinating bridge to tonight’s gospel reading. It begins with a man named Jairus coming to Jesus in utter need and vulnerability, speaking words of what is going on for him in his life; his daughter is dying. This is courageous, because Jairus is named as one of the leaders of the synagogue, and already by this point in Mark’s account such leaders have begun to express hostility toward Jesus for things like breaking Sabbath laws. But never mind that, because Jairus is desperate, his posture one of being just on the edge of lament because he fears that a deep loss is immanent. “Please, help her…”
And Jesus does, but on the way to Jairus’ home he has this encounter with the woman who has suffered from haemorrhages for twelve years. She doesn’t speak, but is she mute? No, she enacts her lament by reaching out to touch Jesus’ garment; an act that would have rendered him unclean in the eyes of the law.
“Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.” And then this: “Immediately—Mark’s favourite word—“Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’” That’s fascinating, right? He feels a literal sort of exchange of his healing power into whoever touched him, just as she felt in her body that she has been made whole. But the disciples can’t fathom his question… look at this crowd, how can you even ask that question?
That’s the moment when her desperate enacted lament of reaching out turns to speech. The woman now speaks and confesses that it was she who had touched his clothes. Mark says she “told him the whole truth,” which means she told him how ill she had been and how she had felt his healing presence soak into her very body. “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.”
Yet there still remains Jairus’s dying daughter; a child Mark tells us is twelve years old, so who was born at about the same time as that woman began to suffer those haemorrhages. There is a subtle linking of the two, and though Mark doesn’t explain it he wants the reader to notice it.
The messengers arrive to tell Jairus that it is too late, his daughter has died, stop troubling the teacher. Jesus overheard that message, but I think he also saw the look of grief on Jairus’ face. “Do not fear, only believe.” Let us go to her.
When they arrived at the house, “Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly”—lamenting—but he tells them to stop, the story isn’t over, life has not left her, she will live. Is he closing the door on their grief, stifling their lament? Isn’t that the sort of lamentation that should be offered when a child dies?
Yes, yes it is. But Jesus has earlier heard Jairus’ vulnerable and frightened plea for help, and he is already answering it. Talitha cum—“little girl, get up”—and she does. Get her something to eat, he says, but don’t spread word of this.
But why not? Well, already so many people are coming to him, already his movement is growing, but they don’t understand the depths of what he is meant to bring to them. Slow the movement down. People will bear witness, as they did in market square when I spoke to that poor woman. This is going to take time. The story I am living cannot be rushed.
But do know this, Jairus. Because you summoned to courage to come to me in your vulnerability and named the truth of what is going on, your daughter lives. She lives as surely as that woman in the market is now whole and well.
In the case of David’s lament, the loss was simply named and the grief given full expression. It was all that could be done, and it was precisely what was needed. In the case of these gospel women, naming the truth and the fear of loss and those deep needs led to healing and life. There’s something in that to be learned about prayer, and especially prayer in times of the greatest, deepest needs. We don’t know the outcome—often can’t understand why this, and not that—but the hard things still need to be voiced, and voiced to God. For to be muted in the face of such loss is a kind of defeat all of its own. Of course we lament with hope that there will be resolution; of course we cry out with prayers that there will be restoration. But before any of that, we need to courage to tell the truth of our hurts and our longings and our losses and our grief. That is gospel too.
