As Sara alluded to a couple weeks back, this story, found in 1 Samuel, is part of a much, much larger narrative. One of the challenges of the worship format when it comes to proclaiming the Word of the Lord is that it’s often so easy to just look at any given scripture passage in isolation. We read this one story, pulled out of its context in one larger book, and we expect it to do far more heavy lifting than it has any business doing on its own. It’s a practice that does real violence to the text. And, as it happens, when we do violence to the text like this, the text tends to punch back and do violence towards us and our communities.
Put another way, to use the framework of Dr. Paloma Martinez-Cruz of the Ohio State University, when we extract the text from its context, we are colonizing the text; therefore, the act of adding context back into the text is necessarily the work of decolonizing the text.
So yes, this story is part of the broader story being told in 1 Samuel. And the fact that we call it first Samuel means that this broader story has a direct sequel: 2 Samuel. As it happens, our Jewish siblings, from whom we’ve inherited these texts, don’t separate the two books in their devotional and liturgical practice and instead treat them as one literary unit.
To take it one step further, our Jewish siblings also lump Samuel with Joshua, Judges, and Kings (or 1 and 2 Kings to us Christians) to create the first major grouping of the second division of the Hebrew Bible—they are the nevi’im rishonim, the “former prophets”. In a similar fashion, biblical scholars refer to these “former prophets”—Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings—as the Deuteronomistic History.
Yup. These are the fun bits of trivia that make me a real blast at dinner parties!
Now that I’ve made a short story long, the main thrust is that this group of texts tell one cohesive story about the people of God’s relationship with the land of Canaan: how the people came into the land, how they came to take possession of the land, how they lived and governed themselves in the land, and, most importantly, how they lost the land and were taken into captivity—it is impossible to understand the full ramifications of anything in the Hebrew Bible without understanding the historical and generational trauma imparted on the people by the destruction of Jerusalem and exile into Babylon and its context thereof. For the sake of time, ask me for that lecture after the service.
For the purposes of this sermon, we’ll just say that the very live question on the mind of the people in the midst and wake of the Babylonian Exile was: if we’re the people of God and God has promised us this land, why did we lose the land in the first place? The answer that the Deuteronomist—the hypothetical author of the Deuteronomistic History proposed by biblical scholars because biblical scholars are just great at naming things—the answer that the Deuteronomist and all of the other prophets thereafter came down on was basically: well…we screwed up.
You know. We played stupid games, we won stupid prizes. We…screwed around and then we found out—my students would use a different word there, but in the interest of Sara ever inviting me to come back to preach here, I’ll let you fill in the blank.
In particular, the Deuteronomist says, we screwed up by forsaking the covenant God laid out for us. We failed to care for the least of these in our midst—the poor, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant stranger—in favor of enriching ourselves—securing our own power and hoarding our own wealth. Thank God we’ve all collectively progressed from such habits.
So, in very, very broad brush strokes, that’s what’s going on around this story in 1 Samuel. It’s part of this larger cautionary tale, explaining just why exactly the people lost the land that they had been promised. And when we read the story with this context in mind, some elements start to come into sharper focus.
See, while there certainly is a pro-Davidic bent to the whole Deuteronomistic History—one of the key elements of the narrative, for example, is God making a covenant with David that his descendants will always be sitting on the throne in Jerusalem—there’s also a strong anti-monarchical streak preserved in the text as well. That is to say, the Deuteronomist is pretty suspicious of giving absolute power to one king. In fact, one of my favorite passages in this part of the bible comes a few chapters earlier in 1 Samuel 8. The elders of Israel approach Samuel and demand that he appoint a king to rule over Israel, just like all the other nations. Distraught, Samuel prays to God, who tells him not to worry—the people are rejecting God, not Samuel after all—but to warn them how a king will rule over them.
And then, Samuel delivers this fantastic speech, saying “Ok, I’ll give you a king, but all he’s going to do is take your sons and conscript them to fight in his wars or to till his fields. He’ll take your daughters to be his bakers and his cooks. He will take the fruits of your labor—your land, your vineyards, your crops, your flocks—and put them in his stores for his profit. And on that day, you’ll cry out to God, because of the king that you chose for yourselves, but God will not answer you.”
I know. Heavy stuff.
Of course, because we know the end of the story, we know that the elders disregarded Samuel’s warning, and so Samuel anointed Saul to be king over Israel, and, well, if you were here for Sara’s sermon a couple weeks ago, then you all know how well that turned out.
But even beyond Saul, we’re going to see king after king make the same mistakes in God’s sight over and over again. Of the many, many kings between David and Jehoiakim, the Deuteronomist only gives like three or four of them an A rating. The vast majority of them will rule in such a way as to turn away from God in favor of foreign idols and rulers. They will rule in such a way as to secure their own power in expense of the well-being of the people God entrusted them to rule over. It’s kind of a feature of absolute monarchies, not a bug.
But what does any of this have to do with the covenant forged between David and Jonathan?
Ok, zooming back into our story from this morning a little bit, we pick things up right after what might be one of the most well-known bible stories of all time. Family Feud style, we polled 100 people and asked them to name a story from the bible, top five answers are on the board, I’m willing to bet that the story of David and Goliath make it up there. And while there is certainly a lot to unpack in that story, that’s another sermon altogether. We’ll just say that David is, understandably, riding pretty high when we first encounter him in our text this morning.
And right away, we are told that Saul’s son, Jonathan’s, life was bound up in David’s life, and Jonathan loved David as much as himself. Jonathan and David made a covenant together because Jonathan loved David as much as himself.
It really is a lovely story and a lovely relationship. It’s one of the strongest examples of a possibly queer relationship in our biblical witness, and if I were standing in any other pulpit, preaching at any other church, we’d dive into that a little bit more, but come on. This is First Schenectady. I know you that you know that queer love is good and holy and that God delights in queer relationships. We don’t need to unpack that here.
Instead, let’s muddy the waters just a little bit and examine how, exactly, Jonathan makes this love visible. The very next verse, we’re told that Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and put it on David, along with his armor, as well as his sword, his bow, and his belt.
Jonathan takes off his own royal garments, and he puts them on David. It’s actually the second time that someone else puts royal garments onto David—the first time actually happens during that story of David and Goliath, when Saul, the king, puts his own armor on David before he goes out to fight the giant, but David takes them off so that he can be nimbler in the battle.
Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, in her commentary on this text, tells us that this is a sign of Jonathan elevating David’s status to that of himself. No longer a peasant shepherd boy, Jonathan giving David his clothing turns David into a prince like him. And I wonder if that, in and of itself, is the problem here.
And yes, at first glance it is a lovely gesture. I’m sure that someone, somewhere could craft a beautiful liturgical element for a marriage ceremony involving the couple putting a piece of their own clothing on each other. But when we dig a little bit deeper, we’ll find that this covenant that Jonathan is making with David is not exactly mutual.
See, love, it turns out, is not one-sided. Love is not love if it is only flowing in one direction. Love, in its truest sense, transforms all parties in such a way as to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. One of the most dangerous lies we’ve allowed to spread is the notion that any one of us is incomplete until we’ve found “our person” who completes us. That we are somehow ontologically deficient until we find our soul mate.
And in case anyone here is really struggling with the realities of living that single life and any loneliness that accompanies it, I want to affirm your pain. And. Just like we would say that the problem is societal structures, physical and otherwise, built in a way that makes living in disabled bodies hard, not the disability itself, the problem is that we’ve ordered our collective lives in such a way as to make living as a single person really, really challenging physically, economically, and emotionally.
Jonathan took his royal garments, and he put them on David. And, in so doing, he showed his love for David by turning David into another version of himself. It’s a sign that David, on his own and as he was, was not enough for Jonathan. For this covenant to work, Jonathan made David join him in the ranks of the monarchy. Jonathan made David wear the trappings of the monarchy.
Never mind the fact that David, a shepherd boy and the youngest of Jesse’s sons was good enough in God’s sight to receive the king’s anointing.
Never mind the fact that David was able to slay Goliath on his own terms rather than the established rules of war and combat.
David was able to do all that and receive God’s blessing without any royal garments at all. But Jonathan loved David more than himself; so, clearly, David needed to become a royal like Jonathan. And what ends up happening with King David? Sure, the Deuteronomistic History has a pro-Davidic bent to it. But also, the total picture of David’s life and reign that the Deuteronomist preserves is not flattering to say the least. After he rapes Bathsheba and kills Uriah, his family falls apart—racked with internal strife and civil war. In one of the last times we encounter him before his death, the Deuteronomist tells us that David is left politically and sexually impotent. Many scholars say that David’s downfall begins after he rapes Bathsheba, but I contend that seeds of his downfall were planted all the way back at this moment. Jonathan showing his love for him by thrusting the monarchy and its politics and logic upon him.
I’ll give you a king, Samuel warned, but all he’s going to do is take and take and take.
In order for this covenant, in order for this love to work, Jonathan said, I’m going to make you look and act and behave like the king we were promised.
Put another way, Jonathan made David in his own image, rather than loving David as a bearer of the divine image of God as he already was.
How often is that how we end up showing love, even still to this day? Trying to form the people we seek to love in our image, rather than loving them as the bearer of the divine image they already are?
And I don’t just mean romantic love—though we’ve all seen enough tragic relationships where that was at play. We see this play out in dysfunctional family systems with familial love: parents projecting their own lived experience on children and vice versa. Jonathan learned this behavior from somewhere, after all.
But when we look closely, we also see it play out in many other types of relationships, systems, and structures.
We see it play out in educational systems wherein students are viewed as blank slates—tabulae rasa—or empty vessels that the instructor pours all of their own knowledge into.
We see it play out in marketing and commerce—advertising campaigns preying on our collective insecurities and vulnerabilities to mold us into the consumers they need us to be.
We see it play out in conferences and events where information only flows in one direction in a tightly controlled, manufactured manner.
We see it play out in conversations about racial advocacy. “Well, I don’t care what race anybody is, just so long as they don’t act like a thug”.
We see it play out in conversations about LGBTQ advocacy when the extent of our advocacy stops at merely letting queer relationships participate in the same heteronormative institutions that straight couples get to participate in.
And oh boy, do we see it play out in service agencies and even churches. We seek to serve our communities, but we’re going to do it on our terms in a way that makes us feel better. We’ll give charitably, but only if the places we give to meet our expectations of what the work ought to look like. No wonder evangelism has such a bad reputation—for so, so long, evangelistic efforts can basically be boiled down to “hey, I have it all figured out because I have Jesus and you don’t, you should be like me”.
Really, it’s a way to keep the ones we seek to be in covenant with at arm’s length. To control them. To prevent us from being in real, loving relationship with them. Because when we seek to mold others in our own likeness, we don’t really have to get to know them. We don’t have to be vulnerable. And if the student fails, or the addict relapses, well then, that’s their problem, not mine.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Love calls us to go deeper. Love calls us to be vulnerable. Love calls us to embrace the messiness of real relationships. Love calls us to recognize that Christ stands in the midst of every single social relationship, and that encountering that Christ requires going beyond ourselves.
It’s what our gospel says this morning. When we enter into covenant with someone, let our yes be yes and our no be no, that’s it.
Not “yes, but only if you act like us”.
Not “yes, but only if you talk like us”.
Not “yes, but only if you look or love or think like us”.
Not “yes, but only if you put on these royal garments, binding you to the way of living and being of the kind of king Samuel warned us about”.
Let our yes be yes and our no be no.
Imagine if that’s the posture Jonathan took with David. Imagine what the trajectory of Israel’s future could have been.
That’s the cautionary tale that the Deuteronomist is telling throughout the Deuteronomistic History, throughout the nevi’im rishonim.
The good news, my friends, is that we can read these cautionary tales to fuel our own prophetic imagination in our own time and in our own place. May we be secure enough in our own selves that we don’t try to grasp for power. May we be secure enough in our own selves that we don’t make promises that we know we can’t keep. May we be secure enough in our own selves that we don’t try to form the ones we seek to be in relationship in our own image—that we don’t force them to put on the robes that we wear.
May it be so.
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