July 5, 2009:  GROWING IN LOVE
1 Samuel 20:1-42, Mark 4:26-29, Psalm 133
Eileen Parfrey  --  Springwater Presbyterian Church

            Someone who knew me pretty well once accused me of having an over-developed sense of loyalty.  She didn’t mean it as a compliment.  It’s something I come by honestly. My mother had a low opinion of what she called fair weather friends.  You know, friends who fit you in if nothing better is happening.  My mother’s attitude has come to be regarded as quaint, as our lifestyle has moved to double- and triple-booking for weekends and evenings, in order to at least make an appearance at committee meetings and practice and book club and parties and study groups and potlucks (and that’s just Thursday).  In terms of daily activities, we seem to embrace “more is better.”

Even the way we relate to each other has morphed into “more is better” as the noun “friend” has become a verb, as in “to friend”—what we do on FaceBook.  I’ve been getting enough requests to “friend” people that I decided it was time to find out more.  I contacted my Gen X consultant, my son, who assured me that to not respond to the requests is rude.  But what are one’s obligations after saying “yes” to the request?  This is the weird thing.  Apparently, FaceBook etiquette decrees no expectations after you agree to “friend” someone.  No relationship, no maintenance.  One is simply listed on your erstwhile “friend’s” account.  Then what?  I guess you “friend” the friends of your friend.  I’m inclined to stick with the kind of friendship David and Jonathan had.  At least they knew the terms of engagement, and they didn’t have to remember a password.
 
The bad news about their friendship is that it put their lives at risk.  We used to be able to say they were “soul mates,” but we’ve lost the free and unassociated use of that term. Now we speak of it in terms of “covenant.”  From the start, Jonathan knows David will be the next king, not him, and sides with David against his father, who loathes David enough to try to kill them both.  When David and Jonathan declare to each other their friendship, their terminology makes their relationship into a parable for the covenant between Israel and God.  Each exhibits hesed, steadfast love, and it is YHWH himself who binds them together.  For Jonathan, the choice is between loyalty to his father and the inevitability of God’s plan.  Put that way, it sounds like a religious choice, but politically, Jonathan can see the future and know he’s not in it.  Jonathan’s loyalty to David puts his life at double risk—right now with his father and later, as Saul’s son, in the great political upheaval to come.
 
These days, we hear of extra-marital and same-sex affairs that destroy political careers.  That is not what is going on in the extraordinary friendship between these two men.  Jonathan’s decision for hesed, for covenant and friendship with David, amazes me.  It’s one thing to make a rear-view religious explanation that “he sees God at work,” that he comprehends the irresistibility of God’s plan.  But really.  How do ordinary people (such as ourselves) live like that?  Can 21st century humans expect to see their lives in God’s plan?  Do we even dare aspire to a faith that allows us to make life decisions based on a God still actively involved in the world and for the ultimate good?  Maybe we can say that in a macro sense.  Elections will turn out the way God wants.  God will rescue us before things get too bad.  But really.  What do “loyal” decisions look like in this day and age, on the level and scale in which we live?  At work, am I loyal to the company (whose loyalty toward me is rarely seen as good corporate policy these days), or am I loyal to my work ethic, or do my family loyalties supersede my work loyalties?  Can I have confidence that I’ll get a job to pay the mortgage before we lose the house?  How can I tell if the college I choose fits into God’s plan?  How do we live with the same level of trust as the farmer in today’s parable?  The one who plants the seed and trusts the earth to bring forth sprout and plant and fruit and harvest.

Bible stories are supposed to help us live our lives, even today.  How does this story help us—this story about a relationship in which loyalty is what’s at stake?  A loyalty infused with trust in God.  Saul hangs over that relationship, forcing David’s hand, forcing his own son to make a choice.  But he’s not in the relationship directly.  From Saul’s perspective, Jonathan’s loyalty to David (and not him) is a cultural error as well as a religious one, a violation of the fifth commandment and a death wish-level insult to the family.  Yet, Jonathan’s choice is made in the context of covenant, loyalty as one of God’s people.  Jonathan may be playing the John the Baptist role to David (“I must decrease that he might increase”), but his choice of loyalty prefigures Jesus himself as he teaches his followers a loyalty that transcends family ties—for God’s sake (Luke 14:26).

The loyalty of David and Jonathan is both costly and ambiguous.  One writer says their story is one of “wrenching, risk, pain, hurt, and hope . . . as God brings God’s new reign (1).”  Put that way, the story becomes one about God and God’s freedom.  Not many of us make choices that appear to bring about God’s reign, or in which loyalty to God costs our life.  Our lives have a smaller scale, but maybe that’s what makes it hard to see a direct correlation between our choices and God’s reign.  Think about how we choose to spend our time.  What if we made decisions about time management to reflect our priorities, rather than to simply try to fit more in, or in response to the most recent demand or the most pressing need?  How would you spend your time if you thought you were showing loyalty to God’s kingdom values?
 
Time is only one way of expressing our loyalty.  I haven’t mentioned the use of other resources—what we’re good at, our important relationships, our money.  Whether we make intentional decisions or not, how we live, the choices we make, reflects our loyalties.  Do our lifestyle decisions reflect loyalty to a God who has an ultimate purpose for the world and even for us—a purpose we trust is good, a purpose bearing fruit worthy of harvest?

The decisions aren’t easy.  David and Jonathan aren’t the only ones whose loyalties are lived out in the context of ambiguity and conflict.  What’s the right choice?  Loyal to whom and to what?  This is the weekend in which we celebrate freedom.  We call it “Independence Day.”  Sometimes we get confused and think freedom means “I did it my way!” and independence means “I did it alone.”  David and Jonathan’s story—covenant theology and a loyalty to the reign of God—tells us otherwise.  Richard Rohr writes of freedom:
 “The primal freedom [first, most important] is the freedom to be our True Self [who God created us to be]—the freedom to live in the whole truth of the moment—
attractive and unattractive.  This takes far more courage than we might imagine.
“Great religion offers us, not just freedom from our small illusion (often called ‘sin’) but freedom for the Big Picture. . . . [Freedom comes] from within.  Our freedom from finally and eventually becomes our freedom for. . . . “Secular freedom is having to do what we want to do.  Religious freedom is wanting to do what we have  to do (2).”

David and Jonathan’s loyalty was freedom for—for covenant, for God’s will, for God’s reign.  May we live in the freedom for that comes from loyalty to God.