David's Lament

Church of the Incarnation

October 17, 2010

II Samuel 1:17-27

Gospel: John 11:32-35

For a bible-story hero and a famous King, David had more than his share of difficulty.  He grew up in a dysfunctional family where his seven older brothers despised him.  He got a great job playing lyre for moody King Saul but twice his boss tried to murder him at work.  He was promised Saul’s oldest daughter Merab but she was given to another man.  Saul saw him as a political threat and forced him into exile.  His own band of soldiers turned on him and almost stoned him to death.  But in today’s story we see him at his absolute lowest thus far.  And it is a shadow of deeper sorrow to come.  This is the midpoint of the David story, the hinge that turns from David’s preparation to become King to his actual rule.  In yet another battle with the Philistines, David’s dear friend Jonathan and King Saul are killed.

In response to this devastating news, David composes a lament.  A lament is a way of giving voice to our grief and loss, a protest against pain.  

Photographers tell us to smile.  Why?  We have done this as parents.  We have actually yelled at our kids for not smiling for a picture - how messed up is that?  We tend not to take pictures of one another weeping.  Why not?  I’m not sure.  But whatever this is also infects the life of faith.  Even though we should know better, we imagine that it is the happy and successful, the comfortable and wealthy who are closest to God.    

It’s not easy to face the reality of our pain and loss, our grief and our disappointment.  But I’ll try anything if it frees me from having to manufacture a smile for the rest of my life.  David’s story is full of highs and lows.  If we sift his life only for his successes and triumphs, we would overlook his lament here in II Samuel 1.  If we fall into the trap of connecting God’s presence with our uninterrupted happiness we will miss Jesus’ central message: “Blessed are those who mourn.”  We will rush past his weeping at the grave of his good friend Lazarus.  David and Jesus can help us live rich, full lives - they can help us give voice to our anger, frustration, confusion, and tears.

Today we are learning a form of poetry, a way of singing, a way of remembering, a way of life.  It’s called “lament.”  When King Saul and his son Jonathan die at the hands of the Philistines, David sings a lament.  To learn to sing and pray in lament is a religious practice of enormous importance.  70% of the Psalms are laments - like Psalm 13 today.  These Psalms lament the pain of exile and homelessness, the plight of the weak, the success of the wicked, and the absence of God.

The Succession Story

Let me set up for you the plot of the David story that leads us to this lament.

In I Samuel 31, Israel is again engaged in battle with the Philistines on Mt. Gilboa.  The significance of that battle is told with great pathos and simplicity:  “So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together on the same day” (I Sam. 31:6).  The Philistines come next day to loot the bodies, and they find Saul and his three sons.  They cut off Saul’s head to display it in their religious temple.  And they fasten their bodies to the city wall at Beth-Shan.  The Israelites who live at Jabesh-Gilead hear of this disgrace.  They owed their very lives to Saul’s courage as a warrior - he had saved them from defeat and torture.  So they travel at great risk to Beth-Shan at night, take down their bodies, return home, burn them, and bury the bones.

In II Samuel 1, David gets word of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan.  “Then David took hold of his clothes and tore them; and all the men who were with him did the same.  They mourned and wept, and fasted until evening for Saul and for his son Jonathan, and for the army of the Lord and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword” (II Sam. 1:11-12). 

David’s immediate response to the loss of Saul and Jonathan is physical.  Clothes are torn - a visible and public symbol that loss has struck.  He weeps.  And then he fasts.  It’s true -- those who grieve do not feel like eating.  Joan Didion, in her book The Year of Magical Thinking, recalls the advice of Emily Post.  Those who grieve cannot eat much.  So offer them small bits of something from time to time.  The first response to loss is felt in our bodies.  Only later, with time, can we come to lament.

Before we reflect on David’s lament we should pause here and consider how strange a shift we have in this narrative.  David is God’s anointed.  He is God’s chosen successor to King Saul.  Very few people know it, but David’s anointing is what drives the story forward.  For ten years he has been hated by Saul and chased by Saul’s men in the wilderness.  He was exiled from his home in Bethlehem and from his people.  David had chances to kill Saul and he didn’t.  But surely he was waiting for this day - the day when finally, Saul would be moved out of the way and the path cleared for David to assume the throne.  Saul was his enemy, and had made his life a living hell.  What we expect to find next is a festive celebration.  Instead, what comes next is a heart-rending, tear-stained lament for both Saul and his son Jonathan.  In II Samuel 2 David is installed as King among the southern tribes of Judah, and the rest of our time with David’s story will involve his active reign.  But not yet.  First, there is this powerful lament.

David’s Lament:

Lament is a kind of praying/singing that can be learned:

We have known since David was introduced as a musician in King Saul’s court (I Sam. 16) that David is a lyre player and presumably a singer.  Now we see him in action as a singer-poet.  David “intones” or “sings” this lament, the “Song of the Bow.”

The editorial note at 1:18 alerts us that the lament was to be taught to God’s people.  The Lament Song was recorded in the Book of Jashar, which did not survive.  But it was recorded and remembered here, in the Samuel narratives: We are expected to learn to lament.  It’s part of the life of faith.

Lament is structured poetry: David’s lament gives form and structure to the experience of loss.  

Three times we hear the repeated refrain: “How the mighty have fallen.”  This lament has been given shape.  Over against the chaos of our pain and suffering, lament brings a certain kind of order.  Eugene Peterson says, “Lament isn’t an animal wail, an inarticulate howl.  Lament notices and attends, savors and delights - details, images, relationships.  Pain entered into, accepted, and owned can become poetry.  It’s no less pain, but it’s no longer ugly.  Poetry is our most personal use of words; it’s our way of entering experience, not just watching it happen to us, and inhabiting it as our home” (Peterson, 119). 

Lament language is used metaphorically.  It’s not an attempt to speak straightforwardly - but an attempt to imagine our pain differently.  David can curse the mountains of Gilboa - where Saul died - as if it was a participant in the battle.  He can speak of Saul’s shield as defiled in war, as a leather shield that will be anointed with oil nor more, and we know that he speaks of Saul.  Saul and Jonathan were swift like eagles and strong like lions in battle.  And David says of his love for Jonathan: “Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (v. 26).

This is a public voice that invites a community to grieve.  In ancient culture, the women - “daughters of Philistines” and “daughters of Israel” are the focus.  But it’s taught to all.  In principle, our culture no longer outsources mourning to a set of female professionals.  Yet there lingers even with us a kind of false masculinity that assigns weeping to women.  I was in the second grade when my sister Sherise was stillborn.  My dad promised he would pick us up from school that day as soon as she was delivered.  When he picked us up his eyes were red.  So I knew something had happened.  

Nick Wolterstorff lost his 25 year old son Eric in a mountain climbing accident.  Eric had been climbing alone in Germany and Nick had to fly there to claim his body.  On the flight back, he says, “I thought about tears.” Nick suggests that our culture has a problem with men crying.  I think our culture has a problem with anyone crying in public.  “Must we always mask our suffering?  May we not sometimes allow people to see and enter it?  I mean, may men too not do this?  And why is it so important to act strong?  I have been graced with the strength to endure.  But I have been assaulted, and in the assault wounded, grievously wounded.  Am I to pretend otherwise?  Wounds are ugly, I know . . . But must they always be swathed?  I shall look at the world through tears.  Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see” (26).

It takes time to compose a lament of course.  To find the right words, the right turn of phrase.  Annie Dillard says we all write in cliches.  We edit to figure out what we really wanted to say.  But in this process we are given the time to pay attention, to notice details, to highlight what is most important. 

Because he is not in a hurry to rush past the pain, to get over his grieving, David has time to notice things:

David remembers the courage of Saul and Jonathan: “the bow of Jonathan did not turn back, nor the sword of Saul return empty” (v. 22).  

David remembers that Saul and Jonathan are both “beloved and lovely” (v. 23) - Their bodies had been mutilated and dismembered, displayed shamefully, then burned and buried.  But they are remembered as those loved by their people, and lovely in appearance.

Lament as Christian Hope

What’s at stake here?  Does David’s lament really help?  Do the lament Psalms help?  Do they really give voice to what we want to say?  In the end, what’s the difference between a lament and screaming at a wall, or bottling our rage and confusion inside ourselves, or dealing with pain by numbing ourselves with pleasure or distraction?

Well, a lament is a kind of prayer.  It’s often a sad prayer, a disappointed prayer, a depressed prayer, an angry prayer, a prayer that only half believes.  But as a prayer it addresses God.  It is offered to God in the hope that God hears our laments.  In the hope that God can do something about all the laments of the world.

Like David, Jesus is a King who laments.  His life is full of grief.  And he weeps.  In his life, death, and resurrection, we have come face to face with a God who loves us deeply.  We are the lost sheep, and God puts himself in harms way to come and find us.  And he comes all the way here, into the middle of our lives, to share in our pain and in our death.

This good news that we are loved by God does not erase the need for lament.  It makes lament possible.  We might even say, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is our lament.  It is the story we tell about our own pain.  It is the shape given to our grief and trouble.  Faith in Jesus Christ enables us to endure, to cope with evil, death, and loss without looking away.  Lament is protest that does not throw in the towel - it holds on.

Jesus said on a mountain: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  What is it about mourning, weeping, yearning - what is it about tears that brings God’s blessing?  Could it be that those who mourn have seen something -- they have glimpsed the fullness of God’s reign and they weep because that fullness is not here yet.  Nick Wolterstorff calls these mourners “aching visionaries.”  

Pain isn’t the worst thing.  The worst thing is missing out on love and beauty and friendship.  The worst thing is living a thin human life, missing the richness of a life that loves.  The worst thing is avoiding reality, preferring to be stoic or numb as a way of avoiding the ups and downs of every human life.  We offer our lament not as a glib avoidance of death, loss, and pain.  We offer our lament because we inhabit a resurrection story.  God has made promises to be good to us, to make all things right.  So we live in hope that in the midst of our loss, God has, and will, triumph over sin, evil, and death, over pain and suffering.  May God give us the ability to lament when all around us are telling us to “smile.”

Prayer for the People

Lord Jesus Christ, hear our prayer.

It matters to us that when Lazarus died you wept.

It matters to us that you have suffered psychologically, spiritually, and in your own body.

It matters to us that you know what it’s like to be afraid of pain,

that you accepted terrible pain for our sakes.

It matters to us that you died, executed by hateful people and by an uncaring regime.

And most of all, it matters to us that you were raised on the third day with your wounds.

This is great love, O High God, that you have come low to suffer with us and share our pain.

But still, we have questions.

Not every problem has been solved.

How long will this go on?

Is it really true that you will re-create the world with no crying, no pain, no death?

We believe.  Help our unbelief.

Every day you wait to make all things new, the horrors pile up.

Children starve, brutal wars waged, people enslaved, the poor crushed by the rich,

millions stagger from day to day without love.

Why wait?  What are you waiting for?  

We pray for all those who are in pain.

Hear the cry of lament voiced by your creatures.

Send aid and grace and strength and friends to those who suffer.

Judge the violent.  Make an end of them.  Show us that they will not win in the end.

It’s not that there is no laughter and joy in our lives.

It’s not that there is no singing and dancing in the world.

It’s not that people do not embrace.

It’s just that love and joy happen only here and there, now and then.

It’s just that in every celebration so many are left out.

Make us your servants.

Free us from our numbness and our lethargy so that we can see the pain all around us.

So that we can bear one another’s burdens, 

As you, Jesus Christ, have borne ours.  Amen.