The Word of God for the People of God

35In the morning, Jonathan went out to the field for the meeting with David, and a young servant boy went with him.36He said to the boy, “Go quickly and retrieve the arrow that I shoot.” So the boy ran off, and he shot an arrow beyond him.37When the boy got to the spot where Jonathan shot the arrow, Jonathan yelled to him, “Isn’t the arrow past you?”38Jonathan yelled again to the boy, “Quick! Hurry up! Don’t just stand there!” So Jonathan’s servant boy gathered up the arrow and came back to his master.39The boy had no idea what had happened; only Jonathan and David knew.40Jonathan handed his weapons to the boy and told him, “Get going. Take these back to town.”

41As soon as the boy was gone, David came out from behind the moundand fell down, face on the ground, bowing low three times. The friends kissed each other, and cried with each other, but David cried hardest.42Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace because the two of us made a solemn pledge in theLord’s name when we said, ‘TheLordis witness between us and between our descendants forever.’” Then David got up and left, but Jonathan went back to town.

The Word of God for the People of God.

Thanks be to God.

So who do you rely on?

In the passage we read just now from 1 Samuel, we find David and Jonathan, the best of friends. David, you see, is the pipsqueak kid who stepped forward with his slingshot and killed Goliath, the giant of the enemy army. But the pipsqueak has grown up; after becoming King Saul's right hand man for awhile, David's successes in battle began to get under Saul's skin. Saul grew weary of everybody fawning over David, singing songs about how he killed ten thousand men in battle while King Saul only killed ONE thousand. Everyone loved David--even Saul's own son, Jonathan. The scripture tells us repeatedly that Jonathan loved David--it says that the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, that Jonathan loved David just as he loved himself.

And so you can imagine that things got a little tense when David became the outright enemy of Saul, Jonathan's father. Saul keeps sendingDavid to battle, thinking David will surely get himself killed, but David just keeps coming back, with more medals, more accolades, more respect from the people--Saul's people. So then Saul begins to hope that someone else might take care of David for him, someone else a little closer, but of course that doesn't work because...everyone loves David. Meanwhile, David tells Jonathan again and again, "You know your dad wants me dead," and Jonathan just doesn't believe it--he CAN'T believe it, until he decides to do his own test. Jonathanbaits his father, telling him a simple story about David, and sure enough, Saul is enraged, and he tells Jonathan to send for David, so Saul can kill him. Jonathan is surprised, and grieved--he couldn't eat. And so he goes out to meet David in the field, to tell him what he has discovered about Saul, to tell him to flee for his safety. And they weep together. And finally, just before they part, they remind each other of their covenant friendship, saying "The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, forever." Their words remind me of the final words of a covenant I know of, this time between Christian friends: "Let the only thing between us be Christ."

So who do you rely on?

David was like a brother to Jonathan, even when it meant pure defiance of his own father, the king. Who are your brothers and your sisters? Who are your peeps? Your support network? Who are the ones who don't need a back story when the bottom falls out, because they already know all the details?

A few weeks ago, on the day before Christmas Eve, Sam Meador, a beloved, long-time member of this congregation died. And do you know what? I never got a call that day from Sam's wife, Donna. Instead, my phone lit up with multiple calls from Donna's friends. I don't know if Donna knew before that she had so many sisters, but I think she's learning that now.

A pastor and friend of mine tells a story about getting a call while he was at the church office, and hearingthat a young member of the congregation, a guy in his 30s, had been in a car accident and was in critical condition in the ER. So the Pastor jumped in the car and drove to the hospital immediately, only to find half of the man's Sunday School class already crowded into the waiting room. The class name was "Rebels with a cause."

Who are those people for you? Do you have these people in your life? Brothers and Sisters. Maybe they are the people you grew up with--your actual brothers and sisters--and maybe they are brothers and sisters of a different kind. Maybe it's your best friends. If you are married, hopefully one of them is your spouse.

Andrew Zirschky has done research about social media and its use among young people in the church, and he argues that people use social media as a way to make connections with other people. We thrive on connections, he says, but the thing we really want, the thing we really need is not connections, it's communion. We long for something more real, more meaningful, more important and life-giving than all of the acquaintances we have, from work, from school, from the coffee shop, from Facebook. We long for relationships that teachus something that looks like the love of God, relationships that revealgrace to us. So who is it for you? Who do you rely on?

Maybe I should back up. Maybe before I ask you who these people are in your life, maybe I should ask whether you really want these people, these brothers and sisters. Because, I don't know if you remember your growing up years or not, but...sometimes Brothers and Sisters are trouble. As it turns out, connections are really a lot cleaner than communion is. Connections stay on the surface; they stay in the places where we have smileson our faces; where we don't delve into issues like politics and religion; where platitudes are enough to say and we can all pretend like we really don't struggle with what Jesus says; where we don't let on how scared I amabout the doctor's appointment coming up, or the thing my teenager said to me last night. Going beyond all of that--going beyond connection--is risky. Lord knows, the people that we get closest to are sometimes the greatest risks we take in life. They know the most about us; you might say that these are the people with the most ammunition.

And the truth is...sometimes they use the ammunition. Sometimes WEuse the ammunition. Sometimes instead of bearing one another's burdens, we hurl them at each other. And we find out that our greatest wounds come from those who are closest to us--point-blank wounds. When you have brothers and sisters, when you take the risk of opening yourself to these relationships, you find out that even in families, and even in church families, we hurt one another.

So why bother? If brothers and sisters are going to let you down, if they are going to betray you or neglect you or do something to hurt you, why would youwant any part of that?

About a year ago, a photographer for the New York Times travelled to Southern Rwanda on assignment. I want to show you a few of the pictures he took. The people you see are part of a national movement for reconciliation following the genocide that occurred there more than 20 years ago. In each pair, there is a perpetrator and asurvivor, one who has harmed and one who has been harmed. Houses were burned; family members were brutally killed; unspeakable crimes were committed. And in each pair, there has been a movement toward forgiveness. Following training and a willingness to confess to the crimes they've committed, the perpetrators have sought and received forgiveness, a pardon for what they have done. Listen to Francois--he killed the son of Epiphanie, who he standsnext to in this photo--he says, "Because of the genocide perpetrated in 1994, I participated in the killing of the son of this woman. We are now members of the same group of unity and reconciliation. We share in everything; if she needs some water to drink, I fetch some for her. There is no suspicion between us, whether under sunlight or during the night. I used to have nightmares recalling the sad events I have been through, but now I can sleep peacefully. And when we are together, we are like brother and sister, no suspicion between us." And incredibly, Epiphanie tells the same story. "Before," she says, "when I had not yet granted him pardon, he could not come close to me. I treated him like my enemy. But now, I would rather treat him like my own child."

Do you hear the words they use? Brother and Sister. Like my own child. Somehow, out of the ashes of all that was destroyed in Rwanda in 1994, there has emerged a new kind of family--ties not held together by blood, but forged by grace.

Friends, it is true; when you move past connection, you are bound to encounter pain and hurt. It is difficult, nearly impossible, we might say, to reach the point when we can truly say, "The only thing between us is Christ." If we can take the risk to peel away the layers of formality, the veneers that we layer on, the fronts we keep up, all of those things between us, then, even still, we are bound, from time to time, to let conflict rise up between us, to put up walls to shield ourselves from being let down again. There are probably many in this room who have encountered the deep hurt of a brother or a sister, and there are probably just as many here who have brought harm to someone else. This, I'm afraid, is part of being human. It's part of being in relationship. But if what we had hoped for was relationships that teach us something of the love of God, relationships that reveal grace to us, well, then there is no greater opportunity than this. There is no greater opportunity for finding that the love we share with one another is simply what we have passed on from the forgiving love that God gives to us. How else do we find out about grace, than to find thatsomeone has had the grace to forgive me, to look past my faults, my repeated failures? How else can I believe that God's grace is real, unless I experiencefirsthand that it would beimpossible for MEto conjure upwhat it takes to forgive my brother, or my sister--it must have come from somewhere else. Church, do you want to have connection, or are you willing to risk for communion? Do you want to know grace? It's here for the taking--to be received and then shared, in your family, in my family, and in the family of God, so that we might bear with one another, so that we might accept each other with love and walk together through life as brothers and sisters, so that the only thing between us is Christ.

Thanks be to God.