“To Teach Hard Things”
David is on the cusp of coronation. But he is not celebrating. He is grieving.
The man who had made multiple attempts on his life, King Saul, has died. But David is not celebrating. He is grieving.
Previously David had been living among the Philistines, to
avoid the murderous wrath of King Saul. Finally he can return home. But upon
his return, we do not find him celebrating. We find him grieving.
There are many reasons for David be happy. He’s finally home. His adversary is gone. He is about to be made king. Why does he grieve?
In fact, the more cynical reader might wonder whether he grieves at all. Could this just be an act, a bit of public posturing? After all, if David wants to win the hearts of those who were previously loyal to King Saul, the last thing he wants to be seen doing is dancing on Saul’s grave. By showing the proper honor for a fallen king, David establishes his credentials as next-in-line.
I’m not so cynical myself to think that’s David’s grief is an act, although I do suspect he is well aware of its political benefits. What convinces me of David’s grief is that it concerns not only Saul, but also his son Jonathan. David and Jonathan had a special friendship, the kind that gets forged when both backs are against the wall and all you have is each other. David had put his life in Jonathan’s hands on more than one occasion, and Jonathan had risked his own life for David. I believe David when he cries, if for no other reason than that he cries for Jonathan.
When David begins to grieve, he makes a curious instruction that others learn from his grief. Our translation says that “he ordered that the Song of the Bow”—presumably his song of grief—“be taught to the people of Judah” (2 Sam 1:18). But the text is more ambiguous here than we can see, and Hebrew scholars have suggested a more likely reading is that David says “to teach hard things” to the people of Judah.[1]
David wants “to teach hard things” to the people of Judah. I think what David wants is that the world stop and acknowledge what it has lost. Many of us who have grieved know this feeling. We feel completely wrecked, and yet all around us the world moves on, indifferent to our loss. David gives poignant expression to this feeling when he tells the mountains of Gilboa, where Saul and Jonathan died, “Let there be no dew or rain upon you, nor bounteous fields!” Such freshness and vitality would make a mockery of the life that was lost there.
“Take the Pain”
I have a good friend who is a pastoral counselor. On occasion, she has shared with me how her clients’ religious understanding of life can get in the way of healing. With regard to death and grief, many Christians experience a tension between what they think they should feel and what they actually feel. On the one hand, “all is well,” right? Their loved one is now in the care of God, and they have the hope of the resurrection, when we will all be joined together again. On the other hand, there is a searing loss, an absence that cannot be replaced. What happens, sometimes, is that a Christian represses or denies the “hard things,” the feelings of loss. They think that “all is well” is the only faithful response, and anything else betrays a lack of trust in God.
But scripture shows us otherwise. Our passage today is remarkable for the fact that it does not try to wrap things up with a bow of faith, to sanitize the messy feelings with some future assurance. Instead David concludes the song as he started it, with the lament, “How the mighty have fallen…” (2 Sam 1:19, 25, 27). We find a similar honesty in many psalms (some of which are attributed to David). In today’s lectionary psalm, the psalmist begins, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord” (Ps 130:1), which suggests that the path to God is not through some unassailable faith that never doubts or grieves. Rather the path to God is through “the depths” of our heart, through the “hard things,” where we “cry,” where we “wait,” where we “hope” (cf. Ps 130). As my friend would point out, the real danger is that we quiet the cry of our heart, that we suppress our grief, for in doing so we are deprived of a more authentic, fulfilling connection with God.
When Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted,” he indicates that grief is sacred. Blessed are those who have something to mourn about; their tears tell them what really matters. They know God, not through ideas, but through the heart.[2]
Not long ago, I read the memoir of Jonathan Foster, a father who lost his daughter, age 20, to a car accident on an icy road. At one point, he shares a bit of a movie that stuck with him and reminded him that his grief was sacred. He writes:
remember watching the moviewind river
the show plays out
against the backdrop of
wyoming
wilderness
fatherhood
the main character
familiar with loss
finds his friend martin
who just lost a daughter, says
i’d like to tell you it gets easier
but it doesn’t
if there’s any comfort
it’s getting used to the pain
i suppose
i went to a grief seminar in casper
did you know that?
i don’t know why
i just wanted the bad to go away
i wanted answers to questions that couldn’t be answered
main character looks up
at the mountains, continues
the counselor comes up to me after the seminar
and sat down next to me
and he said something that stuck with me
idk if it’s what he said
or it’s how he said it
he says
i got some good news and i got some bad news
bad news is you’re never going to be the same
you’re never going to be whole
not ever again
you lost your daughter
and nothing’s ever going to replace that
now the good news is
as soon as you accept that
and let yourself suffer
you’ll allow yourself to visit her in your mind
and you’ll remember all the love she gave
all the joy she knew
main character looks
straight at his friend, says
point is, martin
you can’t steer from the pain
if you do
you’ll rob yourself
you’ll rob yourself of every memory of her
every last one
from her first step to her last smile
it’ll kill them all
just take the pain, martin
you hear me?
you take it
it’s the only way you’ll keep her with you[3]
Good Grief
Paul and the early Christians distinguished between two kinds of grief: a good grief and a bad grief, a grief oriented toward God and life, and a grief oriented toward bitterness and death. I think David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan is the good kind, even as it unflinchingly embraces the “hard things,” the pain of loss. The key is love. In Song of Songs, Solomon sings that love is stronger than death (cf. Song 8:6). We see this in today’s passage, where the word “love” or a derivative is repeated five times. “Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely” (2 Sam 1:23). “Greatly beloved were you [Jonathan] to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (2 Sam 1:26).
David’s song of grief is equally a song of love, and that is the key, because love is stronger than death.
Poet Christian Wiman, who is also a Christ-follower, puts it like this: “Within the love that once opened up the world to you—from the birth of a child to meeting your mate—is a key that can let you back into the world when that love is gone.”[4] Our love, which causes us to grieve, is the very same thing that opens us up to life again. Our lectionary psalm today puts it like this, “With the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem” (Ps 130:7). All of this is to say what Paul said, namely, “Love never ends” (1 Cor 13:8). Love abides with our grief and in time transforms it, redeems it, and makes us well.
Being Made Well
Speaking of being “made well”…. Our gospel scripture today features one healing story sandwiched between another, the hemorrhaging woman and Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:21-43). What made an impression on me in reading them this week is the desperation of the characters. There is Jairus falling at Jesus’ feet and begging him (Mark 5:22-23); there is the hemorrhaging woman who has endured her condition for twelve years and lost everything she has to doctors who have not helped her, braving a large crowd (who would have likely considered her unclean) just to touch the fringe of Jesus’ cloak (Mark 5:26-28). Now, their situations are a little different than David’s. They are not wrestling with feelings of grief; rather they are both facing an increasingly hopeless situation. But both trust (and say to themselves) that by expressing themselves honestly to Jesus they will “be made well” (Mark 5:23, 28).
The miraculous turnaround in their circumstances stand for us today as a reminder that, when we endure hard things, if we express our feelings honestly to God and remain open to God’s love, our hard things are destined for redemption. We will be made well. As the main character in Wind River says, this honesty may sometimes mean “taking the pain.” In a world that has increasingly demonized pain, taking the pain may sound like a bad idea. But as we see in today’s scripture, it can in fact be what orients us toward what matters most: God’s love, which redeems, from which springs new life.
Poet Ross Gay once described the luminous character of his father’s grieving face. His wet freckles, he observed—his wet freckles gleamed. “Like seeds on the surface of the soil.” Like seeds on the surface of the soil.[5]
Prayer
Who hears the cries of our heart,
Our world is filled with distractions
And numbing agents,
That keep us from our own hearts
And from you
…
Teach to us the “hard things” of life,
That in the depths of our heart
Your love might be planted.
In Christ, who makes us well: Amen.
[1] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible:
The Prophets (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), 309.
[2] Cf. Richard Rohr, Jesus’
Alternative Plan: The Sermon on the Mount (Cincinnati: Franciscan Media,
1996), 139-140.
[3] Jonathan J. Foster, indigo:
the color of grief (Verde, 2023), 70-72.
[4] Christian Wiman, My Bright
Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 2013), 121.
[5] Ross Gay, Inciting Joy:
Essays (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2022), 228–229.
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