D. BENSON FEBRUARY 12TH, 2017 Why ? 2 Samuel 11

What do Candle in the Wind by (1973), Mozart’s Requium Mass in D minor, Pride, by U2 (1984), and Pie Jesu all have in common?

Aside from being fairly well known musical pieces, they are all songs of lament. In technical terms these types of songs are called ‘threnody’: a song, hymn, or poem of , composed as a memorial to a dead person. David’s song, The Song of the Bow (2 Sam 1:17-27) is also one of these types of songs, which David composed when he learned of the death of Saul and Jonathan. This wasn’t the only lament song David wrote. 70% of the Psalms are lament. Given the pervasiveness of lament in the Psalms, as well as throughout history in commemoration of the life and death of important people, it seems as though there might be something important about lament. But why? What is so special about singing songs or writing poems about the loss of loved ones, about death, and about the horrible and inescapable pain that comes with such grief? Why lament?

This is a good question for us today, especially since we live in a culture that does everything it can to help us escape from pain, cover it up, distract us from it, and generally do what we can to deny the pervasiveness of its existence. And when we face so much tragedy in the news and in the world around us, why on earth would we want to intentionally spend time thinking about grief and loss and lament? Isn’t the world bad enough? Don’t we have enough bad news stories about crime and war and famine and political scandal? Why must we always dwell on the negative? Let’s focus on the positive and get over it.

But what is really disturbing about these stories and experiences of loss and tragedy and death isn’t so much the overabundance of it but the fact that there is very little real lament over it. Life only matters insofar as it is news. The problem isn’t that we dwell too much on the negative or the hard things in life, it is that we don’t dwell on them at all. We don’t name and recognize and honour them. In the world we live in we don’t really take truth or love or life seriously: as the God-given, Christ- redeemed, and Spirit-blessed life that it is. This is evident in the way we skip over news stories, go from one story of tragedy to the next without any thought more than, ‘what a shame.’ Perhaps we might pause for a moment. But then, either too overwhelmed by tragedy, too defeated to do anything about it, or simply inured to loss, we move on to the next thing soon enough.

The Song of the Bow is just one example of what David did to recognize, honour, and lift up to God the disappointments, deaths, and losses he experienced regularly in his life. David didn’t avoid the hard things that happened in life. He didn’t deny them or soft-pedal them or avoid any of those difficulties. He faced everything and he prayed everything.

1 The inspiration for this series is based on Eugene Peterson’s book, “Leap Over a Wall”. (Harper San Francisco. 1997).

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David’s practice of lament (and it does take practice) offers an essential perspective on grief and death, without which we risk denying a significant part of what it means to be human, and we overlook a fairly substantial part of who God is and what God is doing in our lives and in our world. Lament is the way that we recall and give thanks for the blessings we have experienced by the life of another, the way we give dignity to their lives by remembering significant life moments, the way we recognize the hand God in everyday living. Whether we write an elegy, deliver a eulogy, sing a Psalm, or write a song, lament is a critical part of our human experience.

David’s response to the death of Saul and Jonathan teaches us about the honour of lament, the beauty of lament, and most importantly, the holiness of lament.

When David learned of Saul’s and Jonathan’s death, according to the custom of the time, he and his men tore their clothes, and they wept, fasted, and mourned. But somehow, David’s actions don’t invoke pity in us. We don’t feel sorry for David. Instead we find ourselves admiring him. We see in him something noble and good. We see someone who doesn’t allow small-minded and petty self-righteousness to diminish him – to make him a ‘poor winner’. Being able to grieve equally over the death of a friend and an enemy speaks of something honourable in David’s character. Saul had done everything he could to ruin David’s life. But David never allowed his life to be defined by Saul’s hatred. David grieves the loss of his friend and his enemy, and surprisingly he doesn’t become less. David’s lament is an honourable one.

Second, David’s lament created beauty out of distress. David was a master at distilling the harshness of life into , song, rhythm, and metaphor. David was an artist. Lament captures the details and images of a life and transforms them into art. For David, beauty wasn’t a vehicle for covering up tragedy and loss, but a way of entering deeply into them. David didn’t say, ‘my best friend has been slaughtered by his enemies: his blood turns the ground red and his body has become food for the wild animals. But look at that beautiful sunset over there. Isn’t it glorious?” No. David says,

How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan lies slain upon your high places. 26 I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. 27 How the mighty have fallen,

2 D. BENSON FEBRUARY 12TH, 2017 and the weapons of war perished! 2

Repetition, rhythm, words of covenant and friendship. David creates something beautiful that speaks to the deep places of what it means to be human. Places that mere prose cannot reach. Lament has the power to create beauty by entering into pain and distress rather than escaping it.

And finally, and I think most profoundly, lament is a holy act because it proclaims that God given, Christ-redeemed, and Spirit-blessed life matters. All of it. And by extension then, lament gives glory and honour to God. David’s lament of Saul points to this reality. Although Saul had done everything he could to invoke the hatred of David, to dishonor God in the way he lived his life, and to use power with the worst possible outcomes, still God did something for Saul that only God could do: he gave Saul the gift of being mourned as an anointed, honoured, and holy child of God. Because David never allowed his life to be defined or limited by Saul’s hatred, he was still able to see him as God’s anointed king and servant. David’s lament affirmed the image of God in Saul, even though that image was horribly warped.

Some of you have heard of professional mourners: people (mostly in the Mediterranean or Near East) who are paid to show up at funerals and lament. Or perhaps you have an old aunt who used to read the obituaries in the paper and show up at every funeral regardless of whether she knew the deceased or not. The impetus for these things is the recognition that human life matters, that it is holy, and that because people are important, no one should go unmourned. To be unlamented is to be forgotten, to have never mattered, to never have been born, to have been obliterated from human history without notice or consequence. To be un- lamented is to say that God’s image is expendable or that it isn’t worth anything. There is nothing more tragic or more unholy than this.

David knew this, and this is why David commanded that this lament be taught and memorized by all the people (2 Sam 1:18). If we cannot uphold the God given humanity in people, even in our worst enemies, then we become less than human, our communities disintegrate, and we lose the centre of our existence – the image and glory of God in the world.

Jesus too knew the importance of lament. Jesus lamented over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44). He lamented with Mary and Martha over the death of his friend Lazarus. He didn’t weep just for his own loss but also for the grief that his friends Mary and Martha experienced. But Jesus didn’t run away from it and he didn’t try to cover it up. He wept (John 11:28-36). Jesus wept openly in the company of others who wept. The fully and perfectly human Son of God shows us that lament is a part of what it means to be fully human.

2 The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (2 Sa 1:25–27). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

3 D. BENSON FEBRUARY 12TH, 2017 We need to teach again the way of lament. In our world we hide our grief, we cry quietly in the privacy of our own homes, we apologize to others when we break down as if it were improper to mourn. But the way we grieve, recognize and honour people in our culture, our friends and our enemies, speaks to the kinds of people we are and the kind of God we say we believe in. The reality is that pain comes from both love and hate. Lament is one way to ensure that we aren’t diminished by loss but deepened by it. Those of you who have experienced profound loss and grief will know that grief isn’t something you get over, you don’t just pull it together, and no matter how much you try to distract yourself from feeling it, it doesn’t go away. Lament is the way to find God in the midst of it.

Here is my challenge to each of you today. Everyone here has experienced loss: whether it is the death of a spouse, a child, a relative, friend, neighbor, beloved pet or of a significant relationship. Everyone here has experienced the death of an enemy – someone about whom you said, ‘phew, I’m so glad that’s over.’ I’m guessing that all of you have attended funerals, heard or given eulogies. Some of you have mourned these losses (and continue to do so), and others of you may have distracted yourselves or avoided them. What I would invite you to try is this: carve out some time and reflect on those losses. What beauty might God be calling you to make out of them: poetry, song, planting a tree… ? In what do these losses impart honour to both you and the deceased as people beloved by God and made in the image of a holy God? What does your grief/honour say about who God is and how God has worked in your life? Christ said that he came so that we would have life and have it abundantly. Abundant human life involves the full spectrum of being created in the image of God. Let us learn to lament well and so give glory to God in all things and for all things.

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