David and Jonathan, pt. 2 | 1 Samuel 20

As most of you know, I was brought up as a conservative, evangelical, protestant with a capitol "P" Christian. In the churches I grew up in there was no possibility that Catholics could be saved, or that God even listened to their prayers. In the words of Mike Warnke, when a Catholic died, we figured they'd put him in a chute in the basement and send them right off to hell--do not pass go, do not collect $200. Now you might think that's a little extreme, but that is the way I was taught.

Now, we were allowed to have Catholics as friends, as neighbors, certainly. But when it came to matters of religion or theology, there was no question about it. Catholics were on the same list as Satanists and Nazis; fur sure bound for Hell.

This is where Anglicanism becomes sneaky. You see, all during my adolescence, I was a C.S. Lewis fanatic. And Lewis, was, of course, an Anglican Catholic. This was certainly not made clear to me when I was reading Lewis. Everyone in the evangelical world praised Lewis, and my parents encouraged my reading him.

I remember hearing a few years ago that there was a symposium on Lewis, where people had gathered from around the world to celebrate his life and work. At one of the large, roundtable discussions, one woman raised the question of his denominational affiliation. No one in the room stirred for a few moments. Finally, an elderly priest stood and said, "He was an Anglo-Catholic." And everyone in the room was apparently shocked. That Lewis was an Anglo-Catholic is common knowledge to folks in mainline denominations, but it is one of the best-kept secrets in the evangelical world.

So you can imagine my parents' chagrin, when I discovered the Episcopal Church. Now I was going through a huge spiritual upheaval at that time. I was wrestling mightily with the monster God of my childhood, and the fundamentalism that my tradition gave me. As I've told you before, I used to wake up in the middle of the night screaming with visions of hellfire. Terrified, I cried out to God for help, and I believe God led me to St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Riverside, California.

At St. Michael's I experienced a true spiritual rebirth. There I discovered that I could approach Jesus without all the trappings of my childhood faith. I felt like I was hearing the gospel for the first time. And I was also able to separate Jesus's teaching from Paul's. I found that in the Episcopal Church I was able to listen to the Gospel, and NOT to the Epistle.

At a point in my life where I felt like I had to make up my mind about this Jesus character, the Episcopal Church allowed me to make up my mind in FAVOR of him. I was struggling with this very question a lot. I hadn't yet told my parents that I had been attending an Episcopal church. For them Episcopalians are no different from Catholics. And, in fact, except for some minor points of sacramental theology and the small matter of allegiance to the pope, there IS little difference.

I remember one afternoon preparing myself for mass at St. Michael's. It was a weekday mass, and I was one of the only people in the congregation. My religious allegiances were weighing heavily upon my mind. I wondered how in the world I would be able to tell my parents if I decided to convert. I didn't exactly ask God for help, but I did go to church in a troubled state of mind. Perhaps, that is the same thing.

As I sat there musing, the Gospel was read. To my surprise, and eventually horror, the scripture appointed for the day is the one in which Jesus says, "I have not come to bring peace, but to bring a sword, to divide a man from his mother." I felt like I had just swallowed a rock, and silmutaneously that a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I knew what I had to do. If the question was between following my parents and following Jesus, my choice was clear.

When I finally did work up the nerve to tell them, my parents took it hard. In fact, we hardly spoke for about ten years. Part of this, I think, was because of their anger and their extreme disappointment in me, and partly the divide was on my part because I felt abandoned by them and terrified. So, we avoided each other.

While I felt abandoned, they perhaps felt betrayed. Betrayed because the values and beliefs they had tried so hard to instill in me had apparently gone by the wayside, and I had aligned myself with what was, in their minds, the demonic.

I'm sure they were troubled. I'm sure they were hurt. I'm sure they were confused. Does not the scripture say "Raise up a child in the way that he should go and he will not depart from it"? Well, in their minds, I had departed, and departed greatly. How could such a thing be?

This has got to be similar to how Saul is feeling in our reading today. Although my story is one of religious allegiances, our scripture story today, although touching on the religious, is more about political allegiances.

Jonathan is not idiot. He sees how his father has mismanaged his position. He sees his father being tyrannical. He sees his father being despotic. He knows his father is mentally ill. And perhaps, not fully capable of grasping the results of his actions.

At the same time, Jonathan has a deep loyalty, friendship and affection for David. Jonathan is the next person who should take the throne. And yet Jonathan does not seem to care for the throne. What he cares for is the friendship, the agreement, the covenant he has made with his friends. Now this may be bad politics, but my friends, it is excellent religion.

David and Jonathan, as you'll recall from last week's reading, have decided to play a little ruse on Saul, to try to determine exactly how he is feeling about David. Specifically, whether he wants to kill David or not. So David hides out during a week of feasts. When after a couple of days, David does not show up, Saul becomes suspicious and angry, and accuses Jonathan of lying and betraying him, which of course, he has.

I thank God my parents did not address me with the same venom that Saul unleashes on Jonathan in today's reading. I'm not sure I would have been able to withstand it. We perhaps might not have spoken ever again. But Jonathan certainly has some intestinal fortitude to him, and he runs to tell David the news: all is not safe. You must go and hide out.

Did Jonathan do the right thing? Well, it's a complicated issue. Was it treason? Oh, probably. Did he lie to his father? Yes. Did he betray his father's trust. I would say so, yes. But let's look at Saul. Saul is not such a trustworthy character himself, of course. He has been trying to kill David in an ongoing jealous rage.

Where does Jonathan's allegiance lie? Probably, with what I know about Jonathan, his allegiance lies on the side of justice. Saul is acting unjustly. David is doing what David must to stay alive. It's not THAT difficult a decision for Jonathan, though it might be for you or I if we were in his position.

But Saul IS angry. Jonathan HAS betrayed him. Jonathan has departed from the way that he should go, at least in Saul's eyes. And Saul is angry and disappointed. So did Jonathan do the right thing. Most of us would probably say yes, but most of us would probably also understand Saul's feelings.

So what does this have to say to us today? Simply put, father does not always know best. Sometimes parents can get caught up in their own dramas, their own allegiances, their own prejudices, their own preferences. And although they can make these clear to their children while they are growing. But if the child has been raised right, there comes a time when the child will think for him or her self.

My wife Kate has struggled a great deal with the scripture "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and he will not depart from it." She has discovered an exegesis of this passage that I like very much. Since we had both come out of fundamentalism, this scripture caused her a lot of grief. But she became reconciled to this verse when she realized that the whole meaning of the passage could be turned on its ear with a simple change of emphasis. "Train up a child in the way that HE should go, and he will not depart from it."

Did you catch that little change? Not "Train a child in the way that SOCIETY says he should go," or "in the way that the PARENTS think he should go" but if you train a child to act from his or her own center, if you train a child to make decisions based on who they are, not who the parents are, not what the culture says, not what the religion says. Train a child in the way that HE, individually, should go, and he will not depart from it. It's a stunner of a verse, and it makes a lot of sense.

How would things have been different if Saul realized that Jonathan had a commitment to justice, and was able to see that he himself was being unjust? Jonathan might have been Saul's salvation. Jonathan might have eventually inherited the throne. Who knows how it might have turned out if the parent had been open to the new path that the child was forging.

How might things have been different if I had been brought up in a religious atmosphere which nurtured my need for symbol, myth, ritual, imagery and imagination. If I had been brought up in a church that not only accepted but promoted and encouraged those things in me, as an artist, I may very well be a Baptist to this day. If I had been brought up in the way that I should go, I doubt I would need to depart from it.

Unfortunately, it is often difficult for parents to separate their prejudices from reality. It is often difficult for people who see the world in a certain way to get out of the box, and see things from a different perspective. In the sixties, this was called "The generation gap." My generation doesn't call it anything. We just ignore it and get on with our lives.

Parents aren't the only ones with prejudices, of course. Any adult in a leadership position needs to be able to step back and say, what is God doing here? What if my parents, instead of simply rejecting me for my new religious direction, had stopped and said, "Whoa! Maybe God IS behind this. What is God doing in this situation. What is God DOING in John's life? How can we support what God is doing?"

What if Saul had been able to step back and say, "Whoa! Wait a minute. I'm getting out of hand here. Why is Jonathan doing what he's doing? Why did he lie to me? What is God doing here? Where is God in this situation?"

We often like to think that we have God all figured out. But I can pretty much guarantee you that anyone who thinks that they have God figured out, doesn't. For that would be a very small God indeed. It doesn't matter if you are a parent or a pastor, or even a grandparent, our own worldview and our own prejudices can sometimes interfere in what God is doing.

As we prepare to baptize this little baptize this child today, I would like to remind the parents and the family, that this baby is going to grow up to have a mind of her own. And this is a good, right, and normal thing. It is your responsibility as good parents to encourage her independence, to encourage her critical thinking skills, to encourage her to have her own mind.

Your child is going to be very different from you. I am certain that if I ever had a child, God would make him a football player, just to spite me, because I HATE football. And I hope that I would be able to encourage that child to be the best football player that he could be. Parents frequently try to live vicariously through their children, and forget that their children have their own lives. They forget that children must choose their own way.

When your child chooses her own way, I hope that you will be able to stand back and say, "What is God doing here?"

I'd like to close with a poem from the poet Kahlil Gibran on children: "Your children do not belong to you"

Let us pray.

Holy God, you who are the model of parenthood for us,
Help us to encourage our young people to go the way that THEY should go,
To be open to the new things you are doing in our midst,
To be open to what we do not understand, or do not want to hear
For your plans go far beyond what we can imagine,
And your ways are not our ways.
Bless this child, baptised today into new life,
That she might know your grace and purpose in her life,
For we ask this in the very name in which we baptize,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.