How the mighty have fallen. From David’s complex time into ours, these words still speak. They remind us that, as one of the commentators I read working on this wrote, sometimes you do not want to turn too soon from pain to praise. Sometimes you need to stay where those tough, stubborn, complicated emotions and situations are. Sometimes you need to look out at the world and know that the glory of Israel has been slain upon the high places. And it hurts. It hurts all of us.
These words don’t speak only into that situation, of course. There have been many situations in our own personal lives, in church lives, in our relationships, where it feels like the glory of Israel is slain upon the high places. I can think of one in my own life, where a good friend just lost his teaching job in a very public and traumatic way, after a long process which was clearly unfair to him and his family. We all have stories we bring to mind. When those times come, though it would be better not to lash out in anger as David did when he had the Amalekite executed for bringing the news of Saul’s death, we gain nothing by not acknowledging the pain, the loss, the fear, and the anger.
It is not that there is nothing to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again. There is plenty to do on a number of fronts, in our own lives, in the life of the church. But we won’t gain anything by rushing to do before we pause to lament. Lament the brokenness of the world, cry as the Psalter says in another famous psalm of lament, “out of the depths.” Lament, as David did for Saul and Jonathan, that 9 of our brothers and sisters in Christ, whose bond with us in the baptismal waters is stronger than any way humans might try to divide us, died because we live in a broken world.
Words of lament and words of hope. We place against the story of David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan, against the story of the martyrs of Charleston, the story in the Gospel reading today, where Jesus heals not one but two people. A little girl who was the daughter of a wealthy synagogue supporter, and a woman who had been ritually unclean and shunned by everyone for years. Somehow, in the middle of this brokenness, comes the healer, and a healer who makes no distinction between rich and poor, between Jew and Samaritan. Who even now, we know, makes no difference between black and white.
Here is one thing we can do. And we can do it out of our lament, and out of our trust in that healer. We are not—in our families, in the church locally or globally—of one mind on many things. We know that. But we gain nothing by hiding ourselves away from those who differ from us, whether because they look differently or think differently. If we do that, if we shut ourselves up and isolate ourselves, we are part of the problem, not the solution. We must learn to live and think and work and love and pray together. As our new presiding bishop has said, our hand needs to be “on the Gospel plow.”
Not just because lives depend on it: they do. Not just because the world will be a better place because of it; it will. But because it is what God asks us to do. It is the promise we made, or was made on our behalf, at our baptism. It is the hard work, the necessary work, the lamenting work, the ultimately hopeful work, of following Christ.
Thanks to Christian History Magazine for allowing me to adapt this article on Richard Allen.
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