"Deepening Your Spiritual Life" II

I Samuel 18-20

Today is your day to emphasize "confession" in your prayer life. Roman Catholic brothers and sisters find it important to "go to confession" where they confess their sins to a priest and hear words of forgiveness and pardon. While Protestants say they don't need a priest to do that with, I sometimes wonder if we don't conveniently avoid confession altogether. Besides there have been many times when having someone to confess my sinfulness to has been a powerful source of both healing and avoidance of doing or saying foolish things. Confession with another Christian or just between you and God requires a most important discipline, self-examination. Where are the places in your life where your Christian faith and your words, actions and attitudes don't line up? If you say, "There are no places," then I invite you to examine yourself more closely.

Today's Bible Study mainly involves three people - David, King Saul, and his son, Jonathan. In yesterday's reading, we saw that Saul had become very fond of David. We know from today's passage that Saul's son, Jonathan and David had become best of friends. Again, this looks like a setup for a smooth change of power, except for one major flaw in the character of Saul. That character flaw destroys Saul as a leader and threatens both his relationship with David and his own son, Jonathan - the green monster of jealousy. This flaw seems to be a natural hazard for anyone who has a place of leadership, so as we investigate Saul, we will need to examine ourselves.

Our reading for today follows the famous story of David and Goliath and tells of the great popularity of David. Mighty mouse had indeed come to save the day! All seems well in the opening verses of chapter 18 until the ladies come out into the streets to meeting their returning warriors singing, "Saul has killed his thousands, but David his ten thousands." Notice the celebrity cult that had been there for Saul but suddenly left him for a new celebrity. We will read later in the beginning of next week how this very same situation happened between David and his own son, Absalom. People love a hero...until they find a new one.

We also have here a competitiveness that develops between generations. Demographers have divided society according to generations (conveniently set up in 18 year intervals according to birth): builders (1910-1927), silents (1928-1945), baby boomers (1946-1963), Generation X (1964-1982), Generation Y or Millenials (1982-2000). Each generation has been marketed to in ways that have pitted them against each other. While there has always been a "generation gap" (a term coined in the 60s), the Judeo-Christian faith has seen the generations as gifts to each other and passing power from one generation to another as being natural and something to be done with great care. But the Bible is also honest to say that sin and competitiveness between the generations has always been present.

Saul views the one that he so dearly loved and had made as one of the family as a threat from the day of the victory parade over the Philistines forward. Verse 10 shows how this jealousy took a spiritual power all its own (an evil spirit that came forcefully on Saul) and verse 14 even says that Saul feared David. In the generations of St. Luke's, will we see each other as gift or threat? Will those who are in power zealously hold on to it? Will those who are coming of age agressively grasp for it? Or will power and leadership be shared and mentored into an even greater day for the service of Christ? This challenge faces every mainline church of our day. It will take the grace of God and the leadership of the Holy Spirit to help us in this time of transition. It will also take the examination of hearts and confession of our own fears and unwillingness to share power - what is only natural and human.

In jealousy and fear, Saul then resorts to manipulative leadership. He offers his own daughters to David as wives, not because he thinks David would be a good husband to them, but because David would be distracted and easier prey in battle (a strategy employed by David on someone else later). Saul promises his daughter Michal to him if he kills 100 Philistines (in graphic terms), expecting that David would be killed in the process. But David accomplishes the task and he ends up giving his daughter to David in marriage. The marriage is a difficult one. The tendency toward manipulation is real in every small child and it only matures into adulthood. We manipulate information by gossip and laying, manipulate feelings by self-pity and shame, and manipulate power by control or setting people up for the fall in many ways. In what ways do you find yourself manipulative? As Christians, we are not immune and must die to manipulation's natural tendencies daily.

The brokeness of Saul's relationships only deepens as even his own son and daughter take David's side to protect him against Saul's enraged attacks in chapter 19. A tragic moment happens in chapter 20:30 when Saul publicly cusses out Jonathan, reminding Jonathan that he was the rightful heir to his throne, not David. Jonathan defends David and Saul hurls a spear at his own flesh and blood. Often broken relationships are the fruit of our jealous, fearful, competitive and manipulative ways. Self-examination invites us to search what broken relationships we experience and seek God's forgiveness, pardon and a way toward healing.

Psalm 18:1-30

This Psalm was written while David was eluding the attacks of Saul. Notice the epic language of David as he describes God's faithfulness and deliverance of him in times of struggle. When we're in distress it does feel like the whole earth is shaking around us. But David has a relationship with God that provides him supernatural strength for his epic struggles. David's response here is Spirit-filled rather than reactive. In his better days, David is like this, but not always, as we shall see.