Focus: God values the heart.
I am a sucker for stories about unlikely friendships. Search the Internet and you can find pictures of cats and dogs, dogs and ducks, cats and rats, Wolverines and Buckeyes—ok, I made that one up. My favorite story recently is about the unlikely friendship between former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Michele Obama. A couple moments have gone viral between them, whether it’s their big hug at President Biden’s inauguration or Pres. Bush’s favorite: him reaching over to give Michelle Obama an Altoid at Sen. John McCain’s funeral. “It shocked me,” Pres. Bush said. “We got in the car and I think Barbara or Jenna [Bush, the president’s daughters] said, “Hey, you’re trending!” The American people were so surprised that Michelle Obama and I could be friends.” Obama said, “He’s my partner in crime at every major thing where all the ‘formers’ gather. So we’re together all the time. I love him to death. He’s a wonderful man, he’s a funny man.” The former president wrapped it up: “I think it’s a problem that Americans are so polarized in their thinking that they can’t imagine a George W. Bush and a Michelle Obama being friends.”
As surprising as that friendship is, it has nothing on the most unlikely friendship in the Bible: Jonathan and David. We heard last week that “Jonathan loved David as his own soul (1 Sam18:3).”
There was one obvious test to this relationship. Jonathan is the son of the current King Saul. In a nutshell, this is what makes the friendship so unlikely: Saul wants to kill David who he sees as a threat to the throne. And if David’s a threat to Saul, he’s even more a threat to Jonathan who is Saul’s heir. From a political standpoint, from a career standpoint, from a popularity standpoint, this should be a zero-sum game. The worse the news for Jonathan, the better the news for David, and vice versa.
And that’s why David’s reaction is so surprising when he gets the news today that Saul and Jonathan have been killed in battle. You might think David would be happy: at the very least, no one will try to kill him anymore; he can go home. And more than that, there’s now no real obstacle in his way to the throne that was promised to him by Samuel several chapters ago. The messenger who delivers the news expects that a jubilant David will reward him. And yet, exactly the opposite happens: David sings this long lament and tells all of Israel to do the same.
Why? Because David isn’t going to rejoice at the death of Israel’s king or at the death of a friend. How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan lies slain upon your high places. 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. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!”
A few weeks ago, we were told, “Do not judge by appearance or heigh of stature, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Whatever his flaws—and there are many that we’ll hear about in the coming weeks—on the first day of his reign, David shows the kingdom of Israel and us today his heart—the heart that God saw all the way back at the beginning. David’s heart values empathy over victory, loyalty over power, human friendship over earthly achievement. Empathy, loyalty, friendship, these are the things that matter to David. These are the things that matter to God. Do they matter to us?
Biblical scholar Eugene Peterson writes about this story, “Friendship is a much-underestimated aspect of spirituality. It’s every bit as significant as prayer and fasting. Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what’s common in human experience and turns it into something holy.”
Friendship is that kind of everyday miracle that often goes unnoticed, unappreciated, even taken for granted. If you asked David and Jonathan why they were friends, probably they couldn’t have told you why. But those bonds that they built sustained them through war, rivalry, and the cruelty of King Saul.
Amen