...and they kissed one another
and wept with one another...
then Jonathan said to David
"Go In Peace..."
1 Samuel 20: 41-42
There is a a haunting song about lost love on my album called I THOUGHT IT WOULD LAST FOREVER. Though clearly modern in it's references, the emotions the song evokes are universal, and as anyone who has ever had a broken heart can testify, the feelings one goes through are epic in proportion. I decided to use the above quote from 1 Samuel about Jonathan and David, because the story of their love has always intrigued me, and touched a special place in my heart. I asked a friend, The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, to write a sermon about Jonathan and David, and why the story of their relationship has meant so much to gay and lesbian Christians and Jews over the millennia, and what it continues to mean to us today. Here is his answer to my query.
Love & Light, Lee
Jonathan and David
By The Rev. Harry Scott
Coverston
| The texts of I Samuel 14 ff. which tell the story of the loving relationship between Jonathan, son of King Saul, and David, slayer of Goliath, have long been favorites among gay and lesbian Christians and Jews. Many would suggest the texts point to a homoerotic love relationship between the two, something that is neither verifiable nor deniable by any independent data, leaving that hypothesis simply a possibility. |
| But whether David and Jonathan were lovers is really not the reason why so many gays and lesbians embrace this story. Beneath the surface of this account - which begins with Jonathan's captivation by the brave David who has slain the legendary, feared Goliath, and ends with the death of Jonathan in battle against the Philistines - lie some powerful elements which gay and lesbian persons know only to well, and sometimes, only too painfully in our own lives. |
| Many of us know what it means to be bonded to another whom we have loved with our very lives, a bond which society will not honor, but which the lover honors with all of his or her life and soul. We know only too well this inexplicable but vibrantly real bonding in the depths of our souls reflected in I Samuel 18:1 : "The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." |
| Only too frequently, gay and lesbian covenanted souls find themselves forced to choose between their beloved and their families, social acceptability, even safety. Saul recognized in David a threat to his plans for Jonathan, plans that included his son's eventual kingship over Israel. He sensed that Jonathan's devotion evidenced loyalties lying with David, not with the family, the kingdom or social convention. And thus, almost from the beginning, the lives of both men were in danger because of their love for each other |
| How many of us know the pain of the rejection of the one we have come to love most by those we have loved most of our lives? How many of us have known parents who sought to destroy our loves for our soulmate through therapy, through prohibiting our seeing our beloved, and through threats to the reputation, career, or even the life of the one we loved most ? And how many of us, like Jonathan, have had to argue with our families, friends, ministers and coworkers, that our beloved, like David, "has not wronged you..." and thus should be spared the destructive plans they have conjured up ? |
| When Jonathan will not be dissuaded from his bond to David, Saul, turns on his own child: "You son of a perverse rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to the your own shame and the shame of your mother's nakedness?" (I Sam. 20:30) How many of us know this kind of shaming, this feeling of being outcast from our families? How many of us have been forced to make the Hobbes' Choice between our families, friends and churches or our beloved ? |
| Though Saul swears to kill David, he is not able to do so. Indeed, David repeatedly demonstrates his willingness to forgive Saul, to forego vengeance, provoking Saul to remark upon David's sparing his life, "You are more righteous than I, for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil." (I Sam. 24:17) But even that recognition cannot remove the wall of hostility between Saul and David, whom he now sees as a rival to his own power and position as well as to the plans he has for his son, Jonathan. |
| Sadly, many of us also know the ending of this story only too well. David is never able to rejoin Jonathan and goes into exile in the hills to avoid conflict with Jonathan's father. Jonathan lives out his father's dreams for him, goes into battle with Saul and they are both slain by Philistines. |
| How many of us know the same loss of companionship those partners endured; who never manage to escape prisons of family, of internalized self-hatred, and fear of social reprisal. How many of us walk away or have been left to try to live into social expectations which inevitably lead to our own destruction? How many of us have had to watch from afar as our beloveds have languished and died, some literally at their own hands, others more slowly and painfully, through the toxins of alcohol, drugs or disease incurred through desperate, clandestine sexual encounters they pray will assure them - if only for a moment -that they are loved and loveable but which can never provide such assurance? |
| The story of Jonathan and David is very un-American; it has no Hollywood Happy Ending. But it speaks to many of us whose lives have been touched by another but whose love was taken from us. For we know the lament of David for his beloved Jonathan only too well: |
| "I am distressed for you, my brother, Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me. Your love was wonderful, passing the love of women...How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle" 2 Samuel 1:26 |
| The Rev.Harry Scott Coverston is an Episcopal Priest in the Diocese of El Camino Real, California, a professed member of theThird Order, Society of St. Francis (Anglican) and is an inactive Member of the Florida Bar Association. He is a Ph.D. Candidate in Religion, Law and Society at Florida State University and lives with his partner of 25 years, Andy Mobley, in Orlando, Florida. |