“Love that Changes Your Life” (1 Samuel) June 24, 2018 by Chelsea Page

Today in worship we are witnessing and mourning the separation of migrant families and children that is being perpetrated at our border. There’s something about a human rights abuse that targets children that especially gets up our ire. The breaking up of a family unit is one of the worst things you can do to someone. But today I want to talk about the forming of a family unit. I was overjoyed last week to hear the good news that Meghan Toyama is engaged to be married. Weren’t you? There may be other people close to our congregation you know who are soon to be married, and I know for me it fills me with a special, inexpressibly sweet joy, and also wonder, awe, and dread in the face of two people making such a huge commitment.

What’s the big deal about marriage anyway? My spouse always says he doesn’t believe in dating before marriage, which bugs me because I know many love relationships that are perfectly valid and rich without needing to have a wedding ceremony. But I don’t argue with him too much because he always follows that statement immediately by saying, But I do believe in dating after marriage! I don’t contradict him because it’s turned out to be a good deal for me. But seriously, married love is not the only kind of valid romantic love or partnership. Yet it holds a very special place in my heart and imagination.

I think it’s because married love is the kind of love that changes your life. Your life is never just your own anymore once you give yourself to forming a new family. Even if the marriage ends in divorce, it still changes your life forever to have taken that kind of risk of promising yourself wholly to something that might or might not work out. You will forever be a formerly married or remarried person, and that’s a beautiful thing too. And when children are involved, you will always still be family in some sense. So I’m really intrigued by this lifelong love that is expressed in our reading from 1 Samuel today, between David and Jonathan.

It’s impossible to know whether David and Jonathan expressed their love sexually. The modern idea of sexual orientation didn’t exist in Biblical times. But the powerful love story of Jonathan and David in 1 and 2 Samuel has suggested to churches like ours in the PCUSA that same-sex couples are absolutely affirmed and blessed by God. Still, such intense love between two men may make some people uncomfortable in our day, so I invite you to hear their story primarily through the lens of commitment, the same trait which we honor in lifelong marriage, and which has turned our concept of modern marriage from one of property of a man over a woman, into a lifelong partnership between two equals.

How well did this lifelong commitment work out for Jonathan? It certainly shortened his life. He gave everything he had to his love. Yet he found fulfillment even in his loss. Could this be what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians? “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

In the end Jonathan does gain immortality, an eternal place by David’s side and in David’s story. The Bible honors him for this, and God blesses Jonathan for the role he plays in the life of God’s anointed king David, “a man after God’s own heart.”

Friends, God blesses love even when it doesn’t make sense, even when it doesn’t work out, even when it ends up changing your life in ways you would never have consciously chosen from the outset. Love is the biggest risk I know of.

I see this in families at the hospital all the time, going through illness together. When a patient is sick, often the whole family is in deep distress right there with them. Normal life ceases for everyone. So it’s ironic from a certain point of view that we celebrate engagements and weddings with deep joy when they essentially double your chances for heartbreak in this life.

When people ask me if I want to have a child, I always think, now why would I choose to take my heart out of its nice bony chest and place it outside my body, in the form of a little being with legs to run around on and fingers that fit into electrical sockets? When we give ourselves to another person in love, we are so unprotected.

So I want you to think again of those migrant children being detained at the border. Why on earth would people still marry and have children when it’s fully possible that your heart could be kidnapped and locked up, or you could be deported to a country far away from where your heart resides?

Yet God continues to bless these families, to bless these passions and devotions and commitments that make human beings so vulnerable. This is why we must honor marriage by protecting families; because God has blessed and honored them and called them good. May we bless them as well through our actions for justice. Amen.