Well it did not take a day in Jonestown for the news to spread about what my cousin Frank had done. It was almost unbelievable what Frank had done. But there was the evidence – all spread out in the back of Frank’s pickup truck just outside the Post Office. There were about two hundred fish, which Frank proudly said he had caught out on the little pond out on his farm. “I am exhausted! They were taking my hook as fast as I could get it back out there.” Pretty soon everybody was talking about what an amazing fisherman Frank must be.
Everybody but his wife, Jean. “Frank! There is no way on God’s green earth you caught all those fish! You and I know you cannot catch a fish on a catfish farm on a good day. Now I want to know what REALLY happened.”
Well, I did catch my fish – sort of. I was out there on my tractor and I accidentally hit that power pole and knocked it down with the wire in the pond. There was a big zap and sparks flew everywhere and the next thing I knew, all the fish in that pond were rising to the top! I pulled that wire out and went in there and I CAUGHT those fish with my net.”
There is myth and there is reality. There are our ideals and there is also the truth about who we really are.
In our Hebrew reading today, we are invited to attend a coronation ceremony. David becomes king of Israel. It is a high moment in Israel’s history. It is the time Israel would look back upon as the moment when God gave them their greatest king. And just a few verses later we are told how David captured the city of Jerusalem and made it the capital of Israel. For centuries to come, Jerusalem would become the symbol of all Israel’s longings. “Jerusalem, if I forget you, let my right hand go limp. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I don't think about you above all else.” Jerusalem and King David became for the people that ideal time with an ideal ruler when God’s presence was fully with Israel and there was peace and prosperity and security.
As Christians we also use the ideal image of King David and Jerusalem as a metaphor of all we hope for. Jesus is the Son of David. Why? Because David was the greatest king of Israel and Jesus fulfills all the hopes of the return of the glory day when David was king. In the book of Revelation, we long for the day when, “I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.”
But there is myth and there is reality. There is the ideal and there is also the truth about who we really are. Nowhere is this more evident than in the books of First and Second Samuel. The editor of these ancient books has taken two very different portraits of David and combined them into one story. He has taken two at variant traditions about David and edited them into one story. These two traditions could not be more different. In one, David’s rise to power is a smooth, seamless transition of a shepherd boy into a mighty, just and righteous king. In this tradition, David can do no wrong. He defeats Goliath through a purity of faith. He overcomes his enemies and treats them with benevolence and grace. There are no moral problems facing David or about him. He makes no bad choices and God seems at every turn to bless him in his rise to power.
But in the other tradition, David has not been knighted as a saint in shining armor. He is real and his rise to power is slow, bloody, and fraught with moral difficulties. He surrounds himself not only with good men, but violent and evil men. At times he abhors violence and at other times he has blood on his hands. In this version, David’s world seems confused, as contradictory, dangerous, and violent as our own world. In this version, David is a more complex man, even as our own leaders are all more complex than we sometimes like to believe.
The most amazing revelation about all of this, is that the writer of Samuel – the man who edited these two traditions into one - apparently felt that we need both – both the ideal version of history and the reality.
We need our myths. Our myths contain nuggets of truth about us. They express the ideal version of where we have come from and who we are. They are important because our myths hold up our highest ideals and invite us to aspire to them. Without them we have no vision of what is possible. With them, we have a sense of our identity and our deepest values.
But we also need the hard reality. Our myths can be very dangerous when we allow them to conceal the complete truth about who we are. We caught a lot of fish, but maybe we did not reel them in the way we always say we did. We can be so lost in the ideal version of our history that forget or minimize the very difficult and imperfect path we followed to get where we are.
On this Fourth of July weekend, we take time to celebrate the great ideals on which our nation was founded. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. We feel such pride when we read these words. We stand tall as Americans when we realize that our nation is built on laws in which the majority rule, but the minority retain certain rights that cannot be denied them. We sing our national anthem and remember that glorious night when bombs where bursting in the air but in the morning our flag was still there. We remember with thanksgiving the sacrifice men and women have made – paying the ultimate price for our nation and its highest ideals. Justifiably we feel so much pride to be Americans.
These are our highest ideal – based upon the amazing truths of our nation and its founding. They hold before us what we in some ways are and what we also still aspire to be. Without them we would be lost and greatly diminished.
But we also know that the path to where we are is more. As with the story of King David, our founding and our history has been fraught with contradictions, dangers, and violence. Only over time have we struggled to make sure the rights of all people are respected: former slaves, Native Americans, and women. We know there are times in our history when we have sought our own prosperity – but at great expense to the prosperity of other nations and people. There remains today vast gaps between the haves and the have nots.
I remember taking the required class in Mississippi history when I was in 9th grade. He was a white man who loved his state but who had an ideal view of our state’s history. When it came time to teach about the civil rights struggle, he only spent 30 minutes and glossed over the atrocities that were committed. No wonder the blacks in my school despised the class and complained about the teacher. He acknowledged only the myth and denied the hard truth. We need our ideals as a nation, but we must never let that overshadow the reality of our struggle.
What is true in our nation is also true in our families.
Several years ago, I attended a funeral of the mother of one of my church members. A friend of the family got up to eulogizes the elderly woman who had died after a long battle with cancer. She went on about what a wonderful friend she had been, how much she loved to play bridge, her many trips abroad, and most of all what a wonderful human being she was and how much she loved her family.
I looked over at the daughter – who the whole time this woman was speaking – was so distraught. I wondered how she was hearing what was being said about her mother who I knew did not completely fit the description being given. Then the pastor emeritus of that church stood up to give his eulogy. He said, “In all honesty, Betty was a difficult woman who in many ways made life difficult and painful for her daughter.”
I looked over to the daughter. She was still crying, but now more relaxed as if the burden was being taken off her back with each of the pastor’s honest words. He continued, “Betty was difficult – but if we understand her own upbringing and enormous challenges presented by the great losses early in her life we find reason for understanding and compassion for her.” It was one of the most brave, honest, and graceful eulogies I have ever heard. It both honored the good myths of that family but refused to let the healing truth be ignored.
Everyone here has their myths and their realities, their ideals and their struggles – every nation, every church, every family, every individual. The books of Samuel would tell us that we need both the myths and the realities. God knows we need our ideals to which we aspire, as we also need to be grounded in the reality of our honest struggles.
The good news is that God is with us not only when we live up to our ideals, but when we as nations, families, and individuals contend with the imperfections and the messiness of living in the real world. God is in the messiness of our lives – even as God was in the messiness of David’s life. It is only when we face the difficulties and this messiness of our lives that God meets us with the grace to move closer to our ideals. It is the truth and the grace that sets us free.
Rev. Allen Mothershed, First Congregational Church, Moline, July 5, 2009