2 Samuel 3:7; 21:1-14
June 28, 2020
Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
Last week I had the opportunity to learn from Lucy Abbott-Tucker as a part of my Souljourners residency through the Sophia Center in Atchison. I am at the beginning of a three-year journey of learning how to be a spiritual director, so I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about that in the future. But for today I want to share just one nugget from the many hours we spent with Lucy last week.
In talking with us about the life of faith she said, “If we are attentive to God’s gaze, we will grow in freedom.”
Being attentive to God’s gaze is what we do here, in worship. We come together to allow God’s presence to be felt. And we gather around these ancient stories to see where we might feel and hear the still-speaking voice of God in our own 21st century lives.
As we do this, we start to notice all kinds of emotions and thoughts bubbling within us. Lucy had us do an exercise that I want to share with you this morning. She taught that desire, resistance, and stubbornness are all a part of our individual and collective spiritual lives. And she asked us to find those aspects in our bodies.
So I want you to sit comfortably now and rest your hands in your lap. Maybe even close your eyes if that feels right. Now, use your hands to show what desire feels like. There’s not a right or wrong answer.. Just use your hands to show how desire feels.
Now use your hands to show resistance. How does it feel to resist? What might that look like?
And finally, use your hands to embody stubbornness. What does that look like? How does stubbornness feel?
Okay, open your eyes now if you had them closed. Desire. Resistance. Stubbornness.
These are all present in this morning’s story from 2 Samuel. I’m guessing it’s not one you’re very familiar with because it’s certainly not one most of us learned in Sunday School as kids. Let’s listen to Leslie read it now.
(Listen to the scripture read aloud)
So we’ve got two main characters in this ancient story. You may have heard of King David before. And you might already be thinking about how desire, resistance, stubbornness were a part of his journey. He plays a supporting role in this story.
The protagonist, though, is a woman named Rizpah. Desire, resistance, stubbornness are woven throughout her spiritual journey, too.
She is the faith ancestor of many others. Countless parents, siblings, children, grandparents who have watched as their loved ones died violent deaths….often at the hands of the state, as in Rizpah’s story. Many of them have names we’ll never know. Some have names that are etched on the pages of our history books.
Like Mamie Till-Mobley, whose son, Emmett, was brutally lynched while visiting family in Mississippi in the summer of 1955. Though the local authorities wanted to quietly bury Emmett in Mississippi, his mother refused. She insisted on bringing him home to Chicago. (Are you listening for desire, resistance, stubbornness?)
Once there, she insisted on having an open casket funeral and showed the world what the murderers did to her son. Her outrage and lament spilled into the world around her like a tidal wave, forcing our nation to reckon with the evil of white supremacy. [1]
For every Mamie Till-Mobley, there are others whose names are less-known. Parents who have lost children in mass shootings, to police brutality, to drug addiction, to a lack of access to mental health care, to war, and on and on.
I’ll never forget hearing Marian Wright-Edelman speak at the UCC General Synod back in 2007. She told a story about a young child who had died because he did not have access to proper dental care. His parents could not afford to take him to the dentist and he had an abscessed tooth which eventually caused a full-body infection and took his life. His mother’s lament and outrage spilled into the world like a tidal wave, forcing everyone she encountered to wonder how we can live in a world where a child dies because they access a visit to the dentist.
These are stories of public unraveling. When the pain is too great to bear alone, it overflows. And sometimes, in that overflowing, in that unraveling, public grief inspires action.
Listen now for the overflowing, the unraveling. Listen now for the movement of desire, resistance, stubbornness in the story of Rizpah. Maybe you’ll even want to move your hands into those positions of desire, resistance, stubbornness as you listen to the story.
So many women in the Bible whose names we don’t know. But we know this one. Rizpah, daughter of Aiah. She was a concubine of King Saul. This means she was used by the king but did not have any of the protections given to his wives. Her job was to produce heirs and please the king.
When we open our Bibles to read Rizpah’s story in 2 Samuel 21, we can’t help but notice the “header” at the top of the chapter. Incidentally, it’s important to remember that these section headers are NOT a part of the original text. They were added later and vary depending on what version you read. The header in the NRSV is “David avenges the Gibeonites.” After you hear this story you can ponder what a better title might be.
King David is here in the story, though. Front and center. He’s worried about consolidating power, as kings often are. Though he is the king he is concerned about others who might try to take the throne from him. The former king, Saul, has many descendents who could cause trouble. And so it seems David sees an opportunity to use an ongoing famine as a pretext to get rid of his problems.
And by “get rid of his problems” I mean arrange for the murder of innocent people.
We are told that David prays about the famine. And that the Lord tells him the people are being punished because of atrocities that Saul committed against the neighboring Gibeonites. I don’t know about you, but I always get a little nervous when kings get directives from God. So often the word from the Lord sounds more like the King’s voice instead.
King David goes to the Gibeonites and asks what he can do to make things right. They initially resist but eventually give David an answer, “Give us seven of Saul’s sons,” they say. “We will kill them and then things will be right between us.”
They want to kill Saul’s sons. The possible usurpers of the throne. How convenient for David.
And so David hands over seven sons. Two are the sons of Rizpah, Armoni and Mephibosheth. The other five are the sons of Saul’s daughter, Merab. We are not told their names.
The Gibeonites kill the sons. All seven of them.
But this is not the end of the story.
Because Rizpah resists. She takes herself up the mountain with her sackcloth. And as the harvest season begins, she makes a home for herself there with the bodies that have been left in the sun. Austin Channing Brown tells us, “The word says that she took her sackcloth and made a tent out of it. Her tool for mourning became the shelter under which she led her ferocious vigil.” [2]
Rizpah on the mountain. Can we even begin to imagine what she felt and experienced on that mountain? Her desire for justice overflows. She resists the cruelty of those in power who would throw away lives so callously. Stubbornly, she sits on the mountain until the rains come. And that means months. She stayed on the mountain for about seven months, publicly unraveling. Publicly mourning. Publicly bearing witness to the sins of those in power. A ferocious vigil.
And those in power listened.
King David, hearing about Rizpah’s protest of one, is moved to action. He gathered up the bones of the seven who had been sacrificed and he also went and gathered up the bones of Saul and Jonathan, who had died long before. After their death in battle, David failed to eulogize them and bury them properly. Rizpah’s grief caused him to see the error of his ways.
We are told that after David listened to Rizpah and buried these nine people, the famine ended. Things began to get better for the people of Israel for a time.
We are not told what happened to Rizpah. We don’t know any more about her desires, her resistance, her stubbornness. Like many others who publicly mourn and bear witness to the atrocities humans commit against one another, we only know this one part of her story. We see her desire, resistance, and stubbornness here. We see how it changed the world around her. And we aren’t able to know the rest.
Let’s pause this morning and honor Rizpah and the countless others whose outrage and lament have overflowed into our world like a torrent.
(Prayerful pause)
“May justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” [3]
Notes:
[1] You can read the story of Mamie Till-Mobley lots of places. I most recently read it in A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali N. Gross.
[3] Amos 5: 24
