In tonight’s gospel Jesus faces the crowd with a stark choice- are you with me or are you against me? That choice is one for us to make too, but first a few words by way of a Father’s Day prologue. One day in the summer of 1948, I was walking back from the beach, hand in hand with my father, when he turned to me and asked – Have you given your heart to the Lord Jesus? The question wasn’t totally out of context, since I had been attending a children’s mission on Shoreham’s stony beach. (We couldn’t afford a proper holiday that year). Had I given my heart to the Lord Jesus? Like most small boys, I was much more interested in train numbers and cricket scores than in anything to do with my heart. It was all rather embarrassing, but flustered and uncomfortable as I was, I had just enough sense of what he meant to give the positive response that was evidently expected. So far as I can recall, nothing more was said – I think he just squeezed my hand, and we walked on home. Was it a fair question for an adult to put to a child of seven? Maybe not, but it gave me the nudge which perhaps I needed, and that moment has lodged in my memory ever since.
Both our readings tonight are about loyalty and commitment, about taking sides, and about the obedience that is the test of that commitment. After slaying Goliath he has been taken into Saul’s family. He has formed a deep friendship with Jonathan, Saul’s eldest son, and he has become engaged to Saul’s daughter Michal. In the ongoing confrontation with the Philistines, David has been even more successful than Saul himself, but it is his very success and consequent celebrity that puts him at risk. When Saul hears the people singing that he has killed thousands, but David has killed tens of thousands, he becomes jealous, and plans to kill the young man whom he now perceives as his rival. Jonathan contrives to warn David, who flees into exile, without food or armour. Our reading described his flight, and the desperate measures to which he had to resort in order to make good his escape. David has been deeply reluctant to take sides against Saul, but from that moment the die is cast – David and Saul are divided, with all the bitter consequences that would flow from that.
Whilst the setting of the story is ancient, the rise and fall of a leader is a familiar tale. Ten years ago the sad history of Diana Princess of Wales reminded us how deeply unsettling the popularity of the young and glamorous can be. Whether in sport or fashion, business or politics, leaders are for ever looking over their shoulders at those who might succeed them. Choices have to be made. And when it comes to the choice of a leader, we cannot have it both ways. Are we with Saul or with David? Are we with Jesus, or are we with Beelzebul, the prince of darkness? We have to choose. Whoever is not with me is against me, Jesus says. And it’s not enough to say: I’m against evil but I’m not sure who or what I do believe in. If there’s noone in charge, the restless unclean spirit will soon find ways to fill the vacancy, like a bunch of squatters moving into an empty property. As our gospel reading said, when it finds the house swept and tidy, it comes back and moves in with seven other spirits more evil than itself.
Hear, hear, cries a woman from the back of the crowd. Let’s go with Jesus then – and with his mother. But Jesus rounds on her. No, no, he says – what matters is not the honouring of my family, but the honouring of God, by obedience to his word. We think back to David and Saul, and recognise that this is what makes the difference between Israel’s greatest king and his rejected predecessor. Once the tall shy young man has been found hidden in the baggage cart and installed as king, Saul quickly gets used to the exercise of power. Forgetting the obedience which is required of the servants of God, he begins to substitute his own judgment and authority. When Samuel is late for the sacrifice, Saul does it himself. Putting his own authority on the line, he swears a rash oath which nearly causes him to take the life of his own son. The final straw is when he turns a blind eye as his soldiers ignore the order to destroy all the sheep and cattle of the defeated Amalekites. His errors may not seem all that serious in a king determined to get on with the job, but they reveal a man who is more inclined to follow his own judgment than to obey God and his prophet.
David by contrast is both loyal and obedient. He serves Saul faithfully and energetically, both on the battle field and in the palace, for as long as he can, abandoning his duties only when he finds that his own life is at risk. He and Jonathan are both faithful in the keeping of their vows to one another, even though in Jonathan’s case he knows it will cost him the succession. Eventually even David will succumb to the corruption of power, but at this early stage in his life, his loyalty and obedience cannot be faulted.
And that is what makes him such a key role model in the Old Testament, where loyalty and obedience are integral to the understanding of God’s relationship with his people. God makes a solemn covenant with his people, to which he remains loyal despite their continual failures to honour their side of the bargain – to be his faithful people, loving him, worshipping him, obeying his law. Time and again he has to wipe the slate clean and let them make a fresh start, because he cannot be untrue to himself and to his own promise to be their God. It is only in the New Testament that we are finally led to grasp that obedience is not just what God demands of his people. It’s not just a deal under which God loves us, and we do our best to follow his commandments. In and through Jesus we learn that obedience born of love is integral to the nature of God himself. In and through the Holy Spirit we are ourselves caught up into that same economy of love within the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, which converts the burden of obedience into the giving and receiving of love.
Whoever is not with me is against me. Whose side are you on? In tonight’s gospel the choice is addressed to the crowd at large. But it is in the end a choice which each one of us has to make for ourselves. There are many occasions when Jesus gently draws out from an individual a very simple confession of faith in him. It seems to be a necessary condition for the exercise of his power – again and again we hear the refrain, your faith has made you whole. Even now, as we come to him in our need, he makes it easy for us to say yes. And when we say: Lord, I believe, we discover that his love is indeed able to meet our need, in the healing of our troubled souls and bodies. Each one of us, in our own way and in our own time, needs to take that step. And most of us need a personal invitation.
Have you given your heart to the Lord Jesus? I didn’t know then, and I’m not sure that I really know even now quite what I meant when I glanced up at my father to say: Yes, Daddy, I have. What I do know is that, young or old, however much or little we may understand, Jesus still invites us to make that choice, to join his side, to accept his gentle rule. Yet what he seeks is not so much our submission as our love, for it is in the giving and receiving of that love that we discover that obedience is not a burden after all, but a gift. In the concluding words of our gospel reading: Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it (Luke 11.28).