St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by The Reverend Bruce W. B. Jenneker in the Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr on the Fifteenth Sunday of the Year, 16 July 2006

These last several weeks we have been reading in First Samuel the history of the foundation of the monarchy in Israel. Now, in the lesson before us tonight, the history of the Jews has become David's story and we find ourselves at the beginning of the trajectory by which David will become one of the most significant, most attractive and most beguiling of the heroes of Israel.

The lesson before us tonight presents two highly dramatic scenes from the life of David, each charged with emotion and laden with meaning. The first is that favourite story of all illustrated Children's Bibles: the handsome, young shepherd boy, ruddy, with beautiful eyes, who has charmed King Saul with his music-making, slays the giant Goliath, champion of the Philistines, and he does it with a sling and five smooth stones. Then, with the giant dead at his feet, David cuts off Goliath's head and brings it to Jerusalem, a trophy to lay at the feet of the king. That is the first scene: invasion and retaliation, war, single-combat, violence and brutality – the cheapness of life.

In the second scene, David, fresh from his astounding victory, is summoned to the king's presence, where he is questioned about his lineage. While King Saul is talking to the young and handsome victor, his son Jonathan stands by, watching and listening. As the encounter between Saul and David continues, Jonathan is captivated by the young man, and by the time Saul had finished speaking to David, 'the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved David as his own soul'. There and then Jonathan stripped off all his armour and all his clothes and handed them all over to David. Jonathan made a covenant with David on that day, and from then David lived in Saul's house. That is the second scene: one man drawn to another, captivation, soul finding soul, covenant sealed, commitment given and received – a profound and life-defining relationship.

So it is that the lectionary confronts us with two burning issues: when is life ever cheap, and when is a relationship not a relationship? These questions are not idle speculation or mere intellectual, theological inquiry. The one shouts at us from the headlines of our newspapers and the grotesque images on our television screens. The other threatens to pull apart the world-wide communion of which we are a Province, and polarises communities and whole societies.

Bombs in Baghdad, a train blown to smithereens in Mumbai, suicide bombs in Pakistan. Another gruesome week of violence, death and devastation in the Middle East – this week reaching into Lebanon and encroaching on Egypt and Jordan. Here at home, shack-fires kill some, maim many, and leave others homeless. Murder is commonplace, robbery is an everyday occurrence and rape is as ubiquitous as a scourge of locusts when it comes. Drug use is widespread, and with it the demonic dealing that sustains it, shackling to it lives that are tortured, ruined, wasted. Our hospitals are as frequently places of contagion and death as they are havens of healing and recuperation. HIV and AIDS, and tuberculosis remain rampant. Unemployment and poverty keep many unhealthy and dying. And all the while on our roads and highways hundreds of thousands of lives are cut short by impatience and recklessness, selfishness and pride. Life is cheap, very cheap.

And what makes it so? Our indifference, yours and mine. How much do we know about the struggle between Israel and Palestine? Does its devastation reach our hearts as the horrors of apartheid radicalised the people of Norway and Sweden, of Finland and Russia and China and the US and the rest of Europe? Are we moved to action as they were? Are we even aware that Mumbai is what we used to call Bombay and do we know what lies behind the change of that city's name? How much do we know about drug use in our city and region and how are we using what we know to fight back? Our willing ignorance is our condemnation. Life is cheap. We refuse to let the degradation and dehumanization of life halt our acquisitiveness or interrupt our self-indulgence. How do we treat the women we encounter everyday? It is our disrespect of them that breeds the violence that is visited upon them. It is our insistence on a male-identified world that creates the environment of disrespect and contempt that gives rise to rape. Our world is designed for the pleasure of men, informed by masculine attitudes, assumes male prerogatives and upholds male domination Every time I deny the full worth of a woman I wink at the rapist, and he nods back at me. Even as I say this I am aware that we have not had a woman preach from this pulpit or preside at our altar since Mother Vivian left us for the greener shores of New Zealand. And it is by persisting in thoughtlessness of precisely this sort that we are part of the culture that declares that life is cheap, disposable, unhallowed, just so much rubbish.

Scholars have argued for centuries about the sacred texts that describe the relationship between Jonathan and David. This is not the place or the time to probe and analyse the texts. Suffice to say that no matter how ambiguous the texts are, or how polarised the interpretations of them, one thing is clear from them: and that is that the relationship between Jonathan and David was one of profound intensity and enduring commitment, indeed it was a covenant that was given public expression and which gained public respect. It was a relationship in which the crown-prince recognised the inherent dignity of the shepherd boy and handed over to him all the prerogatives of his place in the succession. It was a relationship of interdependent support and reciprocal protection. Heart to heart and soul of one soul, these two men choose to see life from the same perspective, act from a shared set of values, and offered themselves to each other, unconditionally, unreservedly, sacrificially, till death parted them.

How, I ask myself, does the way I commit myself measure up to this model of fidelity, constancy and self-sacrificing love? Can you place your relationships in the balance opposite it – or do you 'have' a wife, take your identity from your husband, live through your children, make demands of your parents, parade your friends like trophies? And let us not run away from the questions about same-sex relationships that this story begs. Those questions belong with all the rest of them, each one of them asking us, when is a relationship a relationship and when is it just using someone else, or worse, abusing them?

The biblical perspective on life is that it is precious, created by God, bearing the smudge of God's hands and the traces of God's fingers. Life is a many splendoured thing, redolent with divinity. Is it not ironic that the century that placed a man on the moon and began to explore the farthest reaches of space also turned out to be the century characterised by the most horrific inhumanity – within the span of that one century we created the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Pogroms in Russia, Apartheid, genocide in Uganda, the on-going crisis in the Middle East, the occupation of Tibet, the struggle in East Timor, the ghastly consequences of colonialism all across our own dear continent – the list goes on, too long to complete.

Tonight the story of David challenges us to look at the way we deal with the giants of violence in our lives: will we remain part of the problem, or will we commit ourselves to being part of the solution? Can we commit ourselves, each one of us, to a regular self-examination to identify whenever and however we participate in violence – the words we say, the gestures we use, the assumptions we take for granted, the attitudes we express, the violent actions of others we condone or about which we keep silent.

Similarly the relationship between David and Jonathan challenges us to consider our own relationships – honestly, candidly and without throwing up our defences. How deeply committed are we, you and I, to being authentic in our relationships, not using one another, nor objectifying one another? How generous are we, how patient, how self-sacrificing? Are we prisoners of our roles – as lover, friend, parent, child, husband, wife – rather than generous enablers of one another in relationships of mutual care and loving regard?

All around us the evidence is unambiguous that our time and our culture regard life as cheap, dirt cheap. The story of David, with its Goliath and its Jonathan, serves as a salutary reminder that life is unspeakably precious, splendid beyond the telling.

Let us learn to give thanks for life – not only in words and in hymns and in prayer, but in the actions we choose and by the values we embody. Let us give thanks for life.

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