All Will Be Well (reflection during hymn sing service, June 28, 2009)

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Mark 5:21-43

It is quite appropriate that we are doing a hymn sing service in the middle of a sermon series on the stories found in 1 and 2 Samuel. David was a gifted musician; one of the stories we didn’t hear in 1 Samuel tells how David’s first job in the court of King Saul was to play the lyre -- a harp-like instrument -- when the king was not feeling well. David is also the author of many psalms, which were prayers intended to be sung to the Lord.

In order to fully understand the meaning of David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan that we read in today’s story, we need to fill in some of the details. The lectionary skips over nearly half of 1 Samuel, fast-forwarding us to the time of David’s legitimate kingship, but fortunately, it does not skip over the death of Saul and Jonathan. David had very complicated relationships with both of these men, just as any relationship with a family member or very close friend or political rival is bound to be. Although Saul initially welcomed David into his court as a musician whose music soothed and calmed him, he soon became pathologically jealous of David and tried many times to kill him or have him killed. David spent years of his life running and hiding from King Saul.

And yet, David respected the fact that Saul had been anointed by God to be Israel’s first king. Instead of returning Saul’s anger with anger of his own, David kept the big picture in mind, God’s picture, choosing, as Eugene Peterson puts it, to be influenced by “God’s grace in Saul’s life rather than Saul’s hate in David’s life.”

Now although David knew terrible hatred from Saul, he was fortunate enough to find a true friend in Saul’s son Jonathan. The Bible tells us that their souls were bound together and that Jonathan loved David as much as he loved his own life. This speaks not just to the depth of their friendship but also to Jonathan’s political loyalty to David; indeed, it is doubtful that David would have survived to become king without Jonathan to help him escape Saul’s murderous and unpredictable rage.

So when David hears of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, he must grieve the losses both of his greatest enemy, who was also the king anointed by God, andof his dearest friend. From his grief, he composes a song-prayer, and he orders that the song be taught to all the people. He wants everyone to remember these great figures in the history of Israel.

Music helps us remember. My mother is a music therapist, and one of the things I’ve learned from her is that when people lose their memories to illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and dementia, they may not be able to remember the names of their loved ones but they will remember songs they learned as children. Music gets lodged inside our minds -- and our hearts -- in a fundamentally different way from other memories. Music also allows us to enter into shared experiences of joy, wonder, sorrow, despair, and feel that they are our own. Music enables us to connect with each other.

The next hymn we are going to sing together is the hymn “It Is Well.” A man named Horatio G. Spafford wrote this hymn, and although you may have heard the story before, it is worth hearing again. About the same time he lost his fortune in the Chicago fire of 1871, Spafford’s four year-old son died of scarlet fever. Two years later, he decided to take his wife and four daughters on a European vacation to hear the great evangelists Dwight L. Moody and Ira Sankey.

At the last minute, Spafford was delayed by business in New York, but he sent his wife and daughters on ahead on a luxury French ocean liner. In the early morning hours of November 22, 1873, the ship collided with an iron sailing vessel, and water poured in. For the passengers on board, it was a nightmare (one which we can all imagine pretty well if we’ve seen the movie Titanic). Family members fell from one another’s arms into the icy ocean. The ship sank in less than two hours. 226 people died, leaving only 47 survivors. Days later, Spafford received a cable from his wife that said only, “Saved alone.” Their four daughters had perished.

Spafford immediately left to join his wife. On a cold December night, the captain of his ship called for him to tell him that they were passing over the spot where his family’s ship had gone down. Spafford returned to his cabin but could not sleep. The words that kept him going were these: “It is well; the will of God be done.” Later he wrote his famous hymn based on those words.

Our NT story today gives us a clear glimpse into God’s power to make all things well, to heal and make whole again what has become broken and lifeless. Of course, without Jesus walking here among us we may not see or experience healings as dramatic as the two in this passage. We are far more likely to be overcome by grief, as David was when he learned of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan; as Horatio Spafford was when his children perished. But when we affirm in song or in prayer that the grief we experience in life will not overshadow the joy, we take a lesson from David about the importance of looking at the big picture, God’s picture, knowing that God’s grace is greater than our sorrow. As we sing Spafford’s great hymn, we declare that in the end, all things will truly be well by the unfathomable grace and healing power of our God.