Bible reading: 2 Samuel 1:1-12, 17-27.

Message.

I was rather pleased – although I shouldn’t have been – when I was called out of our missionary conference one evening. It had been a long, hot and tiring day of discussions and reports, all in Portuguese. However this wasn’t exactly a welcome escape: I was being asked to drive to the hospital where a Christian man had died and take him back to his home village. It was about 8 o’clock at night and no bush taxis or other transport would be available until the morning.

So, accompanied by one or two family members, I went to the hospital. After a short wait the dead man’s body was brought out, wrapped in cloths, and carefully placed in the open back of the truck. Six or eight Africans clambered aboard and we set off down a dark and very bumpy dirt road for the half-hour journey. The atmosphere was sombre and no-one chatted.

I have to say that I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. When we were a few hundred yards from the village, my African friends started wailing, and got louder as we drew nearer. I slowed down as people ran out to meet us. By the time we finally stopped, a large crowd had gathered, all weeping and bawling. The dead man was respectfully removed from the truck and taken to a house. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do but, after talking with a couple of the village elders, I started the drive back home and reflected on what had just happened. One thing was clear: the outburst of emotion I’d witnessed was very different to the “stiff upper lip” English way of showing grief which I was used to. I’ll return to that later.

Today’s story is ancient – it dates back 3000 years – but the emotions expressed within it are timeless. It comes at the start of 2 Samuel, which is basically a book describing David’s reign as king of Israel. It doesn’t only tell us about the historical development of the nation, but also speaks of David’s victories and flaws, such as his adultery with Bathsheba and plot to get her husband killed. A Church of Scotland minister says that the book “is a fascinating insight into the human condition, both personal and corporate, and does much to contrast human frailty and failure with God’s purpose and faithfulness”.

So here we are at the very beginning. A messenger comes to David saying that both Saul and his son Jonathan have been killed in battle (in fact the messenger says that he put the injured Saul “out of his misery” – an act for which he was to pay with his own life). David’s response is immediate: although he must know that his life’s ambition of becoming king has now been realised, that’s irrelevant for now.                                                                                                                                                                            This is a time of sorrow not just for himself but for the entire nation which must surely be in a state of shock.

It’s easy for us to understand David’s grief for Jonathan: they were bosom buddies, soulmates, possibly lovers (David does say that Jonathan’s love for him was greater than that of any woman). We might say that, when Jonathan died, a part of David died with him. But David also grieves for Saul, which is perhaps more surprising, for he was a man who had hurled his spear at David while he was playing his harp, a man who had spent years seeking to kill David and forcing him into a life of secrecy and exile. Surely David would be delighted to hear that his old adversary had been killed? That isn’t what his lament seems to show. Although it’s true that more lines in David’s poem are spent on Jonathan, his father is not forgotten: they are both declared to have been “wonderful and dear, swifter than eagles, stronger than lions” while the women of Israel are specifically charged to mourn for Saul who “clothed them in rich scarlet dresses and adorned them with jewels and gold”. Of course David is leading the nation in grief as is his duty; but it’s also very personal. Although he’s just become king, he isn’t acting in the stately and formal way we might expect of someone in his position: he’s being true to himself and, well, simply human.

It’s said that there are at least four stages in the grief process: accepting the reality of the loss; working through the anger and pain; adjusting to life without the person who has died; starting to move on. Of course things don’t work out like this for everyone as how we respond to death depends very much on our personality and background, on our relationship to the person we’ve lost, on the circumstances of their passing, on the support we receive and, I’m sure, on many other factors. We can be well-prepared for the passing of an elderly person who’s been battling ill-health and pain for years; indeed we may (somewhat guiltily) see their death as “a blessed release” – although we still feel the ache of bereavement. I suspect (because it’s outside my experience) that things are very much harder when a son or daughter who we’ve nurtured and loved dies suddenly in their teens as the consequence of a tragic accident or a drugs overdose. That must be absolutely overwhelming.

The Bible doesn’t shy away from lament. Robert Davidson, formerly Professor of Old Testament at Glasgow University, said that “there are more verses of lamentation in scripture than verses of praise”. I’m not going to argue and, quite apart from all those Psalms in which the author bewails their plight or looks back sorrowfully to the past, there is of course a whole book called “The Lamentations of Jeremiah”. Life in Bible times must have often been painful and short: men could be killed on the battlefield and I’m sure that many women died in childbirth.

Apart from that there were lots of mysterious diseases which could come and get you; even though their hygiene laws possibly meant that the Hebrews were healthier than the people around them they had no access to the healthcare which, despite the long NHS waiting lists, we take for granted. Death was much closer to them than it is to us and grief was part of daily life; it couldn’t avoided but had to be expressed and then lived with. That’s sadly still true for too many people living in poverty-stricken or war-turn places today.

So the Bible is a realistic book. But – speaking candidly – I get worried about some Christians, who seem to be so relentlessly positive that they seem to ignore or brush over sorrow, lament and grief. There are worship services in which all the songs are upbeat and confident outpourings of praise; I’ve even been to funerals which are so set on expressing Christian hope with a lusty rendition of “Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son” that you begin to wonder, “Has anyone actually died, is there anyone in the coffin?”. I of course recognise that praise can help to lift us out of despair and I do believe in Christian hope. But somehow it seems lop-sided, even deceitful, to push mourning and sorrow aside; I’m sure that can’t be healthy for our emotions.

For our faith shouldn’t be naïve: yes, let’s praise God when things are going well (which may mean learning how to ‘let ourselves go’ a bit more than we often do!), but let’s be honest in recognising sadness, bereavement and failure as well. For that’s what Jesus did: he could enjoy himself with his friends but he wept when he saw the milling multitudes, he railed at his people’s spiritual blindness, he shed tears at Lazarus’ grave. A well-known hymn says, “Crown him the Son of Man; who every grief hath known that wrings the human breast” and encouragingly continues: “He takes and bears them for his own, that all in him may rest”. It’s good to offer Jesus our praise: but we must also remember that he was the Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

Some Christians might regard lament as a denial of faith, but I can’t agree with that. It seems to me that it must be a part of our Christian experience – on behalf of others, if not necessarily for ourselves. I say this because it’s featured in the Bible, I say it because I believe that humans are beings who God created with emotions, I say it because I believe that God himself laments and grieves. And we should realise that we can actually affirm grief and faith at the same time: for instance Jeremiah lamented, yet wrote: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases”; Isaiah declared: “I will give joy and gladness instead of grief to those who mourn, a song of praise instead of sorrow”; and the Psalmist said, “Tears may flow in the night, but joy comes in the morning”.

Can I go back to that night-time journey in West Africa? I’ll be honest: I found the people’s unrestrained expression of grief hard to handle: it was just so unEnglish (but of course we weren’t in England) and so different to the tight control of emotions which was the norm in the circles in which I grew up, where ‘letting it all out’ was something that well-mannered people never did. And yet … the grief on display that night was authentic, genuine and even cathartic. It seemed to be far healthier than bottling everything up, only for it to seep out and cause problems later on: these folk knew how to deal with grief and to then, after a period of lament, settle back into normality.

As Christians we must learn how to praise God, possibly more joyfully and exuberantly than we often do. But we also need to learn how to lament, for this too is part of our human experience. In fact praise and lament are two sides of the one coin. God doesn’t want us to spend our lives in misery, of that I’m sure. Nor does he want us to be insensitive to the loss, pain and suffering of others. Christ experienced and displayed the full range of human emotions. We need to do the same.