Memorial of Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012112.cfm

Sunset on the lake at MSF

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother!
most dear have you been to me;
more precious have I held love for you than love for women.


During those few "peaceful" years between the Vietnam and Gulf Wars vague suggestions floated about that David and Jonathan were more than "just friends." Perhaps there was a homosexual component to their relationship. Didn't David say, "more precious have I held love for you than love for women?"


I find it sad that people would so willfully misread a man's expressions of grief. King David was a ferocious man, given to intense love and hate. His grief for his son Absalom is one of the most affecting passages in the scriptures. People say things in sadness, as they express intense emotion, that may not be taken literally.

At the graveside of her brother a woman once whispered to me, "I'm all alone. There is no one to care for me." In fact she had children and grandchildren and a large caring family. But a fellow who happened to be standing by and overheard her words thought she was insulting her family. He seemed not to know the language of grief. 

Secondly, David's anguished words describe the bond of warriors who fight side by side against a common enemy.  Perhaps we understand that better today, as hear our Veterans speak of  "the band of brothers" and "I've got your back." Men who have been forged into a fighting unit by their basic training and battlefield experience, who have patrolled hostile territory, survived innumerable skirmishes and faced death repeatedly must feel a palpable affection for one another that no woman would dare to challenge. I cannot doubt that David's love for Jonathan was more precious than sexual love. His words need no further interpretation from a contemporary notion about sexuality. 

Our Christian tradition also recognizes in David a prototype of Jesus. His affection for Jonathan depicts Jesus' intense affection for each one of us, for whom he has fought and died. This is more than a spiritual feeling; this is an intense, earthy emotion that groans in pain. 

We see that more clearly in John 11, as Jesus approached the grave of his friend Lazarus. He did not pause to think, "I've got everything under control. I'll fix this up with my divine power to raise the dead. Then they'll know that I am God." Rather, he was staggered by the horror of death and groaned aloud. 

...he became perturbed and deeply troubled.... 

So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb 

As John tells the story, there were mixed feelings around him. Some were moved by the spectacle of Jesus' grief. "See how he loved him." they said. Others were more skeptical. “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”

But Jesus was not thinking about himself. Attuned to the Holy Spirit that guided his impulses, he offered his own life in exchange for Lazarus. Saint John shows this by the sequence of events that immediately followed: Jesus called his friend from the grave, and a group of bystanders raced in Jerusalem, 

"But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done." 

He had signed his own death warrant. 

Hearing of David's grief for his former king Saul and his friend Jonathan -- perhaps I should say overhearing because this is such an intense drama -- we understand all the more clearly the sacrifice that Jesus offers for each one of us. 

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.