Dead Dogs

2 Samuel 9:1-13

August 21, 2022 • Mount Pleasant UMC

The predictions are legendary and they remind us that we are often very short-sighted people. One man was told he was “too stupid to learn anything” and that he should find a place of work where he might succeed “by virtue of his pleasant personality.” That man, Thomas Alva Edison, went onto create many things we use today, including the telephone and the light bulb. Another similar man, who was unable to talk until he was four years old, was told by his teachers he would "never amount to much.” I wonder where those teachers were when Albert Einstein won a Nobel prize? Abraham Lincoln failed in business, had a mental breakdown and was defeated in eight elections before becoming president of the United States. In 1962, Decca Records did not offer the Beatles a recording contract because “guitar music is on its way out” and the Beatles had “no future in show business.” Oprah Winfrey was told she “wasn’t fit for television,” and a Yale University professor told Fred Smith that his idea for reliable overnight delivery service was “interesting and well-formed” but not feasible. Smith went on to found FedEx and revolutionize the whole delivery industry.  

Famous failures. Spectacular misses. Amazing short-sightedness. But they make us think of the times when we’ve been told or when we’ve believed that we didn’t measure up. Most of us go through times when we are told and maybe even believe that we are worthless, that we are nothing, and that no one has any value for us. What happens when our job is our primary identity, and then a pandemic comes along and we’re downsized, or replaced, or even just threatened? Suddenly our value seems to decrease. If we can’t produce, do we matter? Some of us place our identity in our children and our families. So what happens then when our children stray, when they get in trouble, when there is a breach in a relationship? Or what if nothing goes wrong but they grow up and move out, as they are supposed to? What happens to our value then? If we believe the voices we hear, if we tie up who we are with what we have, what we can do, what we can earn, and many other factors, then what happens when those things go away? What do we do then? Who are we then?

This morning, we’re continuing our journey through the life of David, looking at the source of the strength of this greatest king of Israel. When last we were with David, he was in the wilderness, trying to outrun the current king, Saul, who wanted to kill him. Saul had messed up and had been rejected by God, and David had been chosen to be the next king. But, David never tried to take Saul’s throne away from him. In fact, as we saw last week, he was pretty adamant about not doing that, about not harming Saul, whom he called “The Lord’s anointed” (cf. 1 Samuel 24:10). Saul did not return that favor. For a long time, he hunted David in the Judean wilderness, and a lot has happened since last week’s message. In a battle with the Philistines, Saul was critically wounded. He knows he’s not going to live, but he doesn’t want to be captured and, probably, tortured by the Philistines, so he begs his armor bearer, a man he trusted more than anyone else, to kill him. The armor bearer refuses, so Saul falls on his own sword. The Philistines also killed Saul’s son (and David’s best friend) Jonathan, along with Saul’s other two sons. Then the Philistines take their bodies and hang them on the wall of the city of Beit Shean to humiliate them, but some Israelites make a raid, take the bodies down and give the bodies a proper burial (cf 1 Samuel 31). That’s how 1 Samuel ends.

When you turn the page, you find that 2 Samuel begins with several chapters of political intrigue as David first becomes king over the tribe of Judah. Then there are battles between the remnants of those loyal to Saul and David, and eventually David becomes king over all twelve tribes of Israel. At that point, God promises David he will have a descendant on the throne forever. He is the “undisputed king” (Youngblood, “1, 2 Samuel,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 3, pg. 916), and that’s when we come to the story of a young man named Mephibosheth.

His name means “One Who Scatters Shame,” and since names had great importance in ancient Israel, you have to wonder why his parents would give him a name like that. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe he took that name for himself, because Mephibosheth’s story is not a happy one. He first shows up back in one verse of chapter 4, where, in the midst of a battle between David’s forces and Saul’s loyalists, Saul’s family decides it’s a good idea to flee the palace. Mephibosheth is five years old at the time, and we’re told his nanny picked him up to run with him, but he “fell,” which I assume means she dropped him as they hurried away from the palace. The end result of that accident is that Mephibosheth’s ankles are both broken. In their haste to flee, he doesn’t get the medical treatment he needs and he never walks right again (2 Samuel 4:4). Is that when he came to be known as “Shame-Scatterer”? Was that what others told him about himself? Who knows what was said about him before? Grandson of the king! Now he’s “Shame Scatterer.”

Fast forward a few years, Mephibosheth is an adult, still lame in both of his feet, hiding out in a town called Lo Debar, at someone else’s house. A royal son in exile. A king’s grandson in hiding in a place far from the current capital in a town known as “No word, no communication.” Lo Debar was a place where the last of Saul's loyalists had settled, so it’s a place that would feel fairly safe to Mephibosheth. They were out of range of the new king’s word. Or so they thought, until the day when some of David's soldiers show up asking for the son of Jonathan. Can you imagine the fear that must have enveloped Mephibosheth when he's told David has sent people to find him? He can’t run away. He's not likely to be protected by anyone in town; they may have been loyal to Saul, but they weren’t stupid. It wasn’t worth their lives to try to protect this “Shame Scatterer,” this young man who will never be king. What choice does he have except to go with them? So Mephibosheth is loaded up, presumably on a cart or horse, and taken back to Jerusalem. It seems he is not told anything about what David wants, because when he gets to the palace, he is even more afraid. It would be expected that the new king would get rid of all of the family of the previous king. I think Mephibosheth expects to die when he goes before David, but just in case he might be able to save himself, he bows down low and pays David honor. Some translations say he “worships” David (9:6).

What Mephibosheth doesn’t know, though, is that long before he was born, David made a promise to his father. They made a covenant, a promise of loyalty, with each other. Jonathan knew David was his replacement. He knew David would be king instead of him, and yet he asked David, “Show me unfailing kindness like the Lord’s kindness as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family” (1 Samuel 20:14-15). David had promised Jonathan kindness, and even though David would have been expected to take out his vengeance on all of Saul’s family, he chose to live by his promise. That’s why he has invited Mephibosheth to the palace—to show kindness to him for the sake of his father, Jonathan (9:1). In fact, he goes way beyond kindness and shows extravagant generosity. He gives Mephibosheth back all of his grandfather’s land, puts Saul’s servant Ziba in charge of managing it, and gives Mephibosheth a place to live in the palace. Mephibosheth will now eat at the king’s table for the rest of his life. In essence, David makes Mephibosheth a son of the king (Birch, “The First and Second Books of Samuel,” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. II, pg. 1274). Not a bad life for someone who considered himself a “dead dog.”

That’s not me calling him that. That’s how Mephibosheth describes himself earlier in the passage: a “dead dog.” That’s what he believes about himself. It’s not enough that he has the name “Shame Scatterer.” He considers himself worse than useless. When David tells him what he plans to do, Mephibosheth asks, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?” (9:8). Some might say that’s simply false humility, but I don’t think so. I think Mephibosheth really had come to see himself as someone who wasn’t worth anything, someone who was in essence already dead, someone who was somehow less than human. He was the grandson of a deposed king who had killed himself. He had a less than positive name. He was in the wrong political party for the days he was living in—on the wrong side of the aisle, we might say. He had no land, no home, nothing to his name, and he couldn’t even walk right. He could not remember when he had been well; he had always been lame, always had something wrong with him, always had people pitying him. In his mind, he was indeed just a “dead dog,” of no use to anyone.

And it’s largely because of that that I don’t think David did what he did as a political move. Some commentators suggest what David does here is an example of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” David could be seen as putting the last heir of Saul’s kingdom in a place where he can keep an eye on him (cf. Youngblood 919). But David didn’t have to do this. Mephibosheth is no threat to him at all. He’s lame. He’s not likely to rally an army. No one is going to look to him for leadership. No, David treats Mephibosheth with kindness because he made a promise to his father, a promise summed up in the Hebrew word hesed. This is not about power; it’s about honor, loyalty and faithfulness. It’s about valuing Mephibosheth as a real person. And it’s about David doing what God would have him do.

We’ve talked about hesed before, but it’s an important word. As I’ve said before, it’s a difficult word to translate. Some of your Bibles translate it as “lovingkindness,” a compound word that was basically made up just to try to define this Hebrew word. The best definition of hesed is this: when the one who owes you nothing gives you everything. Hesed is not about power or equality. It’s about loyalty and love, honor and faithfulness. It’s about mirroring God’s love for us into the world, helping people see themselves the way God sees them. Hesed is about justice and righteousness. It’s about doing what is right, not just what benefits us, not just what benefits a small group. It’s about loving another person just because they are, not because of anything they have done. Do we ever need a strong dose of hesed in our world today! David and Mephibosheth could not have been more different, and yet David extended love and mercy and grace to this young man because that’s what God would do. That’s who God is. David didn’t quiz Mephibosheth to find out if they were aligned politically or socially or even theologically. He simply offered hesed. And that’s the same way God loves us.

You see, we are Mephibosheth in this story. We may or may not have physical challenges, and we may not have an unpronounceable name, but we are Mephibosheth. We come here, and we stand in the presence of a king who has the power of life and death over us. We stand in the presence of a God whom we repeatedly offend because of our sin. We are “Shame Scatterer,” just about as useful as a “dead dog” in his presence. We try to forget that by creating God in our own image, making him be the way we want him to be. As one author has said, “The God we seek is the God we want, not the God who is. We fashion a god who blesses us without obligation, who lets us feel his presence without living his life, who stands with us and never against us, who gives us what we want, when we want it. We worship a god of consumer satisfaction…” (Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship, pgs. 120, 127-128 iBooks version). But God refuses to be made into our image. He is the king who has the power to do with us as he pleases, just as David could with Mephibosheth. We are to bow down to him in worship and honor like Mephibosheth did toward David. And even as we acknowledge his power, we find he is also the God of hesed. He is the one who owes us nothing but gives us everything. He is the king who holds the power of life and death over us and instead shows us love, values us. Mephibosheth knows David doesn’t have to show him kindness, and yet David still does. And even though God doesn’t have to love us, he still does. He is the king who could destroy us but instead makes a place for us at his table—and invites us to dine there forever. Just because we are, we’re invited to the king’s table.

There was another king’s table, a few centuries later, in the city of Jerusalem. It was the night before the crucifixion, and Jesus gathered his friends in an upper room. Those disciples didn’t realize it but they were, quite literally, sitting at the King’s table. When you know you have only a short time left, you tend not to focus on trivia. You want to talk about only the most important things. And so, that night, around the King’s table, Jesus shared many things, and he reminded these friends that he loved them beyond anything they could imagine. Meanwhile, off to the side, there was this ongoing discussion about who was the greatest, who loved Jesus more (cf. Luke 22:24). There is whispering: “Jesus loves me best.” “No, he doesn’t. He called me before you.” “Yeah, well, I was asked to set up this whole meal.” And they thought Jesus didn’t hear their whispering! This whole evening is about Jesus showing his love for them, but it’s clear they haven’t really yet let Jesus love them. He knows them, but they don’t really know him.

Let’s be really honest today: there are people, even in churches, who know about Jesus, who know about the King, but they don’t know him. There are a lot of folks like Mephibosheth, who know about the king, but don’t really know him. I wonder if that's any of us here today. Jesus offers us unconditional love, love with no strings attached, something we can get nowhere else in our world. Even though, to use Mephibosheth’s language, we are like “dead dogs,” he loves us still, and he invites to come and dine at the king’s table. My pastor when I was growing up used to often say that his mission was to make sure that people didn’t end up 18 inches out of heaven. That’s the distance, roughly speaking, from head to heart, from knowing about Jesus to knowing Jesus, to having a relationship with him.

It’s sort of like this: during my first semester at college, my next-door neighbor in the dorm invited me to go into town with him. I didn’t have a car (freshmen couldn’t have cars on campus then), but he knew someone, this girl, who had a car because she lived off campus. That I was the first time I met Cathy. And I heard about her, and I learned some things about her, but I can’t imagine my life if all my knowledge about Cathy had stayed in the head. Eventually, I asked her to go to a movie with me, and even though she asked questions during the movie (she still does that), I asked her out again. And I came to not just know about Cathy but to know her because we spent time together. We learned to love each other. My knowledge of her moved from head to heart. That’s what it means to have a relationship with Jesus. We spend time with him at his table, reading the Bible, worshipping with other Christians, praying. There comes a point, then, when we have to move from our knowledge about Jesus to knowledge of Jesus. From head to heart. Experiencing first-hand his love, his invitation to come to the table and eat forever. So let me ask: do you know Jesus or do you just know about him?

On that last night Jesus was with the disciples, John says Jesus showed them “the full extent of his love” (John 13:1, NIV 1984) by kneeling down and washing their feet. Then he told them to do the same to others (John 13:14). When we live that way, Jesus said, others would know that we are his followers. Our response to his extravagant love is to love others. That was King David’s attitude from the beginning. The very first question he asks in this chapter is, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” (9:1). Who can I show hesed to? The way we demonstrate that the love of Christ lives within us is to love the Mephibosheths of this world, to love those who may be overlooked, who may be forgotten, who might even be someone we don’t like all that much. No matter what they do to us, we’re called to love them.

I’ve known several people through the years who have had people they trusted end up hurting them. The issues aren’t all that important; what is important is how they choose to respond. When one who was a friend turns against you and does harm to you, what do you do? There are two choices. Get even with them; hurt them the way they hurt you. That’s the natural inclination. Tear them down in whatever way you can. That’s the way our political leaders respond. But there is another choice, the Jesus choice. When Jesus was on the cross, do you remember what he said? “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Hesed. Mercy that extends all through history, down to you and me, and even (or maybe especially) to those who chose to do us harm.

If we have received the love and the welcome of the king, our calling is then to share that love and that welcome with others. And that’s hard. It’s very hard, sometimes. There are people who are very hard to love. There are people we don’t want to love. That’s why Jesus didn’t give us a choice. He didn’t say, “Love others if you want to, if you feel like it.” No, Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). He didn’t say, “A new suggestion I give you.” He didn't say, “Here’s a good idea, what do you think?” He gave us a command. And commands aren’t only followed when you feel like it. If you serve under the commander, those commands are followed until new orders come in. So far, our orders haven’t changed. To follow Jesus is to love the outcast, the stranger, the enemy, the one you don’t like, the one who irritates you to no end, the Mephibosheths.

Don’t you imagine that there were days when Mephibosheth only reminded David of all that he had lost, of the loss of his best friend, of the many years he lost as he wandered in the wilderness trying to avoid Saul? Do you think there were days when he was tempted to throw Mephibosheth out on his ear? I do, and that’s one reason I love this story: because I need it. I love this story because it reminds me to love the Mephibosheths of the world. I love it because it reminds me that no matter what happens to me, I’m called to love the “unpromising stranger” and to keep loving that person no matter what (cf. Peterson, Leap Over a Wall, pg. 179).

I’ve shared this story before, but it’s too good not to share again. Tony Campolo tells the story of walking down the street in Philadelphia about noon when he noticed an obviously homeless man walking toward him. The man was covered from head to toe with dirt and soot, and there was dirt caked on his skin. He had a beard that hung down to his waist with food caught in it, and he was holding a cup of McDonald’s coffee. He was staring into the cup as he walked toward Campolo, then he looked up and said, “Hey, mister, you want some of my coffee?” Campolo says he really didn’t, but he also didn’t feel he could reject the man’s generosity, so he accepted a sip of the coffee. When he handed the cup back to the man, Campolo said, “You’re being pretty generous, aren’t you, giving away your coffee? What’s gotten into you today that’s made you so generous?” The old man stared into Campolo’s eyes and said, “Well, I figure if God gives you something good, you ought to share it with people!” Campolo smiled, thinking he’d been set up, that the next thing the man would ask was five dollars in return for the coffee. “I suppose there’s something I can do for you in return, isn’t there?” he asked. The man said, “Yeah, you can give me a hug!” Campolo said he would have rather given him five dollars, but he put his arms around the man, and they stood there for what seemed like forever. Tony Campolo in a suit, the other man in ragged clothing, and just as Campolo began to feel really uncomfortable, he heard in his heart the words of Jesus: “If you did it to the least of these, you did it to me” (Tell Me a Story, pgs. 29-30).

How will you respond to Jesus today? Will you let him love you, let him welcome you to the King’s table? Will you let him tell you who you are rather than listening to others? And will you love others in response to his love, no matter what they are like? Will you love them just because they are? When we love like that, the kingdom of God grows. Let’s pray.