And At The End…

1 Kings 1:1-4

September 18, 2022 • Mount Pleasant UMC

All good things must come to an end, they say. Movies come to an end, gatherings and parties come to an end, and we’re all praying that someday the talk about COVID comes to an end. Even sermon series eventually come to an end! (Why do my notes say, “Wait for applause here”?) So this morning, we come to the end of our study of the life of David, but there is one more stop we need to make on this journey, because at the end, David dies. David’s life comes to an end, but even then, there are things we can learn about what it means to live out faith in a God who enables us to “leap over a wall.”

So, yes, we’re going to talk about the end of life today, and that may make you uncomfortable. You may already be wondering how long this is going to take. Our culture, our world is pretty uncomfortable with death. We don’t even like to say the word. We have come up with euphemisms, like “passing on” or “passed over” or “passed away.” Rarely do I hear people say someone died. It seems to stark, so abrupt, so final. And when it happens, we don't like to talk about it. We’ll send a card. We make a casserole. But don’t ask us to really talk about it. Don’t ask us to really have to be present to the grieving. We do everything we can to avoid it, sanitize it, ignore it or hurry by it. And we can do that with some proficiency until it’s our own death or the death of a close loved one we’re facing. A few years ago, Sandra Bullock starred in a film called Gravity as a medical engineer on a Space Shuttle mission. She finds herself, through a series of circumstances, adrift in space, seemingly without any hope of rescue. In what she believes are her last moments, her character gives voice to the fear of death we all have.

Bullock’s character cries out for someone to be there, someone to provide help and strength in the face of death. No one wants to face death alone, and yet that’s what happens in the beginning of 1 Kings, as David nears his own death. So what can David teach us—not just about death, but especially about the ways we live in the face of it. How do we, as God’s people, face times like that? And how do we help those who grieve?

We’re going to first look at this story through the lens of the people who are around David during this time: the servants, Adonijah and Bathsheba. And then we’re going to look at Abishag, someone who doesn’t say a single word in this story, but who is vitally important to what happens. First, though, let’s get the setting in mind. David, at this point, is seventy years old—maybe not “very old” by our standards, but it was in his time. He has been king of Israel for forty years and six months, and the nation has gotten used to his leadership. It was sort of like the United Kingdom’s comfort and familiarity with Queen Elizabeth’s reign (cf. Dilday, Communicator’s Commentary: 1, 2 Kings, pgs. 27, 29). Except now, David’s not able to lead. This is not the David we are used to. David the giant-killer, David the warrior-hero, David the noble ruler, David the talented musician, David the man after God’s own heart. Now we have David unable to leave his bed (Dilday 30). This David is weak. His circulation is poor, and he’s not able to keep warm (1:1). Even in the relatively warm climate of Jerusalem, David is cold all the time. A time of transition is upon the kingdom, and everyone seems to know it. And everyone deals with it differently.

For the servants, David’s age and poor health is a problem to be solved. After all, it’s their job to look after the king, to take care of him, to make sure he has what he needs. Their first solution is to pile on the covers, but David is still shivering. So they propose another solution: “Let us look for a young virgin to…lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm” (1:2). Here’s my question: David had many wives and many concubines or secondary wives. Where are they? Why are they not available to help care for the king, for their husband? Why do the servants decide instead to conscript a young unmarried woman to help keep the king warm? There are, undoubtedly, many reasons, but this was a traditional cure prescribed by ancient medicine. The Greeks believed you could transfer the health and heat of a young person into an aging person as a medical treatment, and Josephus, the Jewish historian, calls the servants “physicians” when he retells this story (Dilday 29). So what the servants propose wasn’t uncommon in that day but if you try this “cure” today, you can get in a lot of trouble.

To the servants, David is a problem to be solved. Because if death is just a problem that needs to be solved, we can see ourselves as useful as we try to solve the problem. And when we get busy solving the problem, “we never have to look the dying person in the eyes, wipe her tears, listen to his confession, honor this life, just as it is” (Peterson, Leap Over a Wall, pg. 220). As a pastor, I’ve been in many situations where families either struggle to say goodbye, struggle to let their loved one go, or they forget about them and have no contact with them—they’re not a person, just another problem to be solved. In our consumer culture, it’s easy to forget that behind the “problem” is a person. A real person whom God loves. David deserves better than the way his servants treat him.

In the next section of 1 Kings 1, we find the second person to approach David’s imminent death: his oldest son Adonijah (1:5-10). To Adonijah, David’s death presents an opportunity to be seized. Adonijah knows God had promised a dynasty for David’s family, and since the sons who were older than him have all died, he believes he’s next in line once his father dies. And he has the support of two of the most prominent people in Israel: Joab the general and Abiathar the priest. He’s got the military and the religious leadership on his side; what could go wrong? So he declares himself king. After all, the nation needs leadership and David is not up to it. He invites everyone to a feast to begin his kingship—everyone, that is, except Solomon. We’ll get to Solomon in a moment but the point here is this: to Adonijah, David is taking too long to die. He’s an obstacle to what Adonijah wants. And so he basically acts as if David is already dead and declares himself king. It’s a sadder repeat of what happened with Absalom when he tried to to steal the kingdom. Can you imagine the outcry if Charles had tried taking the throne before Elizabeth’s death in Britain?

You see, David is a limitation to Adonijah, and so he lives as if David no longer exists. He dehumanizes David, something we still do today with those who are near the end. We talk about them and not to them. We live as if they are already gone; I know one family that’s dealing with this right now. Culturally, there is such a struggle today as people try to gain control over both the beginning and ending of life? We’re debating both abortion and euthanasia because we think we ought to control the limits. People become objects or obstacles or limitations rather than human beings whom God created. In a paper published in 1995, Pope John Paul II described this mindset as a “culture of death.” Here’s how John Paul described it: “This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency.…A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or lifestyle of those who are more favored tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of ‘conspiracy against life’ is unleashed.” In other words, when people become objects or obstacles, when we fail to see the person, we are at cross purposes with the world God desires. And if anything, the “culture of death” has only gotten stronger in the quarter century since John Paul wrote those words. Without a doubt, David deserves better than the way his son treats him.

The third person to enter the scene is Bathsheba, the wife David stole from one of his soldiers. We have no indication of what their marriage has been like. Bathsheba—also not invited to Adonijah’s coronation—learns what is happening, and she’s not about to put up with that. David's death presents Bathsheba with a responsibility to be fulfilled. She’s going to make sure her son Solomon ends up on the throne, not this pipsqueak Adonijah. And so Bathsheba goes to see the king. By the way, why was she not there in the first place? She’s his wife—one of them, anyway. Why is she not by the side of her dying husband? Because David is no longer where the action or the power is. He's a dying old fool, one she talks into handing his power to Solomon. She claims he made the promise that Solomon would be king, although there is no textual evidence for such a promise (cf. Goldingay, 1 & 2 Kings for Everyone, pg. 9). It’s quite possible David never made that promise. Regardless, she convinces him he did, and it’s not long before the befuddled David crowns Solomon as king. And soon after the new king is in power, David dies and then Adonijah (the threat to the throne) is killed as well. Bathsheba treats David as a responsibility. David deserves better than his wife treats him.

When David dies, no one mourns him. He’s the greatest king of Israel, and no one laments his death. He dies in the midst of a family squabble, and doesn't that sound familiar? Funerals and death can sometimes bring out the absolute worst in families. I have been a part of funerals where families cry and hug and mourn and pledge to be loyal to one another, and the very next day they begin fighting over what’s left. I’ve been in situations where families were fracturing and only kept talking to each other until the patriarch or matriarch died. Then they had nothing to do with each other. When the loved one is only a responsibility, we’re dehumanizing the person and, if I can make up a word, de-grace-ifiying the death. No one mourns David. No one laments David.

Except a young woman named Abishag. Abishag is the young woman brought in to serve and help David (1:3-4). She is the “miracle cure” they hope will restore the king. She has no ambitions to fulfill, nor is she there to be a plaything for the king. She only comes to serve, and she becomes a silent witness to the whole experience of David’s death. She doesn’t say anything. She is just there, quietly doing what is needed and helping to the best of her ability to keep the king warm at night. So when the servants see the king as a problem to be solved, Abishag simply serves. When Adonijah sees an opportunity to be seiwzed, Abishag simply sits by and holds the hand of the real king. (And, incidentally, after Solomon is declared king by David, Adonijah asks to have Abishag as his wife (2:13-25), which most scholars think was yet another attempt to claim a direct link to David. It’s this request that gets Adonijah killed.) And when Bathsheba sees a responsibility to be fulfilled, Abishag is there, helping the king. Everyone in David’s family and circle of friends deserts him, but Abishag remains there, “quietly and beautifully there” (Peterson 220) as a witness to the mystery and holiness of death. She serves seemingly without any thought of herself.

It is a holy privilege to be present as someone passes from this life into the next. The first time I had that privilege will always stand out. I had visited with this gentleman just a few days before, and while our family was in Indianapolis I got a call that they thought the time was near. Could I come over? When we got home, I immediately went to the house and sat with the family, talked with many, and prayed with the man who was between here and there. People came and went, and his wife of over sixty years faithfully sat by his side. Somewhere around one in the morning, she fell asleep just briefly, and from across the room, I watched as he took his last, peaceful breath. Then, there was no more. There was a quiet hush, and after another moment, his wife woke up and said, “Oh, I missed it!” But I told her I thought he had waited for that moment, and we gathered again and prayed. It was a holy moment. That was holy ground, as he was able to be surrounded by those he loved in his last moments.

Those moments are holy because we believe death is not the end. The worst thing is never the last thing. There’s a great story in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus encountered a widow at Nain. Did you realize Jesus, the greatest preacher ever, never preached a funeral? In the Gospel story, he comes to town to find a widow’s only son—her only means of provision—being carried out to the cemetery, and Luke says “his heart went out to her” (7:13). Then he went to touch the boy and said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” And the boy did. Jesus did the same with his friend Lazarus (cf. John 11), who was four days dead before Jesus showed up and called him out of the tomb. And then, after his own death, Jesus did one better: he was raised from the dead and his resurrection became the hope and the promise for all who believe in him. His resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing. For the Christian, there is yet more ahead. There is hope. There is life. There is something better, and because of that hope, because of that life, death is not an end or the ultimate tragedy. It’s a new beginning. That’s not to say we don’t mourn. We grieve what we’ve lost here, but the Gospel changes the way we approach those who are dying and those who are grieving. We do not grieve as people who are without hope (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:13). The story of David’s death can guide and teach us how to live when we face times of grief and loss. What do we need to remember?

First of all, death trumps everything. When death is imminent or when death comes, it becomes the most important event on the agenda because it is the greatest fear that most people face (Lampe, The Caring Congregation, pg. 58). Please know that when your family is touched by death, we want to know about it so we can pray for you and we can follow up with you. Abishag left behind whatever life she had in order to tend to David, to be a witness to his death. Now some will say she had no choice, and that may have been the case, but at the same time, these are servants who have found her, asked her to come, not the king himself. I’m assuming she could have refused his servants, but there is no protest recorded, because it’s that important: to be a witness to life in the midst of death. And even though she can’t stop David from dying, she remains present.

And by remaining present, she treats David as human being. The text says she “took are of” or, more literally, “cherished” the king. To Abishag, David is not a problem or a project, he’s not an obstacle or a responsibility. He’s a person, someone to be cared for and someone who has value. Abishag is in many ways an embodiment of the modern hospice movement. I have such great respect for the ministry of hospice because every experience I have had with hospice has been one in which the loved one was treated with dignity, as a human being. I’ve learned so much from watching hospice workers. You talk to the person, not about them. You touch the person, and you involve the family members in everything you can. Hospice will often care for people in their own home, but even if someone is taken to a hospice center because they need greater care, they are encouraged to bring reminders of their life, things from home. It’s so easy in our technological, sterile society to treat people who are dying as objects; they are not objects. They are someone for whom Jesus died, and even though their body here is shutting down, we believe there is a new body being prepared for them—a resurrection body, one prepared to live forever.

Abishag, we’re told, “waited” on the king. The word literally means “served” or “ministered to.” In other words, she did what was needed, without a word of complaint. When death comes, what can you do? I know the Methodist impulse is to cook something, to take a casserole or a crock pot of something to the home. Cooking and feeding people is a distinctly Methodist spiritual gift! And that very well may be needed, although it might be better if you wait a bit and take it a couple of weeks after the death. Often families are overwhelmed with people bringing food for the first few days but they could use some help a bit later. Or, even better, ask what the family needs. Do they need someone to walk the dog while they take care of details? Do family members from out of town need a place to stay? Do they need a driver to take them to appointments and such? Do what is needed, not what you think is needed, but what they need—and do it with joy. If we can’t do it with joy and without complaining, we’d be better off not doing it. If you simply do something because you feel obligated but you don’t do it with joy, you run the risk of adding to the burden of those who are in the midst of grief. So what can you do? What can you do with joy? Now, I know as well as and maybe better than most that death is inconvenient. It never comes on schedule, and often throws off a whole lot of things that are planned for that week. But it doesn't matter. My response to a grieving family is always this: as a church, we will do whatever we can to be helpful. We will serve, and we will do it with joy.

And one more thing that comes, not from David’s story, but from my own experience. Do everything you can to prepare your family for your own death. There are a lot of times when Pastor Rick or I sit down with a family to prepare for the funeral and we ask them to share some things they remember about their loved one. Or we’ll ask about favorite Scriptures, or favorite hymns. And because they are in the midst of grief, because the world has been turned upside down, very often they simply can’t think of things that would normally come easily to them. So I can’t encourage you enough to free your family up to grieve by preparing them. I tell everyone to do this, and few do, so this morning you’re welcome to pick up a planning worksheet that we’ve put together. I can’t encourage you enough to fill it out and put it someplace where your family can find it, or if you want, we’d be happy to keep it in a file here at the church. It will help your family because many of the things we ask of them you will have already answered. Now, many will think this is just for older people, but friends, none of us are guaranteed tomorrow, no matter how much we might want to deny it. I never imagined several years ago I would be attending the funeral of my college roommate, and yet I did. This is for everyone. Free up your family to grieve and make plans ahead of time.

In everything, as we approach death, we proclaim hope. We believe in a God who raised Jesus from the dead, who promises life everlasting to those who believe, and who, in fact, begins creating new life in us from the moment we trust in Christ. As South African pastor Trevor Hudson puts it, “Death, for us, is that moment of transition into a fuller and deeper experience of what we already know” (Renovare Book Club podcast, 2/2014). If we’ve walked with Jesus here, death is simply a change of location. That is our hope. That is our joy. That is why death is not an enemy. In a Scripture I share at nearly every funeral, Paul put it this way: “The perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’…Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:53-57).

No one lived that to the end better than John Wesley, the founder of the Methodism. Wesley believed that the last act of God's grace in our lives is what he called “glorifying grace.” He said, “Methodists die well.” And he not only preached that, he lived it. Wesley was 88 years old, having faithfully preached the Gospel for so many years, but he was growing weaker by the day. He wanted to send one last message to the world, so he called for pen and paper. A friend, Miss Ritchie, suggested she would write it for him. What did he want to say? “Nothing,” he said, “but that God is with us.” He summoned enough strength to tell the twenty or so friends who were with him, “Farewell, farewell,” and he once again cried out, “The best of all is, God is with us.” He said that more than once during that time. During the night, he was often heard to say, “I’ll praise—I’ll praise.” Many think he was trying to say or sing Isaac Watts’ hymn, “I’ll Praise My Maker While I Have Breath,” but he didn’t have the strength. Yet it was obvious his thoughts were turning heavenward. After a long silence, Wesley said, “Farewell,” and without another sound, he went to be with his savior (Hattersley, The Life of John Wesley, pg. 397).

And, so at the end, David dies. His story ends the way every story ends, but it is not the end. The person we become here lives on. Because Christ lives, so shall we live (cf. John 14:19). There is hope; the worst thing is never the last thing. So we can face the end with confidence and hope because the one who was there at your beginning will also be there at the end. The best of all is, God is with us. Let’s pray.