A few years ago, my sister played the female lead in a community theater production of a play called “Pack of Lies.” It was about a couple whose neighbors across the street were suspected of espionage; the British Secret Service asked their permission to establish a surveillance on them from the first couple’s upstairs bedroom. The woman my sister played, Margaret, chooses loyalty to her country over loyalty to her friend, because that person – the friend - had never actually existed. During the play we watch Margaret disintegrate, from her awareness of both betrayals: that of her friend, who turned out to be someone completely different - and her own.
Should Margaret have chosen loyalty to the false friend? I don’t think so. Because a healthy relationship cannot be built on deception - or indeed any other wrongdoing.
There’s a quote that I spent hours trying to track down and couldn’t. It’s British, I know that much, but whether it’s from Oscar Wilde or Kim Philby I haven’t the slightest idea. Remember Kim Philby? He was the principal villain in a big Cold War spy scandal in 1950's England. Well, it’s probably not Oscar Wilde, it’s not witty enough. But it goes something like this: “If I am ever forced to choose between loyalty to my friend or loyalty to my country, I hope I will have the courage to betray my country.”
I’ve thought about that a lot, over the years. I can’t tell you why it has stuck in my mind, but it has. And I think that he was wrong. Not only wrong, but profoundly immoral in a particularly dangerous way because it is excused under the label of friendship.
Maybe I’m being too hard on the guy. Maybe he had a particular occasion in mind, when his friend clearly deserved his allegiance, and his country would not have been greatly harmed. Because as the great essayist Samuel Johnson once said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” And I certainly don’t adhere to the old bumper sticker slogan, “MY COUNTRY, RIGHT OR WRONG.” And this isn’t a sermon about patriotism, anyway... it’s a sermon about allegiances, and choices.
But it’s a way of thinking about conflicting loyalties that holds that feelings matter more than principles. And it is, I think, emblematic of many of the problems our society faces nowadays. Think of the contrast between that sentiment and the Restoration poet Richard Lovelace, who wrote to his beloved on leaving her to go away to war, “I could not love thee, dear, so much, lov’d I not honor more.” Lovelace and his culture believed that only a person who was capable of putting duty above personal feelings was able to love faithfully. It was only later, during the Romantic Era, that people started elevating feeling above thinking.
Well, this probably all sounds very distant and abstract and what does it matter anyway? When are any of us going to have to face that kind of decision? Probably never, on that scale. But every day, on another scale. Because we all have to deal with competing loyalties. How do you choose between one set of claims and another? Is there a set of hard-and-fast rules that we can follow?
The fifth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother,” is a pretty good place to start. That’s a primary allegiance if there ever was one. One of the ugliest things about the communist system was their training children to inform against their parents.
Another pretty good place to take a stand is with Jesus, talking about marriage in Matthew 19:6: “What God has joined together, let no one separate.” Paul reinforces that in 1 Corinthians 7, where he tells believing men and women not to divorce their unbelieving spouses.
Allegiance to your parents, allegiance to your spouse. Pretty simple, isn’t it? Two primary commitments that God clearly expects you - us - to be faithful to. But in just a few short chapters, two heroes of the Old Testament betray them both.
Jonathan puts his friendship with David above loyalty to his father Saul, and Abigail goes against her husband Nabal to give David and his men food and drink. And they are both applauded for their decisions. What’s going on? What can we learn from their behavior?
In the passage read earlier, we see Jonathan trying to act as go-between and peacemaker between David and his father Saul. If you recall, Saul had once favored David, until David’s military victories won him favor with the populace and jealousy poisoned his mind. “Saul spoke with his son Jonathan and with all his servants about killing David. But Saul’s son Jonathan... told David, “My father Saul is trying to kill you; therefore be on guard tomorrow morning.” [1 Sam 19:1-2] The first thing Jonathan does is warn David. He is disobeying his father, yes, but he is also saving a life - something the Torah always approves of. But note that Jonathan is also SAVING his father. Saul’s attempt to take David’s life is a sin against God. So although Jonathan is technically disobeying Saul, he is not dishonoring him. He is - although ultimately unsuccessfully - trying to help his father retain his honor.
In chapter 20, Saul is even more determined to wipe David out, and Jonathan is still trying to shield him, this time by lying to Saul. It doesn’t work; Saul sees through it, and is so angry that he tries kill Jonathan, his own son. Clearly, Jonathan shouldn’t have lied. But at the same time, Saul is the one who is committing the more serious sin, that of attempted murder.
At no time does Jonathan ever lift his hand against his father, or conspire with David or anyone else for Saul’s downfall.
We haven’t looked at David and Abigail’s story today... it’s fairly long, so I’ll only give you the highlights. David and his private army have been down in the desert, living off the land, and have been protecting the locals against bandits. At sheep-shearing time, they ask the richest landowner, a man named Nabal, for hospitality. He refuses them rudely, and David gets angry and then prepares to get even. Nabal’s wife
Abigail hurried and took 200 loaves, two skins of wine, five sheep ready dressed, five measures of parched grain, 100 clusters of raisins, and 200 cakes of figs. She loaded them on donkeys and said to her young men, “Go on ahead of me; I am coming after you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal. As she rode on the donkey and came down under cover of the mountain, David and his men came down toward her; and she met them... When Abigail saw David, she hurried and alighted from the donkey, fell before David on her face, bowing to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, “Upon me alone, my lord, be the guilt; please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant.” [1 Sam 25:18-20,3]
Abigail succeeds in talking David out of killing Nabal. And “When she went home, Nabal was “in the house holding a banquet like that of a king. He was in high spirits and very drunk. So she told him nothing until daybreak. Then in the morning, when Nabal was sober, his wife told him all these things, and his heart failed him and he became like a stone.” [1 Sam 20:36-37] Nabal died about 10 days later, and David married her.
So here again, we have a primary relationship being “betrayed” - again to prevent a greater wrong from being done. In this case, there had been no prior connection between Abigail and David.
So what are the criteria for deciding when to betray a primary allegiance?
There are three principles at stake here.
First of all, both Saul and Nabal were clearly in the wrong. The issue at stake was not just a difference of opinion, but a matter of sin. Abigail and Jonathan kept husband and father respectively from committing a serious offense against God.
Secondly, Jonathan saved David’s life, and Abigail saved her husband’s life, by their actions. Nabal did die, of course, but his death wasn’t Abigail’s fault, but instead that of his own ill-temper and self-indulgence.
And thirdly, except for Jonathan’s clumsy lie, neither one conspired against or sought harm to the person they were defying.
We all have primary allegiances. We all have parents, or spouses, or children, or all three. In addition, both job and country have claims on us. We all owe duty, to one degree or another, to all of these. Scripture makes it clear that spouses come first, then children and parents.
But even those attachments pale before our duty to God. Of all our possible allegiances, the primary one is ALWAYS to God, and his standards. And any friendship, marriage, family relationship that is based on lies or theft or unfaithfulness - on anything that dishonors God - is ultimately corrupted by it.
Where Richard Lovelace might say, “I could not love thee, dear, so much, lov’d I not honor more,” the Christian says, “I could not love thee, dear, so much, lov’d I not Jesus more.” All other loves must take a back seat to the claims of Christ. That is what Jesus meant when he said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” [Luke 14:26]
No matter who or what you are committed to, if Christ is not put first, all the other allegiances suffer as well. And that is why, during this joyful time of celebrating the baptism of our newest member, we too renew our vows. We need to be reminded who comes first in our own lives, whose grace we depend on, whose light we steer by. Only our primary commitment to Christ can keep our love for our families, our nurture of our children, our faithfulness to all other commitments in the proper balance. And if we don’t have OUR priorities straight, how can we possibly help little Gabrielle - and all of our other children - get it right?
