The central spoke of holy history

2 Samuel 5:1–12

David’s ascension to the throne and his defeat of the Jebusites to take Jerusalem seem easy and inevitable. From the perspective of a child reading Bible stories, it seemed that everything fell into place so easily—play the harp, kill Goliath, play tag with Saul while fleeing him, then rule in might and glory. But war, intrigue, and assassination are all part of the mix leading up to David’s reign as king over all 12 tribes.

As coronations go, this is a rather modest event. The tribes meet with David at Hebron. Interestingly, they tell David what the Lord had said to him: “You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will be Israel’s leader” (5:2b, CEB). David, who once shepherded actual sheep, has been called by God to shepherd the Israelite people. As the people’s shepherd-leader, David is expected to rule for the sake of the people, not for his own glorification.

Three things are worth noting. First, David makes a covenant with the tribes. The conditions of the covenant are not revealed, but it’s likely some sort of agreement between David and the tribes would have been established. Second, David is anointed. Anointing with oil was a physical act performed to install a person into a position of leadership. Third, both the covenant and the anointing take place “before the Lord,” that is, in God’s presence.

Rulers need a central place from which to rule. Saul had ruled from Gibeah, a city located within the tribal allotment of Benjamin. Up to this point, David’s capital city had been Hebron, but Hebron was located in the tribal allotment of Judah. In order to establish his leadership of all 12 tribes, David needs a neutral location. He chooses the city of Jerusalem, which became known as the city of David.

One problem. Jerusalem is occupied by the Jebusite people. We know very little about the Jebusites. They were one of the peoples occupying the land of Canaan before the time of Joshua and the settlement of the Israelite tribes in Canaan. Although the Jebusites taunt the invaders, saying that it will be impossible for them to conquer the city, David’s troops take Jerusalem away from the Jebusites. Establishing Jerusalem as his capital gives David a strategic location both militarily and economically.

Surrounded by deep valleys, Jerusalem is a natural fortress that can be defended against all but the most powerful armies. In an arid land, access to a water supply is essential, andJerusalem has a natural water supply. Finally, the city is situated at the intersection of major trade routes.

A history of trauma

The biblical historian we call the Deuteronomist, writing from the perspective of one whose nation had been conquered, temple destroyed, and people scattered, wrote a history of a people looking back on their ancestors who had been traumatized by defeat, destruction, and deportation. The wounds imposed by the Babylonian conquerors were passed down through the generations of those living in exile.

It is understandable that the exiles carried trauma—but we should note that they also created trauma. When they returned home, they, in turn, uprooted their cousins. These cousins, the “poor of the land” who had remained in Judah following the Babylonian conquest (2 Kings 24:14 and 25:12), were pushed aside by the returning exiles.

We have arrived at what some might call the central spoke of holy history—the ascension of David as ruler of the 12 tribes that have been brought together into a united kingdom. This is the high point. Never mind that from the vantage point of the writer, David’s kingdom had been destroyed. This is a golden moment. And this is true for the New Testament writers as well. All biblical roads, looking forward and backwards in time, appear to lead to David.

And never mind that the history of David we inherit is as blunt about his shortcomings as it is celebratory about the glory of his times. What matters is that David—boy shepherd and singer-songwriter, conqueror of the giant Goliath, and protector of his people—not only sings about the Lord as a shepherd but covenants with the people to reign as a shepherd, not a despot, in the neutral city of Jerusalem, wedged between the rival kingdoms of Judah in the south and Israel in the north.

Healing history

You can’t go to an Amish home without spotting a copy of Martyrs Mirror, that compendium of the Anabaptist martyrs’ faithfulness against fire and sword. We love this history. Indeed, that print of Dirk Willems, who turned back from his escape attempt to rescue his pursuer, is a favorite in Mennonite circles. Rescuing the pursuer who fell through the ice and would have otherwise drowned, led to Willems’ agonizingly botched execution at the stake.

I recall with a smile an order from the publisher of Sunday school materials to a group of writers that we were no longer allowed to tell Willems’ story because we’d overused it in our lessons! But this story of faithfulness against hatred masquerading as Christianity needs to be told.

Brethren enjoy reflecting on what the late, great archivist Ken Shaffer referred to as “the Brethren service explosion,” when Brethren led the way in creating Heifer International, CROP, and Church World Service. It was a time when Brethren Volunteer Service was deliberately used as the model for creating the Peace Corps, and when Brethren leadership was instrumental in the founding of the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches.

Our foundational stories really happened. They need to be told. But our stories as religious refugees are set against sometimes sanitized histories of the United States and Canada. We were traumatized people who intentionally or unintentionally unleashed trauma on the indigenous people while seeking God’s will for our own lives.

In their book Healing Haunted Histories, Mennonites Elaine Enns and Ched Myers discuss how traumatized people may not see the trauma they are creating for others. They map a personal story that stands in for the larger story of Mennonites who, traumatized by religious and economic persecution in Russia and Ukraine, found a new life in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. They settled land taken from the First Nations and Native Americans, thereby contributing to a larger cycle of trauma that began before their arrival.

Enns, whose ancestors settled on Cree land in the Saskatchewan River watershed, analyzes her own family story, which she calls “our entangled story.” Aspects of the Mennonite immigration story fit the archetypal narrative of leaving the old country under duress, arriving poor in the new land, “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps,” and through hard work and faithfulness achieving prosperity.

There is some truth in this, but as a simple story it overlooks many things: privileges we were given on arrival (or even guaranteed before immigration), who we displaced, and our assimilation into the unearned benefits of white privilege in the racialized societies of the US and Canada. Indeed, our long history of Anabaptist dissent against systems of domination was blunted by these arrangements, which eroded much of our distinctiveness.

In light of attempts to sugarcoat a history that never was, it’s important for us to confront the true past, as well as to celebrate our true—and triumphant—history of faith.