The Hebrew people wanted a king. They were jealous of their neighbors, among
them the much-maligned Philistines, and they said “Give us a King to govern
us.” God, on the other hand, wasn’t too thrilled with the idea, and came to
Samuel—the last of the judges, who was having rejection issues—and said: “Come
on now, they’re not rejecting you they’re rejecting me, from
being king over you. So this is what you
do: hear their words, give ‘em a king, but warn them first, tell them what’ll
happen to them when they have a king.” And so he did, he told them what the
king would do to them, he says “a king’ll take your sons and put ‘em in the
army, he’ll take your daughters and make ‘em his servants, he’ll take the best
of your land for his vineyards and orchards and give ‘em to his toadies and
hangers-on . . . he’ll take your livestock and a tenth of your grain, and you
will be his slaves, but don’t’ come running to me, don’t come running to
the Lord your God, because I warned
you.” But the people didn’t listen to him, they were jealous of those
Philistines, and they said “We’re determined to have a king over us, so
that we may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out
before us and fight our battles.”
So Samuel went out and found ‘em a king,
and it was Saul, and he was a good-looking guy, you know? There wasn’t a man among the people of Israel
better looking than him, he made the Nomad Times’ cover-story for most handsome
man of the year, all the ladies of the Meggido Bridge and Frotiledge Club
wanted him for their daughters, only problem was he was a crummy king, he didn’t
do what God told him to do, he did things that God told him not
to do, and so God decided he had to go . . .
And now, in our passage, Samuel’s mourning
Saul, worrying about him, maybe feeling a little guilty, to boot—after all, he was
the one who found him in the first place.
So God says “How long are you gonna mope around? How long are you gonna grieve? Snap out of it, man, it’s over, I’ve rejected
him already. I’ll send you to Jesse the
Bethlehemite—that’s Jesse from Bethlehem, you understand—because I’ve gotten
myself another king from his sons.”
So Samuel saddles up ol’ Paint, heads out
into the boonies—Bethlehem was so out of the way—but he’s worried about
Saul, and what he’d do if he found out he was consecrating another king, while
he was still alive, even, and so God sighs and says “all right, all right” and designs
a little subterfuge, a little white lie, he says “take this heifer, and say
I’ve come to sacrifice to the Lord,” and so he does, and he gets to Bethlehem
and they see Samuel—the last of the judges, he was an imposing man, he had fine
clothes, a Rolex on each wrist and a 256 Gigabyte iPhone—and they know who he is
and so they send out the elders to meet him, all shaky-of-hand, saying “do you
come in peace?” Because judges had been known
not to, you understand, and he tells them about the supposed sacrifice, he
tells them to sanctify themselves and come
to the sacrifice; then he himself sanctifies
Jesse and his sons and invites them along as well.
And this was a big deal in those parts, because
it wasn’t everyday that a muckety-muck like Samuel came down from the city, and
everyone who was anyone went to the sacrifice, it was covered by Bethlehem News
at 6—covering the Galilee basin for over 20 years!—and when all Jesse’s sons
were there, he took one look at Eliab and said—“Surely this is the guy, surely
he’s the one, I mean just look at
him—strapping and handsome and, at the same time, sensitive . . . and God said
“hold the phone! Not so fast . . . don’t look at his appearance or the height
of his stature, cause we’ve been down that
road before” And the almighty of
course was thinking of the last king,
who was like a bad apple, pretty on the outside, but rotten to the core. “Don’t
look at his handsome mug, or the height of his head . . . I’ve rejected him, already . . . for the Lord does not see as
mortals see . . . mortals look on the
outward appearance.”
And all I can say is Amen to that, and
there’s no time more obvious than the one we just got through, an election
season . . . humans tend to look on outward appearance, we dote over
candidates’ hair-dos and the color of
their skin, we worry about whether or not they're too old or too young or
whether their haircut cost too much
or whether they use fake spray-on tan or
not. Is it any wonder that candidates
single-handedly support the television networks during the election
season? Television is the ultimate
surface-lover, the ultimate pretty-people machine . . . and each of the
candidates spent millions of dollars on television ads alone. There’s a famous observation that Abraham
Lincoln, with his squeaky voice and gangly demeanor couldn’t get elected dog-catcher in this day of 30-second
sound bites, film at eleven . . . we mortals do indeed look on outward
appearances . . .
But it doesn’t stop at television, of
course—it filters down into everyday lives.
Many folks immediately judge people by what they look like, if their
clothes are a little worn, or they wear a gimme cap or not . . . they
immediately brand them, size them up, categorize them as to class, then dismiss
them if they aren’t up to theirs, or suck up if they’re higher. . . . one time I was stuck in the middle of
nowhere, Oregon, the gas pump gone on a little red car that I used to drive,
and there wasn’t a person within miles, I was up on this wild tableland in the
Cascade mountains, and this guy pulled up in a ratty ol’ pickup, looking like
he hadn’t visited a dentist in 30 years, had a stringy, greasy mullet hair, and
he asked if he could help, and I said “Naw, I got it . . .” but I didn’t have
it, of course, I just didn’t like his looks, and 20 minutes later, he came back
by and I swallowed my whatever it was and he was the one who got me down off
that mountain . . .
And churches can often—not all the time,
but often—be the worst places, they stratify according to class, with middle-to
upper class congregations and “lower-middle class” ones, blue-collar
congregations as opposed to white-collar professional, and I tell you
what: it doesn’t take long in a lot of
Presbyterian congregations—not all of them, but many—before visitors from the
“lower” socioeconomic classes—and why do we call people with less money than we
have “lower” class?—it doesn’t take long in a lot of Presbyterian congregations
before visitors from “lower” socioeconomic classes to see that they’re not
welcome. The members don’t have to even
say anything . . . we humans look on
outward appearances, how others are dressed, how much money they have, the
color of their skin . . .
But not God . . . as God tells Samuel, there at the
Bethlehem sacrifice, “the Lord looks on the heart.” And so big, strapping Eliab is rejected, tall
as he was, and Jesse calls Abinadab, and parades him in front of Samuel, and Samuel says “Neither has the Lord
chosen this one.” Then Jesse makes
Shammah pass by, and once again he’s told “Neither has the Lord chosen this one,” and one by one, all of
Jesse’s sons—the seven of them that were there—are passed in front of Samuel
like Miss Bethlehem U.S.A. and they’re all rejected, and Samuel's a little
worried by now, and wondering why indeed the Lord of Hosts had sent him to this
little backwater town, so he asks “are all your sons here?” And Jesse says “Well, there’s the youngest,
but he’s minding the sheep,” and Samuel says “Send and bring him, cause we‘re
not going anywhere until I see him.”
And Jesse sends and brings him, and he’s
ruddy and has beautiful eyes, even though he’s a boy, just a kid, really, the runt of the litter,
but God says “Rise and anoint him for he’s the one.” And of
course he’s the one, he’s the eighth son, one greater than seven, the
perfect number, he’s beyond perfect! And
I think there’s a hint of a new creation, a hint of the eighth day in this . . . and so they anoint
David king in the presence of his brothers and family and the elders of
Bethlehem, and the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him at his anointing and it stayed on him all the rest of his life .
. .
And at this season of Lent we read this
passage because David was the original anointed one, from Bethlehem, no less,
and this is one of the foundational passages for our faith. And of course, the Hebrew word for anointing
is Meshach, from whence comes the word Messiah, and David is the original
Messiah, the original anointed one, but not the last . . . Jesus is our Messiah, our anointed one, a new creation as Paul would say, but even
he’s not the last. Because somewhere this morning, another is
being anointed, another is having oil signed on her forehead. And I'm not talking apocalyptically, here,
I'm not some Presbyterian Hal Lindsey or John Hagee, saying the end will come on
June 3rd at 9:47 a.m. so you’d better get your act together and send
me money, I'm talking about some everyday girl or boy or man or woman, in that
ancient act we call baptism. Because
when Jesus was baptized, the spirit of God came upon him, just as it did upon David, and by that he was anointed as
God’s beloved. And for us, our anointing
as children of God, heirs according to the promise, is bound up in our baptism, and because we generally
can't see the spirit come upon us, we
are visibly anointed with the sign of the cross on our foreheads in oil. In this way, we too become messiahs, perhaps
with little “m’s,” but messiahs nevertheless?
We are visibly designated children of God, in whom God is well pleased.
But our passage looks forward not only to
Christ, the Messiah, our anointed
king, not only to our own anointings at
our own baptisms, but toward a new covenant as well. Years later, years after that Bethlehem
scene, God entered into a covenant
with David . . . listen to what God said to David, through the prophet Nathan:
“I will not take my steadfast love from [your son] . . . your house and your
kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.” This unconditional covenant with
David—everlasting, and not dependent on anything he or his offspring would
do—foreshadows our own new covenant with God, sealed in our participation in
Christ. Like the covenant with David, this
new covenant is an unconditional one,
depending not on anything we have done, or will
do, but only on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which we
contemplate at this season. Amen.
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