But
it’s not really Samuel doing the judging, it’s the Lord. The Lord is going to choose a King over
Israel, but the Lord isn’t particularly happy about it. In fact, God is on record as being opposed
to the whole enterprise. As we saw last
week, not so long before, there wasn’t any need for a human king at all, there
was a series of Judges—Samuel was one of them, the last, it turned out—and they
did exactly what the title said, they judged the cause of the people of Israel,
and sometimes led them into battle.
They weren’t ruler at all, and that was the way God liked it, at according
to Samuel, anyway, the last of the judges, who might be expected to have a
bias, and it is through him that we get one of the two great streams of thought
in the books of Samuel and Kings: pro- versus anti-monarchy.
And
again, as we saw last week, the elders of Israel gathered before Samuel and demanded
a king. And it put him into such a funk, but when he prayed to God,
God said “Calm down, get a grip, they’re not rejecting you but me from being
king over them. Tell you what: do what they
say, listen to their voices, only pass on my warning to them.” And he did, and last week wesaw how Samuel
predicted that a king will takel and take and take, but they insisted, so here
we are, with Jesse’s sons all lined up, choosing a king. There’s only one tiny, little problem: there already was a king, King Saul, but he hadn’t, ah . . . worked out. Oh God had chosen him all right, but now God regretted it, and we won’t even go into what this does to our
belief that God is omniscient—if God knew in advance Saul wasn’t going to be a
good king, why’d God choose him in the first place . . . as Robbie Robertson
once said, if you knew it, why’d you do it?
But
we won’t open that can of worms
today, we’ll just notice that all this choosing in our passage is going on in
secret, because if Saul, who was still king at the time, knew about it, he’d
pitch a fit, and probably try to track down the miscreants and kill them or
worse . . . and so God cooks up this elaborate scheme to make it look all
innocent and everything, he says “take a heifer with you and say you’re going
to sacrifice it to me, and then invite Jesse to the party” . . . and so he
does. He goes up to Bethlehem, and the
city elders come out all shaking with fear, saying “do you come in peace?” Because, you know, Samuel was a dangerous
man, he’d just got finished hewing a Philistine King into a bunch of little
pieces, and they knew God was on his side and all . . . but he reassures them
and gives them the little . . . story
concocted by the Lord.
And
so that’s how Samuel came to be choosing a King in the first place, when they
already had one sitting on the throne, and notice that David is chosen in
deception, that his tenure as King begins with a little white lie . . . could
that have been a portent of things to come?
Anyway,
he sanctifies Jesse and his boys, and invites them to the sacrifice, and the
minute he sees Eliab—big, strong, competent Eliab—he thinks “All right!
That was easy, this is surely the new king, just look at him!” But God says “Not so fast … don’t look upon
his appearance or the height of his stature, because I’ve rejected him. I don’t see the way y’all see, the way mortals see: they look on the outward
appearances, but the Lord—that’s me—the Lord looks on the heart.”
And
boy is that ever the same today as it ever was . . . us human beings persist in
looking at the external things, at the appearances, at the pretty and the
handsome, the strong and the rich. We
favor them, we love them, all our television programs feature them, good
looking doctors or powerful lawyers, or men in blue with big guns, with power .
. . Our media worships this sort of thing, commercials are packed with
beautiful people, selling us toothpaste and sleeping pills and automobiles. We
associate these qualities with, well, quality. We think if something or someone looks good, they are good. Take Susan Boyle,
the Scottish woman on the British version of American Idol a few years
back. She has a gorgeous voice, but a
frumpy appearance, and the producers of Britain’s
Got Talent cleverly exploited our human inclinations to judge a book by its
cover, and produced a television moment that was played over and over, ad nauseum, on just about every TV
station in America. In that
carefully-manufactured moment, you can see the hosts’ anticipation—they’re in
on the joke—and the judges’ skepticism, as they get a load of the decidedly down-scale Boyle, the rolling of the
eyes and muffled laughter, then looks of astonishment on their faces as that voice came out of that package . . . and then, in the
aftermath, they got even more publicity as every talking head went on CNN and
Fox and MSNBC and said how disgusting the judges’ response was, how evil it is
to judge things by appearance, how effete everybody was, and etc.
But
if it were God sitting next to Simon Cowell, judging Britain’s Got Talent, it wouldn’t have worked. They wouldn’t have gotten any bounce, any PR
bonanza, because God doesn’t judge the way we mortals do, God doesn’t look at
externals, but at the heart. And that’s
why, as hard as it is, it’s vital to our ministry, or that of any other church,
to let God be the one to judge, let God be the one to decide what our ministry
will look like, because God doesn’t go by externals, God doesn’t go for the
slickest or the sexiest plan, God doesn’t go for the easy, fashionable
way. God sees into the heart of
matters, to the core of things, the way they really are. If congregations do the things that look
good to them, construct the programs
that please them, they’ll inevitably
fail, because they look at the surface, they go for what’s flashy, for the in thing of the moment, but God discerns
what is at the center of things.
But
Samuel, standing there in the baking Palestinian sun, watching the sweat roll
down the faces of Jesse’s son's faces, wants God to get on with it. Every time
a son of Jesse’s comes by, he thinks “Surely this is the one. Look at how bright and intelligent, how
strong and wise, this has gotta be the one.”
But noooo . . . Jesse parades seven sons before him and God chooses not
one of them, until Samuel must have been on his last legs, and he asks
Jesse—and can we detect a little exasperation down through the ages since?—he
asks Jesse: “Is this all your
sons?” And Jesse says no: the youngest
is down in the pasture, watching the sheep, the lowest on the totem pole, the
runt of the litter, had to stay home and work while his fathers and brothers
got to go to the party. Samuel says “Go
get him, what are you waiting for? We
won’t sit down until you bring him, so hurry up, it’s hot out here.
Jesse
sends for the youngest, and brings him before Samuel, the most powerful man in
Palestine, other than Saul, and what you have to understand is how
counter-cultural even thinking about the youngest being first—or as Jesus would
put it, some thousand years later, the last
being first—was in those parts and at that time. Our writer doesn’t tell us, but I imagine Jesse was not too happy
having to go down to the back forty to bring up his youngest, but he did it—Samuel
had the ear of the Lord, after all—he brings up the little guy, and displays
him before the judge and before God, and what do you know? That’s who God wants, he wants the one
that’s the opposite from who anybody else would pick, the polar opposite from
what society would choose. Mortals go
by outward appearances, but God sees
into the heart.
David
was the youngest of the sons, the eighth son, and we shouldn’t let the
significance of that go by . . . there were seven sons, a perfect number, but
David was the eighth, beyond perfect
. . . in Christian iconography, the eighth day represents the new creation,
it’s why baptismal fonts have eight sides, and David was the eighth son, his
Kingship a new creation, and the narrator couldn’t help but gush over him, like
a besotten school-girl, because he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes. And did I say handsome? He was so good
looking, so dreamy that even Justin Briber had nothing on him.
And
Samuel anointed him—that’s what the Hebrew word Messiah means, the anointed
one—and David was the anointed one,
born in the town of Bethlehem, the eighth son of Jesse, the new creation.
And
he went on—as we’ll see over the Summer, as we talk about him from time to
time—he went on to be the greatest monarch that Israel ever had, many Jews the
world over are awaiting the coming of the new
anointed one, who will re-build the house of David, and all because God sees
into the heart, all because God chose the least of these, all because the
wisdom of God is not the wisdom of the world.
And
the story of God’s choosing throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, which we call the
Old Testament, the story of God’s choosing is exactly like that, isn’t it? God chooses the outcast, the one who would
not be chosen by anyone else, God
chooses the one who’s normally left standing after the rest of the team is
chosen, the overweight kid, the stutterer, the one the rest of the kids pick
on. God chooses the poor and
brokenhearted, the down-beaten to be God’s messengers, to carry God’s plans
forward, the women, the vain shepherd boys, the outcasts . . . God does it over
and over, Jacob, David, Daniel, Joseph . . . God chooses the most unlikely
people to carry God’s plan forward.
And
now, in this place, God has chosen us . . . we who get too wrapped up in our
own lives, too worried about ourselves
to worry about God. And yet, we are
chosen. We who are downcast and fearful
about the way the world is going, who don’t always behave as God would have us
behave. And yet, God chooses us. We who deserve it the least, who give God an
hour a week when God demands our all, who feel alienated from society and one
another, who are disappointed and discouraged, grieving and alone, God chooses us.
What a fabulous, glorious, grace-filled
thing. Hallelujah! Amen.
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