Samuel’s new mission, to anoint the new king – even though it’s only a
proleptic anointing, as Saul will reign for quite a while after David is soaked
in oil – must be sneaky, surreptitious, clandestine (it’s fun for preachers to
play with such words, isn’t it? – and we have, I always believe, a curious
responsibility to keep certain words alive in the English language...). It’s intriguing that Jesus, too, the anointed
one, the Messiah, was rather on the secretive side about his reign during his
ministry; Mark pictures him shushing the disciples, and the powers that
dominated the world then would have snickered at the notion that Augustus or
Tiberius was not emperor, or that Herod (or Herod) was not king for much
longer.
Walking your people back through the
story, which is so very vivid, is helpful – if you don’t belabor it for so
long… What were Jesse’s feelings when he
learned one of his sons would be king? Pride? Shock? A fearful trembling? He
called them together and lined them up by age, height, and brawn. But
one-by-one, Samuel dismissed them: the strapping Eliab, the burly Abinadab, the
finely-chiseled Shammah. Seven altogether. The preacher can use hands, standing on
tiptoe, gesturing to illustrate the gradually receding bulk of these fine boys.
The Lord spoke each time to Samuel—but
how? Did the others hear? Was it a whisper? An interior voice? The Lord said,
“Have no regard for his appearance or stature, because I haven’t selected him.
God doesn’t look at things like humans do. Humans see only what is visible to
the eyes, but the Lord sees into the heart” (1 Sam
16:7). Preachers can expand upon this at length; more on this in a moment. For
now, we might want to locate times the meek and unlikely were the game-changers
(Rosa Parks?). We might compare God’s vision
to the way Thomas Kuhn spoke of revolutions in perspective: people thought the
world was flat until Copernicus explained things from a very different
viewpoint – and nothing was ever the same.
God’s way isn’t about ability, strength, IQ, street smarts, agility, or
savvy. It’s about the “heart”—although really it’s just about God choosing whom
God chooses.
Puzzled, Samuel shrugged. Only then did
Jesse acknowledge that, well, yes, “There is still the youngest one . . . but
he’s out keeping the sheep” (v. 11). The obvious deduction is that Jesse didn’t
even consider the possibility that this little one might be the one. But could
it be that Jesse actually feared David might be the one? That he saw
unprecedented potential in him? Or perhaps he was simply the one he loved the
most—the unexpected child of old age, the apple of his eye? The writer does
take note that David “was reddish brown, had beautiful eyes, and was
good-looking” (v. 12). Perhaps Jesse wanted to keep this small but handsome one
home to shelter him for himself and from the perils of kingship.
Christian history features so many stories
of parents blocking their children’s calling to sainthood. Francis of Assisi’s
father, Pietro, was so mortified when his son began giving to the poor with
total abandon that he took him to court and disowned him. Pope Francis’s mother
was crushed when he reported he was headed into the priesthood instead of to
medical school, and she would not speak to him or forgive him for some time.
How many women and men never became great heroes of the church because parents
restrained them and wouldn’t let go?
Francesca Aran Murphy points out that
there is not one divine miracle in the entire sixteen chapters of the story of
David’s rise from obscurity to power. As she puts it, “God’s working has gone
underground.” Leaders understand that God’s working generally is underground;
rarely does anything remotely miraculous save the day. What matters is trusting
that God’s working is still going on, as unseen as water being soaked up by the
roots of a tree.
Or maybe we develop a different kind of
seeing. The verb see (ra’ah)
occurs six times in the story of David’s anointing; “the Lord
does not see as mortals see” (v. 7 NRSV). How does God see? How can we see as
God sees? Can we see things as they really are instead of being deceived by
what is only superficially visible? As Gandalf wrote in a letter to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, “All that is gold does not glitter.”
In The Little Prince we find this
memorable quote: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is
essential is invisible to the eye.” Or
that Native American saying: “We teach our children to see when there is
nothing to see, and to listen where there is nothing to hear.” It’s common to
say a leader is responsible for having a vision; 1 Samuel’s take might be that
the leader is someone who can see and who sees clearly and deeply.
The Hebrew word for “see,” ra’ah, is one barely distinguishable sound away from ra‘ah, the word for “shepherd.” We might think of shepherds
as lowly and despised, poor laborers of no account. Yet there is always an
ambiguity to the image of a shepherd. Yes, they spent their days and nights out
of doors with smelly animals who tended to nibble themselves lost. Mothers
didn’t fantasize that their daughters would marry shepherds one day. And yet in
the agrarian, pastoral culture of the world in those days, where sheep were
everywhere and they mattered for survival, even the mightiest kings of Sumer,
Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt were often dubbed the “shepherds” of their people. David
was a shepherd boy, but his responsibilities—to care for the flock, insure they
got food and water, protect them from harm, bring them safely home—were
identical to those of the good ruler.
Don’t many of our stories wind up like
David’s? Public events and private lives twist, turn, and collide. The pursuit
of power and pleasure gets mixed up with efforts to be pious and faithful, and
the results are mixed: some success and some disaster. This is life in God’s
world: we do our best, but then cruel processes of history steamroll
everybody—yet somehow they almost accidentally further God’s kingdom. Does God
cause or even superintend all this? We
live, always, with this mystery: where is God in it all? There are hints,
clues, guesses, wonderings. But who can be sure?
The epistle, 2
Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17, flawlessly picks up on this vision thing. “We walk by faith, not by sight.” Faith is a peculiar way of seeing. Or I recall David Steinmetz, lecturing the
Reformation, explaining how most theologians trusted in what they could see –
but Martin Luther insisted that the organ of faith is the ear, not the
eye. “The eyes are hard of hearing.” What we see can deceive; but the Word we hear
is trustworthy, enduring forever, creative of new, unseen life.
Two little details beg for
attention – as details to which we typically under-attend (so I guess they
aren’t little details at all!). Paul
suggests that the purpose of life isn’t the be good or do good but to please
the Lord. Want to know how fabulous,
significant and powerful you are? You
have the ability to please God – or to displease God. God opens God’s holy self to the
vulnerability of being pleased, or not, by people like us. And we know we will falter terribly – but I
then take heart from the famous Merton prayer, “My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot
know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact
that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually
doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never
do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead
me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I
trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I
will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my
perils alone.”
At the same time, it is hard
to scare up a mainline denominational sermon that dares to speak about Paul’s
insistence that we will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. What we do, and how we live, is deadly
serious – and God wants us to envision that day of judgment (as the daily
prayer in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer
puts it, “Imprint upon our hearts such a dread of thy judgments, and such a
grateful sense of thy goodness to us, as may make us both afraid and ashamed to
offend thee.”
And yet we needn’t tremble as we enter the courtroom. God is judge and prosecuting attorney, but God
is also my defender, and the jury. God
wants me to be released from bondage more than I do. God’s is no fair, blind justice. God is absurdly, intensely, passionately
biased toward us. So yes, humbly
approach the seat of justice – and the God waiting for us is the one who shed
his blood for us, who healed the sick, who touched the untouchables, who
forgave those nobody else would tolerate?
Notice that in this season, the lectionary adds verses 18-21 – which I
like. This business of reconciliation and
reconciling and being ambassadors for God – the universal scope, not merely
individual or personal of God’s work and our ministry, is just staggering, and
beautiful and hopeful. I preached on 2 Corinthians 5:14-20 last year, and focused on all this – while our church was
engaged in a marvelous and impactful ten week series on Reconciliation, with
Christena Cleveland, Ben Witherington, Brenda Tapia, Matt Rawle and more; see
videos and other resources here: http://www.myersparkumc.org/reconciliation/. I have no doubt that Reconciliation is God’s
clearest calling to the church in our day, summoning us beyond simplistic forms
of forgiveness, urging us to connect at a deep level with others, in fractured
relationships, in a divided denomination, in a broken world, with other
religions, in our communities – and in mission, which isn’t the haves doing for
the have-notes, but lost people finding one another, sharing their gifts,
journeying together. No one has spoken
more eloquently of this than Sam Wells, first in A
Nazareth Manifesto, and then in his Incarnational
Ministry and its companion, Incarnational
Mission.
And finally we come to the Gospel (Mark
4:26-34), which is fine (of course...) but for me just not as interesting
as the Old Testament and Epistle – or the other moments when Jesus speaks of
sowing seed (earlier in Mark 4!). Jesus
wouldn’t have known what we smart modern people know (unless you need to attribute
omniscience to the earthly Jesus and pit him against farming realities) – that,
horticulturally speaking, the mustard seed isn’t actually the smallest; orchid
seeds, and maybe others are tinier.
This parable is utterly uninterested in human efforts (which is required
for farming to happen well); I’m reminded of the old joke about the guy who
bought an abandoned farm, cleared the fields, plowed, planted – and then as his
crops came in the local preacher said to him, “Look what God has done!” – to which
the farmer replied, “Well yes, but do you remember what it was like when God
was working this farm alone?” And yet Mark’s theology is on target: the real
growth, the miracle of the seed, soil, sun and rain, comes from God. I cannot pass here without directing all
preachers to the most moving, helpful sermon I’ve ever heard directed to clergy
– from my friend Bishop Claude Alexander (watch here – and
don’t miss the music that follows his sermon!).
His way of speaking of God’s hand being on the field while the farmer
sleeps: just brilliant, so encouraging, and theologically humbling and hopeful.
************
My newest book, Weak Enough to Lead, is available, and my next most recent book, Worshipful, now has an online study guide with video clips.
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