Sermon – 1 Samuel 8.4-20, 11.14-14, P5, YB, June 10, 2018

Tags

choice, covenant, faithfulness, foundation, free will, God, king, leader, redeem, relationship, Sermon, theocracy, trust, worry

Today we encounter one of the most pivotal moments in our faith history.  The story from First Samuel may not seem that momentous.  Surely the Flood, or the crossing of the Red Sea, or the arrival at the Promised Land, or, I don’t know, the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are more pivotal.  But this short piece of scripture contains something quite theologically significant in the covenantal relationship between God and God’s people.  Samuel has been a righteous prophet and judge for the people, but much like his predecessor Eli who we heard about last week, his sons have become corrupt leaders and the people are unhappy.  And so, the people suggest a solution:  a king.  In their minds this is a great solution.  A king could solve their problems, and most certainly would help protect them from enemies.  A king would dispense justice and mercy to foster right relationships among the people, would hold fast to the covenantal law, and would be appointed by God.  And they would still have prophets to act as their system of checks and balances.[i]  Besides, all the other nations have kings, why shouldn’t they?

The request sounds innocent enough.  As twenty-first century Americans, having no governing leader is inconceivable.  For us, the idea of a theocracy is so foreign, we almost have a hard time imagining the concept.  A king, or at least a president, sounds perfectly reasonable.  But for the people of God, a theocracy is all they have ever known.  “Since the time when Israel first became a nation, Israel had been a theocracy, a community guided and protected by YHWH.  They were set apart, distinctive from other nations, and they had no king as others nations did.  Israel was led by various judges whom God raised up in times of need.  These leaders included, among others, Moses, Miriam, Aaron, Deborah, Samson, Gideon, and Samuel, who served not as kings or queens but as mouthpieces for God as they arbitrated disputes, saw that justice was done, or led the people to victory over a threatening enemy.”[ii]  So this request for a king is a huge shift.  As Walter Brueggemann explains, “Their request is nothing less than a change in Israel’s foundational commitments….This request for a king is one more step in [a] continuing performance of mistrust.”[iii]  In other words, the people of God do not trust God, and out of their mistrust, they are willing to change the entire basis of their relationship with God.

Now if you were to ask me about my greatest spiritual struggle, I would likely say worry.  I have told countless people how much the Matthean text about worry has been a spiritual guide for me, “Consider the lilies of the field…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”[iv]  My whole life I have thought my greatest struggle was worry.  But in reflecting this week, I am not sure my greatest issue is worry.  My greatest issue might be trust.  I worry because I do not trust – I do not trust God to make a way, so I strive and fail and strive again to make my own way.  I suspect I am not alone.  We all fail to trust God from time to time.  And any logical person would quietly support your lack of trust in God.  Because to trust in God seems naïve, lacks self-responsibility, and discredits our agency in the world.  Most of us read today’s Old Testament lesson, and secretly we agree with the Israelites.  Sure, there is no perfect form of government, but you have to have something!  We may jokingly or even figuratively ask Jesus to take the wheel, but we all know that we still need to drive the car.

But when we step away from a theocracy, when we change the foundational covenantal commitment between us and God, we must face the same fate as the Israelites.  Samuel tells them what having a king will mean.  Having a king will mean giving up their sons for service in battle and for the tending of the king’s fields, giving up their daughters as cooks and sexual servants, giving up their best land, livestock, and produce.  And worst of all – worst of all – they will be the king’s slaves.  Now for a people who have been enslaved before, this should be the ultimate warning.  All they need to do was think back to those days with Pharaoh – no rights, no power, brutal labor, no hope.  But then, God says something even worse.  When the Israelites finally see God is right and that the new king they wanted is a mess (and spoiler alert:  the new kings will be a mess – the kings do all that Samuel predicts and even more horrible things); when the Israelites cry out, God will not answer them.  This critical part of their relationship with God will be over.

These are the words that have haunted me this week, “…in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”  Are there things I could do that would make God not answer me?  Is there a chance that on the two millionth time I refuse to trust God, our relationship could finally break?  Is there a chance we could have a government so broken by ego and lack of compassion and compromise that God would refuse to exert God’s power to redeem us?  A couple of years ago, we talked to our pediatrician about discipline and our frustration with our children’s constant pushing of boundaries.  The pediatrician recommended the “Three Rule.”  Instead of threatening punishments and consequences, instead of engaging in lengthy explanations about why behaviors were unacceptable and what the consequence would be, we should follow the “Three Rule.”  When a child does something unacceptable, the parent says, “one.”  No words are exchanged, no threats are made.  Just the number one.  If, or I guess I should say when, the behavior continues, the parent simply says, “two.”  Finally, when the behavior still continues, the parent says, “three,” and the child immediately goes to their room for a period of time commiserate with their age.  But, and here’s the kicker, when their time is up, there is no discussion, no scolding, just a return to normal.

Now I get a little wary of comparing God with a parent, since parents are just as flawed as kings, but here is what I appreciate about God in this text today.  God strikes me as a person who calmly works through the Three Rule.  So, although Samuel breaks the rule by going on an on about the consequences of a king, God does something extraordinary with the people of God’s request.  God says “okay.”  In a wonderful combination of “grace and judgment, the Lord commands Samuel to ‘listen’ to the people but also to ‘warn them and show them the ways of the king.’”  God does not smite the people or abandon the people.  God, as God always does, respects their free-will and allows the people of God to choose their fate – even if their choice is a fundamental altering of the very basis of their relationship with God.  There is something reassuring to me about a God who allows us full agency in our relationship – whose love is not tied to us making good decisions – and who can remain calm even when we are catastrophically proposing a fundamental change in our relationship with God.

But even more than God’s reaction, I am not convinced the judgment of God is as final as Samuel predicts.  We know God is a God who judges.  Lord knows the Israelites do indeed suffer the consequences of taking on a human king – their sons, daughters, and property are decimated, and eventually the kingdom is divided and ultimately destroyed, with the peoples scattered all over the world.  But we know a few things more about God.  We know that God’s mind can be changed.  We saw this reality firsthand when Moses advocated for mercy with the sinful people, or when Nineveh repented of their sins, or when some of those earthly kings changed their ways.  But mostly we know that God sends a Messiah – God’s only Son to redeem us.  Though judgment is a part of our relationship with God, so is redemption, forgiveness, and grace.  I am not sure I will ever master trusting God fully.  Perhaps I am just too human.  But our invitation this week is to keep trying.  Our invitation is to pause in those moments of mistrust and recount the wonderful deeds of our God.  Maybe you start with a scriptural mantra, “Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Hannah, Jonah, Ruth, Peter, Paul.”  But perhaps more importantly you start your own mantra, “That time when I walked away from God, that time when I blamed God, that time when I…”  We have seen God’s faithfulness, even through the sacrifice of God’s only Son.  But we have also seen God’s faithfulness every day of our earthly life.  Our invitation is to listen, as God listens to God’s people everyday.  Amen.

[i] Carol J. Dempsey, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays for Year B (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 3.

[ii] Marianne Blickenstaff, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays for Year B (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 1.

[iii] Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation:  A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preach, First and Second Samuel (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1990), 62.

[iv] Matthew 6.28, 34

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On Father’s Day…

Tags

complicated, conflicted, father, Father's Day, God, grateful, honor, obligation, painful, parent, redeem

In general, I am opposed to “Hallmark Holidays.”  I learned a long time ago on Valentine’s Day how consumerism fueled by one stationery company (and let’s be honest, the restaurant industry, floral industry, chocolate industry, jewelry industry…) could make a person feel invalidated, lonely, or dissatisfied.  As with any consumerism, there really is no one thing that we purchase that can fill a void in our egos and hearts.  And so I stopped wanting an amazing Valentine’s Day and started trying to affirm my loved ones as often as possible on the other days.

The same is true for Mother’s and Father’s Day.  An industry has told us how and when we should specifically honor our mothers and fathers and any resistance makes one seem ungrateful and disrespectful.  Like with Valentine’s Day, I would much rather work intentionally on showing gratitude towards my parents as often as possible – and as a parent myself, I find that my gratitude is much easier to give now that I understand the fullness of their sacrifices, challenges, and struggles to love me in the best ways they knew and know how.

That being said, what really burdens me about Mother’s and Father’s Day is the ways in which they are fraught with emotion.  Not everyone has positive relationships with their parents.  Not everyone has two active parents in their lives.  Not everyone has living parents.  And some of us experience extremes in those areas – parents who were hurtful, abusive, or absent.  But what I had forgotten about until this week is that there are also men who want to be fathers and cannot.  Women are not the only victims of infertility, miscarriage, and infant loss.  So are men.  For those men who have longed to cradle a baby in their arms, to throw a baseball in the front yard with their child, or have a meaningful relationship with their child, Father’s Day is an equally painful day.  And because of the way that we socialize most men, there is rarely a forum for such a vulnerable conversation.  I was humbled by that realization when I read this poem this week:  http://projectpomegranate.org/2015/faith-hope-and-love/.  It gives more voice to that pain than I ever could.

Photo credit: http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/when-fathers-day-hurts

Once again, I am conflicted about Father’s Day.  For the wonderful father and step-father I have been blessed with and the amazing husband and father who is helping me raise our girls, I am eternally grateful.  For all the men who have been mentors and companions on my journey, and for those who are amazing dads to their children, I am equally grateful.  I am also mournful for all those who suffer because of the fraught relationships they have had with their fathers.  I grieve with all those men who want to be fathers and have not been able to conceive.  And I stand with all those fathers who recognize their faults and failures and long to be better versions of themselves.  Father’s Day is a complicated mess.  And so this year, I hold all of us in prayer, as we sort through the complicatedness of life, honor the good, recognize the bad, and celebrate our God who can redeem us all.

Sermon – 1 Samuel 8.4-20, 11.14-15, P5, YB, June 7, 2015

Tags

choice, control, decision, free will, God, good, Israelites, king, redeem, Samuel, Saul, Sermon, trust

One of the movies I enjoyed growing up was called Freaky Friday.  The movie debuted in the seventies starring a young Jodie Foster, but they remade the movie in 2003 with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan.  The premise of the movie is a mother and her teenage daughter are at each other’s throats.  They are constantly fighting, arguing that the other person cannot possible understand the difficulties she is facing.  On one fateful Friday morning, the two make a flippant wish.  With great gusto and anger they both say, “I wish you could live in my shoes for just one day!”  Of course the two get their wish, and spend a crazy day trapped in the body of the other.  There are fun mishaps like the under-aged daughter trying to figure out how to drive a car and spending lots of mom’s money which is suddenly at her disposal.  There are also those stressful moments as the mom tries to take a high school test on material she has long since forgotten or trying to navigate being teased at school.  By the end of the movie, both mother and daughter are frazzled by the demands on them, overwhelmingly regretful of their wish, and just want to go back to life the way it was.  They have to work together to figure out how to reverse the wish, which basically includes coming to a point of fully appreciating the difficulties each of them faces in life and loving each other deeply.

Unfortunately, there was no Freaky Friday for the people of Israel in Samuel’s time.  Samuel had been a great prophet for the people, teaching them the ways of God.  But Samuel was aging, and his sons were proving they would not be able to fill Samuel’s shoes, as they were corrupt and abusive.  Normally, the people of Israel would have been on their own until God decided to elect another prophet for them.  But the people of Israel felt threatened.  There were great powers all around them, many of which were battling for power and control.  The Israelites looked to those nations and noticed one major difference between themselves and the other countries – kings!  And so, with great gusto they had Samuel ask God to give them a king.  Now, we have to understand how petulant the Israelites sound.  In their immaturity, they whine, “We want a king!  All the other kids have kings, and we need one too.  Then we will be guaranteed to be protected!”  Samuel is outraged on God’s behalf.  Asking for a king is tantamount to admitting that the people of God do not trust God to protect them.  They are basically asking to totally change their centuries-old relationship with God – no longer being governed by God, but being governed by a human being.  God agrees to grant their wish, but advises Samuel first to warn them about what they are asking.  Samuel does – like a parent, he rips into them about what they can expect – to give up their young men to fight in wars, to give up their young women for service to the empire, for their livestock and best fields to be taken by the king.  And when they begin to sense the injustice of the king, God will not answer their cries.  And of course, like a petulant child, the people demand their king anyway.

Who among us has not similarly negotiated with God?  We take the higher paying job even though something in our gut tells us we should not.  Years later we find ourselves unhappy and unfulfilled.  We stay in romantic relationships that are not life-giving because we are more afraid of being alone than we are of being in an unsatisfying relationship.  We spend more and more money trying to fill a void in ourselves, even though we know the void never goes away.  Like the people of Israel we turn away from God, trying to control and protect our lives, while God longs for us to instead turn toward God.

Here is what I love about this story though:  God actually had a fair amount of choices in this story.  God could have smote the people for their disloyalty.  God could have simply refused and told them to get on with life.  God could have negotiated or come up with a compromise.  Instead, God respects the people’s free-will.  God presents the disadvantages of taking on a human king; but then God lets the people choose – even choose the wrong choice.  I find God’s action encouraging because God’s action tells us a lot about our relationship with God.  God actions show us that our free-will is so important to God, that God will not rule over us like a dictator, but will let us make our own decisions – even when our decisions are not very good ones.  That kind of relationship between us teaches us that God respects us, empowers us to make decisions, and let’s us have a fair amount of control in our lives.

But even more encouraging than God respecting our free will is that fact that God can make everything good anyway.  The people of Israel did in fact make a poor choice that they paid for dearly – all that Samuel predicted came true in the person of King Solomon.  But God also made their poor decision great “in the form of a Davidic dynasty with a historical significance beyond measure.”[i]  The human choice of an Israelite king would later be redeemed through the coming of Jesus of Nazareth – descended from that same line.[ii]  If God can redeem a centuries old poor decision, surely God can redeem the many poor decisions we make in life.  And that is good news!  Amen.

[i] Roger Nam, “Commentary on 1 Samuel 8:4-11 [12-15] 16-20 [11:14-15]” as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2472 on June 3, 2015.

[ii] Patrick J. Willson, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays, Yr. B, Proper 5 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 6