Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Borden, OHC
Proper 6 B - Sunday, June 13, 2021
We generally prefer origin stories that flatter us and denigrate everyone else. In the US, our “received” origin stories focus on things like the Declaration of Independence and the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and gloss over things like slavery and the Tuskegee Study. Who, after all, wants to tell stories in which they look bad? But the writers of the Hebrew Scripture don’t seem to have gotten that memo. We want Disney Princes. Samuel is more Game of Thrones...
Just to be clear – when it comes to growth and insight, Walt Disney is not particularly helpful.
It would be nice to think that in First and Second Samuel we’re dealing with very old, very stable texts... The stories are thousands of years old, therefore nothing can have changed in thousands of years... But that isn’t true. For only about five hundred years the notion of two books of Samuel has been pretty common. But Jerome’s Vulgate, based on Greek texts, gave us Four Kingdoms, combining Samuel and Kings. In the most ancient Hebrew texts available, there is but one book... And recently unearthed documents at Qumran fill in gaps in the ancient record - so the texts of Samuel in the New Revised Standard Version of scripture is a bit longer than its older sibling, the Revised Standard Version...
Scripture is more dynamic than we may want to believe. That is as it should be. Scripture teaches us about a living God... a dynamic God.
Why is the Book of Samuel catching my fancy today? It could be argued that Samuel is telling us early stories about forming a system of government; and not just that, but in a primitive sense, about self-governance. It is the people who demand a king. God gives in and makes Saul king with Samuel on hand to anoint him. We pick up the story today when God has come to regret that decision...
God asks Samuel: “How long with you mourn for Saul?” Keep in mind, Saul is still very much alive. He is just a terrible king. He is ruthless, paranoid, greedy, violent, and mentally ill. We will meet similar rulers with similar flaws throughout scripture – especially when we get to Jesus’ time. It would be wonderful to think that in our modern world, such leaders have been banished. But you don’t have to search too hard to find leaders who are ruthless, corrupt, paranoid, destructive, and mentally unstable.
God is fed up with Saul. God had such high hopes for Saul... but the illusion of Saul is shattered. I’ve heard some followers of Jesus defending objectively terribly leaders by suggesting that, in scripture, God works through terribly flawed people and so the quality of the leader doesn’t matter. That may be true – God may work through Saul, but God does not leave him in office.
God sends Samuel off to get the next king. This is risky for Samuel as Saul is not going to go quietly. Desperately hanging onto power is characteristic of despotic rulers... Peaceful transition of power is in our origin story, but it was not in anybody’s story back then.
Samuel is off to Bethlehem, full of apprehension but faithful to God. This is not the last time Bethlehem will figure in our story...
In Bethlehem nobody is happy to see Samuel... Saul’s paranoia has infected his people. Nonetheless we meet Jesse – an honorable man with many sons. One of the sons is destined to be the next king, but which son? Samuel is charged with anointing God’s chosen one. So, the family comes together with all the sons in attendance – well almost all the sons...
When Samuel sees the first son, he is certain that he is seeing the chosen one... This son is tall, good looking; he looks the part in Samuel’s mind. But Samuel is wrong. Looks can be deceiving. The description we hear of the number one son is really an echo of the description of Saul, before he became king. We’re cautioned not to look on appearance or height... God looks at the heart... Is this a lesson for us or for God – who, after all, chose Saul.
And so, we proceed through the sons one by one. Not one of them is chosen. It's beginning to look like a washout when Samuel asks if, by chance, there is another son. This must be a bit of an ego blow for the first seven.
But yes, there is one more. The youngest. The one whom no one takes seriously. He is so unlikely that he has been left in the field tending animals. In he comes and, much to everybody’s shock, he is the chosen one. When Samuel sees the first son, he sees a leader – because of appearances. And we are told to look beyond appearance. But when David comes in, we get this almost erotic description of how good looking he is, with ruddy complexion and beautiful eyes... and handsome.
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If looks are not important, why are we being told how good looking he is? I’m just guessing, but I suspect what we’re really being told is that David looks young – his ruddy complexion is only visible because he has no beard... When David kills Goliath in a few chapters, he is described as little more than a boy... We also know that as David’s story unfolds, his physical attractiveness will be important, especially to Jonathan. Still – the important thing is that Samuel anoints him.
Fast forward a few thousand years... what is this story telling us?
It seems to be telling us that we need good leadership. We may not need a king, but we need something... Poor, dishonest, or insane leadership is ungodly. We have some role to play in having good leadership and some responsibility if we have bad leadership.
The most beguiling leader may not be what we need. The most statesman like figure may not be the best choice. What is in someone’s heart is what we should be most concerned with. That is a hard thing to know. I’d just point out that our modern systems of election in the US, driven by boatloads of money and hours of negative advertising, seem designed to obscure what might be in someone's heart...
Samuel, the Prophet, has a vital role in the leadership of Israel, but he is not a leader. Saul and David, after all, are anointed by Samuel. In our modern times we have largely pushed the Church out of the government – and that isn’t all bad. Faithful living is a matter of choice, not of legislation. The excesses of religious leaders in the Colonial era in the US sold folks on the idea of secular government. But as one of our friends in South Africa likes to observe, anybody who thinks politics and religion shouldn’t mix doesn’t understand religion.
The essential lesson from the story of Saul and David is that the proper role of the Samuel is that of Prophet – not king. As the Church, however you define that, approaches our modern political world, the proper role is Prophet, not ruler.
I’m thinking of folks like Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King, of Dorothy Day and Pauli Murray. The task of the Prophet is to speak truth to power, not to sit in the seat of power. This task is neither popular nor fun. But without a prophet, without a vision as Proverbs tells us, the people parish.
Without a Prophet Israel cannot get rid of a terrible king and cannot have a good one.
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Today without a strong prophetic voice, our governments across the planet seem to be, at best, lazy and ineffective... at worst, corrupt and in service to the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor – of the folks that Jesus is most concerned with...
Mathew and Luke are at great pains to draw a solid line from David, whom we have just met, to Jesus. This is partly to enhance the perception of Jesus – David is one of the greatest leaders Israel has ever known.
But I wonder if there isn’t a second connection to be noted... I think there may be a similar line from Samuel to the church.
Throughout history there are times when the Church has failed to find its prophetic voice. Too often the Church (not all of it, but parts...) has used its voice to prop up terrible governments. The Church had a sorry role in the Crusades. The Church had no small part in supporting the Apartheid Regime in South Africa. The Church helped the Government of Canada in terrible crimes against the first nations peoples. In the US, the Church was complicit in slavery and, even today, much of the Church is silent in the face of racism that shreds the very fabric of our society. That is nowhere near a full list...
So, how long will we mourn Saul? How long will we delay before we find our prophetic voice, our Samuel voice, and speak the truth that needs to be spoken. How long until we can no longer ignore Dr King who reminds us that justice delayed is justice denied... Knowing that God’s love is justice.
Samuel does not tell us about a fairy tale world, but rather a real world with a vast display of ugliness. But with God’s love and in God’s name we have the ability to heal and transform that ugliness; not just the ability, but the responsibility. The vocation of the Church, in part, is to use its voice.
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