March 15, 2020

L4A 2020 (Second Sunday of Coronatide): 1 Samuel 16:1-13 This story from 1 Samuel is one of my all time favorite passages of the OldTestament, but as with so many things that have changed, I heard it differently this weekthan I have before. To remind you where we are in the story, the Israelites moved into thepromised land and were governed by a series of judges. Then they ask for a king so thatthey can be like all the other nations. The Lord never intended for Israel to have a king—it was part of what was supposed to set them apart as an example and model for the othernations; God was to be their king and with God in charge, they would have avoided thekind of exploitation that tends to result from a few rich and powerful people havingcontrol over many others. But the people whined unto the Lord until God accepted theirrejection and gave them a king: Saul. Saul did OK for awhile but then disobeyed God,and so God determined to raise up a new king. That’s were we pick up today’s reading. The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejectedhim from being king over Israel. You’re going to go anoint the new king.” This is thepart that always gets me—that Samuel knew God wanted to replace Saul with a newking, but Samuel was still looking backward, still grieving over Saul. Then God giveshim a mission to do something new—go anoint the new king—but even though Godspeaks that instruction directly to Samuel, Samuel is still afraid that the old rejected kingis going to harm him, or in other words, that God won’t protect Samuel on the missionthat God sent Samuel to do. Is it normal to look back on the good times and grieve theend of them? Yes. Is it scary to go forward into something new that contradicts the waythings have always been, also yes. But when God calls us to look forward, is itreasonable to trust that God knows what God is doing and is going to take care of us inthe midst of our faithful response to that call? Yes! God doesn’t call us into an unknownfuture and abandon us there—Good luck kids! See ya later! No. God calls us forwardwith the promise of presence, help, strength, grace, and hope. Now here’s the part I heard differently this week: Samuel sees Jesse’s firstborn andsays, “Ah, surely this is the one!” Nope. Samuel sees Jesse’s second born and says, “Ah,now surely this is the one.” Nope. And so on and so on and so on through seven sons.[Jesse clearly didn’t have Netflix to keep him busy while he was stuck at home.] Ithought of that process of expectation, and then change, expectation, and then change,and I thought of what the news cycle has been like in the last ten days. We keep thinkingwe know the plan, and then it changes. We adjust to a new normal, and then it changeson us yet again. We’re still in the “getting worse before it gets better” stage, and that isfrustrating, scary, and exhausting. And it’s unlike anything we’ve ever experiencedtogether before. Just when Samuel thought he had run out of options, it turns out that Jesse had onemore son, the youngest, the unlikeliest, so far last that his father hadn’t even bothered tocall him in from the fields. And even though God chastises Samuel for relying onoutward appearances while God sees the heart—which might lead us to expect that God’schosen one is going to be kind of homely—it turns out that David is pretty good lookingafter all. Samuel anoints David, and the Spirit of the Lord comes mightily on him, andalthough we know David does not end up being perfect, he is still the exemplary king ofIsrael against which all other kings are compared, and he remains in the collectivememory of the people as, generations later, they wait for another ruler like him to leadthem from exile and occupation. We are living through history that changes by the day, sometimes by the hour. Weno longer have to look back to former decades to grieve for the good old days; I’d take itif we could go back to the way things were just two weeks ago. But we can’t. Eventhough it is a scary and unknown future that we have to walk into, God has never yetcalled God’s people to go back in time; God always calls us forward. And it may looklike we keep taking steps and making no progress, that we get our hopes up and havethem dashed, that the stability we so dearly long for disappears as soon as we feel we have gotten our footing…and in these days, that may absolutely be true. But honestly,even when things are relatively normal, life is rarely steady progress with no setbacks.Still, God does not abandon us to walk that winding path on our own. And when wethink we’ve gone as far as we can go, that we’ve exhausted all our options, God still callsus to hope. And hope, I am told, does not disappoint us. Do not be so overcome grieving for better days gone by that you cannot look to thebetter days that are ahead. And in the meantime, trust that God has not called us intothese days without sending the Spirit among us.