Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
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SERMON
At first reading or hearing,
that story of Samuel and Jesse and, eventually, David,
seems straightforward enough.
Samuel has to find a new king for Israel,
and has to be careful so that Saul doesn’t find out he’s doing it,
and David turns out to be the one.
But the more time I spent with the story,
the stranger it got.
The first thing I started to wonder about was this:
what is Jesse, the father doing
in choosing the way that those first seven sons
parade before Samuel?
Could he have known somehow that Samuel’s visit
involved more than just a sacrifice?
Did he suspect the real reason?
Was he ambitious for his sons –
or just showing them off, like any proud father?
The writer’s description is that
Jesse called each of the sons in turn,
after the first one had already been looked over,
and made each one pass before Samuel.
Was it in order of age?
Or was Jesse trying to read Samuel’s mind,
trying to figure out just what he was looking for,
and somehow trying to offer first
the sons he thought were the best fit?
And in connection with that, I then started to wonder:
why wasn’t David there?
Samuel had clearly invited Jesse and his sons to the sacrifice …
how did David get left out?
Did he draw the short straw and get stuck tending the sheep?
Or, as often happens in any family,
did his older brothers always somehow see to it
that he got the worst jobs to do, or the most boring?
Did they deliberately leave him out of things?
Or was David absent because he wanted to be?
Maybe he was going through that
adolescent/young adult phase of
“you can’t make me go to temple with you.”
Or maybe it was just his turn to watch the sheep,
and no one intended to leave him out.
Of course, there’s no way we can know any of that.
But how interesting it is that
these strange things about the story
heighten its drama.
Imagine how it would feel to be Samuel:
each of these perfectly nice seven young men
is shown off to you by his proud papa,
and you know that none of them is the one.
Think how long a good movie director
could sustain the tension in that scene.
If I were Samuel,
I think I’d be doubting myself first of all …
- did I misunderstand God?
- have I missed a signal somehow?
I don’t think it would have occurred to me at all
to ask Jesse if there was another son.
I would just assume I had goofed up somehow.
Not Samuel.
It seems almost like mind-reading, almost magical,
when he turns to Jesse and says,
“Are all your sons here?”
as if he already knows the answer is no.
So David is brought,
and immediately God lets Samuel know:
This is the one.
So David is anointed,
in anticipation of the day when he will become
king over Israel.
For most of us, probably,
the most famous story about David
is about his killing the giant Goliath
with just his sling and a stone –
no armor, no sword, nothing.
And we may believe it’s that combination
of bravery, and skill, and cleverness,
that qualified him to be king.
And no doubt that’s part of it.
But behind even that is Samuel’s part in the story.
David became king because God chose him …
and Samuel was the instrument who bore the message.
And what an intriguing choice it was.
If you had sent a “king search committee,”
duly constituted, decently and in order,
to visit Jesse and his sons –
I’ll bet that David wouldn’t have been their recommendation.
After all, even Samuel appeared at first
to lean toward Eliab, Jesse’s oldest.
It would be typical for an only child, which Samuel was,
to prefer an oldest child –
personality-wise, they would be very similar.
Verse 6 tells us that Samuel
“looked on Eliab and thought,
‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.’”
But God interrupts these thoughts.
Just a minute, says the Almighty:
Don’t assume he’s the one
just because he’s tall and good-looking.
In fact, I’ve rejected him already.
I’m not interested in outward appearance,
but in a person’s heart.
So there must have been something about
David’s heart, David’s inward person …
Something that might be instructive for us,
even if none of us particularly desires to be king of Israel –
and these days especially, who would want that?!
But – what is it about David?
The story hints to us
that it is precisely David’s youth –
that which makes others ready to disqualify him –
it is just this
which makes him an appealing choice to God.
We don’t know exactly how old he was:
he wasn’t a small child,
but he also hadn’t yet reached full adult height and size.
(We know that from the story about Goliath,
because other people’s armor was all too big for him.)
Yet David’s youth is, I think,
symbolic as much as anything else.
David is still teachable.
His ideas and ways aren’t yet set in concrete.
Like most young folks,
he’s sort of impulsive and sometimes acts before he thinks,
but when he makes a mistake and realizes it,
David repents.
He doesn’t try to blame someone else,
or claim that he didn’t know it was wrong to do that.,
or, worse, claim that because he was king
he could do whatever he wanted.
For example, when Nathan confronted him about Bathsheba,
he didn’t say:
- Well, she shouldn’t have been taking her bath
out there where everybody could see her!
or,
- Dopey me! I forgot that it’s wrong to take another man’s wife.
or even,
- I did not have sex with ‘that woman’
-- oops, wrong executive sex scandal!
David accepted God’s correction,
through the voice of Nathan, the prophet;
he repented of his bad behavior,
and he learned from it.
David made plenty of mistakes,
but most of them, he did not repeat!
He was teachable.
He listened to what God said to him,
even when it was uncomfortable.
He allowed God to shape him
into the kind of person and the kind of king
God wanted him to be.
So – how teachable are we?
One of the things that most charms me about children
is their curiosity.
They are always asking us things they want to know, like
Why is the sky blue?
Where does the sun go at night?
Who is God’s mother?
What does this cute wiggly bug taste like?
They are hungry for knowledge.
But as we grow up, and grow older,
we often seem to lose that.
We know why the sky is blue, where the sun goes at night,
that God doesn’t have a mother (unless you’re Catholic and count Mary),
and we don’t want to know what the bug tastes like.
We are competent at our work, or retired from it,
and know pretty much everything we need or want to know.
I don’t remember the exact number,
but it’s more than 75% of adults in the U.S.,
have not read even one book, cover to cover, in the past year.
That doesn’t include people who are unable to read for whatever reason …
It means, people who just don’t read.
Last summer, when I was in Guatemala,
most of the people I was sharing the house with were college students,
and I mentioned that statistic to them,
figuring that they were students; of course they read.
One of them, a young woman slightly older than the others,
got a puzzled look on her face, and said:
“Well, I think I probably read a whole book last year.”
I must have looked shocked,
because she immediately asked,
“How many books a year do you read?”
and when I told her, anywhere from 150 to 200,
it was her turn to look shocked!
But anyway – books and reading aside –
in what ways do we give God access to us,
to grow our minds and hearts,
to teach and shape us?
We believe that as followers of Christ,
we are somehow chosen and called by God.
But do we let God get through to us
and speak with us, and direct us?
Sometimes books can help us …
certainly the Bible ought to be high on that list.
Sometimes we study the Bible,
and really dig into what’s there and what’s behind it—
Other times we read in a devotional way,
listening for what the words have to say to us
in that particular moment.
Some of us catch glimpses of God on books about
science and the world around us,
biographies of interesting people,
different countries and traditions around the world,
and all the weird and wonderful people also created in God’s image.
Some of us find God in works of fiction,
and a few of us, even in books of theology!
But, perhaps others of us aren’t so interested in words.
We may be shaped and taught better
in times of quiet prayer and meditation,
where we bring ourselves before God
to talk and to listen.
Others, though, can’t stand that level of solitude,
and will be best shaped in groups …
study groups, support groups, therapy groups, etc.
-- people with whom we share our thoughts,
our feelings, our struggles.
People who influence and shape us
and through whom God influences and shapes us.
David most often seems to have heard God’s word
through the voice of Nathan, the prophet.
We may have Nathans in our lives
who tell us what we need to hear, need to know.
How are we letting God shape us?
Or are we? If not, will we?
Israel no longer needs a king,
but this hurting world does.
And God has chosen us to tell good news,
and to bring good news, and to be good news.
Let us be “shaped up” for the work we are called to do.
Amen.
© 2002 Julie
Adkins (e-mail: Drjadkins@aol.com)