Gracious God, may only your truth be spoken and only your truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
First, 1 Samuel.
We’ve skipped a lot since last week when we heard about when the people chose
to have a king appointed to rule them. Today, we’ve arrived at the end of
Saul’s kingship – which, you can tell from the verse “the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul
king over Israel” did not go well. So God tells Samuel that he will appoint a
new king over Israel.
This is a
dangerous mission – to appoint a new king while there is still one on the
throne. Samuel though is a faithful prophet and goes as God commands. Now, Samuel
knows that he’s going to the house of Jesse, but he’s not been told the name of
Jesse’s son who is to be anointed as king. Easy enough though – there’s a way
this sort of thing works: you anoint the eldest son. But God has never worked
in such a predictable way. It is the younger Jacob, not the elder Esau who
becomes one of the great patriarchs of Israel. Then it is Joseph, the eleventh
of twelve sons who becomes the greatest. It is the outsider Ruth the Moabite
who is the hero of the book that bears her name. The lowly and young Mary is
the one who carries the Incarnate God in her womb. And on through the history
of the Church, great and glorious things are done by people the world would
have otherwise passed over.
But Samuel was not
thinking in those terms. Samuel was thinking the way that his culture, and
ours, does. He assumed that the eldest, Eliab, must be the chosen one. After
all, that is how a monarchy works. Of course, we don’t know what Eliab looked
like, but I’d imagine he must have looked something like a Brad Pitt or a Idris
Elba because upon looking at Eliab, Samuel thinks “Surely, this must be the
one.” But God corrects Samuel and says “You’re doing this wrong. You’re looking
at his height and his appearance. You do not see things the way that I do. You
look at outward things – things that are fleeting, subjective, and passing
away. Instead, I look upon the heart.”
Now, the heart was
seen as the seat of understanding, something like our inner-being, core
identity, or character. God sees you as you are – to God all hearts are open,
all desires known, and no secrets are hid – and God loves you as you are. We do
not see in the way that God sees. As we hear in the prophet Isaiah, “God’s
thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are God’s ways our ways. For as the heavens
are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways and thoughts higher than ours.”
Humility is, perhaps, the most important virtue there is – not thinking poorly of
ourselves, but thinking rightly about ourselves in relationship to God and
others. Simply put, we are not God. No matter how well-educated we are, no
matter how often we read the Bible, no matter many books we’ve read, no matter
how much experience we have, no matter how many diversity workshops we’ve
attended, not a single one of us knows it all, none of us are perfect, none of
us are free from bias, none of us are not infected by Sin.
This does not make
us worthless. This does not make us bad. But this does make us not God. When we
judge a situation or a person, we never have the whole story, we never see
every perspective, we never are pure in our assessments. So we really ought to
hold our opinions loosely and certainly never let our preferences or analysis
divide us, because, at the end of the day, we’re all wrong, at least partially.
We do not see as God does.
For the kingship
of Israel though, God needed something specific and it wasn’t in the heart of
Eliab. Samuel then goes to Abinadab, the next oldest. “No, not that one.”
Shammah. “Nope.” Four more sons come before Samuel who is waiting to hear a
“yes” from God, but, instead, he hears “The Lord
has not chosen any of these.” I can only imagine the frustration and anxiety
felt by Samuel at this point – he’s been sent to anoint a rival king, he’s
rejected seven sons in a row, and now seems to be out of options. “There’s got
to be another son, God has told me that one of Jesse’s sons shall be anointed.”
“Well, there is little David out with the flock, but he’s the youngest.” “Go
get him,” Samuel says.
We miss this
because we’re not Jews in the 10th century BC, but the fact that
David is out in the fields with the sheep is an obvious clue that David is the
one. Shepherding was a metaphor for kingship. Again, we don’t see things the
way God does, true. But sometimes we don’t even see the things that are right
in front of our noses because of our prejudice This is one of many reasons why
racism and sexism are such a scourge on our society. These biases prevent us
from seeing amazing things in people because we get stuck on appearances, just
as Samuel did. There’s a newly published book called The Sum of Us by
Heather McGhee that masterfully shows us how racism not only impacts people of
color, but brings all of society down with its prejudice.
David, as we know,
is the Lord’s anointed and becomes
the next king of Israel. He is the youngest and he is certainly flawed – but
God does not need perfect people. Whatever flaws we might have, God can and
will work through them. Because God looks upon the heart. Sometimes we don’t
even know what’s in our own heart – so don’t be surprised when God calls you to
do something that you weren’t expecting or feel qualified for. God sees things
differently.
And this is
exactly the point that St. Paul is writing about in his second letter to the
Corinthian church. He writes, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a
human point of view… if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” That is,
because of Jesus Christ, everything is different. What used to be no longer is
– Sin and Death have been overcome. The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus
Christ gifted us with God’s grace, mercy, and redemption – there is a new
story, we inhabit a new creation in Christ. And if we are a part of a new
world, then it means there should be a new way of being in this world.
What makes this
work is love. Our translation this morning said, “For the love of Christ urges
us on.” And that captures some of it, but not all of it. That word “urge” could
also be translated as “directs” or “compels”. So the love of Christ directs us
towards seeing differently. The love of Christ compels us to see things through
the lens of God’s redeeming love. The love of Christ urges, inspires, and
equips us to see that everything has become new.
Just imagine what
our lives and our society might look like if we did not view things as a
competition, where everything is a zero-sum game, where if someone gains
something we assume that there’s another side of the ledger where someone else
has to lose something. Imagine if we didn’t hold onto our resentments and
doubts as our some of our most prized possessions. Imagine if we knew that we
are loved at our core and that no one can take that away; and if we also
trusted that everyone we encounter is also loved by God. Imagine if we no
longer judged others by their actions and mistakes and ourselves by our
intentions. Imagine if we began with humility, confessing that we do not have
all of the answers. Imagine if independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency
were not virtues, but instead, beloved community, mutuality, and connection
were the hallmarks of society.
Now, I’m not
delusional enough to think that we can do this on our own. There is no amount
of “wokeness” that can overcome Sin. Despite our best efforts, we will remain
imperfect. Regardless of our piety, we will not be able to see things the way
that God does. But we also ought not be satisfied with keeping our blinders on.
So what can we do?
Well, the liturgy
helps us. Every week, we hear the phrase “Lift up your hearts.” As we’ve seen
in 1 Samuel, the heart is where God looks. We can offer up to God ourselves.
One of the most rousing lines in our Eucharistic Prayers is “And here we offer
and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a
reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.” Again, we won’t be perfect
at it. But we can, through generous giving to the Church and to those in need,
lift up our hearts. Through the use of our time to rest, to learn, to pray, and
to read Scripture, we can lift up our hearts. Through the use of our lives, we
can stand up for justice, we can stand with the oppressed, we can stand down
from places of privilege and thereby lift up our hearts. Through humbly
acknowledging that we do not have all the answers, we can lift up our hearts to
the God of all truth. Through confessing our sins, seeking reconciliation, and
forgiving others, we lift up our hearts. Through trusting that we are the
beloved of God, as is everyone else, we lift up our hearts. In lifting up our
hearts, we can see things differently as we are brought into Christ’s new
creation of love.
