O Lord, you are the Way, the Truth, and the
Life; may only your truth be spoken and only your truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Before diving into the Biblical texts this week, a larger question has to be asked about how we read Scripture. On the Sundays after Trinity Sunday, the lectionary readings start to be more chronological than thematic. In Lent and Easter, there was a fairly easy-to-spot thread that connected the readings thematically, but for the next several months we will be reading Biblical books in course. The Old Testament readings will take us through the narrative of King David and then into wisdom literature in the fall. Our Epistle readings will take us through 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, James, and Hebrews. And other than a five-week excursus into John in August, the Gospel texts will be coming from Mark.
And
so as we read through the Bible not thematically but through literary units, we
have to be clear about what we are reading. Primarily, the Bible is a book of
theology. In other words, the Bible is about God. Perhaps that seems obvious,
but it often gets lost rather quickly when our focus turns to interpretation.
Especially when we read through the narratives about the historical kingship of
Israel over the next several Sundays, we have to bear in mind that more than
telling us about the history of Israel and King David, the Bible is helping us
to interpret history through the lens our faith. Put bluntly – we read
Scripture not to learn about history, but to encounter God.
This
is not to say that we won’t find history in the Bible, but that is not why we
read Scripture. There’s a reason why no one walks around quoting The History
of the Peloponnesian War. We read and respect Scripture not because of its
historical insights, but because it connects us to the living God. Therefore, theology
always precedes history. Meaning that we don’t read a passage and then deduce a
meaning from it; rather we read a passage, learn something about God, and then
see how that truth of God is manifest in history.
This
approach changes everything. Because if the Bible is just recording history,
who cares? Sure, maybe the academics would find it interesting – but why in the
world are we reading a passage from 1 Samuel that dates back something like
3,000 years ago? The only reason that makes any sense is that we expect to encounter
the living God in this ancient text. And this is the case because we start with
theology; we start with God. Again, the learnings to take from this passage in
1 Samuel are not “Let’s learn from their mistakes” but rather “God is the true king
of all.”
As
you noticed, the passage from 1 Samuel began at chapter 8, so there’s some
context that we’re dropped into the middle of. Israel had been not ruled, but
governed, by a series of judges. And judges did just that – they arbitrated
disputes, they corrected injustice, they led military efforts. But these judges
were not kings – they did not have a throne to maintain, wear a crown to bow
down to, or have ultimate power to exert. This model was in stark contrast to
the nations that surrounded Israel – all of which had kings.
However,
things had not been going well for Israel – they had been losing some battles
and experiencing hardship. They didn’t necessarily want to look inward and see
that they were the cause of their own problems, so they instead looked for a scapegoat.
That analysis was true then, and it’s true now. It’s far easier to blame others
for our problems than to accept responsibility for them. And so the elders
gathered and said to Samuel, who was a prophet and a judge, “Look old man, your
good days are behind you and your sons are worthless. We want a king like the
other nations.”
We’ve
already seen that scapegoating is an issue and envy is next. Throughout Israel’s
history, their calling has been to be holy, not to be like others. Moses had
warned the people in Deuteronomy, “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you must
not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations.” God is King,
but we much prefer someone that we can exert influence over, someone we can
control, someone we can launch a coup against. But God is unassailable. It
makes no sense to blame God for our problems because the accusations will
quickly turn back on us.
If
you were to ask most Americans to tell you what is wrong with our country right
now, I bet a lot of people would respond “Politicians.” We’re no different than
the people of Israel. We like having people to blame for our problems – if they
would just get their act together, then everything would be better. But we skip
right over the fact that we’re the people who voted for them. We dismiss any
aspect of responsibility for governance – we say “That’s their job, and they’re
lousy at it.” But this is not democracy, not a government of the people, for
the people, or by the people. No, essentially what we have chosen is an elected
kingship – someone that is given more power than they should have, meaning that
they can take more of the blame.
And
people who say that they prefer “limited government” forget that the other side
of that equation is a more involved and invested citizenry. No longer can we
elect people and then say that it’s not our responsibility to worry about the success
of our public schools, or the uninsured, or those oppressed by corporate greed.
When those things become our responsibility, we start to sound a lot like those
Israelites – Give us a king so that we don’t have to worry about this stuff.
And
in making this move, the great sin is not apathy, not laziness, not envy, but
an abandonment of identity and caling. At the very beginning, when God created
the heavens and the earth, humanity was made as the pinnacle of Creation. And
the name for this vocation and blessing is that we are image-bearers of God. We
are created in the image of God to be the image of God to the world. To say “Give
us a king to govern us,” is to deny the fact that we have a calling and a duty
to be God’s image in this world. This is what God says to Samuel: “They have
not rejected you, Samuel, but they have rejected me.”
God
tells Samuel to warn the people about the road they are about to go down. “The
king will take your sons and make them fight his wars.” We’ll see this later in
the narrative most clearly when King David stays at home instead of fighting
with his army, has Bathsheba brought to him, has his way with her, and then
murders her husband. God warns that daughters will be taken to be household servants.
In 1 Kings, we’ll read that King Solomon had 700 princesses and 300 concubines,
to go along with his many wives. That’s a lot of daughters taken. God warns,
the king is going to tax you and take your best from you. 1 Kings recounts that
“Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty units of choice flour, and sixty units
of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty pasture-fed cattle, one hundred sheep,
besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fatted fowl.” God tells them that though
God freed them from slavery in Egypt, a king will effectively enslave them
again. Again, in 1 Kings we read “King Solomon conscripted forced labor out of
all Israel; the levy numbered thirty thousand men.” Every single warning that
God offers, the people reject saying “No! but we are determined to have a king
over us.”
The
end result of this choice is that every warning that God issued was fulfilled
within a few generations. The king oppressed the people, the nation became more
idolatrous, and eventually, the monarchy was divided into two kingdoms, both of
which would eventually fall to invading empires. Now, one way of interpreting
this series of events is that God punishes disobedience. But that’s the wrong
direction of interpretation. That is starting with history and then working
towards an understanding of God. And as we all know, different people will
interpret events differently. And if we do that with Scripture, we end up with
different and conflicting understandings of God.
Instead
of going from history to theology, what does this passage look like when have
theology interpreting history? For one, we see that God lets us make bad
decisions, but that does not mean that the consequences are punishments from
God. Over and over again, God meets our disobedience with mercy. As we hear in
one of our Eucharistic prayers, “Again and again, you called us to return.
Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness
of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open
for us the way of freedom and peace.” God does not abandon us to our choices
but continually reaches towards us in mercy.
Reading
this passage historically, we might think that “God leaves us to our
consequences.” And that is completely the wrong message to take from this text.
It turns God into a spurned lover. Instead, this passage becomes an example of
how low God will go to redeem us; namely, that God will go as low as we do.
The
other thing that this passage teaches us about God is that God is a giver. God
has given Creation its life, God has given us freedom, God has given us
prophets, God has given us himself in Jesus, who in turn gave us his life for
the world, and God has given us the Holy Spirit. As Jesus tells us, he came to
give us abundant life. God is always about graciously gifting us with mercy and
love. But notice what God warns about the king – he will take your sons, he
will take your daughters, he will take your crops, he will take your land, he
will take your money, he will take your freedom, he will take your very lives.
The world takes from us whereas God gives to us. And this is how to tell the
difference between God and an idol – idols will always take more from us than
they give, whereas God will always give more than is demanded from us. This
knowledge is what allows us to discern what is holy and worthy of our time and
attention. If it is of God, even if it is challenging or difficult, it will be
life-giving; if it is not of God, it will be life-draining.
Of
course, in this narrative from 1 Samuel, we see the great dangers of “majority
rule” and “popular opinion.” Just because something or someone gets 51% of the
vote doesn’t make it a good choice. And we see this when Jesus’ own family is
saying that he’s gone out of his mind. Because when we follow King Jesus, it
may well appear that we’ve gone out of our minds. And maybe that’s the point – God
gives us the freedom from being stuck in our own minds, in our old ways of thinking,
in our old habits, in our old doubts and confusions. God gives us the grace to
be out of our minds so that instead we might be in God’s abundant grace.
