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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Choices to use our skill and our voice to lift other people up and our our position to try and move issues of care and concern forward one day at a time. The story makes it clear that this is vital and important and divinely inspired work, and it's not just for ancient judges. We still have some work to do on this last of us series that we have been in. We've been covering lots of ground with our exploration of this period of the judges in the Hebrew bible. It's this time of incredible unrest and instability and violence in the text.
Speaker 1:And for the past couple of weeks especially, we have focused on this character named Samuel. There's been a lot to consider. One of the things that I always appreciate about opportunities like this is how a careful look at ancient stories has a way of showing us how scripture actually works. See, sometimes scripture actually obscures the good only to reveal it in an unexpected way. And time and time again when this happens to me as I read it or I encounter the story, see how biblical text is deeply nuanced in how it presents what it means and what it looks like to be faithful.
Speaker 1:If you go back and catch up on any of the messages that you may have missed, you'll see that there is this compelling narrative to the lives of the judges. And as the last of them, there's something in Samuel that I think particularly reveals something about God. As Jeremy said last week, God's response to the end of the judges and the arrival of kings is to be clear that toxic authoritarian forms of power will never renew and restore like we hope, despite their promises to the contrary. And that isn't just a message for ancient tribal societies. We still need the reminder that the God who acquiesced to demands for kingship would one day acquiesce to longings for a violent messiah.
Speaker 1:God appeared as Christ as a humble understated messenger of peace for a world that was still addicted to grabbing and exploiting power. And Christ's life shows us a better way. Thanks be to God. Now, today, it's the penultimate sermon in this series and in it, we are going to meet a new character who's certainly gonna pop up again when we come back to this part of the scripture again years to come. But before we meet him, let's pause for a moment.
Speaker 1:Whatever state you're in, whatever state of anxiety, whatever state of joy, whatever state of quiet that you might be feeling, let's pause for a moment and pray together. Loving God, you are present to us now in a community gathered, in the welcome and in the encounter and in the embrace we experience and you are also present to us in whatever state we are internally in the thoughts, the tension, perhaps some of us carry some grief today just simmering below the surface. And so we pray that you would help us to be open to your gracious gentle work in us and the ways that you are always offering us new perspective, the ways that you are nudging us toward the change that we desire. And as we turn our ears and our hearts and our minds to ancient words now, spirit, would you come and would you bring the clarity and comfort we seek? Would you teach us all the ways that you hold our world that's so often marked by distress and violence and fear?
Speaker 1:We pray in the name of Christ, our hope today. Amen. Okay. Well, we have some story to cover today and in it, are gonna talk a little bit about introductions, about passive resistance, about will and agency and all the contradictions. As we do this, we're going to move a little closer to the business end of Samuel's character arc in the text, which just means that we shouldn't be surprised when the narrator begins the story in first Samuel chapter nine with these words.
Speaker 1:There was a Benjamite, man of standing, whose name was Kish son Bebiel, son of Zoror, son of Bekoroth, son of Aphiah of Benjamin. And Kish had a son named Saul. As handsome a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel. And he was a head taller than anyone else. Now, it's easy to miss in an English bible is how the ancient narrator has used a formula here to signal a new storyline.
Speaker 1:Name plus home region plus genealogy, just think of that like the narrated backstory sequence at the beginning of a film. Right? It's telling you that someone has arrived on on stage. And there's an introduction being made here. We're told that this man of considerable means and influence named Kish, he's a member of the tribe of Benjamin, that he has a son named Saul.
Speaker 1:There's actually a lot packed into these opening phrases. It's important to remember, first of all, that the sequence immediately before this, where we were last week. Jeremy talked about how God tells Samuel to give the people the king they asked for. The text says that Samuel's immediate response is to send everybody home. I don't know what the strategy is there, but he sends everybody away and then we are introduced to Kish and his son.
Speaker 1:So there's an obvious connection here. Even if there appears to have been a time lapse in the story, God says, give them a king and then we meet this character. And there's actually something quite playful in the Hebrew here where the people have asked for a king. The verb for ask being Sha'al. Well, then we learn that Kish's son is named Saul or Sha'ul, meaning the one or the thing that is asked for.
Speaker 1:So right out of the gate, we as an audience, we are meant to recognize who Saul is. Samuel is old and this is the new leading man and so like Jeff Bridges as the dude, as Morgan Freeman is as Red, Denzel as detective Harris, and yes, even slight and spindly Timothy Chalamet as Paul Atreides, we recognize this striking figure of a key character. And the narrator leaves nothing to the imagination describing him as handsome, as physically imposing, and a quick note on this, the NIV's use of the word handsome doesn't really do justice to the Hebrew. The implication is that Saul is young and good, for sure, but in a moral sense. The point is is that at this point in the story, he is upright and honorable and also he happens to be quite tall.
Speaker 1:And as the story unfolds, we're gonna see that the assumptions of Paul's fitness to be ruler based on physique and youthful character, based on this oversimplified comparison, I e, he's taller than most, he'll be great. These these are misguided assumptions. And in this way, the ancient story is actually quite sophisticated. It names our human propensity to see what we want to see. Long before longitudinal studies were around to tell us how toxic social media is and how it impacts our mental health negatively because we come to conclusions about ourselves in the second we spend looking at someone else's life.
Speaker 1:The story is quite sophisticated in that it confirms that we aren't all that adept at making introductions. See, I measure my position and my progress unfairly when I meet someone sometimes. And I evaluate my worth by looking at other people's bodies sometimes. And I reduce other people to their profile or their resume or their wardrobe for goodness sake. And I think it's great that as Saul steps on stage, we get this great reminder to be grounded and cautious and slow with our assumptions.
Speaker 1:Maybe just try that this week. Anytime we feel ourselves odd by someone's reputation or physical presence or public presentation of themselves, do yourself and them a favor. Assume there's more to the story. And listen, we immediately learn more about Saul because he's about to meet up with Samuel. Remember, there's been an interlude in the narrative.
Speaker 1:We're gonna talk more about this in a second. Everybody's waiting for a king to show up. And we learn in the story that Saul and a servant, they've gone out looking for some missing livestock and they end up in Samuel's part of the country, his home region. And through a series of events, it kind of feels like God's sort of steering Saul towards the right place. We can sense it.
Speaker 1:This person that the people have asked for is going to meet the last of the judges. And we read that as Saul and his servant came into this town, as they were entering it, there was Samuel coming toward them on his way out of town to go to the high place. Now the day before Saul came and arrived, the Lord had revealed this to Samuel. About this time tomorrow, I'm gonna send you a man from the land of Benjamin. I want you to anoint him ruler over my people Israel.
Speaker 1:He's gonna deliver them from the hand of the Philistines. I've looked on my people, their cry has reached me. So when Samuel caught sight of Saul, the Lord said to him, this this is the man I spoke to you about. He will govern my people. So Saul approached Samuel in the gateway and said, would you please direct me to where the seer's house is?
Speaker 1:And Samuel said, I I'm I'm the seer. Okay, a couple quick notes here and an inference I think we need to make. First, I think it's a little comical that Saul doesn't know who Samuel is. A few chapters before this, there's this reference to how all of Israel from Dan in the North to Beersheba in the South, the whole country is implied, that everybody recognized Samuel as a prophet of the Lord. And sure, Saul may not have been born when that story happened, fine, but over the next few decades in the text, Samuel is the face of God's leadership and presence in the nation.
Speaker 1:He is out and about. He has a very public ministry. This is why I find it hard to not start to start laughing and giggling to myself as I see Saul cross paths with the protagonist of the story and he doesn't recognize him. And not only that, but then he asks Samuel, like any bystander on the road, he say, hey, do you know where I could find this judge? I don't know about you, but I think there's a little indignance, maybe even some mild offense, as Samuel says, me, dude.
Speaker 1:I'm the seer. And then he's like, Samuel? I'm the the seer. There's no one else. And commentators actually reflect on how this is part of an overarching theme in the narrative.
Speaker 1:Because it seems like Saul doesn't have any of the vital information. He's being guided by divine providence and intent. That much is clear, but he is not the primary actor. Samuel still holds that role here. And in the verses that follow, Samuel will anoint Saul as the next ruler.
Speaker 1:That's the word that's pulled from the text and it's directly from the Hebrew here. It's interesting. God doesn't tell Samuel that Saul will be king. He doesn't say that he will be judge. There's the term here.
Speaker 1:It's far more generic. God says there's a designation of political power. Saul is not a charismatic, divinely inspired leader like the judges have been. Note also that when Samuel first sees Saul, he senses God say, this is the man who will govern my people, which sounds pretty normal in English, but as scholars such as Johanna van Wittbos point out, the verb is often translated govern, generally in other parts of the text means to restrain or to hinder. And in this way, the text is casting a long shadow over Saul and whether or not he will be any good for God's people.
Speaker 1:And I I think this is a shadow that we can use to infer something about the character of Samuel based on how the story is put together. Remember, where we were last week, Samuel has done nothing to do anything about the king that God has told him to go and find. There's a gap until Samuel walks on stage and Saul is guided by divine inspiration to run into Samuel as Samuel coincidentally is trying to leave town at the time when God told him he would find the guy he's looking for. And in this, I see something in Samuel that I find in myself. The text is clear and will be clear again that Samuel isn't a fan of this turn toward monarchy.
Speaker 1:God also doesn't seem to be a fan of it, but there's still work to do. There's still a story unfolding. There's still responsibilities to be taken care of. And consequently then, I see in Samuel a kind of passive resistance that I see in myself sometimes. And I can't be the only one.
Speaker 1:Right? Like, do you ever let emails and messages go by and unanswered without thinking about why you're just not answering? Or do you ever find yourself ensuring that you will not run into that person that you don't wanna see? Maybe you let deadlines for applications go by, and then you just shrug and say, I guess I'll move on. Or maybe you wait for someone else to reach out, and when they don't, you tell yourself that friendship or that relationship wasn't meant to be.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, this kind of passive resistance is actually a form of wisdom. It's an intuition that needs time and attention to mature into discernment. Sometimes our passive resistance to our lives is actually good for us, but then of course, there are times when this resistance is actually an expression of our unacknowledged fear or of the wisdom that we know intrinsically but we do not want to live out of. And in Samuel, it's hard to say exactly what lies behind his hesitancy, but what I appreciate is how the divinely inspired contours of scripture showing us this process at work. It offers us an opportunity to stop and be honest with us with our own lives where we are, in the decisions that we need to make, in the steps that we need to take.
Speaker 1:Maybe you've been hesitating and as you sit here, you can see that there's been wisdom in that waiting. Or maybe you've been holding back and as you sit here and you think about this story, you can sense that actually, I think there's more fear than intuition at work in me right now. And whatever it might be, this storied direction, it invites all of us to choose a way forward with as much purpose and intent as we can muster trusting above all that God's presence is there in the choosing, which seems to be what Samuel finds a way to do. At first, he does the work of supporting Saul's ascendancy as a king. He does it almost begrudgingly.
Speaker 1:He does it almost secretly. In one scene, he actually tells everybody to leave the room so he can do his job. It's like, can everybody leave? I need to do this very secretly. And it's almost as if he doesn't want it to happen, but he does keep moving forward.
Speaker 1:It's just not straightforward. For example, we read in chapter 10 that Samuel gathers all the people of God to Mizpah again. And despite the fact that God has already told him that Saul's the guy, despite the fact that Samuel himself has already anointed him to be ruler, Samuel gathers the people, berates them for wanting a king, and then begins a very public ritual of casting lots to determine who the king is going to be. It makes no sense. And the or the Hebrew vocabulary adds a little nuance.
Speaker 1:Many biblical scholars have noted that the verb used here to describe the process of how Saul is eventually going to be identified, the practice of casting lots, that only happens in scripture when God's people are trying to find a culprit or trying to determine who's guilty. So is this just another reference to how God and God's servant Samuel, how they feel about the king that is to come? Or has Samuel, who for the record does not follow divine instruction to do this casting of lots, has he just chosen a method that he knows is gonna lead people to be suspicious of who Saul is? Who knows? The story doesn't make it clear, but it what it does do is help us understand that Saul is chosen and that Saul goes and hides, Something that he is going to do time and time again in the story ahead.
Speaker 1:We read this, that when they went to look for Saul after he'd been chosen, he was not to be found. So they inquired further of God, has the man come here yet? And God said to them, yes, he's hidden among the supplies. So they ran and they brought him out. And he stood among the people, and guess what?
Speaker 1:He was still taller than everybody. They're so fixated on this. And Samuel said to all the people, do you see the man the Lord has chosen? There's no one like him among all the people. And so then the people shouted, long live the king.
Speaker 1:And listen, the the people's praise here in the scene, it is unambiguous. They don't call Saul ruler. They don't call him prince. They don't call him judge. They call him malek.
Speaker 1:They call him king. And it's important to see that here, finally, Samuel goes public. And whether he does this because he can feel the nation hanging in the balance, and here's Saul, this is a politically sensitive moment, and you're hiding in the luggage. What are you doing? Or whether he finally realized that the time had come for him to leverage his rapport and his authority and his influence to contend for someone else.
Speaker 1:Or maybe he's just a narrative pawn by an ancient writer trying to help us see that God is behind all of history's unfolding. Any and all of these could be true. The story though isn't interested in spelling out cleanly the contours of divine will and the role the human agency plays in realizing it. Like, is God making Saul king? Is Samuel's initiative and reaction in this scene the means by which that's going to happen?
Speaker 1:And those are questions that are so easily translated, I think, into the grit of our experience. Like, when we ask questions like is God actually making all things new as God promises? Are are my intentional forgiveness of and friendship with people how that's going to happen? Or maybe we need to look at it through this lens. Will violence ever end with God coming and drying every tear from every eye as the text says?
Speaker 1:Or are my advocacy and my generosity and my compassion how that happens? And I to be clear, I'm not sure we're supposed to hear such questions as an either or proposition because I think this story highlights something of how our choices to serve others like Samuel does here, Our choices to use our skill and our voice to lift other people up and our our position to try and move issues of care and concern forward one day at a time, even when we're unsure, even when we don't know how it's gonna turn out. The story makes it clear that this is vital and important and divinely inspired work, and it's not just for ancient judges, which centers something for me that I couldn't shake as I spent some time with these stories the last few weeks. It's this way that Samuel seems to be so conflicted about all this. And guess what?
Speaker 1:That inner turmoil in this character, it's not going to go away. There's going to be so much more nuance in Samuel's story as the monarchy takes shape. We're going to come back to that, don't worry. Before today, we need to close by taking a quick look at some of what happens in chapter 12. All you need to know is that after they pull Saul out of the baggage and make him their king, he vindicates himself.
Speaker 1:He faces down a foreign threat and he consolidates Israel's military power and he shows himself actually in this season of his life to be quite benevolent and sensible. On the heels of that success, Samuel gathers the people again to renew their commitment to the king And where in previous chapters and episodes, we've seen Saul chosen as a political and military leader here, chapter 12 has has him affirmed by the ceremonial practices and the religious convictions of the people. They gather together and they offer sacrifices to God in thanks for Saul. At which point, get this, Samuel grabs the mic and he offers a scathing rebuke of the people. He says, well, you have your king, and here I am.
Speaker 1:What did I ever do to you? When did I ever take advantage of you? When did I ever lead you astray? And it can feel a little like Samuel's letting his true colors, his true feelings show right here. He basically says, I did everything I could and I couldn't win your trust.
Speaker 1:And then the ancient narrator has Samuel lead them through a blistering walkthrough of all the times they've failed God since the exodus all the way to the current period, how they have been so unfaithful, and how God has delivered them. And unsurprisingly, kinda kills the vibe at the party. It's interesting. They the crowd seems to see that this newly appointed king, the one that just followed into a battle, that he and his victories may be a reflection of their past error more than an indication of a bright and prosperous future. To which Samuel says, don't be afraid.
Speaker 1:You've done all this evil, yet don't turn away from the Lord. Serve God with all your heart. Don't turn to useless idols. They're no good for you. They can't rescue you.
Speaker 1:They're useless. For the sake of God's great name, God will not reject God's people because God was pleased to make you God's own. As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against God by failing to pray for you. I will teach you. I'll still teach you the way that is good and right.
Speaker 1:Now for the record, parts of this speech seem like a bit of a one off. Samuel as a character, nowhere else is Samuel obsessed with idols, which is why lots of biblical scholars think that some of this language is actually imported from later writers of the text who were very concerned about Jewish acquiescence to foreign cultures and foreign gods when they were captivity. And I get that. But I'm also inclined to think that this speech with its do nots and its, I'll be right there with you. It makes this profound theological assertion simply because it imagines Samuel as a reflection of the contradictions we all carry as individuals.
Speaker 1:Because I find the emotion that Samuel expresses here, it makes complete sense to me. He's disappointed in all that has happened. He's jilted and he's wounded and he's lashing out. We see Samuel here as his most fiercely honest self, but then there's also something in him that seems somewhat resolved and compassionate and understanding. Here is Samuel at his most fiercely loyal self.
Speaker 1:And I like to think that as a character, this indicates a kind of change right here in all of the inner turmoil. Can can you feel it in the story that Samuel finally gets it? Just like I think we do sometimes. Have you ever come to a place where you kind of let go and you start to trust that mercy and kindness are gonna have to work things out because you can't control a situation. Have you ever come to a place like that even when you realize that you can't keep other people from imploding like Samuel does with Saul?
Speaker 1:Have you ever come to a moment like this, a moment where like Samuel surely did, where you can feel the limits of your energy and your strength, where your body is failing and I'm just not gonna be able to make this happen? And honestly, I think humanizing Samuel's simultaneous outburst and his affection in this moment really helps me move the story from ancient narrative to embodied living. Maybe like him, you've felt conflicted because others have moved on from something or someone or some idea that you still care very much about and you can rationalize and understand why they've decided to do this, but it still hurts And yet, perhaps you find yourself sensing an invitation just like Samuel seems to here, where the spirit might be helping you to see that sometimes being there at the end of something isn't a sign that your life is a dead end or that God is somehow far or unremoved? Could it be that there's a transformation afoot and that divine imagination of your life and all the world is right there at the source of it? Sure.
Speaker 1:Like your life and mine, this doesn't mean that the rest of Samuel's days went on without challenge or ambiguity, but there is an encouragement here to see scripture, to see history, to see the patterns of our lives marked by the presence of a God who faithfully persists. And in this, Samuel's story, I think, reminds us that we have no choice but to carry our hurt and our love. We have no choice but to carry our care for others and our boundaries from them. We carry always the light of our hope for what lies ahead along with the shadow of our past experience. You have no choice to carry these things because you are constantly, painstakingly, ever so slowly changing.
Speaker 1:And this is why my prayer for you today is that you would come to trust in some small way, like Samuel seems to, that God is at work in all the contradictions. Let's pray. Loving God, This moment in lots of ways isn't unlike so many others where we can be present to the mystery of your work out in the world and the mystery of how it sort of finds us where we are. This ancient story has a way of stoking. It certainly stokes my imagination of how you were constantly, steadily moving your people forward.
Speaker 1:You were constantly persisting in mercy, gently advancing them. And how you do this with us. Here, moving through the world as fraught as it is. And sometimes it can feel like we're we struggle to not be passive. Sometimes it can feel like we're resisting our lives as it's coming to us.
Speaker 1:And I think there there's this opportunity to learn to trust your character and your peaceful way. And also learning to trust that our agency has a way of letting your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so spirit, we pray, would you help us as we do the work to stay open even just slightly to the newness you bring in all the endings we face, in all the contradictions we carry. We pray in the name of Christ, our hope and example. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.