 |
| Sunrise from Mt. Kilimanjaro (credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/slapshot/344483476) |
Old Testament
Reading: 1 Samuel 8:4-20,
11:14-15
8:4Then all the elders
of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5and said
to him, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us,
then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” 6But the thing
displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed
to the LORD, 7and the LORD said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of
the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but
they have rejected me from being king over them. 8Just as they have
done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking
me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9Now then,
listen to their voice; only — you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the
ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
10So Samuel reported
all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11He
said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take
your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run
before his chariots; 12and he will appoint for himself commanders of
thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap
his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his
chariots. 13He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks
and bakers. 14He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and
olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15He will take
one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and
his courtiers. 16He will take your male and female slaves, and the
best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17He will
take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18And in
that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for
yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
19But the people
refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined
to have a king over us, 20so that we also may be like other nations,
and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
11:14Samuel said to the
people, “Come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingship.” 15So
all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the LORD in
Gilgal. There they sacrificed offerings of well-being before the Lord, and
there Saul and all the Israelites rejoiced greatly.
SERMON: “Of Tribes
and Kingdoms”
It
is a commonly known technique that when you want to ask a person for something
you sandwich the request between two positive statements. Let me give you an example: say you wanted to
ask a friend (we’ll use Earl) to watch your dog for three weeks. You would say, “Hey Earl, have I ever told
you how funny you are? I mean, I think
you would even make my dog laugh.
Speaking of my dog, mind watching him for me? You’re such fun to be around I’d probably
have to pry him away from you!” See what
I did there? My salesman brother-in-law
swears by this practice.
The
people of Israel could’ve used a little sugar-coating. They did a terrible job of asking Samuel for
a king: insulting him the whole time.
First it was, “You’re OLD!”, swiftly followed by “and your children are
a disgrace!”. Not too clever, guys. Then they ask for a king to rule over them
“so they could be like other nations.”
After all this time the prophet Samuel has been trying to help them see
that Yahweh has set them apart as a holy people and here they are asking for a
McDonald’s and a Walmart. Sigh. The text says he was “displeased” by this
request. I’m betting it was closer to
disgusted.
But
God calls Samuel to listen to them anyway and then to tell them that the king
they seek will only bring oppression and hardship, on everything from their
daughters to their donkeys. But these
blunt blokes have already made up their mind: a king it must be. This is a huge paradigm shift for them: from
being ruled as tribes to becoming a monarchy.
However
harsh their request, you can understand where they’re coming from. With Egypt to the south, Babylon and Assyria
to the east, Aram/Syria to the north, and still farther north, the Hittites,
this little tribal people, nestled between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea, are justifiably nervous.
After warning them through Samuel, God allows for their free will to
reign and they anoint Saul as their King.
He turns out to be a bit of a violent wildcard and has this unfortunate
habit of being possessed by evil spirits, but they got their King. The tribe became a kingdom. And so most civilizations of the world have
gone following in this same direction ever since.
But
as our parents told us growing up, “Just because it’s popular, doesn’t mean
it’s right.” The kingdom model has not
always been a positive direction: from the crusades spreading colonialism more
than Christianity to a world where wealth makes kings of very few and paupers
of the majority of our planet. Perhaps
as children of God, we should seek something more than just another
kingdom. Even our language of “God’s
kingdom” in the church has easily been corrupted by our understanding of
worldly kingdoms.
Ada
Maria Isasi-Diaz, a Cuban-born theologian challenges this most strongly, even
calling for a change of terminology: from “kingdom” to “kin-dom.” She says,
“to be an instrument for
transforming the world, our church needs to change more than its
structures. We must change our very
self-understanding as church. The Kingdom metaphor perpetuates elitist and
patriarchal systems in the church, and sanctions all sorts of oppression.
“Kin-dom” of God means family — la familia de Dios — with the emphasis on
kinship, equality, “a true sense of home, of being safe, of being able to be
and become one’s self. If the church is
about Kingdom, there is no need to change. The church can ally itself with the
world’s powerful, and ignore the poor and marginalized. A kingdom of God’s
Church can preach justice to others while exempting itself from being just. But
if church is God’s kin-dom or family, then the church is not only for the poor
but of the poor.”
We
may not all be ready to let go of language of God’s kingdom on earth, but we
can reclaim it. We can recognize that
God’s kingdom looks much more like a family structure of unity and belonging
than an oppressive hierarchy.
In
other words, a tribe. Now, I’m not
advocating that we as a nation return to a tribal system: this is an
impossibility in today’s world. But, I
do believe that we in the church have the power through our Compassionate King
to become a tribe once again: to let go of the tendency to want to be just like
other people, to reject the notion that material wealth and God’s favor are one
and the same, and to fiercely fight not for power but for unity and
reconciliation no matter how deeply politics, theology and history divide.
If
we are going to learn how to be a tribe once more, who better to learn from
than an actual tribe?
I
made a good friend last week at Duke’s Summer Institute on Reconciliation: a
minister named Wilfred, from Tanzania.
His tribe, the Chagga people, live at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Describing life there, he said, “In our
context if there are no relationships, there is no life. People can do without water or food, but not
without healthy relationships.”
He
went on to describe a ritual by which they enable healing in
relationships. Between people’s homes,
they grow a very particular plant called the “esaled plant.” This is meant to divide between neighbors’
land, but what divides can also unite.
If you are fighting with someone to the point that you are no longer
talking to one another, you simply pluck a leaf from that plant, hold it behind
your back and approach that person. You
greet them and, before they can flee, you take the esaled leaf from behind your
back and place it on them. As soon as it
touches their skin, they are obligated, tribally bound, to talk with you until
your conflict is resolved. If you are
not able to resolve the conflict, you go to the tribal elders and they help
mediate the conflict.
Perhaps
here we could use pine branches….
Actually,
we in the church already have such a mechanism for reconciliation in our
tribe. It’s here, on this Table: bread
and a cup. Jesus teaches in Matthew that
if we are angry with a brother or sister, before coming to offer ourselves at
this Table, we should go first to them and be reconciled and then come to the
Table to find healing and peace. As the
Spirit fills us at this Table, we are given eyes to see what really matters
and, just like a family meal, we are reminded in simple bread and a cup that what
unites us is stronger than what divides us.
Being
an imperfect, reconciling tribe in the midst of kingdoms of power requires
great strength and trust in God. It
takes even more courage to proclaim the kin-dom or kingdom of God that is
already coming, and to participate as the Spirit urges us to cross divides and
seek others’ welfare before our own. As
part of God’s kin, we need no other King.
We need only to engage in the uncomfortable task of making peace in all
areas of our lives and come to this Table to remember that we belong to a tribe
of grace.
Reconciliation
is no simple task: there’s nothing simple about the cross. But like those Chagga people in Tanzania, we
cannot survive without it. The survival
of the church depends not on adopting economically extravagant kingdom models
or building theological arsenals against all those who threaten us. Our survival as a tribe depends upon our
willingness to remain a family and our openness to include all those in search
of home.
No comments:
Post a Comment