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Preached at the June 11 Meeting of the Presbytery of Coastal Carolina and at Cameron Presbyterian Church on June 14
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
15:34Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of
Saul. 35Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death,
but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD was sorry that he had made Saul king
over Israel.
16:1The LORD said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have
rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out;
I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a
king among his sons.” 2Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of
it, he will kill me.” And the LORD said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I
have come to sacrifice to the LORD.’ 3Invite Jesse to the sacrifice,
and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom
I name to you.” 4Samuel did what the LORD commanded, and came to
Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you
come peaceably?” 5He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to
the LORD; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he
sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
6When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought,
“Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the LORD.” 7But the LORD
said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature,
because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they
look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” 8Then
Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has
the LORD chosen this one.” 9Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he
said, “Neither has the LORD chosen this one.” 10Jesse made seven of
his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The LORD has not chosen
any of these.” 11Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And
he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And
Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he
comes here.” 12He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had
beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The LORD said, “Rise and anoint him; for this
is the one.” 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in
the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the LORD came mightily upon David
from that day forward.
“How Long Will You Grieve?”
Church is weird,
y’all. I hope this isn’t news to
you!
We are weird for lots
of reasons. We think it’s really cool to
wear matching colors on Pentecost. We
think any kind of food can be vastly improved upon if it’s turned into
casserole form. We like it when people
clap, just not too much. Then, we get
all squirmy. We speak in code:
the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all…
the Word of the Lord…
But one oddity about us
rises above the rest: we think about death.
A lot.
Sometimes, we church
people unintentionally say unhelpful things when facing death, things like:
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“Be strong.”
“God needed another angel.”
“God never gives you more than you can bear.”
These words fall short
in bringing comfort (except of course to the person saying them, who wants to
be emotionally removed from the situation as soon as possible).
You could throw
Yahweh’s words to Samuel from our reading this morning into the mix:
“How long will you grieve?”
Ouch. Sounds harsh, doesn’t it? Samuel’s not grieving a death, well, not
exactly. He’s grieving that Saul, this
king the people of Israel begged him for, has been such a disappointment. He’s grieving that he ever had any part in
the whole mess.
And yet Yahweh doesn’t
tell him to rest. God doesn’t tell him
to take a nice vacation, or perhaps have a casserole. God tells him to get over it. (A casserole would have been much nicer.)
But God didn’t have any
time to waste, you see. Yahweh had plans
for a new king for the people of Israel.
“I’ve provided for myself a king among Jesse’s sons.” God said. Karl Barth points out that “provided” can be
helpfully parsed as pro-video: God has seen beforehand, selecting a boy-king
with wisdom and vision, and Samuel had a crucial part to play in it all. His lingering grief was getting in the way of
that. You see, sometimes, you need to be
pushed out of your grief so you can imagine a new reality.
I think now is that time for the Presbyterian Church (USA), for
the Presbytery of Coastal Carolina, and for our individual churches.
You don’t need me to tell you we are a grieving people. We have lost Calabash church to another
denomination. We will lose more. It is like losing a family member. No, wait, it’s not like losing a family
member, it is losing a family member.
But this has all just happened in the past year. So why should we be pushed out of grief
already? Is God that cruel? Is this preacher that insensitive?
It would seem cruel and insensitive if we were in the early
stages of grief. We’re not. We are being pushed out of grief because we
didn’t just start it. We in the church
have been grieving for decades, my friends.
Grieving positions of power in business, government and social life
being lost. Grieving that full pews on a
Sunday were a given, but now they’re not.
Grieving that our grandkids won’t come to church unless we tell them “Why?”
and that “Because it’s just what you do” doesn’t seem to cut it.
We have been grieving for a very long time. And so, I believe the God who asked Samuel
that question first, asks it of us now, not with anger or mockery, but with
true, deep, sadness, “How long will you grieve?”
To grieve is to be
human -- we all know it. Like I said, we
weird church people are well acquainted with death. And so we all counsel people in grief. At our best, we say things like, “It’s not
your fault. Stick to the basics. Don’t try to do too much. Eat, sleep.
It’s not selfish to focus on yourself right now.”
But what if that’s all
you ever do?
What if our churches
have been sticking to the basics for decades – focusing on food and rest for
us, but not even realizing there’s anyone else out there? What if God is pushing us forward the way
Samuel was pushed?
We don’t need a king
now. We also certainly don’t need
leaders who keep the church held hostage in exile. What we do need is bravery. To stop looking on outward appearance, even
if that is an expensive building being contested.
We need to look at
hearts, as God does, starting with ours.
We need to understand that those who feel they have to leave this family
of the Presbyterian Church (USA) do so not out of hatred or bitterness or anger
or self-righteousness. They leave because
they grieve – grieving a church they believe has changed too much, changing
from their understanding of scripture.
And those who stay –
those who advocate for change in the church, who understand this to also be
about scripture, do not do this because of pride or arrogance or
self-righteousness. They call for change
because they grieve – grieving a church that has changed too little in terms of
justice over these past decades, and thus become irrelevant, detached, an
exclusive club.
We may not share the
same interpretation of scripture. We
many not share the same understanding of what purity looks like. But you can be sure that we share the same
grief.
It all comes down to
grief. And we see in the story of Samuel
and David that grief can be immobilizing, or it can be a catalyst.
The world doesn’t need
a grieving church. They’ve had too much
of that. The world needs a brave
church. A resurrected church. A Pentecost church.
So how do we move past
our grief? Well, we don’t.
God pushes us past our
grief. Samuel wasn’t ready. David certainly wasn’t. But when God calls you, you don’t say “yes”
yesterday and you don’t say “yes” tomorrow.
You say yes right now, with tears rolling down your cheeks and fear in
your heart.
Samuel trusted the wild
ideas of God enough to get past his grief and go to people who expected the
worst from him. “Do you come peaceably?”
they asked, with knees knocking together in panic. No doubt, they probably said this because
they knew Samuel had anointed Saul as king – that same Saul who liked to hack
people into pieces and call it justice.
“Actually, I do come
peaceably,” He said. “I come to
sacrifice.” Sure, he had a heifer with
him, but that’s not really what he was sacrificing. Samuel was sacrificing his sorrow, his grief,
so that the story of God working in human history, the story of the people of
Israel, his own story could continue. He
didn’t know which of Jesse’s sons was the Cinderella to his King Fairy Tale. All he knew for sure was to go to people who
made him nervous, who were terrified of him in return, and speak peace to them,
expecting that in the middle of it all, God would show up.
We may not know the
whole path of moving past our grief as a church, but goodness, what a wonderful
way to start! Go to people who make us
nervous. Speak peace. Sacrifice our grief. Trust God.
See what happens.
Notice I did not say
form a committee, nor did I say develop a 14-point plan for community outreach.
This will look
different in our different communities.
I’ll tell you what it might look like in mine. I live in the small but proud town of
Cameron. If you want to go to the
library, you go to Vass, which is 6 miles up the road. (That’s also where the Piggly Wiggly is, if
you’re interested, and you should be!)
Anyway, the other evening, I went to our little local library. It was after-hours, but I wanted to return a
(much-overdue) book.
As I pulled up to the
library, I saw something I didn’t expect: there was a family in a van, with all
the doors and windows open to stave off the heat. There was a teenage boy propped against the
hood of the van, with an old laptop on top.
I suddenly realized that he was there to access the wi-fi to do his
school work. As I drove away, I noticed
an honor student bumper sticker on that old van.
And my church has
wireless internet all the time. How easy
would it be to “speak peace” to my community by offering free internet access
to students in the area who are technologically impoverished? Internet access
is becoming, if it hasn’t already become, a human rights issue. Kids who can access internet at home can do
their work. Kids who can’t, can’t. Perhaps that’s what ‘speaking peace’ looks
like for us.
Think about, pray
about, what it looks like for you and your community.
We as a church have to
get past our grief. We can still feel
what we feel, we can still have regret and sadness. I’m pretty sure Samuel felt regret for that
whole Saul situation the rest of his days.
But we can’t let that stop us from being the church, the body of Christ
in this fractured world. We can’t let
that stop us from being a part of God breaking a peaceable kingdom into this
world even now, using broken people like us to do it.
How long will we
grieve? It’s been long enough.
Amen.
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