Proper 6
June 14, 2015

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13; Mark 4:26-34

When I was growing up, I wanted to become the next Shakespeare. Anyone who has been on the Road Rally knows that didn’t happen.

I would have settled for being the next William Faulkner or the next Agatha Christie. And so, before God morphed that desire into the weekly slog of writing a sermon, I did several stints as a writer and/or editor in a variety of places, including one brief time in which I was the interim de facto editor of a newspaper written for black people.

That was because the woman who had the title of editor was hired simply as a advertising salesperson. She had no idea of how to write. So, for a brief time, I would interview various people over the telephone for articles to keep my non-Blackness from being so obvious.

In any case, there are times when I’m reading the Bible that my editor’s instincts kick in. I think there are certain incidents that could have been written differently or even left out entirely to strengthen the overall message. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in thinking that. Although typically the truth is that those problematic areas are often the ones that provoke the most growth when I accept them on their own terms and wrestle with the reasons they were written the way they were.

Our Old Testament lesson today is a case in point — or at least it is if you expand the story backwards one chapter to gain some perspective on the background of today’s story. It begins when the prophet Samuel has a huge argument with King Saul over something that we modern Christians have a hard time understanding. Samuel had given Saul a message from God, saying that Saul was to lead the Israelite armies against the Amalekites and then kill them all — every man, woman, child and animal. It’s what one biblical scholar calls a “text of terror.”

Saul does want he’s told — up to a point. He defeats the Amalekites and kills them all — except the king. Then Saul burns most of the loot they captured — except for the very best stuff, which he takes home with him. But that wasn’t good enough for Samuel. So Samuel tells Saul that because he had disobeyed, God would tear the kingdom away from him and give it to someone who would obey.

Then Samuel did something that you thankfully don’t see very often as a part of a modern worship service: he took a sword and killed the king of the Amalekites, hacking his body into pieces. After that, Samuel stormed off. It was merciless and gory and seemingly not very much like the God of love we know from scripture.

That’s why the editor in me wishes I could excise this story from the Bible. It would make life so much simpler. However, given that this story is part of the Bible, we should take it seriously and try to make sense of it. Why is God being portrayed as asking for the total destruction of the Amalekites? How can the God who sent Jesus to save us from our sins be the Lord of Genocide?

Modern scholars have found ancient records that seem to indicate that at least some of the groups which eventually came together to form the Hebrews were tribes of landless people who roamed the countryside like highway robbers, taking protection money from the local people and fighting the authorities for control of small areas of land.

Eventually some or all of these tribes drifted down to Egypt where they became slaves until Moses led them to freedom. According to this theory, it was the Exodus itself and the resulting covenant with God that molded those various groups together into a single nation.

Assuming you’ll accept that theory as a possibility, it would seem to me that these robber barons would be completely unable to relate to a God whose primary qualities are love and mercy. Therefore, God earned their respect by appearing to the Israelites mostly through displays of awesome power. Then, over the centuries, he worked to gradually lead the Israelites into an understanding of his true nature.

However, at this point in their history, the Israelites saw God very much as a warrior. That’s where the title “The Lord of Hosts” comes in. It is literally a description of God as a commanding general. That idea comforted the Israelites since they knew that, even when they were outnumbered, they could be sure they would win because God was on their side. And who wouldn’t want that assurance when you’re a member of a tiny nation forced to hide in the Judean highlands, surrounded by far more powerful nations?

But that’s also where the idea of divine genocide comes in. That was exactly what many other nations in the area did to their enemies in those days. So, if the God of Israel wanted to be taken seriously by his own people with their renegade past, he had to approach them where they lived and introduce himself in a way they understood.

You’ve heard the old saying “To the victor go the spoils.” Whenever the Hebrews would fight a holy war, they believed that God was leading their armies and fighting for them. Therefore, the victory belonged to God, not to the soldiers. As a result, God should be the one to get the spoils. There was only one way they knew to get the spoils to God and that was to kill the captives and burn the booty.

This practice was called herem in Hebrew, which means that the things to be dedicated were under the “curse” or the “ban” of God. In reading about this practice, I found one book that compares the ban with a surgeon amputating a limb that’s become infected with gangrene. In that view, the ban was like surgery to protect the Israelites.

But I don’t think that’s the point at all. As much as we may wish that the idea of the ban was not in the Bible, I believe this practice was imposed simply to teach the people obedience, which they had to learn before they could begin to learn mercy.

Therefore, God and Samuel become angry with Saul because he didn’t fully obey God’s command. Saul preferred to put his personal judgment over that of God. He wanted to have unlimited power like the kings in all the neighboring countries; he didn’t want to have his power checked by anyone — even God.

That set the stage for today’s Old Testament lesson. God sends Samuel out to anoint a king who will replace Saul. Given the power that even a limited king had in those days, that was a dangerous thing to do. If Saul caught even the faintest whiff of what Samuel was planning, Samuel could be arrested and executed without any trial and with no appeals. Therefore, Samuel decides to go undercover essentially as a prophetic spy in order to fulfill God’s command.

When Samuel arrives in Bethlehem, the people in town are aware of his rift with the king, so they’re more than a little worried about his motives for coming to town. They were afraid because, as the king of the Amalekites learned the hard way, you have to watch out for Samuel when you get him mad. But Samuel reassures them with his cover story that he’s simply coming to offer a sacrifice to God.

Then Samuel ritually washes each of Jesses’ sons one by one to get them ready for that sacrifice. Meanwhile, Samuel is privately trying to guess which is the one chosen by God to be the next king.

It’s possible that Jesse and his sons didn’t have any idea that Samuel was doing anything more than simply preparing them for a sacrifice. This idea is made even more probable when you see in the next chapter that David’s oldest brother doesn’t seem to be at all aware of the fact that David had been anointed as the future king.

However, we’re privileged to peek into Samuel’s mind as he reviews all of Jesse’s sons. Samuel clearly assumes that the one whom God has chosen must somehow be impressive looking. But God does the unexpected. He doesn’t choose any of the striking young men Jesse parades before Samuel. Instead, God chooses the youngest son, the one who’s still just a boy. God tells Samuel the reason for that is that he doesn’t look at a person’s appearance, but at their heart.

I would suggest to you that that moment is one in which the perceptions of the Israelite people began to change. The God, whom they assumed would demonstrate his power by thoroughly destroying his enemies, surprisingly sidesteps their cultural expectations by selecting a young shepherd boy from a small out-of-the-way town to be the next king.

If God could do that, perhaps there were other cultural expectations that God would refuse to be bound by. Perhaps there was more to this God than they expected.

I would further suggest that one of the major themes in the broad sweep of the Old Testament is that of a God who continually does the unexpected and who consistently asks his people to open their hearts to see the new paths God is blazing, so that they can let go of their old ideas and join him in the journey along this new direction.

Isn’t that also part of the point of Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed? We think of that as being a story of something starting out small and growing into something large. However, the truth is that a mustard plant is really only a bush, not a tree. It isn’t really large at all.

In Jesus’ time mustard was considered a noxious weed that, if left unchecked, would take over a field. So Jesus’ actual point is about the irresistibility of God’s plans, even when they don’t match what we may think is best.

Last week we began a search for new ways to follow Christ in a changing world. One of those ways was to begin our Pub Theology program last Wednesday. We had 19 people come from a variety of backgrounds — Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Assembly of God, Universalist-Unitarian as well as Jewish and atheist.

We had a fascinating exchange of ideas and, as I had hoped, the entire discussion remained completely on a respectful level, which allowed people to hear new approaches to spirituality and to sense God working in a variety of unexpected areas.

Then this morning we heard about the fund Nancy was led to create to help young people who have been hooked by drugs — the newly-named Josh Serpliss Hope Fund. Let’s pray that God will bless the intent behind this fund to shine a powerful light of hope into the dark alleys of our community that lead our young people to seek solace in these enslaving substances.

May God use it to share the good news that hope is always a present reality — that our old lives may be put to the ban and we may be resurrected to a new and enriching life if we choose to be.

God calls us out of our comfort zones and into an unknown — but always infinitely better — future.

After all, we serve the God who drew Abraham and Sarah away from their family and their familiar surroundings in order to make them the founders of a great nation. We serve the God who transformed a simple shepherd boy named David into a mighty king.

We serve the God who calls all of us to leave behind the successes of our past in order to build a more powerful tomorrow — in our private lives, in this church and in our community. The question is: will we have the faith to follow him? Amen.

(Comments to Jim at :jmfpc@sbcglobal.net.)