Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, 2015 – 1 Samuel 8:4-11,(12-15), 16-20; Psalm 138; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35
I would like to begin this morning by asking each of you to consider what you picture when you think of a king. Outside of the Bible, where do we learn about good kings? Maybe we learn from books, movies, fairytales, and perhaps even “Hello!” magazine. What is it that characterizes these kings as being good? A good king always saves, always protects, they always act justly, and they always arrive on scene just in time.
To what degree to these notions impact the way in which we think about kingship? Because we know that real life is not as neat as all of this. People suffer, we face injustices, we commit injustices, people are wrongly accused, wrongly imprisoned, they get sick, and they die. So how do we understand God’s sovereignty in our proclamation that Christ is King? Whether you personally identify with one of these dark situations, or have walked through them with a loved one, or when we hear of the suffering of our brothers and sisters around the world, we sometimes find ourselves wondering, is God really in control right now? Is He truly sovereign over all? How do we understand Christ’s victory in the midst of terrible situations?
In our first lesson this morning we heard about the elders of Israel asking Samuel to give them a king. Samuel had been raised up as a judge in Israel following a dark period in their history, where the author of the Book of Judges repeatedly notes that everyone did what was right in their own eyes. In the chapter preceding our reading for today, Samuel led the people to turn back to the Lord once again, in order that they might be saved from the Philistines who were drawing near to attack. The Israelites fast and confess their sins against the Lord, asking Samuel to not stop crying out to Him on their behalf. God intercedes and the Philistines are subdued. Samuel then sets up a stone, naming in Ebenezer, meaning ‘stone of help’, since the Lord has helped Israel thus far.
While this stone should have served as a reminder of the Lord’s unfailing help, the Israelites lose faith in the assurance of His sovereignty, His power to save. Perhaps they were afraid because Samuel, their judge, was growing older. The threat of the Philistines still loomed large and Samuel’s sons, now also serving as judges, were acting wrongly and perverting justice. It is perhaps not difficult to empathize with the Israelites; their circumstance was precarious, so they decided to deal with the situation.
We do not have a detailed description of the logic that led to the elders of Israel to approach Samuel at Ramah, but Scripture does tell us that they 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”. Their request seems to be prompted by a desire to work out their undesirable circumstances. Samuel does not see their request as an honorable attempt to be proactive in protecting their people, nor should we. The narrator writes that their request displeases him. A more literal rendering reads, “the thing that was evil in the eyes of Samuel”. And what was this evil thing? The displacement of the kingship of God over Israel.
Up until this point Israel had existed as a tribe rather than a state. They lived with a brotherhood ethos, rather than under the rule of a centralized authority. This was the thing that set Israel apart from other nations: they did not require the power of a king, and subsequently would not incur the cost of supporting a monarchy. Instead, according to God’s covenant promise, when Israel was in distress, the Lord would answer them, as He did when they were threatened by the Philistines in the previous chapter. However, years pass, Samuel grows old, and in time it is this very help of the Lord that that they reject.
In God’s love, our free will is never compromised, even when our choices are compromising.
The elders of Israel do not err in ignorance, as they are well-warned of the future consequences of their choice. Samuel tells them that their future king will take the sons of Israel for royal appointments, to serve at the pleasure of the king; take the daughters of Israel to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers; to support the lush court life, like that of other kings; take the property of the Israelites to give to his courtiers, necessary resources in faction politics; take one-tenth of the Israelites’ grain, because it costs money to run a government; take one-tenth of the Israelites’ flocks. In fact, the governing verb of Samuel’s description of the monarchy is ‘take’. Finally, they are to be enslaved again, like they were in Egypt, all in the service of an earthy king. Samuel’s cautioning is not spoken in a polemical tone; it is a statement of facts. The people persist and refuse to heed Samuel’s warnings. Once again they demand a king who may govern them and go out before them in battle. So, while God does not approve of the monarchy, it is permitted.
How do we end up here from chapter 7? If we look back to the statement by the elders about Samuel’s unjust sons, this petition for a king seems to start because things don’t look as they ought to. Despite the fact that God has been faithful to his people, the Israelites reject his kingship, not trusting in his sovereignty. It is a rule that they are blind to, instead asking for a king who they can see before them, not wanting to be set-apart, but just the same as everyone else.
If we are honest with ourselves, do we not recognize a similar attitude towards Christ’s lordship?
There are moments in life when we do not doubt what God has promised us, but the delivery of said promise does not come as quickly or how we would like it to. We do mental gymnastics to persuade ourselves that we need to play a more active role in seeing God’s promise to us come to fruition. In doing so, we rely on our own sovereignty or control over our own lives.
Our unfaithfulness does not surprise God. He knew from his laying the foundations of the earth that Israel would demand a king. He gives his first warning about the limitations of royal authority in the Law, where it is written: When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me”.
It is important to remember that God’s foreknowledge is not causal, that is to say, His knowing what our choices will be does not dictate them. God knew that the Israelites would reject his kingship, yet he does not abandon them. He prepares a way forward, appointing David as king, and through his line, Christ.
This should indicate to us that God is at work in ways that we cannot see. While we have the benefit of hindsight in reading these stories in Scripture, knowing that everything will be okay in the end, it can admittedly be difficult to regard our own circumstances with the same confidence in God’s Lordship. Paul’s words from our second lesson, characterizing our troubles as ‘light’ and ‘momentary’ can feel like cold water on a hot rock when we are experiencing trauma or grief. But Paul is not speaking from a place of vain optimism. He too is in the midst of trials, but speaks as one who knows that God is goodness, all of the time; even when He doesn’t seem good and things don’t look as we think that they should.
We need to believe that God is sovereign, despite what empirical evidence might suggest. Paul does not gloss over the reality of suffering, but reframes it for his readers.
He quotes Psalm 116:
I kept my faith, even when I said, “I am greatly afflicted”;
I said in my consternation, “Everyone is a liar.”
What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all people.
He says, so too do we keep the faith, even when we say that we are greatly afflicted.
We are not to lose heart, even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. Outwardly, things don’t look as they should, but we look not at what can be seen, which is temporary, but at what cannot be seen, which is eternal.
Missionary and author Amy Carmichael wrote in one of her many books that failure to worship God was an act of treachery because it meant that one refuses to accept that the will of God is ‘good, acceptable and perfect’, always. Carmichael did not live in a world far from pain; in fact, she was confronted with suffering and injustice daily in her ministry in India. She recounts situations where she was unable to save children from temple prostitution, not knowing their fate. While heartbroken, she did not doubt that God was mighty to save when she was not, trusting in his Lordship and praising Him for his goodness, saying, “We only live as we minister, and the ministry is praise.”
The glory of God’s kingdom often looks like failure by the measure of the world. Elie Wiesel’s book Night is a record of his memories from the Auschwitz concentration camp. He recounts the death of his family and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronted with absolute evil. He writes as one who has lost his faith, if not in the existence of God, than certainly in his sovereignty. Wiesel remembers a day when he and his fellow prisoners were forced to march past the gallows where three people had just been executed, one of whom was a little boy.
He writes:
Behind me, I heard the man asking:
“For God’s sake, where is God?”
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
“Where He is? This is where – hanging here from this gallows…”
For Wiesel, the thought of God being hung on the gallows was a source of hopeless despair. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, was humiliated, tortured, nailed to a cross, and died. According to the ways of the world, this looks a lot like failure. But in Christ’s death and resurrection, we understand that He achieved an eternal glory. We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead will also raise us with Him and present us to himself. We live in the tension of daily confronting suffering while daily proclaiming the victory of our Lord. And so we kneel before God, frightened and frustrated by our circumstances, but in faith asking that His Kingdom would come. We know that because He is goodness that everything is going to be okay in the end. If it’s not okay yet, it’s not the end.
