Who’s our king?

RCL Year B, Proper 5 In the church lectionary – the cycle of scripture readings – we now settle into the long season of ‘ordinary time.’ After all the readings chosen for the themes of the season, now we get to spend a long period just following the narratives along, hearing about casts of characters […]

RCL Year B, Proper 5

In the church lectionary – the cycle of scripture readings – we now settle into the long season of ‘ordinary time.’ After all the readings chosen for the themes of the season, now we get to spend a long period just following the narratives along, hearing about casts of characters and what they’re up to as the plot moves on. I like this season – I like stories, and the chance to tell and listen to stories with other people. It’s one of the chief joys I find in having kids, that I get to read aloud to them – especially so when they’re old enough to read something in chapters, like the Little House books or the Wizard of Oz series, with lots of different plot twists and developments in each chapter that you get to experience together. It’s a refreshing change from reading Where the Wild Things Are for the twentieth time that week – as wonderful as that book is. I’ll leave it to you to guess which of my kids prefers which book.

We get stories both ways in scripture. The old old story of Jesus’s life, his birth, his ministry, his passion & death, his resurrection – that is a great big story that is well worth telling and retelling time and again. But there are other stories in scripture that are wonderful ones too, and in our Old Testament cycle this year we get to hear some of those. This is the year we hear about the kings, about Saul and David and Solomon and all of their exploits and intrigues. These stories are exciting, the kind they make into children’s books – battles and scheming and rebellions. They’re also the kind they don’t make into children’s books, as we’ll hear when we get to the story about Bathsheba.

But before we get to the exciting stories we have to set the stage for them, which is what happens in today’s reading. First, it might help if we have a brief review of the history: There were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs: grandpa, son, and grandson. Jacob had a son named Joseph who was sold into slavery by his brothers to Egypt, but who then rose to power there and was able to save his family from famine when they came begging. So all the family settled in Egypt. But some time later, a new king, Pharaoh, enslaved these people, who had become known as the Israelites. Moses was called by God and led the people out of Egypt with God’s help. They wandered around the desert wilderness for 40 years, crossed over the Jordan River under Joshua’s leadership, and settled in the Promised Land of Canaan. They fought lots of battles to conquer that land, and as a small warrior tribe they were led by various charismatic leaders called judges who arose from time to time when leadership was needed. Finally Samuel became their judge and leader. But in today’s reading the people tell Samuel they’re through with him and don’t want a dynasty passing to his sons. They want to have a king so they can be like other nations. If you think of the people of Israel as a single person, they were a child with the patriarchs, an adolescent in the wilderness, and now they’ve grown into what they think is adulthood. It’s time, they think, for them to start calling the shots about who’s in charge. They want what other people have – they want the good job and the nice car and all of that, and they think it’s high time they get it. The word ‘entitlement’ might apply well here.

Samuel doesn’t like this – no wonder, for he’s being ousted from power before his time. God doesn’t like this – for similar but very different reasons, which we’ll get to in a minute. But God tells Samuel, give them what they want. Just make sure you tell them what having a king entails – if they think they’re so adult, let them make this decision with eyes wide open.

So Samuel does, and he lays it on thick. You want a king? This is what the king will do to you. He will take. (He says this 7 or 8 times over.) He will take what is yours for himself. He will take your children. He will take your crops. He will take your money. You will go back to being slaves again. You want that?

And the people say, ‘la-la-la-la, we aren’t listening! we know what we want – give it to us.’ So Samuel anoints Saul, and the king stories begin. The people give up their freedom, and now they are like other nations. Now they’re not a warrior tribe, they’re a kingdom, and they pay taxes, and their children serve in the army, and they obey the laws, and a whole lineage of flawed people rule over them right down to the day Jesus comes on the scene as a new and different king. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

So just why is it that God doesn’t like this? He says to Samuel, the people aren’t rejecting you – they’re rejecting me as their king. They’re just doing what they’ve always done. They haven’t grown up at all. Think about what God has gone through with these people in their history together. He told Abraham & Sarah, I’ll make you the ancestors of a mighty nation, and Sarah laughed at him and Abraham tried to pursue other solutions with Hagar. He told Jacob, I’ll be your god, and Jacob bargained and tricked his brother and played games, not really believing this promise. He told the Israelites, I’ll lead you to the Promised Land, and they grumbled back that they really liked it better in Egypt. He raised up judges to lead them, to rouse their faith and further settle the Promised Land, and every time that judge died, the people would go back to worshiping other gods and messing around. So this behavior, demanding a king, is right in line with it all. God is the perpetually jilted lover with this people Israel.

So is God just angry and feeling rejected? That’s what we’d be feeling, to be sure: ‘That’s it. I’ve had it with you. Go your own way and suffer the consequences.’ But of course that’s not what God does. He helps Samuel select Saul, who turns out to be just the military leader they need to fight the Philistines, and then he selects David, who rules them well for many years. And once things start going sour with the kings, God starts sending prophets, so that there’s always someone around calling the kings to account and speaking God’s truth about what’s going on. And finally, of course, God comes in the flesh in the person of Jesus. So God doesn’t shake Israel off at this point. But he does let them experience the consequences of their decision – that’s one good way of learning, as any parent knows.

So I don’t think God lingers long in the bad feelings of rejection. No, God’s real problem with this king idea has to do with trust. It’s what God struggles with with all of us, really. Despite all the history these people have had of God taking care of them, God freeing them from slavery and fulfilling promises made to them, the people still over and over again just can’t trust God. The whole identity of God with Israel is as one who delivers them from slavery and sets them free. But something makes the people opt for slavery again anyway. Something about freedom is too much for them – too vulnerable, too risky. They want security at any cost. So they choose it, at great cost. It’s a pattern they keep living out – it’s a pattern that we keep living out too. God comes in Jesus, the ultimate demonstration of risky outrageous love, and they and we still can’t quite bring ourselves to accept it. We’d rather have what feels safe. We’d rather conform to the world around us. We’d rather opt for what we think will keep us in control – choosing our own gods that we think we can direct. Even when, every time, those gods take control of us instead.

Because of course this whole story gets replayed over and over again between us and God all the time. ‘God, thanks for everything you’ve done for us. You’re really wonderful. Please now give us what we want – the good job, the shiny new car, all of it.’ We want to be as cool as the Joneses. We want to have enough money so we feel secure. We want relationships that go our way and make us feel happy. We want to look good to other people – a nice house, an impressive title at work, a successful church. We want all these things because without them we don’t feel safe. And if you don’t give them to us, God, then we’ll look for someone who can – we might not call that other one God, we might call it a new spouse or a better job or a bank account, but guess what: it still functions the same way. Only whatever that new god is, it might just not follow through the way we hope. It might be like the king Samuel describes: that king will take from you. He does not give.

The thing is, God is a risky God. Worshipping God is a risky endeavor. We forget this, us in our nice safe country – nothing reminds us that following Jesus is a daring thing to do. But it is risky for us too, simply because we have to let go of our own ability to control. We have to let go of our own picture of how things should be. We have to let go of the approval of the world around us. We even have to let go of getting to define what is good for us.

But we gain so much more. God takes only to give again – takes, blesses, breaks apart and gives out again just as Jesus did with the feeding of the 5000, just as we experience every Sunday in the Eucharist. God makes sure we have enough, and more leftover besides. That’s the difference in having God as our king – in accepting the gifts God so wants to give us, we live into what abundance there is all around us. So we practice again and again receiving that gift – we try it out here together every Sunday, we live it out every time we allow others in our community to help us, every time we let ourselves rely on God’s love. We trust that God will do more than we can ask or even imagine. It is possible to receive – try it this week and see.