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July 14, 2024
1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15
Mark 3:32-35
Sermon Text:
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
There is a lot of history and background information for our reading from 1 Samuel today, and I’m only going to mention the very high points of it. Because otherwise I’d be up here for an hour, and I don’t want to do that.
So, to get the fuller picture, I encourage you to read up through ch11 when you have time. Parts of it are quite entertaining. Some of it reads like a conversation with a 4-year-old, and some of it sounds like an Indiana Jones movie.
The events in our reading today begin in v1. We heard last week that Samuel was a wonderful, honorable prophet and judge in ancient Israel. He was respected and trusted. But not so much his sons.
They looked out for themselves. They didn’t honor God or God’s ways. But Samuel didn’t correct them, and he appointed them as judges. And the elders weren’t happy about that. But instead of asking Samuel – or God – to appoint someone else, they asked for a human king.
And their logic tracks like a child’s logic: Everybody else has a king. Why can’t we have a king?
But instead of God or Samuel asking something like, “If everybody else jumped out of a tree, would you jump too?” they confronted the people with the reality of what would happen if they had a human king. And it isn’t good.
Sameul told them that a king would only seek to make himself stronger by taking the people’s wealth, property, loved ones, and eventually their freedom. That only the king and the people loyal to him would thrive. That, ultimately, they would end up enslaved to the king like their ancestors were in Egypt under Pharaoh.
And they refused to listen. And so God finally relents and appoints Saul as their first king. Saul was not only not qualified to be a king, he also didn’t want the job. At all. On the day that he was supposed to be officially named, he hid, and people had to go looking for him.
When he ascended the throne, he did well for a while. The tribes began to unite under him as one nation. But Saul was ultimately just as human as everybody else. He got power-hungry and looked out for himself, exploited the people. And the kingship in ancient Israel continued from there, but it never got better.
When we read this part of ancient Israel’s history, it’s important to remember that it was written during the Babylonian exile, decades after these events happened. So, these stories are told from the perspective of hindsight. And for the people who recorded these events, ancient Israel fell because the people didn’t have faith in God as their leader.
When the people asked for a king, they were really asking for a different system of leadership because the one they had wasn’t working anymore. And they recognized that, but they didn’t think through their decision to replace that structure. They couldn’t imagine a life of freedom. So, they asked for what they knew even though it was just as imperfect.
And while it seems like God’s warning was about enslavement and taxes, the real issue was in whom would the people of God put their trust. And that’s the common thread in the whole Bible – that God (YHWH) is the only one in whom people are to put their trust. Because there are consequences when people put their trust elsewhere.
The ancestors of the ancient Israelites learned that when they wandered in the wilderness after God liberated their previous generation from slavery. They spent 40 years learning not only how to be God’s people but also about who God is.
They learned about God’s love and faithfulness to them, and what it means to live within that. Living together with care and compassion, in service to one another. The freedom of living within that. But that went out the window when they came to this crossroads.
We can ask questions all day long about what might have been different if the people had believed the warnings about a human king. If they had taken a moment to think through what they were asking, and instead demanded justice and a leader that was truly servant-oriented.
Throughout history, there’s example after example of leaders who have exploited the people they’re supposed to serve and care for. There seem to be fewer examples of leaders serving and caring for their people, and modeling that behavior so that the people learn to care for each other, but they do exist.
The more prominent current names include Melinda Gates, Howard Schultz, Bob Iger, Herb Kelleher. Their leadership traits include listening to their employees and cultivating workplace environments that value people. And each of us can probably name at least one person who has shown us what it means to be a servant leader.
But for us, as Christians, the ultimate example of servant leadership we look to is Jesus. When we are faced with moral dilemmas, and the ethical challenges of human tendencies, Jesus is the one we turn to as our example. Jesus is the one in whom we trust.
And to clarify, when I talk about trusting in God or trusting in Jesus – or God’s faithfulness or Jesus’ love, God and Jesus and also the Holy Spirit are one and the same because we believe in the Trinity. There’s no separation.
When God came to us as Jesus, humanity was given a flesh-and-blood example of a servant leader. Because in Jesus, we learned what God’s faithfulness and love look like in practice. We were given a tangible ideal of God’s desire for the world.
A world in which wealth is shared, and violence in any form just doesn’t happen. A world in which accountability is maintained, and the abundance and beauty of God’s creation are honored. It’s the world God has wanted for us from the beginning.
So, as Christians, when we consider God’s faithfulness to humanity and Jesus’ love for the world, together with Samuel’s warnings about being ruled by a human king – or president, or whomever we identify – it gives us a lot to think about. It sheds light on our decisions about leadership, on how we make those decisions – what we base them on, and asks how we might do things differently.
And it asks us in a way that doesn’t leave us any wiggle room. Because it asks us in a way that holds us accountable to the way our faith asks us to live, so that we can then hold our leaders accountable. Because it asks us in whom we put our trust.
When we put our trust in God, it shapes who we are as people of God. Our trust in God calls us to recognize the face of God in those whom we meet, to recognize them as neighbor. To seek their wellbeing – to not only make sure they have enough, but to make sure no harm comes to them.
And to demand these qualities in the human beings we trust to lead us. Because that’s the system we have right now. But our trust in God calls us to imagine bigger – to imagine everyone living in the freedom of God’s love.
When we put our trust in God, we remember the one who has been around from the beginning of everything. We remember God’s love and commitment and faithfulness to humanity throughout history – even when humanity hasn’t listened to God. That that love and commitment and faithfulness run so deep that God came to us as Jesus.
And that in Jesus, we are shown what it means to live a life of trust in God. What it means for how we treat each other. That it shapes how we interact with the world.
And that as we live that life of trust, the world God desires for us comes to be. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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