"Earthly Kingdoms" - Preached at St. Margaret's, June 15, 2018

Intro

Echoing through the latter half of the book of Judges sounds the messianic refrain, “there was no king in Israel, all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” As the book of Judges reaches its dystopian conclusion with the slaughter of the Benjaminites and the communally-sanctioned kidnapping of hundreds of young women, the only hope the narrator can provide to make sense of Israel’s wickedness is that, if only there was a king, perhaps things could be other than they are. Thus, we enter the story of 1 Samuel with the last words of the narrator of Judges ringing in our ears, setting our expectations for what lies ahead. “There was no king in Israel, all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”

As we pick up the story of 1 Samuel in today’s reading, we find that the negatively expressed expectation of Judges has given way to a full-throated demand for a king. The charismatic leadership of the judges ended in chaos and oppression from Israel’s enemies on every side. Israel demands Samuel to give them a king that can go ahead of them to fight their enemies; that they might be like the other nations. But a king to go ahead of Israel to fight their enemies is precisely who Yahweh had promised to be when he brought them up from Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. As we were reminded last Sunday, the establishment of monarchy in Israel was an ambiguous good at best – at once both a grace and a rebuke for Israel’s rejection of God’s kingship.

Saul

Our text today begins with Samuel’s grief over the rejection of Saul. The transition of power from Saul to David is a story that will take most of the rest of the book of 1 Samuel to complete, but today’s episode is a moment in that story that is particularly charged with comedic irony. David’s anointing is strikingly reminiscent of Saul’s own anointing. In 1 Samuel 9, we are introduced to this famous son of Kish: “He had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else” (1 Sam. 9:2). Samuel anoints Saul in the context of a sacrificial feast and then tells him that the Spirit will come upon him and cause a prophetic frenzy within him. This comes to pass, and it is whispered among the Israelites that Saul is among the prophets. Saul goes on to fight the enemies of Israel on every side, finding victory against all their foes, and delivering Israel from the heavy yoke of oppression.

Yet Saul is a tragic character, doomed to fail. He has his dynasty stripped from him for offering priestly sacrifices – an activity that is within the royal prerogative to perform. His kingship is stripped from him for failing to carry out the herem against the Amalekites. His kingdom is torn from him, and the prophetic spirit that fueled his charismatic reign becomes an evil spirit that torments him into madness. While some may look for sins or specific actions that Saul took to lose God’s favour, reading Saul as a tragically doomed figure illuminates the way God’s acquiescence to Israel’s demand for a king is both a grace and a rebuke. Saul indeed delivers Israel from foreign oppression, but meets a doomed end precisely as his sphere of sovereignty lays claim to that which is properly God’s alone. Thus, in Saul’s rejection we are brought back to the gracious face of God with the opening line of our text today: “And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.” God grieves Israel’s rejection of him, and grieves the doom that has befallen the secular personification of Israel in the life of Saul.

David

            Now that Saul’s doom has been pronounced, that old refrain from the days of the Judges sounds again just below the surface of our text. There is no longer a king in Israel, something must be done. But this is where the comedic irony that I mentioned above enters the story most forcefully. Listen carefully again to the anointing of David:

The 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.” Samuel 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.’ Invite 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.” Samuel 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?” He 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.

When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” But 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.” Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” Samuel 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.” He 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.” Then 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. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

David’s anointing narrative is carefully subverting Saul’s anointing in important ways. First, remember that in Saul’s anointing, it is Saul who is drawn to the prophet, an innocent victim, unaware that he approaches his doom. In David’s anointing narrative, however, Yahweh drives the prophet to seek him out, discarding what very well might be viable alternatives along the way. Both David and Saul are thus portrayed as figures of fate – yet it is clear from the narrative differences of their anointing that their fates will not be the same.

While Saul’s anointing takes place in the context of a sacrifice, in our text the prophet uses the pretense of a sacrifice to secretly anoint David. When Jesse presents his first son, Eliab, to Samuel, Samuel sees a replacement in the mould of King Saul and is convinced that this is the one. But Yahweh rebukes Samuel, reminding him that it is not the outward appearance that counts. Remember, that back in chapter 9, when Saul is introduced, the first thing we learn is that he comes from money, is handsome, and is very tall. Clearly Samuel has a type – but is it because, as we might assume, that Samuel thinks these outward markers are signs of kingship, or is this superficiality part of Samuel’s revenge on a people who have rejected his divinely appointed charismatic rule in favour of a king? The text is silent on such speculations, but my suspicion is that it is the latter.

Once all the sons of Jesse have been presented and rejected, finally, David is called from the fields. Now remember, God has told Samuel that he “judges the heart” not the outward appearance, so we are set up to expect that David must have some sort of exceptionally pure heart that sets him apart from both his many brothers and the former King Saul. Yet it is right here, when our expectations for messianic kingship are at their highest, that the narrator signals that all is not as it seems. Conditioned as our expectation are by the refrain from Judges, the failed kingship of Saul, the divine guidance by which Samuel seeks out David, we would expect that here at last is the king that God has chosen, the anointed messiah that will be the conduit by which God mediates his relationship with Israel in this new political moment. But this is not the text we have, instead, the narrator tells us that “he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.”  The joke is revealed, the messianic anticipation collapses into comedic irony, and we discover that David is ultimately a king like all other kings – bearing the superficial marks of nobility in a pale imitation of the divine majesty of Yahweh.

As the story of David continues to unfold throughout the rest of the book, we discover that he and his progeny are everything that Samuel warned against when the people first demanded a king. David, in a horrifying display of vengeance will finish the genocide of the Amalekites that Saul failed to complete, yet David is not censured when he keeps the spoils of war for himself. His son Solomon takes foreign wives, stockpiles arms from Egypt, and worships other gods. In short, the Davidic line will make a mockery of the Deuteronomic laws that govern kingship and will ultimately land all of Israel and Judah in exile.

Jesus

            The messianic dream that drove Israel to anoint kings is an understandable and natural desire. Evil and chaos are always threatening to overwhelm the people of God, and under the yoke of oppression, God’s silence can seem too much to bear. There is a natural longing for an anointed one of God to come and deliver us from our enemies and to set things aright. This desire can be so powerful that it ultimately tempted Israel to proclaim that it had no king but Caesar, thus missing the ultimate anointed one who hung under the sign, “King of the Jews.” It is a desire that we continue to replicate today as we elect governments who use scriptures such as Romans 13 to defend unjust policies; cravenly reminding us that it is God who establishes their authority, lest we think to challenge their definition of “justice.” Our blind desire for messianic governance, while good and right in spirit, betrays our fickle tendency to see only the enemies on all sides, and in so doing, lose track of the grain of the universe that points us toward the God who brought up both Israel from Egypt and Jesus from the grave. We desire a king to save us, but no matter how handsome our politicians may be, the only king that can truly fulfill our desires is the one who hung on a cross; grotesque, despised, and rejected.