1 Samuel 16.1-13
Psalm 51.10-14
James 4.7-10
I was in a meeting this week, with others from London
Citizens,
and we were
discussing the fact that it’s only just over six months
before the
next round of UK local elections,
with all London borough councils, and all local authorities
up for
election on 22nd May 2022.
The opportunities for electing our leaders only happens
periodically,
and it
always represents an opportunity
to bring
about change in the direction of justice.
This will be the country’s first chance since the pandemic,
to choose
who our local leaders will be,
and I
wonder what our criteria will be when we come to vote?
Will we simply vote for the local representatives of our
preferred national party?
Or will we
engage deeply with the people, the policies, and the programmes
that will
shape our society for the next few years?
With COP 26 round the corner, you might want to take a look
at the
website of The Commitment UK https://www.thecommitment.uk/
who invite us to make a commitment to voting
with the
health of the planet at the heart of our decision.
They then take everyone’s Commitment to local politicians,
giving them
a powerful reason to act on the climate and the natural world.
Because, of course, they really want our votes!
The months in the run-up to an election are a key time
to obtain
promises from those seeking office,
as they develop their policies to win confidence and,
ultimately, votes.
We saw this with the London Mayoral election earlier this
year,
and a
number of us from Bloomsbury joined with thousands of others
for an online Citizens Assembly,
to put to
the mayoral candidates a manifesto of requests,
on the issues
that we believe matter most to London.
So we got promises on
Housing and
Homelessness,
Youth
safety and knife crime
The living
wage
Welcome and
sanctuary for refugees
and a Just
Transition to becoming a carbon neutral city.
This last one continues to resonate, of course,
with the
threat of rising utility prices pushing more people into fuel poverty
where they
have to choose between heating their homes and buying food.
The task now is to hold the elected mayor to account on the
promises he gave,
and I’m
personally involved in this, along with others from Bloomsbury.
At our Deacons’ meeting this week
Jean
mentioned the proud history this church has
of taking
action with others on issues of justice,
and if anyone would like to join me on the evening of Monday
15th November,
I’ll be
going to an event organised by our West London Citizens group,
which
will be highlighting the importance of both the Living Wage
and
the necessity to create good green jobs.
We will be joined by a representative from the Mayor’s
office,
who will be
speaking about the progress they’ve made since the election,
and we will get to meet both employers seeking to create
good job opportunities,
and local
people who are seeking fair employment.
Do let me know if you’d like to join me,
and Libby
will send the information round in the news email this week.
All of which is to illustrate my point for this morning:
who we have
as our leaders, really matters.
This is true nationally, internationally, locally, and also
in church life.
As I said last week, it isn’t true that all politicians are
the same,
any more
than it is true that all church leaders are the same.
And all leaders, even those with whom we may disagree on
policy,
are worthy
of respect until they prove otherwise!
And so we come to the story we read earlier from the book of
1 Samuel
which speaks
powerfully, I think, to our current situation.
You may remember the story so far…
Israel under the Judges had become lawless and godless,
a place
where ‘Everyone did what was right in their own eyes’(Judges 17.6)
God’s answer to this was to call Samuel,
the young
boy who would be God’s prophet to the nation,
calling
them to a better way of being.
Those who suggest that religion should stay away from politics
obviously
haven’t spent enough time reading the Hebrew Bible,
because it is clear from stories such as the life of Samuel,
that God’s
people absolutely have a vital role to play
in the way
society is shaped and functions.
This week we re-join the story of Samuel a few chapters
later,
and we find
him stepping into his vocation
as the person who is called to lead the people
from a time
of degeneracy and corruption
into a new
and better future as a society.
He finds himself representing the bright new hope for the
nation,
which is
the popular call for the establishment of a monarchy.
The people cry that the judges have failed them,
and that
what they need instead is a king,
like the
other nations around them have.
In this we hear, I think, an early example of nationalist
politics,
and the
parallels with certain contemporary political events
are too
obvious to ignore.
The people of Israel felt failed by the political system of
the Judges;
that had
become bureaucratic and unwieldly,
with
corruption a constant threat,
and leaders
who were out of touch.
So the people cried out for a new national identity,
a new way
of understanding themselves,
they wanted to take their stand on the world stage
on an equal
basis to the other countries around them.
Does it sound familiar?
But instead of BREXIT, they wanted a king.
It’s interesting to note that Samuel
was far
from being an ardent advocate for the monarchy,
and he had profound doubts about whether kingship was a path
that Israel
ought to be following.
But Israel wanted its king,
a bright
shining personality of a leader
who could fix all their problems
and be
accountable to those who appointed them.
And initially, it looked like Saul was the perfect choice.
He was
every inch a king, but also, it emerged, brutal, faithless, and unpredictable.
And by the time we re-join the story in chapter 16,
we find
Samuel embroiled in another attempt to raise up a new leadership,
this time against the backdrop of the failing leadership of
Saul,
rather than
the previously failing regime of the Judges.
And so Samuel goes to Bethlehem,
to visit a
man called Jesse,
because God has told Samuel that the next king
will be one
of Jesse’s sons.
As a leadership-appointment strategy,
I think it
lacks some of the nuances of democracy;
but then sometimes I look at who democracy appoints as our
leader,
and I
wonder whether things are all that different!
Anyway…
Samuel sets up a kind of beauty-pageant parade of potential
kings,
and his
first instinct is for a young man called Eliab.
However, as Samuel had already discovered with Saul,
the person
who looks most kingly,
isn’t
necessarily the person most suited to ruling.
And so we get God’s voice intruding into the narrative,
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."
The inference, although I may be being harsh on young Eliab
here,
is that he
doesn’t have the right character to lead.
And it’s not until Jesse’s youngest son, David, is brought
in from the fields,
that Samuel
takes the horn of oil, and anoints David for kingship.
David’s character, it seems, is just what God is looking
for.
Except, of course, if you know what comes next,
David’s
character turns out to be, well, questionable.
He was, as they say, a complicated character!
There’s the cutesy David,
the
shepherd-boy, the talented musician,
who knows
the secret chord that pleases the Lord.
Although, at the risk of undermining Leonard Cohen’s great
song,
it’s not
such secret…
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the
major lift;
I can play
that on the guitar!
But I digress.
Here we have David the pastoral musical boy-wonder,
who also
turns out to be a capable mixed martial arts fighter
capable of
giant-killing acts of violence.
And then we have David the adulterer,
David the
murderer,
who by the time of his death has become a kind of
Mafia-boss,
visiting
death and destruction on those who displease him,
through a
complex family-based network of thugs and agents.
This, it turns out, is the Lord’s anointed,
who despite
us having just been told that the Lord looks not upon appearance,
is also
handsome, with a ruddy complexion and beautiful eyes!
What is going on,
that this gorgeous
poster-boy for the Israelite Monarchy 2.0 reboot
turns out
to be someone who could give Saul a run for his money
in
the competition for the title of ‘dangerous tyrant of the century’???
Why is he the anointed one?
And here we need to pause for a moment,
and locate
this story within its wider historical context.
As with all these early stories from the Hebrew Bible,
what we
have in our Bibles
are
texts written much, much later, than the events they describe
telling stories set in prehistory.
It’s a bit like going to see one of Shakespeare’s Henry
plays:
there’s the
historical gap between us and Shakespeare,
and then
there’s another historical gap
between
Shakespeare and the characters he’s writing about.
So it is with this story from 1 Samuel,
which was written
down during the Babylonian exile,
some 500
years or more after the stories it is recording.
This is not contemporary, first-hand, eyewitness history.
This is
oral tradition, dramatized and retold over centuries.
And it’s written for the Jewish exiles in Babylon,
who have
just witnessed their capital city of Jerusalem destroyed
and their
king deposed by the invading Babylonians.
For these people, a story setting the seal of God’s approval
on the
mythic ancestor of their kingly line,
rooting that person firmly in the geography of Jerusalem and
Judea,
was a
compelling narrative of national hope,
told to
sustain them through the experience of exile.
David, for the exiled Babylonians,
functioned similarly
to King Arthur’s role in medieval England.
The stories of Arthur, set in a mythic prehistory,
defined
what it meant to be English,
setting out in narrative form the values of chivalry
as nobility,
humility, bravery, and obedience.
Similarly, for the Israelite exiles in Babylon,
the story
of the mythic king David,
defined
what it meant to be Jewish,
setting out the dream of a land, a king,
and a
national identity rooted in God’s presence in the city of Jerusalem.
And just as King Arthur was often portrayed as a complex
man,
a flawed
hero, far from ideal,
whilst
still defining the ideal of what it meant to be English;
so also for King David,
another imperfect,
inconsistent character,
compelling
and repellent in equal measure,
far from ideal,
but
defining the ideal of what it meant to be Jewish.
It may not matter to God if David is good-looking,
but it
certainly mattered to the scribe of 1 Samuel,
who needed his idealised David who his audience could fall
in love with,
before
going on to explore the complexities of the great man’s character
in the
stories that followed.
We might say to ourselves that image isn’t important,
that it’s a
person’s heart and character that matter,
not how
competently they can eat a bacon sandwich on camera,
but the reality of our world,
as for the
world the ancient Israelites in exile in Babylon,
is that we like our heroes to look the part,
and we
expect them to play the part,
and as long as they do,
we will
overlook all kind of other moral and personal failings.
David is still Israel’s hero,
despite his
tendency towards adultery, murder, and violence.
Because he represents and ideal,
he is more
than the sum of his parts.
It doesn’t matter whether he even existed, historically
speaking,
he still
writes the script of what it means to be Jewish,
every bit as effectively as Arthur writes the script
of what it
means to be English.
So what are we to make of this?
What are we to do with the fact
that people
continue to acclaim leaders
based on appearance rather than
character,
on the
ideology they represent,
rather than the decency of their
personality?
What are we to make of the fact
that we
live in a society where appearance is so often decisive
in how a person
will be treated by others?
From racism, to gender stereotyping, to transphobia,
to conspicuous
wealth, to a person’s weight…
in so many ways, we judge by appearance,
and lives
are blighted because of it.
the black-led organisation now based on our 4th floor,
together with our strong stance as a church on issues of gender and sexuality,
speak well of our openness to going deeper,
to valuing each person as made and loved by God.
It was inspirational this week to be at the public launch of Impact Dance,
and to hear the testimonies of young people whose lives have been turned around
because of the acceptance and value they have discovered there.
And I look forward to finding ways as a congregation
of us journeying with Impact Dance,
as our church and our building are used to embody inclusion and justice.
Similarly, I am glad that we are church
where gender and sexuality are no bar to full participation,
and where we live into being the belief that each of us is created in the image of God.
But for all the steps taken,
there is still a long journey ahead.
We need to hear the voice of the Lord,
breaking
into our narratives,
telling us that the
LORD does not see as mortals see;
they look on the outward appearance,
but the LORD looks on the heart.
If we can truly hear this message,
and learn
to see people as God sees them,
it could be revolutionary for the way we live our lives:
not just in
terms of who we vote for as our leaders,
although certainly that;
but also in
the way we are towards others.
God’s call is on the people of God
to
radically reject any narrative or ideology
that values
or devalues people based on appearance.
Because God looks to the heart,
to a person’s
character,
and it is here that God’s persistence is most obvious,
as God
calls sinful people to repentance,
to turn
from their selfish ambition,
and to live
lives of love and concern for others.
This story from 1 Samuel isn’t, in the end,
a fable
about whether or not we should elect leaders like David.
Of course we shouldn’t, and of course we do.
Rather, it’s an invitation for us to see ourselves reflected
in the life of David,
as we too
are flawed human beings,
capable of great sin, and great goodness,
sometimes
both at the same time.
And if God continued to call David,
it was
because beneath the flaws of David’s character,
he was a person who was willing to repent of his evil,
to seek
forgiveness, and to keep seeking the heart of God.
Like David, we are called to be continually responsive to
the word of God,
embodied
for us in the word made flesh that is Jesus.
It is through Jesus that we are called to a new, a better
way of being human,
to live
lives focussed on love of God, and love of the other.
People called Jesus the anointed one, the messiah,
the son of
David, born in David’s town of Bethlehem.
But unlike David, Jesus resisted temptations of power,
Jesus
turned away from nationalism, from overthrowing the empire,
he refused
to be King.
And in so doing, in Jesus, we see the loving heart of God
revealed,
because the LORD does not see as mortals see;
they look on the outward appearance,
but the LORD looks on the heart.
