David is Chosen

Church of the Incarnation

Sept. 19, 2010

I Samuel 16:1-13

When you’re a small child and you happen to see your grade school teacher in the grocery store, it’s rather shocking.  What?  You go other places?  There’s another part of you I don’t know?  Different people in our lives know different parts of us.  People we work with know us from a certain angle.  Neighbors in our building know a different side of us.  But no one, of course, knows all there is to know about us.  Not even long time friends, partners, or spouses.

David’s story helps us imagine that all of our lives matter.  There is nothing about us and our humanity that is not claimed and loved by God.  Absolutely everything in our stories puts us in touch with the power and the holiness of God.  Some of us have trouble imagining our lives as connected with the holiness of God - the ordinariness of our lives makes the claim seem exaggerated..  Some of us have trouble imagining certain parts of our lives as putting us into touch with God.  Sure, occasionally I feel like praying or am moved by a text of Scripture.  But what about our ambition, our sexuality and desire, our brokenness, our depression, our secrets, our body image, our deepest fears, our anger?

Jesus’ story is the main story of Scripture, and the gospels show us the drama and dignity of a full human life - he is fully and utterly human, and completely connected to God.  Outside that story, the David story is the longest and the most detailed life in all of Scripture.  David’s story involves the full arc of a human life, and nothing is left out.  We listen to the Jesus and David stories to learn how to be fully human.  Neither Jesus nor David were professional priests.  They were ordinary.  Their families weren’t important.  Their day jobs weren’t significant.  But they both came to see that absolutely all of their lives had been claimed by God.

For the next several weeks we’ll be reading David’s story as its told in I and II Samuel.  (It wasn’t written in two parts.  They just got to the end of a scroll and started another).  The story begins with David at home in Bethlehem, the youngest of eight brothers.  He is anointed as the next King of Israel but spends years in the wilderness fighting for his life before he actually becomes King.  He reigns over Israel for 40 years.  And the story ends with David dying as an old man, depressed, unable to keep warm, ordering the deaths of several enemies from his bed like some kind of mafia boss. We see him as son, brother, husband, father, military commander, adulterer, and murderer.  We see him at moments brave, at other times cowardly.  We see him conniving and honorable.  Sometimes he serves and loves God, sometimes he denies God’s claim on his life. In David we have the fullness of a human life lived before God.

Critical issues:

So I am asking you allow your imagination, and heart, and life be shaped by David’s story.  You might wonder, what’s so special or powerful about David’s story?  Is it real?  Is it true?  Why is it part of sacred scripture?  Until recently, some scholars doubted whether David ever existed.  They doubted whether the David story was connected to historical figures and events.  Two inscriptions have been found dating from not long after his reign (around 1000 B.C.).  But still, some scholars argue that the story is more legend than reality - more like King Arthur stories than actual history.  I encourage you to read the stories for yourself and see what you make of it.

There is scholarly agreement that much of I and II Samuel was written not long after David’s reign, probably just after 900 B.C. or so.  But the material was likely edited and arranged and shaped into its present form later, around 600 B.C. or so.  If most of the material originally dates from a generation or two after David, it is likely “historical” to a large degree.  Yet if the narrative received its final literary shape several hundred years later, we should expect that the story has been framed in an artful way.  Storytellers give literary shape to their stories not to lie, but in order to understand what’s going on.

This story is Israel’s attempt to come to grips with God at a time when Israel was moving from a loose federation of tribes to a consolidated monarchy.  So it has been given a certain literary shape.  And, it has been placed by Jews in a broader story of God delivering Israel from Egypt.  In addition to that, it was received by early Christians as part of the story leading up the story of Jesus Christ, whom they called “Son of David.”

16:1 Samuel Sent to Jesse in Bethlehem

So back to the story read for us today.  The story begins with the prophet Samuel mourning.  God says to Samuel, “How long are you going to mourn?  I’ve rejected Saul.  It’s over.  We’re moving on.  The future will unfold without Saul.”  So God tells Samuel to take his flask of oil and head to Bethlehem.  God has already chosen a new king, and it’s someone from Jesse’s family. 

Saul was Israel’s first King.  He was the embodiment of what you would want in a King: tall, handsome, courageous and skilled as a warrior in battle.  At least in the beginning, he was attentive to God’s leading.  He grew up on a farm, and one day he was out looking for his father’s lost donkeys and ran into Samuel.  Before he knew it, he’d been anointed Israel’s first king.  He had not wanted to be king.  At the coronation ceremony, he was hiding and they had to go find him.  God chose him to be a king, and now God is rejecting him.  And Samuel is mourning, because God is ready to move on and Samuel wasn’t ready. This is the grief that comes from realizing that something with great promise has gone sour.  A path rich with possibilities has closed down.  What once looked like a good future has now turned dark.  Most of us know what’s it’s like to mourn the loss of what could have been.  

It is clear that God is the one making things happen.  God says: I have rejected Saul.  I will send you to Jesse’s house.  I have provided for myself a new king.  David’s story begins with God taking the initiative.  God pivots from the past and moves off in a new direction.  God is at work so that something fresh and new can emerge.  Just like in the story the gospels tell about Jesus, God does something new that most of us aren’t ready for.  Jesus comes and claims us and calls us into God’s kingdom, and we’re caught off guard.  In both Jesus’ story and David’s story, God is in the business of rupturing the sameness with surprising newness.  The gospel story marks an unexpected veer in history.  Truth be told, we’re much more committed to our past than God is.  God is ready to move ahead with us.  So grab your flask of oil and let’s go.

16:2-5 God Gives Samuel a Cover Story

Samuel doesn’t want to go to Bethlehem and anoint a new king.  “If Saul hears I’m off naming his successor while he’s still on the throne, he’ll kill me!” Samuel is right to be worried.  Powerful kings could be viciously cruel, not just killing but torturing and mutilating their enemies.  When Samuel did make his way to Bethlehem, the he people there reacted the same way.  The elders of the town “trembled” when Samuel showed up.  They’re not sure what Samuel is up to, but they don’t want to end up on the wrong side of a political conflict.  Politically motivated assassinations are a constant feature of this story.

So God suggests a ruse.  God supplies him with a cover story.  “Just deceive them.  Take a heifer and tell them you’ve come to make a sacrifice.”  And that’s what Samuel does.  Now I’m not sure how to avoid saying that God coaches Samuel in the art of lying.  But that’s what it looks like.  That might interest us, but it’s not really a big part of the story.  God is going to get a new king anointed and will do whatever it takes.  God doesn’t need everyone in on the plan to anoint David King.  This anointing ritual doesn’t need to be publicly visible.  What God does in Bethlehem won’t wear its meaning on its sleeve.  Here we’re dealing with a God who doesn’t always lay his cards on the table. 

In the gospels Jesus actually tells his followers that the reason he teaches in enigmatic and symbolic parables is so that most people will not understand.  On several occasions, Jesus tells his followers to keep his identity a secret.  And when God raised the crucified Jesus fro the dead, he appeared only to his followers, not to those with cultural or political influence.  So is it ok with you if God is at work in the world and chooses to keep much of it hidden?  Is it ok with you if God is at work in your own life in ways that you can’t fully understand?  Some of what God does, God keeps hidden.  

16:6-11 Jesse’s Seven Sons

So Samuel tricks Jesse and the leaders in Bethlehem.  They think he’s there simply for a religious sacrifice.  They don’t have a clue that Samuel has been sent by God to anoint a new king.  

When Jesse’s sons arrive, Samuel locks in on Eliab first -- he’s the oldest, the tallest, the most striking in appearance.  Immediately Samuel assumes that this dashing and powerful figure is God’s anointed.  I had thought I would give you some examples here, but then I thought . .  this is NYC!  The is the most densely populated place for visually powerful people, so I don’t think you need help on this one.

He was wrong.  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” (16:7).  Samuel was a holy man, a prophet who had been a leader in Israel for 40 years.  But he was easily swayed by visible signs of power.  When handsome King Saul was anointed, Samuel says, “Do you see the man the Lord has chosen?  There is no one like him among all the people” (10:24).  Samuel is God’s prophet.  But even he tends to think that it’s outwardly powerful people that make the world go round.  

Three sons are named - Eliab, then Abinadab, the Shammah - each of them is rejected by God.  Then the next four brothers pass in front of Samuel - they aren’t even named.  It’s kind of like, “etcetera, etcetera.”  At the end of the seven brothers, Samuel is confused.  “The Lord has not chosen any of these.  Are there any more sons?”  “There’s the youngest,” Jesse admits, “but he is keeping the sheep.”  Samuel says - “we’ll wait.”

16:12-13  David is Anointed King

And so there is a pause built into this well-told story.  Samuel, Jesse, and the seven brothers wait while someone goes to fetch David.  And we the readers wait as well.  Finally, David shows up.      This - the youngest and eighth son - is the one God has chosen to replace Saul as Israel’s new king.  And even though we’ve just gotten a lesson in not paying attention to what people look like, the narrator of the story can’t help it.  “Now he was ruddy [complexion? auburn hair?], and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.”  David certainly did appeal to both women and men during the course of his life.

Scholar Robert Alter calls David “a kind of male Cinderella left to his domestic chores instead of being invited to the party” (97).  If this sounds a little like the Cinderella story, it sounds a lot like the story of Genesis.  One of the most widespread and stable expectations was the right of the first-born son to honor of place and inheritance of the estate.  That’s the way the world works.  Yet the story of Genesis goes out of its way to show that God reverses this rule.  God chooses younger Jacob over older Esau.  God chooses the baby son Joseph over all his brothers.  And here, God chooses the youngest son -- inexperienced, overlooked, un-credentialed David.  This reversal is part of Jesus announcement of God’s reign: the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

God said to Samuel, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.”  And God’s Spirit came mightily upon David.  No wonder Jesus is referred to as “Son of David” in the gospels.  No wonder the early Christians understood Jesus by framing his story in the terms of David’s story.  Both hailed from Bethlehem.  Both were anointed with the Spirit at the beginning of their service to God.  David is the unexpected shepherd who will become King.  Jesus too is the good shepherd and King.

Conclusion:

David and Jesus show us that all of our humanity is part of who we are.  Nothing about us, nothing in us, has been left out of the story.  All of it has been taken into the story of God’s unexpected and surprising way of blessing the world.  There is a wholeness to the gospel that can be scary.  God’s claim on our lives is total.  We are responsible to God with the entire scope of our lives.  And of course, there is much that is wrong with our lives.  But all of it is loved by God.  All of it is claimed by God.  In Jesus’ death and resurrection: all of me is judged, and all of me is forgiven and made new.  All of me is loved.

God is the power of fresh beginning and surprising newness.  But it will come from somewhere we probably don’t expect it.  Both Jesus and David remind us that God rarely works in obvious ways.  Forget politicians.  Forget religious professionals.  Forget looking to those who are culturally influential, those with wealth and power, and especially those impressive in their appearance.  God shows up in the ordinary.  That’s one of the reasons we eat this meal each week.  Jesus’ ordinary humanity is filled with the presence of God.  By feeding on him, we become more holy, and more human.