1 Samuel: 16:3 13 Second Presbyterian Church October 20, 2013

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1 1 Samuel: 16:3 13 Second Presbyterian Church October 20, 2013 Honorable Excuses The Rev. Dr. Tom Blair This fall we have been working our way through the Old Testament, reviewing some of the greatest hits of the Hebrew Bible, from Noah to Abraham to Moses. Today we consider First book of Samuel. It is a book, all about the presence and absence of God among a people who have become blind and tone-deaf. One thing is made abundantly clear; the Lord does not see as we see. We look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. As it s stated later in scripture, God asks us to walk by faith, not by sight. First Samuel is where David is first mentioned in the Bible, and it s a great story. It begins with a journey to Bethlehem. (Now there s no infant to be found at the end of this story, but there is a gift, for all just wait and see.) Samuel the prophet is led by the Lord to go to Bethlehem, to make the journey, because Saul, Israel s first King, has failed in his role to faithfully lead the people. It's come to an end and time to move on. The Lord says to Samuel "I am about to do a new thing," and tells Samuel to fill his horn with oil (for anointing) and go. Samuel protests that such a thing would be dangerous; Saul is still King and he won t look fondly on someone trying to depose him; so God comes up with kind of a sneaky plan to do this Samuel is sent down to Bethlehem, to visit a man named Jesse, to find this son who is going to be the new anointed one, the new king in our scripture lesson this morning, from Chapter 16.in this wonderfully abrupt and staccato translation by Robert Alter. Samuel did what the Lord had spoken, he came to Bethlehem, and the elders of the town came trembling to meet him and they said, Do you come in peace? And he said, In peace! To sacrifice to the Lord I have come. Purify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice. And Jesse purified his sons 1

2 and invited them to the sacrifice. And it happened when they came that he saw Eliab and he said, Ah, yes! Before the LORD stands His anointed! And the LORD said to Samuel, Look not to his appearance and to his lofty stature, for I have cast him aside. For not as a man sees does God see. For man sees with the eyes and the LORD sees with the heart. And Jesse called Abinidab and made him pass before Samuel, and he said This one, too, the LORD has not chosen. And Jesse made Shammah pass by, and he said, This one, too, the LORD has not chosen. And Jesse made his seven sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, The LORD has not chosen these. And Samuel said to Jesse, Are there no more lads? And he said, The youngest is still left, and look, he is tending the flock. And Samuel said to Jesse, Send and fetch him, for we shall not sit to eat until he comes here. And he sent and brought him. And he was ruddy, with fine eyes and goodly to look on. And the LORD said, Arise, anoint him, for this is the one. And Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the spirit of the LORD gripped David from that day onward. [This is the word of the Lord ] The elders of Bethlehem trembled at the sight of Samuel because he was a prophet, powerful in word and deed, and he could have his way and say with them. When Jesse figures out what is going on, that one of his sons is to be the next anointed king, you might just be able to imagine what this is like for him. Without getting into any of the intrigue of it all, this had to be an honor far beyond anything he could ever have expected in his humble life... So Samuel says to Jesse, "Show me your sons." And he brings them out. He has great sons, indeed. He lines up seven of them, from the tallest to the shortest, from the oldest to the youngest, from the one with the most military experience to the one who is still fairly new but yet a strapping young man. This is like the NBA draft, right? The tallest, the strongest, the best. It's also like the finals of a search committee that we use in church life. You might not know this, but when Jenn came to us, she was the No. 1 pick in the pastoral draft in And we got her here. 2

3 When we vote for leaders, we want the one who looks strong, speaks convincingly and has a great track record. But God's got a quirky logic. God never seems to want the big, tall, strapping one. God seems to want the small scrawny one. God doesn't always want the most experienced one. God seems to choose the youngest one. God's got this inverted logic and chooses who God wants to choose. So the big boys come out...and the Lord says "No, no, none of these." The Lord sees not as we see. We look at the outward appearance. The Lord looks on the heart. God sees what's hidden. God sees what nobody else can see. You know that this is actually the most important stuff in your own life. There's the superficial stuff that everybody can see, but what really matters about you is the hidden stuff that's in the dark. People see you but what really matters is what nobody can see. Your lungs are working but no one can see that. Your heart is beating but no one can see that. The most important part of you, what goes on inside your head; who can see that? You get dressed up and say "Hey, I'm great and how are you?" But what's going on inside your head, your dreams, your wounds, your fears, your hopes. That's what really drives us, and the Lord sees that. The Lord does not see as we see. Well, Samuel looks at the seven boys and to each one the Lords says "No, not that one, no, not that one." When he s done, Samuel asks a desperate question, "Don't you have anybody else?" And Jesse says "Well, there is one other one, David; he's out in the field." And when they went out and found him, they brought him in and he was ruddy, very handsome. I've thought a lot about why David got left out in the field. I've always tended to think it was because Jesse didn't get God's logic. Jesse, like the rest of us, thought it would have to be the big strong one that Samuel would want. He forgot about the little one. I wonder if that's really why Jesse left David out in the field. 3

4 But maybe, maybe David was Jesse's favorite. Maybe Jesse suspected that David was meant to be king but didn't want to admit it, because when you're the king you've got to go into battle and might get killed, and you also need to move away far from home. And for Jesse, as a father, it s just too hard for him to imagine his son going away. So maybe he sends David out in the field because he's the one that he wants to keep. He s willing to let the others go. "Well, you might ask, what does that mean for my life? And maybe it's something like this: We have our stuff that we offer to God, but do we hold back our best self from God? You've got your best self but you've got to save that for work, right? Because work really matters. Or you've got your best self and you want to save your best self for your family because, I mean, after all, it's your family. Or you've got your best self and you hold it back for yourself because, after all, it's your life. Do we hold back our best self from God? Or do we even realize that we have a best self? I m not sure that a lot of people think that they have a best self anymore. Maybe it s because the number of mistakes you ve accumulated in life; maybe a lot of things have gone wrong in life; you ve endured criticism too long. And if you hear "Show me your best self," you say "Uh, what best self?" But in each of us there is a best self. In each of us there is a David. I remembered this week what Marianne Williamson once wrote, and it's absolutely on target. "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. We were all born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is true that David was small, but his destiny was to shine with the glory of God. Now, this sermon is titled "Honorable Excuses." We all have honorable excuses. Jesse did. His honorable excuse was that somebody had to watch the sheep. "You can't just leave the sheep out there, they ll all run off. We need our sheep." Somebody had to 4

5 watch the sheep. He had a good reason not to bring David in. He had an honorable excuse. And all of us, when it comes to God, have our honorable excuses. We never give God an evil excuse, like "Well, God, I can't serve because I want to go rob banks this afternoon." No, we have honorable excuses. "Well, God, I've got to go do my work. I've got to take care of my family. I've got to..." Something. We have honorable excuses, good things that we're doing. Sometimes our honorable excuse is our own goodness. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this somewhere: "We often prefer our own goodness to doing God's will. You have to think about that because we think God wants us to be good. But then sometimes our goodness becomes a block to God's will because we say "I'm good, I've got my goodness." Sometimes our virtue becomes our most honorable excuse. God's trying to get you to do something, and you hold back that best part of yourself, and you say "Ha, I go to church. I say a prayer before my meals. I read the Bible well, at least once in awhile." We have our honorable excuse of virtue itself, and we're out in the field, and God says "Don't you have any other sons?" What part of you is left out, that is the missing ingredient for making all of this connect to what God is doing in your life - now? God wants that best part of ourselves. God wants to go there. God wants to use that best part of ourselves. The reason we know this at all is because we know what happened in Bethlehem 1,000 years after David. That's when and where Jesus was born, who is the gift given to each and every one of us Jesus is the one who sees us as we are, knows the gift we have to give, and welcomes us - whoever we are big, little, old, young, a strapping young man, a little child, a student, a grandmother. Jesus sees the gift in us all, and turns no one away- ever. Jesus sees no reason for us to come up with any excuses, regardless of how honorable they may be because he accepts us who we are, as we are, with just what it is we have to give as the gift that is just right. The Lord Jesus sees not as we see. The Lord sees what others don't see. The Lord sees the goodness in you. The Lord sees your dreams, your hopes, your prayers. And today, the Lord simply says, "Don't leave your best out in the field from me, because I 5

6 need you. I'm going to go where you are. I'm going to love you as you are. I want your whole self, not just a little. I want your whole self. And when we consider whether to give it, or not, what other answer can you ever give, but yes. Thanks be to God. Amen. 6