Matters of Interpretation

A sermon drawn from 1 Samuel 16:1-13

This text is a story from the early history of Israel, which Christians sometimes think of as the prelude or the context for the life of Christ. A little background might be helpful. Once upon a time, the Israelites were simply people living together under the terms of their covenant with God, which they received after being liberated from slavery in Egypt. That didn’t always go well. Then the people want to have a king, a government like everyone else around them. To which God says, OK. Saul is the first king. But right from the beginning there are problems … and we’re coming into the story right at the point where God is about to make a change …

If we’ve been in Sunday school or spent much time in church, we’ve heard this story before, probably more than once, and that verse where God says “people look on the outward appearance, but GOD looks on the heart” is a memorable one.

It’s the scheduled reading for the fourth Sunday of Lent every three years, paired up with the gospel story of Jesus, healing the man born blind. So the emphasis of the day is on seeing, and what it means to see – we think, not only literally, to see with our physical eyes, but also spiritually, to see with eyes opened by grace, to see Jesus’ true identity – the Messiah, the “Son of David,” “God with us,” and so, to see God as savior and as love, and to see what that means for our own next steps …

Since we’ve likely had a chance to think about this story before … have we ever asked ourselves, what does God see, when God looks on the heart? In particular, on David’s heart? When God “sees for himself a king” among Jesse’s sons?

Have we ever wondered about that?

We may actually have been told “the answer,” by a Sunday school teacher, or a commentary …

And if we took a poll … on what people think … we’re likely to hear things like “loyalty – God saw that David loved God, was steadfastly loyal to the God of Israel,” or maybe “zeal,” that David was really passionate for God – or maybe that David was a poet, a psalmist – or was a good, caring shepherd of sheep, and so would be a good, caring shepherd of God’s people …

And maybe we’ll notice that all those ideas have something in common. They all zero in on one of the good things we know about David, that would “explain” or “justify” God’s choice here. Things that would give God a “good reason” for choosing David.

Which is, in a way, like trying to say what David had done to earn the prize of being picked by God to be king. Because we do seem to assume that was a prize. Like a promotion, from being a shepherd for his dad to being the king of Israel.

And people do often seem to think that what we’re supposed to learn from this story is what it was about David, that earned him that divine favor.

Even though, if we read our Bibles – and I’m a Bible study teacher, so of course I’m going to encourage people to do that! If we read the book of Samuel and the first couple of chapters in the book of Kings, so, not just the stories about David that we read in Sunday school and church, but the whole story that’s in our book – and if we read that story honestly, instead of with our preconceived idea that David is a hero so whatever David does must be right – we’ll notice that David is an extraordinarily complex, and terribly human character, far from ideal.

In fact, David is a particularly good example of something the Biblical scholar John Goldingay says – whenever his students ask him, in his Old Testament classes, “why does God pick these flawed characters to be part of God’s story?” and Professor Goldingay’s answer is always “Well, who else is there?”

That makes David a particularly good reminder that God’s choice, God’s calling – God’s grace – is not something we earn by our good behavior! We know this. All Christians know this. And Presbyterians, Calvinists, Protestants, especially have made knowing that a centerpiece of our theology, that we are “saved by grace, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, so that no one may boast.” (Also in the Bible, Ephesians 2:8.)

We know perfectly well that we have God’s grace as a pure gift, thanks to the life and work of Jesus Christ. The usual definition of “grace,” in fact, is “unmerited – undeserved – favor.” Grace is, by definition, something we don’t and can’t earn! So we know that none of us can look at ourselves and say “yeah, this talent or skill or whatever, this is what earned me God’s favor.” On the contrary, when we are seeing clearly, we look at ourselves, and we see how everything in us that is good and kind and faithful comes from God. We just have to say, “Thank you, God, for this!” Thank you for who I am, for what I am, for what I have, for my life, thank you!

If we could talk to David himself, I’m confident that’s what David would say. [In fact, in Psalm 8, which is attributed to David, that’s exactly what David does say: “what are humans, that you, God, are mindful of them, mortals, that you care for them? And yet, you have made them just below God in the order of things, and crowned them with glory and honor …” How incredible and wonderful is that? Praise God!]

We know that, but we forget it all the time, too. Forgetting it is probably what makes us keep looking for what it was about David that made God choose him, and trying to figure out what we’d need to do to be more like David … thinking the lesson we’re supposed to learn from this story is “we need to be more like David.”

[We should not try to be more like David! If we’re going to imitate anyone from the Bible, we should pick Jesus.]

The Bible never does tell us, by the way, what God sees when God looks on the heart – we don’t ever really know what’s on David’s heart. The deeper lesson here is that God’s choice, God’s calling, itself, is what makes David the figure he is. As Thomas Aquinas said, God’s grace is a gift that makes us good. Not the other way around.

God makes us good. God and God’s grace come first. We love God because God first loved us. Everything we do is always already a response to what God has done and is doing in our lives.

We know that, but we forget it, maybe because it’s so difficult to accept. Because it is difficult to accept.

For one thing, it forces us to see that what God sees in us is what God has put there, or can put there; or will put there; and this is something that God alone chooses. That forces us to see how completely at God’s mercy we really are –

And that would be scary, if we didn’t already know that God cares for us, because the truest picture we have of God is Jesus Christ – who shows us that what God sees in us is one of those little ones, precious to God, that Christ came, and died, and rose again, to save.

This is especially difficult for modern people like us to accept, because we have tightly embraced the idea of “autonomy.”

We tell our children “you can be whatever you want to be,” “you just need to believe in yourself,” “it’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you,” we have educational theories about the importance of “grit” and “resilience” and having a “growth mindset” instead of a “fixed mindset;” we’ve made the self-improvement market in the US a $10B industry.

We are practiced at ignoring the way injustice works in the world, and saying to the victims of injustice, “so, you’ve got a problem, what are you going to do about it?” We have learned to see ourselves as being in control of our own lives, having to make all the right choices, because who and how we are is on us.

I don’t want to deny all that, either, because I think we all know that when it comes to things like … getting through school; doing our jobs; learning a second language or how to play a musical instrument or taking up a sport … having those ideas can help us. They can work for us.

And if we’re ever in a position to hire someone for a job … we need to do things like ask about qualifications and experience and what people are calling “soft skills” these days, like being a self-starter and getting along with people and doing good problem solving and communicating, things like that. We need to do that, or we’re not doing our best to serve the cause and the goals we’re supposed to serve.

So our world keeps pushing us back to that vision of “meritocracy,” that idea that getting something good is something we have to earn. That makes it even harder for us to shake loose from the idea that there must be something we can do to earn God’s love, God’s approval, God’s favor, whatever it is we want from God.

Which is why we have to keep coming back and back and back again to the insight that no, really, God’s love, God’s approval, God’s grace, is all free – God gives grace and faith and gifts to whomever God wills, in whatever measure God wills. This is not up to us. This is up to God’s purposes, God’s designs, God’s creative genius …

The deep lesson in this story is that God is making something of David … and of Israel … and ultimately of humanity … the way an artist chooses materials, colors, design, … in the service of a vision … in the service of a creation that no one but the artist can see yet … and will even shape and work with those materials to make them “go” or “fit” or “work” right where they need to go in that spot … God’s work of art, God’s creation … which we know God calls “good,” which God sees through the eyes of God’s beautiful vision, past all the preliminary complexities and imperfections, to the good and beautiful reality it is becoming.

God has a vision for humanity and for humanity’s life with God, a good and beautiful vision, and is making that vision a reality, even now.

And that divine artist can and will work with any of us – not only the tall older brothers with their regal bearing, but the cute little brother they thought didn’t even count, the one they didn’t even think to call in for dinner, who could just about manage watching the sheep … whoever will say “yes” to God.

That can help us see that we ourselves will be happiest – most fulfilled, our best selves – when we say “yes” to God, and to our part in God’s project, whatever it is. This may be the biggest thing we learn from this story about David.

Most of us would point to our experience of saying “yes” to the invitation to be engaged in the life of God’s people as an example of that – we’d agree that saying “yes” to coming to church, being part of the life of the church, worship, fellowship, has added something to our lives, and is changing us, discernibly, for the better.

The same goes for being called into God’s service in a more specific way – what we Presbyterians call “ordered ministry.” Some job needs doing, God calls someone to that work, and God also equips that person with the gifts and graces necessary to do that work.

It’s almost a cliché, that “God doesn’t call the qualified, God qualifies the called.” And part of the fun – if that’s the right word – or at least the excitement in responding to God’s call is that very process of qualifi-cation – of learning, of growing, of becoming new in and through the process of serving …

We do need to accept the faith God offers us along with that call – the faith that God will give us what we need, at least by the time we need it, if not before. “Saying yes” is the first, next, step, always.

We really don’t know what God saw in David’s heart.

What we do know is that Samuel said “yes” to God’s call to anoint David; and David said “yes” to the call to be anointed; and when they did, those events became part of the story we read in the Bible, that brings us to Jesus, and to the clear vision of God we have in Jesus, a vision that still beckons us, that still moves us to say “yes” to the God who rescues us from sin and death, and saves us into new life, – a new life that challenges and transforms us, according to God’s vision for us.

So let’s learn from this story that saying “yes” to God is vital, and worthwhile, and when we do it, it’s the beginning of something great – whoever we are, great or small, whatever we’re saying “yes” to, whatever the next step in our life with God – because when the invitation comes from God, we know the good and beautiful God will, in the end, make something good and beautiful of us.

Images: “Open book 1,” by Alina Daniker alinadaniker, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons; “Dura Synagogue WC3 David anointed by Samuel,” reworked by Marsyas, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons