This sermon was preached at Second Presbyterian Church on October 22, 2017
Read First Samuel 16:1-13
How would you rate your capacity to see as God sees?
If a 10 is a perfect score,
how many of you by show of hands would give yourself an 8 or above?
Okay, how about a 5 or above?
So, for the rest of you, we’re talking more like a 2 or a 3?
I guess we have some work to do, huh?
You and me both.
I’m not going to promise that you’ll rate yourself a 10 by the end of this message.
In fact, I’m leaving your outcome completely up to the Holy Spirit.
As my father says to me when he wants to be absolved of any responsibility
in a matter, “Good luck with that.”
Most of us are likely familiar with the story we just read
about King David’s anointing.
With seven older brothers, David isn’t seen
as being even remotely needed at this important meeting with Samuel.
Our human sight knows that the baby of the family is certainly not
going to supersede all of his older brothers
and be called into leadership over them and all of Israel, …
so he’s out tending the sheep.
Maybe his father Jesse insisted that he do so.
Maybe the older brothers passed the baton down the line.
Maybe David said, “Please let me do something productive
rather than go to one of those ceremonial religious services.”
We aren’t told exactly why it is that David is in the field
rather than with his father, brothers, and their important guest Samuel.
We are just told that he is not with them, but is out working.
Now, if David’s family status, or lack thereof, weren’t enough of a deterrent,
I’d still see David as a curious pick.
Consider how he is introduced in the story.
The only thing we are told about him as he passes before God
is that he has a healthy, glowing, handsome face and beautiful eyes.
These attributes seem like odd things to mention
since God just stressed that outer appearances aren’t the deciding factor.
Remember what we just read?
“The Lord does not see as mortals see;
mortals look on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looks on the heart.”
As a smart person said to me this week,
“God might not look at outward appearances,
but apparently the narrator of this story can’t help him or herself!”
David is also a curious pick because if God is all knowing,
one would think that David’s eventual foibles —
of which he will have more than a few —
including some relatively grave ones
(he does end up breaking four of the ten commandments, if you recall)
would keep him from being God’s selection.
But maybe all of this comes from the perspective of human sight
rather than divine sight.
Upon a bit of reflection,
most of us would probably admit that our failures teach us
as much or more than our successes,
so maybe God is not looking for a perfect king.
Being the flawed and broken people we are,
King David included,
God is going to use each one of us to accomplish good in the world.
What’s interesting,
and ancient audiences might see this more readily than we do,
is that David is already demonstrating his leadership capacity
by being out with the sheep in the first place.
Whether he chose to be there or was strongly encouraged to do so,
he is doing in this moment what God wants him to do on a larger scale—
he’s leading and caring for the flock.
Maybe God’s sight or decision-making isn’t as mysterious as we sometimes think.
David seems a pretty logical choice in this way of thinking.
Select someone who is a natural,
someone who’s already doing the job.
But even after all this analysis,
it’s quite clear that our plans, our human plans,
are not necessarily aligned with God’s plans.
Have you ever noticed that?
It shows up all throughout this short narrative.
- Samuel, a prophet of God, thinks every brother, especially the tall, handsome ones, must be God’s pick.
- Jesse, the father of this large pack of brothers, doesn’t think his youngest needs to be in the lineup.
- I’m pretty sure the brothers didn’t think the baby of the family was going to be selected, … and I suspect David didn’t think so either.
- The townspeople, who were terrified by Samuel’s arrival in the first place, asking if he has come peaceably, don’t expect the selection of a new king to be on the agenda for the day, …
- not to mention King Saul, who certainly wouldn’t have anticipated that he was going to be replaced.
And so it goes …
No one in this story seems to be clued in to what God is up to.
I wonder if any of this resonates with you?
I must confess that it does for me.
Most of you know that I arrived here in January of this year.
About a year prior to that,
I said one of my most simple but powerful personal prayers,
and it was simply, “Mercy.”
You see, for several years I had been a solo pastor of a small church in San Francisco.
I was making three-quarters of a pastor’s salary,
whatever that means.
The Bay Area isn’t the easiest place to have that kind of life,
especially as a single mother,
and so I said, “Mercy. I give up, God. Get me out of this predicament.”
I did the footwork and posted my PIF (Personal Information Form),
as we Presbyterian pastors affectionately call our resumes.
I posted it on Church Connections,
a website that allows churches and pastors to connect,
and it wasn’t all that long before I received a phone call from Henry here,
asking if I might be interested in talking with the call committee about this position.
The call here felt exceedingly strong to me.
I might even have thought at the time
that I had a pretty good handle on what God was up to.
I had said “Mercy,”
and God was answering.
In some ways, what has unfolded
has been closely aligned with what I would have anticipated, —
with one huge wrinkle —
my 11-year-old son John isn’t here with me.
If God had asked me ahead of time if this would be an acceptable sacrifice,
I would have said unequivocally, “No.”
Unfortunately, God did not ask that question,
or if God did,
I failed to hear it.
Is it possible for human beings to acquire the capacity to see as God sees?
Will studying the Word help?
I think it will.
Will listening to one’s spiritual elders —
which in my case is a certain 11-year-old boy named John in San Francisco —
will that help?
I think so,
even though neither of us saw this one coming.
How do we align ourselves with God’s plan?
How do we see as God sees?
In Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s story, The Little Prince,
the fox who has a relatively small but very important role,
tells the Little Prince a secret.
He says it is a very simple secret, which is that
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Now, as an artist drawn to the beauty around me,
I don’t so much want to discount what my eyes see.
And as a pastor, I want to think that I do see with the heart.
So, in my way of thinking,
it would seem that using all one’s available faculties would be wise —
and maybe that is part of the challenge.
As finite human beings, we can’t see the whole picture.
We can’t know why one person succumbs to addiction and another recovers.
We can’t understand why some of our loved ones end up dying from cancer
and others live long, healthy lives.
It’s hard to comprehend how one house could burn up
in the wildfires surrounding Napa, California
and another would be spared.
Those of us who do our best to walk humbly with our God
probably struggle to understand why it is that our world
is such a broken and flawed place so much of the time.
Maybe our goal should not be to see how God sees.
Maybe our goal needs to be to learn to trust the One who loves us,
the One who loves each and every one of us —
with a love that is beyond description —
with a love that is eternal —
with a love that no person and no thing in this world can ever take away.
Maybe the call is to be like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.
To ask God to hear our prayers;
to ask God to know our desires;
to ask God to keep our best interests at heart;
BUT ultimately to work in our lives powerfully —
and in a way that will accomplish what God wishes to manifest through us.
Maybe our job is to keep looking,
keep anticipating,
that God will make a way where there is no way.
If this is the task, then we are truly quite fortunate,
because we live on this side of the resurrection.
If God did that once, who are we to think that God won’t do it again?
Our task, it seems, is to look for those little resurrections in our lives
and the lives of those we love,
because God is good
and we aren’t in this alone.
Thanks be to God.
