The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
One of the gifts God gives to each of us is the ability to think for ourselves. It's a great gift, and it's part of the even greater gift of free will that he gave humanity at Creation. But both the gifts of free will and of independent thinking bring problems with them, as we all know only too well.
King Saul, whom God had told Samuel to anoint as the first king of the kingdom of Israel, had decided to use his gift of independent thinking to interpret God's instructions to him, and came up with a different interpretation from what God had intended for him to do. And, of course, this meant that he sinned, because he was doing what HE decided to do, not exactly what God had told him to do. As punishment, God decided to remove Saul from the kingship. And so God gave Samuel orders to go to Bethlehem, to the farm of Jesse, and to take along a container of the oil used to anoint kings, because God would show Samuel who would be the new king to replace Saul.
Well, Samuel was a careful and prudent man, and so he checked with God to be sure he had understood properly what God had in mind. And, since Samuel also had the gift of independent thinking, he asked God how to handle this errand. Samuel knew that if King Saul heard that Samuel was going to anoint a new king, Saul would get very angry and probably would put Samuel to death. So he asked God for more detailed instructions, and he followed them exactly.
Samuel arrived at Bethlehem, at the home of Jesse, who had quite a large family...seven sons and we don't know how many daughters, since the Bible doesn't say. He asked Jesse to send his sons to Samuel, one by one. The first son to come to Samuel, the oldest, looked very kingly and so Samuel of course thought he would be the new king. But he was wise enough to check with God, and God said, "No, this is not the one I want for the new king." So Samuel obeyed God, and asked for the next son to come to him. Again, Samuel thought that this famous soldier would be an excellent king, well able to lead the army into battle. But again, God said, "No." God explained to Samuel that God doesn't use human ways of judging. He doesn't care about how handsome or how strong or how rich a person is; God sees the heart and mind, not just the outside of our bodies. And so Samuel asked for the next son to come to him.
Well, this went on until Samuel had met six sons of Jesse. And he knew there were seven, so he asked, "Don't you have another son? I must see him too."
Jesse answered, "Yes, there is one more, but he is just a boy. He's out looking after the sheep in the fields. I'll send for him."
When the youngest son, David came, God said, "This is the one!" and Samuel anointed him and told him that he would be the new king. God sent his spirit strongly upon David, and he began to think and feel and act like a king. The Bible tells us that Samuel warned David that he must not let Saul know that David was to be the new king; Saul would kill him if he found out. And then Samuel left.
Later on, Saul was killed in a war, in fact, he committed suicide because he saw he was losing the battle. David took over and ruled for many years as king of Israel and Judah, uniting them into one large country.
We need to remember, I think, that we are not God. It is God's opinion and God's rules that matter, not our opinion and our rules. The Gospel reading gives us a warning about this, too. Jesus healed a blind man on the Sabbath, in the synagogue, and this made the Pharisees very angry because they felt that it was a terrible crime to heal on the Sabbath. It seemed to them to be work, and work is forbidden on the Sabbath which is God's day of rest. So, they excommunicated the man from the synagogue, and his parents as well, and started scolding Jesus for healing the man. Now, you know that Jesus is God the Son, and he knew that the Sabbath was a gift to people from God. The Sabbath is intended to help people rest and be healed from the stress and hard work of earning a living. It is intended to give people time free from work to praise God, pray, and enjoy God's blessings. But all the Pharisees could think of was that THEIR rules and THEIR ideas were being ignored. This is the real problem between Jesus and the Pharisees....simply that they thought their opinions and their rules were equally important as God's Law.
It is not just our relationship with God that suffers when we get too attached to our own ideas and habits. Most of us have had the experience of having a disagreement with someone important to us...our wife or husband, our parents or children, our boss or our friends. An idea or opinion that seems clear and right to us might be completely different from the idea or opinion of the other person, and so we get into an argument about it, maybe we let our feelings get hurt and think to ourselves, "Well, he won't even try to understand what I mean!" and sometimes the argument becomes nasty and can lead to a broken friendship or a broken marriage.
It seems that it is very important to check our opinion or our interpretation of whatever God or other people say. Samuel, you remember, checked with God instead of going ahead and anointing the young men that looked good to him. King Saul had gone ahead and followed his own opinion without checking with God about exactly what God wanted him to do. The Pharisees assumed that their interpretation of God's law was the only right interpretation, but Jesus stopped to remember what the purpose of the Sabbath was and why God had given it to people. Perhaps we could have much more peaceful lives if we simply checked with God, or with the person we are talking with, about what they really mean, before we start acting on things, or getting mad about differences of opinion. After all, we are supposed to live together in the peace of God, and we can't do that if we aren't clear about what God, and what our fellow people, really mean by the things they say! Amen.
