The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY (Retired)
Did you ever make careful plans for some project that was important to you,
and then have the project spoiled when something went wrong...not with the plan
itself, but with the persons or the conditions that were necessary to carry out
your plan? If this has happened to you, you are not alone. It happens to lots of
people, including the Lord God himself. And, like you and most other folks, the
Lord then had to fall back on Plan B, and try to make it work...and, of course,
something happened to prevent Plan B being successful, so it became necessary to
come up with Plan C, and on, and on, and on.
Plan A, we all know, got messed up in the Garden of Eden, when the first
humans decided that they didn't have to obey God and could do their own thing.
As the years and centuries passed, things got worse and worse, and Plan B
resulted in God's doing away with all the rebellious types out there, and
starting over again with one family that he felt could do a better job of
bringing their offspring up in the ways God had taught. But the spirit of
rebellion somehow survived, and eventually, the people whom God had intended to
rule forever, as their Lord and King, decided they wanted a human king. The
prophet Samuel felt very badly about their rejection of the Lord God's kingship
and their request for a human king, but God put Plan C into motion. He told
Samuel to go and anoint a man named Saul to be the king of the Hebrew people.
This seemed to work out pretty well at first. Saul was an obedient man who
seemed to be trying hard to obey God and to lead the people of Israel in the
ways of obedience. He became famous and had no trouble getting the people to
follow the ways of God's Law. But, eventually, a time came when he disobeyed
God, because he thought he knew better than God did how to handle a situation.
And you have heard just now what God thought and felt about Saul's disobedience.
God, however, always has a way to bring good out of bad, so after a time of
grief over Saul, God called the prophet Samuel to do a special errand. Saul was
still king, and he was very upset that God had said he would lose his kingdom
and his kingship. Samuel knew Saul's temper, and when God told Samuel to go and
anoint one of the sons of Jesse, down in Bethlehem, to be the new king, Samuel
was worried. He was expecting that Saul would be so angry that he would put
Samuel in prison, or even kill him, if he followed God's orders. But with God's
help, Samuel went down to Bethlehem and took along the flask of holy oil, and
anointed Jesse's youngest son, David, as king. And then he hurried home before
Saul could find out what had happened.
It's interesting to note that Saul and David both had a lot of things in
common. Both were younger sons of their fathers. In fact, David was the youngest
of such a large family that his father did not even think to introduce him to
Samuel. Samuel anointed each of them secretly, and did not proclaim them as king
right away. He, and God, gave them time to "grow into" the kingship, to mature
and learn to lead the people. When Saul had was young, he had the responsibility
of looking after his family's donkeys. When David was young, he was the family's
sheep tender, a shepherd. Saul grew up and learned to be a soldier. David grew
up and learned to be a guerilla fighter. Both won many battles and gained much
respect from the people for the way they managed their wars and foreign affairs.
And, eventually, both disappointed God by sinning in some way. The big
difference was that Saul tried to make excuses for his sin, and David confessed
his sin and repented and begged for God's forgiveness....but that story comes
later.
Paul's letter to the church in Corinth emphasizes some of the traits that we
see in these stories of the famous kings. Paul reminds us that we need to walk
by faith in God, not by our own ideas and observations and plans. Paul tells us
that we need to make pleasing God our most important aim in life....not pleasing
ourselves.
Jesus gives further advice in the Gospel readings for today. He reminds us
that we do not know all the factors that influence how things happen...but God
does. We know that we plant seeds, but we do not really know how God makes those
seeds grow into a plant that can feed us or provide necessary things such as
cotton or linen or food or wine or oil for our use. We can't claim that we grew
those plants...God did, with our help. It was God's plan, not ours, that helped
plants break through the hard seed, put down roots, and make stalks, leaves and
fruit appear. What's more, Jesus reminds us that we cannot be like little
children in kindergarten, who plant seeds in paper cups of soil, and then want
to pull them up every day to see how they are growing. Instead, we must be
patient and leave the plant in the soil, so that it can absorb nutrition and
water and grow. We have to work according to God's plan for the growing plant,
not according to our desires to hurry up and get a lot of wheat or tomatoes or
wine from it. And we must always remember that it is God's plan, not ours; that
he, not we, makes the plan work. The most we can do is accept his teaching and
advice and work along with him to make the plan successful.
Right now, many of us are making plans of different kinds. We are planning
summer vacations. Some people are planning for their last year of high school
this fall...which colleges will they apply to, or will they sign up for the
service? Some are planning for college...what major should they choose, will
they live in a dorm or get an apartment, how will they manage their expenses?
Some of us have been hurt by the bad economy and need to plan how to improve our
finances. Young couples are planning their weddings, and making plans for their
life together as a new family. As we make those various plans, we should ask
God's advice and listen to it, and take it to heart. And so it goes. Often he
has better ideas than our own for making our plans work out the way he---and
we---would like them to.
But all of us have to remember that we are God's people and God's helpers in
carrying out his plans for the world. We do not always know exactly what God has
in mind for all those people he loves...but we do know that he will show us our
part in his plans, if we pay attention to him. Bible reading and church teaching
can help us with this. The big point, however, is to be sure that we are open
to, and willing to obey, what God is telling us to do in order to make his plans
work out. We need to be very sure that we are not trying to push our own plans
into the place of God's plans. And we need to walk by our faith in God's love
for us and his care for the world, and do what he asks us to do, in order to
make his plans succeed. Amen.
