About two weeks, I was checking out at the grocery store. I was purchasing the graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolates for the s’mores to recognize all of our Sunday morning volunteers. I think the volume and the singular nature of my purchase caught the eye of the bagger who was helping me. She asked me what I was getting all of these s’mores for. When I explained that I was thanking volunteers with s’mores, she asked if I would thank those who helped bag and carry my groceries? After a giggle, I explained these were folks at my church. She asked me what I did at the church. When I explained that I was the pastor, she was shocked and almost incredulous. How could I be the pastor, her pastor was a man – why was I not a man?
I have to admit I have not been asked that particular question too often in my career. It is rare that I hear the words – why am I not a man? But when I do, it is clear that I am not what someone has expected. The expectations they help for clergy looked and sounded one particular way and I confounded, confronted and confused that expectation all by answering God’s call in my own life. Isn’t it just like God to use people we don’t expect to speak to each of us in our lives?
This is where we pick up the story of David. We have been in a series about David, After God’s Own Heart. Eugene Peterson writes in his book, Leap Over A Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Every Day Christians, that “the David story is the most extensively narrated story in Scripture.” We know more about David than almost anyone else in Scripture. His story dominates the Old Testament. Sixty-six chapters are devoted to telling David’s story. When the New Testament opens with the story of Jesus, it should come as no surprise that Matthew identifies him as “the Son of David” (Matthew 1:1). So we pick up the story of David in the interaction of God and Samuel the prophet.
As we discussed last week, we find both Samuel and God distraught over the actions of Saul as King. He was not the upstanding, God-fearing King that he might have been. But God does not abandon the people of Israel in their time of need. No, in fact, restoring the monarchy after one failed king is next on the ‘to-do’ list. God sends Samuel searching out the next King, without even telling Samuel exactly what he is looking for. So, without any directions to the contrary, Samuel expects a tall, handsome leader, who will be a first born son. In the tradition of the time (the Iron Age), Samuel expects that he knows what he will come across while still seeking to follow God.
Samuel forgets the most important truth: “For the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” As he gathers the family of Jesse, he lays his eyes on the Elihab, the oldest son. Sure, that he is the one God is choosing. He does that solely based on social conventions, not the specifically calling of God. And so, he finds himself surprised that it is not Elihab or any of his first six brothers. It is the youngest brother, the one who cares for the sheep, the one who is not even bothered to be called in to greet the Samuel, the guest. It is David, whom God has chosen.
David’s rise to prominence is a Cinderella story. He’s a baby brother stuck in a dead-end job, no hope for advance with 7 older brothers. His resume is light; he possesses no Jerusalem pedigree. Bethlehem, his hometown is a no-nametown from the middle of nowhere. He’s the youngest of eight from the smallest of Israel’s 12 tribes. Isn’t that just like God? God often picks the least likely people to accomplish His mission. This story is not merely about David; it’s a story about God. God is the principle protagonist. David was merely doing his job and minding his own business when God calls him out of obscurity. One day he’s tending sheep; the next day he’s a king-in-waiting and people are out to kill him. David’s story bears witness to God’s transforming power in the lives of deeply flawed people whose hearts are open to God.
God’s story of choosing unlikely heroes, unexpected rulers, and unforeseen champions in told across time and space, in the bible and in the larger world. God does not call the qualified; God qualifies the called. From the scripture, we recall that Jacob was a cheater, Peter had a temper, David had an affair, Noah got drunk, Jonah ran from God, Paul was a murderer, Gideon was insecure, Miriam was a gossip, Martha was a worrier, Thomas was a doubter, Sara was impatient, Elijah was moody, Moses stuttered, Zaccheus was short, Abraham was old, and Lazarus was dead!
Isn’t this also the narrative of our cultural stories as well? This is the story of Peter Parker and Spiderman. This is the story of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings. It is the story of Charlie Brown and the Little Engine that Could. It is the story of Cinderella, and it is story after story of how our expectations are confounded.
It has been the story of how God has moved through history. God used unlikely characters to advance God’s story. As Martin Luther King Junior said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” This was the story of Rosa Parks as she refused to give up her seat again, officially beginning a movement of justice for African Americans that had been occurring for decades prior. This was the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton as she devoted herself to the cause of women’s suffrage, ushering in a new era of equal opportunity. This was the story of people today as they call for God’s way in the world. God, who works not only through those who are expected, but through each of us to serve God’s purposes.
In baptism, we remember again that our expectations do not limit how God might move through us. We sometimes forget that our God is a God of surprises and the unexpected. We forget that God is not waiting for the perfect person, before calling them to God. God’s love and grace begins the conversation. Even conversations and interactions that we, as good church folks do not believe should happen. In baptism, God acts first calling us, loving us, and naming us as Children of God, regardless of our age and ability to consent. God began loving, calling, and creating Olivia as her parents tenderly cared for her in utero. God has loved her each and every day of her little life. It is on this day, that we celebrate her incorporation in the body of Christ in a public way. It is on this day, that the gathered body makes promises to her to be a living community for Olivia, nurturing her in faith, hope, and love. It is on this day, that we acknowledge that God has been working through her and will continue to do so, and as a result, God’s new creation may be seen in her in expected and unexpected ways.
As we re-evaluate our expectations and open our thinking to more closely reflect God, we notice that God called and gifted us from the same perspective that God called and gifted our wacky neighbors and our unbalanced friends. Opening our minds to God’s possibilities may catch us off guard. At the end of our conversation in the check-out line over s’mores, my friend the bagger said to me, I don’t know. Maybe you could even be my pastor someday. Hearing God’s creativity reminds us of the openness that God calls us to and the giftedness that accompanies it. God is calling you, gifting you, equipping you, and opening your mind to the ways in which you and others can serve. Hear the words of Jesus to the resurrected Lazarus, ‘Be unbound and let go!’
This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, Amen.
Old Testament Lesson: 1 Samuel 15:34 -16:13
Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.
David Anointed as King
The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.
Gospel Lesson: John 11:41-44
So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”