This sermon is the second of the "Casual Sermons" Series, and was delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to Unfinished Community on Sunday, March 26, 2023. It draws from 1 Samuel 16:1-13 and Ephesians 5:8-14.
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1 Samuel 16:1-13
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 his 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.
Ephesians 5:8-14
for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly, but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
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I want to start today with a little peek behind the scenes, so to speak.
You might not know this, but the typical sermon has a very particular structure to it, a form that's been shaped and developed over centuries to function in a very specific way. Usually, a sermon will open with an anecdote of some kind - often, though not always, an amusing one - to act as sort of a grounding; a touchstone, that the preacher can return to in order to connect the higher-minded rhetoric of what's coming with something more closely resembling the everyday experiences of the people to whom they’re preaching.
This grounding makes it possible for the listeners to take a sort of cognitive leap; to move from the more active, spiritual, ritual aspects of the worship surrounding it, into a place of introspection and self-reflection. So the preacher will often come back to that anecdote throughout the sermon, drawing connections between it and the chosen biblical passages again and again, until they've made clear whatever point they've felt the Spirit call them to make in that particular time and place.
Problem is, this sermon series I've been doing with you all lately - these casual sermons - they don't take place in the middle of a worship service, so that kind of mental transitioning isn't really all that necessary. And what's more, most of you who are listening today haven't come to church for that experience of spiritual comfort and reassurance that so many look for from church. In point of fact, I'd be willing to bet that out of the many handfuls of people who might listen to this sermon, I may well be the only one who's actually in a church at this exact moment.
I know in our community there are any number of reasons, good reasons, for that to be the case. Some of us are overloaded with medical concerns, and are spending every waking moment fighting, and clawing our way back towards health through a system that won't support it, so we don't have time to sit in a half-empty sanctuary just for a message we could get just as easily on YouTube. Others of us are at work, because if we are fortunate enough to get even an hour's break from our labors, it makes no sense to spend it among people who'll judge us for our poverty, in a place that may never lift a finger to help. Others still just don't see the point. After all, why spend our time sitting around in idle worship and praise when there are hungry people to be fed, homeless people to be housed, oppressed to be uplifted, and prisoners to be set free?
As for the rest of us…well…quite a lot of have long been told that we're not welcome in church in the first place. Many of us honestly would like to have that time of peaceful meditation, worship, and learning in our week, but have been either explicitly or implicitly told that this place is not our place, that God's house is not our house, and that we cannot be who God made us; not if we mean to walk through those hallowed doors.
Some of us have taken these rejections quite understandably to heart, and left the church. Others of us, like myself, have gotten quite a bit more indignant about it, and have dedicated ourselves to fighting back, to reclaiming some small measure of space within the community not just for ourselves, but for all those who have been by social condition or explicit rejection pushed out of the community of God. So we take up the banner of God's justice, firm in our scriptural conviction that the church must be open to all.
Welcoming, is the word I hear used most of all, by those churches who have at least started trying to make room among them for all these groups that have historically been unable to find a place in the community.
And, I'm not gonna lie, it's been a fight, right? How many of us have found ourselves locked in discussions, arguments, even screaming matches with the people of our communities, fighting just for that one scrap of presence, that single, brief moment of divine acceptance summed up that one shining word;
Welcome.
And it makes sense, of course. In the words of aspiring theologian Jack Crusher, we all long for connection, even though we are all just a little bit alone. But in scrapping, tooth-and-nail for that bit of connection, I wonder if our desperation to take hold of that welcome which God's church must, indeed ought to, afford to everyone without consideration might have blinded us to the greater calling that has been placed on all God's people.
Consider today's story, the calling of King David by the prophet Samuel. At the time of this story, Israel already had a king; King Saul. And Saul wasn't just any king, he was the king. He had risen his people to greatness, led them through war and struggle and, despite being followed the far better-known line of his rival - is generally regarded as the first Monarch of the United Kingdom of Israel. The Unifier himself.
And at this point in time he is still king, ruling from his throne in the capital city Gibeah of Benjamin. Before the beginning of today’s story, he started to break away from the guidance of the Prophet Saul, performing his own sacrifices to God and waging war against Israel's enemies in his own way, making compromises that would result in greater resources and power coming to the throne - to Saul himself.
So, God rejected Saul as king, withdrew divine support from his kingship, and instructed the prophet Samuel to seek out the next person who God has chosen for kingship; rulership over the entire United Kingdom of God's people.
And that brings us to the city of Bethlehem, in what would in a still-distant time come to be known as Judea, and the home of Jesse and his many sons. Now God has already told Samuel that among the great number of Jesse's sons they will find the one who God has chosen as king.
And thus begins the presentation.
Both Samuel the prophet, and Jesse of Bethlehem think they know what God is looking for in a king. In fact, they both thought Eliab - presumably Jesse's eldest - was God's chosen king based solely on his appearance.
"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.""
So Samuel listens, because of course he does, and goes back to checking through the list of sons. And as God rejects each of them on similar grounds, it eventually comes out that Jesse stacked the deck a bit, and left his youngest out of the presentation. After all, his youngest was the sheep-keeper; he knew nothing about the appearance of power and prestige, nothing about the fine arts of kingly presentation or fine speech, and while he may have been handsome, it was in a rough-and-ruddy way, and not in any way that spoke of refinement.
So when the time came for Jesse's family to come together and meet with Samuel to decide who next would be king, young David had been quietly shown the door. Left out in the fields doing the work that needed to be done, while the rest of the family gathered together in their Sunday best to strut and preen for power.
Sound familiar?
I think that we all tend to get so lost in what we think is right, careful, and above all safe, that we loose sight of just how undeniably radical our God truly is. Our God doesn't care for those who look the part, those who you might expect to set the course for the entire church. Our God doesn't look to what has been as a map for what is yet to come. Our God doesn't come to Jesse's house looking for Saul the Warrior.
God comes looking for David the Shepherd. David the non-traditionally attractive. David the conspicuously absent, David the out-caring-for-the-sheep-instead-of-embracing-sanctity-sacrifice-and-kingly-appearance. David the quietly unwelcome.
David the King.
Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
This is the truth that Samuel had to figure out in that moment, the truth that Paul communicated so eloquently to the church in Ephesus, and which most of us are still wrestling with today:
What is pleasing to the Lord isn't the secret, shameful lusts of the proud and the powerful, trying to grasp at authority by mimicking the greatness that preceded them, impersonating the last leader who failed to live up to the expectations of righteousness. Remember that Jesse didn't proudly or clearly proclaim her intention to leave David out of the selection process; he just…quietly showed him the door, asserting his own will above the Lord’s by sending David out to the fields without so much as a care as to whether this ruddy little boy might actually be the great king that God had already chosen to lead God's people into the future.
But when the powerful falter and fail, when the prideful like Saul place their own desire for power and control above the word of the Lord, when the well-meaning like Jesse in their determination turn away from those who tradition and practice tell them could not possibly be welcome in God's house, let alone called to lead it…
…God says otherwise.
In the world today, the powerful of the church have faltered, fallen, and failed. Nearly every denomination of the universal church has been divided over the sins of the powerful men, screaming into the world their hateful rhetoric and determined insistence that not everyone is welcome in the house of the Lord, that some folks are in fact ruddy-faced and unwelcome, unnecessary before the obvious kingship of better, truer Christians.
And at the same time the entire LGBTQIA+ community, the poor, the immigrants, the refugees, the prisoners, the widows, and all the broken of the world are sent away from the sanctuary to scour the fields in search of lost sheep. There we find still more of the lost and the vulnerable in every crack and crevice into which they might have retreated, and form together in spaces of fellowship and community, gathering together in candlelight and starlight; a church of table scraps, while Jesse's lineage sacrifices and feasts in painted halls of old.
Royalty in exile all; ordained by God not just to be welcomed, grudgingly, into a community that just happened to remember their existence, but the next phase in the evolution of Christ's body here on earth.
My dearest siblings in Christ, whom the churches and temples of this world have called unworthy and insufficient. My incredible friends, who the powerful and the privileged ignored and forgot while they pursued an image of piety and perfection that God never asked for, and which is unappealing in the sight of the Lord.
Beloved of Christ, God has not called you to be welcome.
God has ordained you king.
God has ordained you queen.
God has ordained you leader and ruler, the standard by which the next stage of our institutions of faith at work in this world will be measured. And in the presence of your siblings, fathers and mothers, and all those who thought they knew what church must necessarily be for now and for always, God has anointed you, and the Spirit of the Lord shall come mightily upon you all from this day forward.
So, as you go out into the world knowing that God doesn't care to uplift yet another of the same failed king that the divine just turned away from, knowing that God sets the future by looking to those on the outside, looking to those who others have rejected and cast aside, knowing that our God reaches for that cornerstone that all the builders refused, you can go secure in the knowledge that you are not only welcome but empowered; not only invited, but encouraged; not only sought after, but looked to as example of the divine's first, best choice to lead.
So take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, the shady dealings of the powerful and the privileged who came before, but instead commit yourself to exposing them all. For what they do in secret is shameful, but everything exposed to the light becomes visible, made clean in the light once again.
Grasp firmly the authority given you in Christ Jesus, in the name of the Lord God our Creator, the maker of heaven and Earth. Know the full measure of your value to God, and let your compassion guide all of us into a season that truly and better reflects an earth that may yet be as it is in heaven.
God has sent for you all, and the people of the Lord will not sit down again until you've come home once more.
Amen.
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