In 1 Samuel 15:26-29, after a disastrous mission against the Amalekites in which Saul "pounces on the plunder" instead of completely destroying it, Samuel announces that God has rejected Saul. In Samuel's words, "because you rejected the Word of the Lord, the Lord has rejected you as king."
There's a lot going on in this dark and confusing passage, but I was reading it the other day and something in particular struck me as odd. In 1 Samuel 15:28, Samuel turns to leave Saul and Saul, afraid of the political ramifications of this public withdrawal of Samuel's support, attempts to detain him. Now a-days we might say, "he was worried about the optics." So he catches hold of Samuel's robe, which tears in the subsequent tussle, and in that moment he becomes his own prophetic object lesson: just as Saul has torn the Prophet's robe in his efforts literally to seize the bearer of the Prophetic Word, so too YHWH will tear the Kingdom from him because he has metaphorically seized on the Prophetic Word and used it to his own ends (i.e. he seized on the prophetic commandment to attack the Amalekites, but used it as a license to loot and pillage for political gain).
And here's where things get both convicting and freeing. Samuel's precise words are: "The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to ..."
To whom?
"One of your neighbours, who is better than you" is how we translate the verse in English, and this is accurate, but the actual word is reyah, which means "friend/close companion." I don't want to make an exegetical mountain out of a linguistic molehill here: there is a Hebrew word for "intimate friend/confidant" (côwdh) and that's not the word that's being used here, but there's also a word for neighbor (shachen) and that word's not being used either. The word is reyah; and the nuance, I think, points us to someone of more significance than simply "one of Saul's neighbors." Because, the reyah in question, we'll find out later, is none other than King David himself, who will indeed become Saul's close companion before he becomes Saul's replacement. But at this point, the Prophetic Word is just left echoing ominously. God has rejected Saul and has chosen his reyah, his close companion who "is better than him," to replace him as the Lord's Annointed.
I read this verse the other evening and as the weight of the word-choice sunk in, it seemed to me that God was saying: "Oh yeah; I've also rejected you as Messiah, too, Dale, and given that role to a close companion of yours, who is far better than you." And as that prophetic word sunk in, God gently started to show me ways I've been "playing Messiah," or have done in the past. I won't share those here, except to say that they're the same kind of ways we all, I think, play Messiah -- in our churches, in our families, in our marriages, in our relationships, in our spheres of influence -- by trying to "fix," or "reign-over" or "own" or "save" ourselves and those around us.
God showed me some of my own efforts at self-Messiahship for what they were, and assured me that it's just not my job anymore. I'm a reject Messiah.
And there is something convicting about this, but also deeply liberating: God has rejected us all, with Saul, as Messiah, and has turned that onerous responsibility over to a close companion of ours-- a true reyah who is infinitely better at this role than us. And he, we will discover if we will chose a path different than Saul's, he is the true "Beloved" whom David only prefigured and who delights (like he said it John 15) he delights to call us friends, rejected Messiahs though we are.
On Being a Reject Messiah
When God Gives Us What We Ask For
In an effort to keep my Seminary Hebrew fresh, I've been reading 1 Samuel in the Hebrew these days, so something stood out to me here that I'd never noticed before. There are a variety of verbs Samuel could have used to describe Israel's sin in "asking" for a king. But the verb he did use, it so happens, was ša’l. "To ask for." If that verb looks familiar, I think it's supposed to. It's the same verb that gives us King Saul's name-- which, loosely translated, means something like "the asked-for one," or "the desired one."
Names, of course, are seldom accidental in the Hebrew Scriptures, and I doubt the writer wants the irony here to be lost on us (the pun, after all, gets repeated in 12:19). Israel "saul-ed" (so to speak) for a king like all the other nations, so God gave them, quite literally, the "Saul" they asked for. The disastrous results of their "saul-ing" of course, unfold almost immediately, as their "saul" begins his reign with one debacle after another: sacrificing to the Lord as king at Gilgal, amassing loot from the battle with Amalekites, setting up a monument to himself on Mt. Carmel. To be sure, none of this would have even raised the eyebrows of a typical Ancient Near Eastern king-- for whom things like personal aggrandizement, or personal gain, or personally assuming the role of mediator for the divine, that stuff just came along with the job description of king. Put bluntly: Saul proves quite quickly that he is a king like the kings of all the other nations and that Israel has received, quite literally, the king they had "saul-ed" for.
And I'm left wondering. If the story of Saul's inauspicious reign teaches the people of God anything, it seems, it's this: there are times, it turns out, that God's most terrifying judgment on our sin is simply and finally to give us what we've asked for.
The fifth calling of Samuel
No wonder this mysterious episode has made it to so many a Sunday School coloring page. It's vivid and compelling and charming; but as I say, I was re-reading it the other day and I realized that, though we often end the telling after the fourth call of Samuel (the "Speak Lord, your servant is listening" one), Samuel is actually called five times in the story, and the "fifth call" is essential to the boy's prophetic ministry. Because when Samuel does recognize the Word of the Lord at last, it turns out to be a prophetic judgment against Eli and his house, one that will make "the ears of everyone who hears it tingle." It's a message so heavy and heart-rending that Samuel, we're told, is afraid to tell the vision to Eli.
And then comes the fifth call: the next morning Eli himself "calls" to Samuel. The narrative accentuates the irony here by using the same verb as before (karaw-- to call), and by putting the same response into Samuel's mouth-- "Here I am." Previously Samuel had mistaken God's voice for Eli's, but now, having responded to God's call, Samuel hears and recognizes Eli's call for what it is. And what it is, in fact, is an invitation to share the terrifying word of the Lord with the very one against whom it has been uttered. It's a call to do the very thing that young Samuel is loathe to do: to speak the prophetic Word to power.
So here's what I'm wondering as I meditate on this "fifth call" of Samuel. If the "fifth call" is the call for ministers of the Word to share it faithfully with God's people, even when it may cause the ears of those who hear it to tingle (inasmuch as Samuel's "fifth call" was a call from Eli to share what God had spoken against him), if the "fifth call" is our invitation to speak the Word of God to "power" when we're most afraid to do so because we're most uncertain of the outcome and we have the most at stake-- if Samuel's story is in some way paradigmatic for the Ministry of the Word, then what would it take for us to speak a willing "Here I am" with Samuel when we receive this "fifth call" in our ministries?
Read This... (Seeing Her)
I don't usually link to other blogs in lieu of a post, but I've always wanted to write a reflection on Judges 19 and Richard Beck over at Experimental Theology beat me to it (and he crossed the finish line far more gracefully than I could have). Hyperbole fails me: his is the most sensitive, insightful and beautiful reading of the most painful, opaque and ugly passages of scripture that I've ever read.
Read it. Please. To understand Judges 19; to understand how to read Scripture generally; to catch a glimpse of the heart of God. Read it.
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2012/02/seeing-her.html
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