On Being a Reject Messiah

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.