Four years ago when I preached on this text from 1 Samuel,
on the subject of electing leaders, I began by pointing out a survey at the
time that Congress’ approval rating was a whopping 10%. Believe it or not,
things have improved in the last four years! Today, 13% of Americans approve of
Congress; this in spite of the fact that by all appearances they’ve haven’t
actually done anything in those intervening four years.
Still, 13% approval is pretty terrible, so I think the
point I was making four years ago stands today: We make terrible choices when
it comes to electing people. Now, we can say that all the choices are bad,
which may be true however uninspiring. We can point to local and regional
leadership that is much better than our national leaders. This is more hopeful.
However, at the end of the day, most of us take issue with the way most leaders
lead us most of the time.
Thank goodness God doesn’t elect democratically. God
elects with a backwards kind of politics. He elects the shepherd boy. The
youngest. The least mature. The least wise to the ways of the world. The one we
choose last. That’s who God chooses first.
Human beings look
on the outside, but God looks on the heart, says God in verse 7.
The Bible tells us repeatedly that God is not interested
in the wealthy or the powerful or the politically-inclined; God doesn’t elect
the biggest or the strongest or the coolest or the one with the most Twitter
followers. Instead, God chooses the weakest and the lowliest and the meekest
and the humblest and the lost and the invisible and the dead. We’ve heard this
story before, many times actually, so it begs the question, “Why?” Why David
over his older brothers? Why Joseph over his older brothers? Why Abraham and
Sarah in their old age? Why Moses in his unwillingness? Why Hannah in her
barrenness? Why Jeremiah in his youth? Why Mary and Joseph before their
marriage? Why these people? Why is it that their hearts are better for God’s
choosing?
I have a guess, and I think it’s a good guess (though I
would… wouldn’t I?).
My guess is this: The more we accumulate in this
life—things, time, security, comfort—the more we plan ahead, the more rooted we
are in authority, the more respected we are in our communities, the more we are
and the more we have the more our hearts are tempted to stay put. With every
ounce of comfort we acquire the desire to protect and shelter ourselves from risk
grows. I recognize this in myself all the time. When things are going really
well I don’t want to chance losing it! I’d rather sit back and enjoy the
comfortable assurance of cashing the next paycheck, of coming home to a nice
warm home, of a nice car and a beautiful family. I doubt any of you would
question that either. Nobody says you’re being selfish for wanting assurances
for your family. And it’s not that God calls that into question directly here;
it’s just that, if scripture is any indication, me-in-my-comfort is not the
person God is going to elect to change the course of history.
Instead, God is going to call somebody who is going to
make us upset; somebody who is going to question our comfort. God is going to
call somebody who is going to call into question everything we have, every
ounce of respect we feel we’ve earned. This is not comfortable. What would
David say to Congress? Well… what would David say to us? Would we elect him…
boo him off the stage… trash him on Twitter… call him out for being a
hypocrite… point out his lack of credentials… tell him to stick to shepherding…
What would we do?
Consider how many Davids we reject out of hand. How many
people might God be calling that we just don’t want to hear? How many people do
we know who call into question the status quo? How many people in our own lives
needle us with little jabs at the things we feel we are due?
Nobody said this would be comfortable. It certainly
wouldn’t have been for David’s brothers, for Joseph’s brothers, for all the
ones who worked harder, like the laborers in Jesus’ parable who are paid the
same whether they worked for a half hour or all day. God doesn’t call those who
are great or those who’ve worked all day but the guy who just fell off his
couch at 4:30, stumbled into the vineyard and cashed the same paycheck as the
one who rose at dawn. That’s frustrating. This is not how we elect. Our system
makes more sense.
Let me get back to my guess about why it is that God
operates this way. I believe that God chooses those who are raw enough to care.
So he chooses the littlest, because the littlest knows what it’s like to be
picked on by the big guy. He chooses the youngest, because the youngest knows
what it’s like to have elders tell her how it is. He chooses the oldest,
because the oldest knows what it’s like to lose both respect and autonomy with
age. God chooses the quietest, because the quietest has been listening not only
to the ways of the world but to how all those ways are foolishness. He chooses
the lost, because the lost knows how desperately they need to be found. God
chooses the losers, because the losers know that there is always a loser in the
games that we play and this world that celebrates winners is one created by
winners for their own sake. God chooses those who grieve over loss, because
they know the desperate need and the astonishing power of resurrection… because
some things do not come back to us by our own strength. God chooses the dead,
because the dead are the only ones who get it.
God chooses us not because of who we are, but in spite of
who we are, and that’s why he chose David, because he was nobody. Nobody. Same
with Joseph. With Moses. With Abraham and Sarah. The Samaritan. The woman at
the well. The woman who anoints his feet. Mary Magdalene. Esther. Jeremiah. All
of ‘em. Nobodies.
Dead people, barely living, like we feel we are sometimes
in our darkest moments when all the light of our hope has gone out, when that
last twinkling flame of our dreams for what might have been fades to black and
we have nothing but the depths of our soul to swim in and it’s dark down there…
it’s only in that place when we know that we are dead—dead people walking, dead
people trying desperately to pretend we are alive—it is there that God meets us
and grabs us and thrusts us not out of the pit like we were begging—like we
were hoping in our infantile desire to return to what was comfortable—no! Not
out of the pit of our despair but further and further in until we break through
on the other side, a baptism headlong through death and all those things that
are temporary. It’s the opposite of picking ourselves up by our bootstraps. It’s
resurrection! And only the least of us see it; we only see it when we feel
beyond hope. Death opens our eyes to resurrection, and that is why God raises
up people like David, because he raises up people like us: Nobodies.
It’s
resurrection. It won’t be comfortable. It won’t be easy. It sure ain’t proper.
Or logical. Or reasonable. It is simply the only thing; the only thing worth a
cent when we are dead and gone. It’s it. It’s all of it. It’s David’s; it’s
ours; it’s yours. Because, at the end of the day, you are nobody, which is
exactly the somebody that God can use.
No comments:
Post a Comment