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Sermon for The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 30, 2014
1 Samuel 16:1-13
John 9:1-41
“How Long Will You Grieve?”
We need some background to help us with our Old Testament reading. Originally after Israel entered the promised land they were ruled by judges. Decisions and judgments were made somewhat collectively and the understanding was that God was their ultimate ruler. Samuel and his sons were among these judges.
There came a time when the elders of Israel came to Samuel and said to him, “This system doesn’t work all that well, it doesn’t provide for good continuity of leadership. We have observed the nations around us and see that they have kings. That is what we need.” This displeased Samuel, for he thought it meant that the people had rejected his leadership, but God told him that rather it meant the people had rejected God as their necessary leader.

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God told Samuel to listen to the people, but to warn them about the abuses they would suffer under kingship. The king would take the best for himself without regard to the people’s need. Samuel warned the people, but they insisted and eventually Samuel anointed Saul as king. We are told that Saul was a “handsome young man” (who) “stood head and shoulders above everyone else.” (He had that presidential look about him).
Now, many years later, God has rejected Saul as king. The people have experienced some of the abuses that God had warned them of, and many more were to come. God tells Samuel to go anoint an new king, one who will be more to God’s liking.
(Time and history move forward. No going back to judges. Israel in the wilderness longed for Egypt, but the way was forward into the promised land, and they wandered about until they found the courage to follow God in that direction. History may have cycles, like the turning of the seasons, but it is more like a spiral than a

circle. Time continues to move forward and there is no going back.)
God asked Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul?”
Once Samuel got over his pique of being rejected as a judge, he had a stake in Saul, whom he had anointed. Now, he is having difficulty accepting that God has rejected Saul. When asked to go anoint another king, Samuel resists. He is rightly afraid. Saul will find out, and Samuel’s life will be at risk. God tells Samuel to go to the region of Bethlehem and worship. Take a heifer with you to sacrifice. After all how threatening can worship be? It is only about otherworldly, personal matters. It is only attending to old writings in a dusty book. It can’t really threaten economic arrangements. It can’t challenge political powers. It can’t have anything concrete to do with what goes on in the rough and tumble day to day world, can it?
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So off Samuel goes, and after reassuring the people of the region that he does not come from the royal power center with any ill intent, off they all go to worship God. There was a man in the region named Jesse, and God told Samuel that he had chosen one of Jesse’s sons to be king. So Samuel invited Jesse and all his sons to worship.
When they came before him, he saw the oldest son, Eliab. He thought right away this must be the one. God said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance or the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. Of course we recall that description of Saul, and realize that Samuel is still grieving over Saul. He is still clinging to the idea of a king that Saul represented. He is stuck in an old thought pattern that God has moved on from. “How long will you grieve over Saul?”
The people of God can get stuck like this. I have already mentioned the Israelites in the wilderness, stuck for an entire

5 generation, until finally they were able to follow God into Canaan.
We might recall Elijah, fleeing from Ahab, cowering in another wilderness. God fed him and promised to be with him, if he would just get up and move forward. There is Jonah, pouting on a hill over Nineveh, unwilling to accept the graciousness of God toward an enemy. How long will you pout, Jonah? How long will you grieve, Samuel? Finally there is Mary Magdalene weeping in the garden. The gardener asks “Why do you weep? Mary?” “Rabonni”
God is seeing and moving in a new way, trust me.
So all of Jesse’s sons are paraded in front of Samuel and with each one comes the whisper in Samuel’s ear, no, not this one. Samuel is working through his grief, still clinging to his understanding of what a king must be, but he is bit by bit being weaned of it. The last son has passed by, but no king has appeared. Samuel stops grieving. He stops clinging to the old. He asks, are these all your sons? You see Samuel has moved to knowing that God has a way forward, that God can be trusted. And Samuel will not leave, will

6 not give up, without seeing that future. “Well,” Jesse said, “there remains the runt of the litter, there remains the youngest, but he is busy keeping the sheep.” Samuel told Jesse to call him. We cannot do anything else until he comes. Bring him here. So Jesse called for him.
It tells us something about David’s eyes, but we cannot translate it.
This entire passage has focused on seeing with different eyes.
Samuel needed to see with eyes no longer filled with grief, no longer clinging to past understandings. God was going to do a new thing. It would have continuity with the past, but it would not be dictated by the past, or look exactly like the past. Faithfulness in this new time would require seeing with new eyes. Maybe that is why David’s eyes are mentioned.
Samuel anointed David and a new era in the life of God’s people began. It would not be perfect, but it would move them toward
God’s will for this world.

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This past Monday evening we embarked on a journey together. We are seeking to understand God’s will and way for Condit. We come to this journey with fear, as did Samuel. There are threats to our future. We come with grief over a past that seems lost, and that seems to be ultimate in its goodness and its ways. We come with understandings and ways of seeing that served well in the past, but do not seem to do so well now. We may need to hear God’s words to Samuel, “How long will you grieve?”
We began our journey. Soon we will receive a report, several of us will be trained to lead us to work with that report, and over the summer we will all work with it together. In many ways it will be like the parading of Jesse’s sons before us: which one has God chosen. We will be challenged by God to look with God’s eyes.
Most of all we will be challenged to trust God, to imagine that God has a way forward even though it seem hard, or strange.

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I don’t know what we will discover, or where we will come out, as we take this journey together with God. What I am certain of is this
– somewhere along this journey one or more of us will see a glimpse of God’s new thing, God’s new direction, God’s new vision for Condit’s future. And in that glimpse we will see God’s faithfulness and the promise of resurrection. God will be faithful, and if we can dare to trust God, we will find the new thing God has for us.