March 22, 2020 – I Samuel 16:1-13
I Samuel 16:1-13
Grieve no Longer, I Will Provide
4th Sunday in Lent – March 22, 2020
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Samuel is grieving.
Samuel was the prophet entrusted with anointing Israel’s first king.
Samuel is sometimes called the “king-maker.”
He anointed Saul as Israel’s first king and had high hopes for him.
Saul looked like a king: tall, muscular, handsome – and strong.
But Saul has been a disappointment, and God has decided to reject him from being king.
Samuel is grieving for the loss of his friend,
and grieving all the hopes for Israel that have died with God’s rejection of him as king.
There is a great sense of loss.
Well, we can relate.
In the midst of all we are experiencing in light of the COVID-19 pandemic,
we are above all, perhaps, experiencing tremendous loss.
Loss certainty. Perhaps loss of income. Loss of freedom. Loss of social contact.
Loss of worship – that mysterious, refreshing, calming gathering of our community.
Restriction is the word of the moment.
With many others this week, I have wondered: what does it mean to be a Christian community
if we cannot gather for worship?
Along with the man born blind in the Gospel reading, I have been forced to answer,
“I do not know.”
The man’s answer comes in response to the religious authorities questioning him about Jesus’
whereabouts after Jesus heals him.
But Jesus is nowhere to be found, and the man is forced to reply, “I do not know where Jesus is.”
As Lutherans we strongly believe that Jesus is God incarnate, God in the flesh.
Therefore, God and God’s goodness is experienced most readily in real people
sharing real bread and real wine.
In fact, Luther defined what the church is in the following way:
The church is the community of the baptized gathered around the sacrament of bread and wine.
Now this is, to be sure, a very unusual and unique definition of “church,” but it is a very fine one.
God’s grace comes to us most readily when we greet one another, when we ask after each other,
when we squeeze one another’s hands, when we hug, when we encourage one another
with a smile and with conversation and when we hear a good word,
when we taste the gift of good wine, and share delicious bread that
has been made with a lot of love.
‘Taste and see, taste and see the goodness of the Lord” indeed.
That is how we primarily experience God’s goodness: in the flesh.
The question is: are we still church when we can’t do that?
I don’t know.
Not being able to gather, to greet, to comfort, to console, to enquire, to hug –
this is a great, great loss to us.
But then, you could say that about society in general.
I believe that since we are created in the image of the Triune God whose very nature is
relationship between three loving persons we therefore are creatures who are
made to be in loving relationships.
I believe with all my heart that – despite the fact I am an introvert! – love and social connection
matter more than anything else in life.
(thank you, Peter Marty, in the Christian Century this week)
Human relationships are our most precious resource and more valuable than anything.
Yet, as a society, we gather together less frequently and
form fewer and less meaningful bonds than formerly.
Loneliness is on the rise – which is such a sad, sad fact.
Church is one of the few places left where people voluntarily gather to be in relationship and
do meaningful work together.
To not be able to do that feels like a tremendous, overwhelming loss.
Like Samuel, we are grieving many things – and this is most certainly one of them.
But it is into this very situation that God speaks.
And God is surprisingly . . . not very sensitive!
Hahahahahaha!!!!!
God rhetorically asks very matter of factly: How long with you grieve over Saul?
I have rejected him from being king over Israel.
As if to say: Grieve no longer! Get over it!
Not a very pastoral response – I would lose my job if that were my grief counseling strategy!
Nevertheless, God states the reason why God can say such a thing to Samuel.
God says, “I have provided for myself another king among Jesse’s sons.”
As if to say: I will provide.
Grieve no longer. I will provide.
That is the essence of the story.
As I said last week, God has created the world in such a way that it contains everything we need.
God is a generous provider.
God has provided all the resources we need for life to flourish and
those resources are discoverable.
Last week it was water from an unlikely rock.
This week it is a king from among Jesse’s sons.
But here is the thing: we all know how the story goes.
7 burly, brawny, king-ly looking guys are paraded before Samuel!
Any one of whom looks like he could probably make good king.
But God rejects all of them – not what I’m looking for, God says.
So Samuel says to Jesse, “Uh, is that it? Don’t you have any more sons?”
And Jesse says, “Well, there’s the little one out back tending the sheep.”
And Samuel says, “Bring ‘im here.”
And Jesus says, “Okay.”
And of course, this is the one God chooses to be the next king – the unlikely one.
It’s a long rocky story after that – but despite his many questionable choices and
his many obvious mistakes and even acute moral failings,
David will ultimately be remembered as Israel’s greatest king.
Not an obvious choice, but there was something in him
that God saw.
As God says, “I do not see as you human beings see:
for human beings look on the outward appearance, but I look on the heart.”
The human resource God sought was not easy for Samuel to find and was not obvious –
but was there – and was discoverable.
Samuel was grieving – but God promised to provide, and did.
So what does this mean for us who are grieving so much?
It is all well and good to say, “God will provide.”
I mean, that is undoubtedly true.
Our God is a God of tremendous abundance and is tremendously generous.
But how will God provide in the face of what we have lost?
I do not know. . . and yet, I am going to hazard a guess.
I went into my friend Jeff’s audio shop this week.
His store, Creative Audio, has closed temporarily in order to support social distancing.
But he told me if I knocked on the locked door he would come and open it for me.
So I did.
We talked of little else besides, well, what we are all talking about.
But he said to me: you know, I think in a weird way what we are experiencing
has the potential to bring us all closer together.
I’m actually in touch with my friends way more since all this started.
We talk on the phone more and we text more: we seem more connected.
Maybe in some way this is not an entirely bad thing.
And remember: this is from a small business owner!
Now, I wouldn’t have said what he said in those exact words,
but what he said rang true to what I have been feeling this week.
He articulated something that has been nagging away at me somewhere inside me.
I have spent quite a bit of time just talking with many of you on the phone this week.
We’ve had, you know, conversations!
I have also spent quite a bit of time having long email interactions with some of you this week.
And that has been great.
No: it is certainly not the same as being face to face and reading body language and
hearing the timbre of somebody’s live voice and giving and receiving hugs.
But, on the other hand, even though the relationship is mediated by technology,
it opens up ways of being together that create a different kind of relationship.
Not better or worse – just different.
In the same way that back in the day a relationship that was based on letter writing was
different from other relationships you were involved in.
There was a depth and a leisureliness the medium afforded you that
you often didn’t get face to face.
Yes: phone conversations and email correspondences and face-timing
are not obvious replacements for face to face gatherings such as church.
Yet: I will provide, says God.
God wants us to connect.
God has made us in order to connect.
It is our function as human beings:
love and social connection matter more than anything else in life.
We are created in the image of the triune God,
the God who is most like a loving community of three persons.
We are relational by nature.
And while we are deprived as a church and as individuals from physically gathering together
and while we grieve all the things we lose with that –
let’s also remember God’s promise to the grieving Samuel: I will provide.
So let us, like Samuel, discover the resources that are available to us.
Let us give thanks for the miraculous technology that can connect us and that
can open to us different ways in which we can connect with each other.
Let us see, in this time, how our relationships can actually be deepened by
connecting with each other in different ways than we are used to.
I believe this time has the potential to bring us even closer to each other.
It is not inevitable –
our church community could just as easily become more fragmented and
our church could close – that is of course a real possibility.
We will have to make an effort to being connected in these new ways.
Nevertheless, the potential is there.
The resources are there – so that we do not lose our most precious natural resource of all:
loving, caring and nurturing human relationships.
So, with Saul and the prophets and saints of every time and place,
together let us say a virtual “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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