Homily: St. Peter’s
Proper 6: June 17, 2018
David
In our first reading we hear the account in spare but powerful language of the prophet Samuel choosing the next king for the people of Israel, replacing Saul who – well, didn’t work out so well. This is pivotal point in the historical cycle that in former days we wouldn’t have heard from. The whole cycle runs from Joshua / Judges through 2 Kings and is know as the Deuteronomistic History.
Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.
I have been preaching from the Episcopal lectionary for well over 30 years now. I have experience of Episcopal preaching going back to the Prayer Book of 1928.
I am especially glad for the shift that has occurred – just in the last generation – toward the legitimate focus on the Old Testament narratives. It gives us a chance today to focus on the choice of David as the Messiah, the anointed king of Israel.
Samuel was a powerful figure in his own right. The king maker. He was the last in a line of leaders in ancient Israel who were part priest, part prophet, part political leader, part supreme judge. Moses was the first in that line. Samuel, then, is the one who begins a new line of leadership in ancient Israel. From this point forward there will be kings. All the other nations get to have them the people pleaded with him. Samuel tried to discourage the people, saying that God is the real leader of Israel. But they insisted. So he chose Saul.
As if to show that Samuel was right about choosing kings because all the other nations have them, Saul didn’t live up to expectations. David is the 2nd try at it.
He was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.
Samuel chose him and he was at least, we might say, better than Saul. In fact God made a profound covenant with David that would have a lasting impact in Israel, right up through the birth of the Messiah, Jesus, at the beginning of our history as Christians.
Samuel anointed David to be king in today’s reading. It was the standard means of designating a leader who has been chosen by God. The Hebrew word is Mashiach, or “messiah.” It was a term used to apply to a wide variety of leaders, not just kings. In a 1,000 years from the time of these events, it would be used to apply to Jesus.
Our attraction to the beautiful, to the thing that brings us pleasure applies not just to people – men or women – it applies to ideas as well. We love the looks of our ideas and convictions. Other peoples’ ideas – not so much.
Israel was so intent on having a leader like everybody else. They got a messiah to be sure – but he was a flawed leader, like all leaders are. We look for the beautiful – the ruddy looking type – and we lose sight of what got us here in the first place. Abba, the Father, the Holy One.
It’s something of a parable for our time, I think.
Today is Father’s Day:
I don’t generally focus on “fathers” on Fathers Day. Several reasons for that. One of them is that for many years when I was in Hawai’i, I was frequently not in church on Father’s Day. I was either on retreat, on vacation, or teaching. Another is that I was taught, and I accept, the presupposition that my preaching is on the gospel, not on ephemeral current events.
On the other hand, I have increasingly become convinced that the only way to preach the Gospel is through the ephemeral and through the current events of the actual lives that we live.
For many years various people, including Karl Barth have been quoted as saying that one ought to preach from Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.[1]
The gospel has to do with you and me. And it has to do with how you and I live our lives and the decisions we make in the course of living them.
We live our lives with the deep impact of fathers and father-figures. We are reminded of one such strand of father-figures in today’s biblical readings.
There is David – as patriarch. As the archtypical messiah – anointed one.
There is the other end of that lineage: Jesus, preaching and teaching to followers. In parables, in stories, in figurative language.
Jesus who knew that we always prefer the beautiful to the holy.
… he who was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. Wanted him to what we understood and what we wanted. Instead he came calling us to what we didn’t know – God himself.
Jesus pointed toward his relationship with God, who he called father. Too often the people didn’t really know who Jesus was, much less God himself. He found himself unable to teach them directly. He had to tell them stories, parable, … he had to teach them as it were indirectly, until they got it.
He was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. We prefer the flashy – the obvious – the beautiful.
Movie presentation
The Lion King (1994) gave us a father-figure.
On top of being a wise and noble king, Mufasa is also an extremely loving dad, play-fighting with young Simba whenever he gets the opportunity, and gladly laying his life down in order to save his son. Even in death he remains on hand to point Simba in the right direction through life.
Our fathers are giants for all of us. But they are all human, flawed & wise, sinners & saints.
The value of cartoon presentations of father figures – in my experience – is that the mythic quality of the story is able to come through in a way that the literal presentation of images squashes.
Something like the literal interpretation of the Bible vs. a metaphorical, figurative interpretation. The literal view is so pale and limpid compared to the figurative view.
I first encountered this in the movie Prince of Egypt. It is the story of one of our primordial and most important father-figures – patriarchs – Moses. I would show the film to my high school classes in Hawai’i. I have shown it – at least excerpts – to my college classes here at Winthrop. The same effect. These grown up kids get it.
They get it that we want our fathers to be: ruddy and handsome – strong and wise. But what we get are ordinary humans trying to lead the way to holiness.
Jesus knew well of our preference for the attractive over the holy.
So Jesus spoke in parables. Truth comes indirectly. We only understand our lives looking backwards. But we have to live our lives going forwards. We only get it indirectly when our lives are changed and challenged by our preference for the beautiful over the holy.[2]
Jesus knew we wouldn’t get it straight on. It is stories that have the power to change us. Facts don’t have the same power. Today is a day for remembering – for re-telling the stories of our fathers. Because those stories have the power to move us and change us. Our fathers are not always ruddy and beautiful. But they are fathers, patriarchs, father-figures who point for us the way to the God the Father, Abba, to whom we pray “Our Father.”
We are attracted to the ruddy and beautiful. But we are called – by David, by Jesus, by our own fathers & father-figures, to holiness. We give thanks today for fathers.
Addendum: Indirect communication: SK & Zen
- cf. re. Chinese “Chan Buddhism” with reference to D.T. Suzuki [3]
- Zen communication: (sounds oh so familiar) [4]
- on power to “move” people … not just “inform” them [5]
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http://christianthinktank.com/barthsquote.html http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2015/05/09/ars-praedicandi-preaching-with-the-bible-in-one-hand-and-the-newspaper-in-the-other/ ↩
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These added notes suggest some of the background to this homily. ↩
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https://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/Philosophical/Never\_Tell\_Too\_Plainly.html ↩
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http://susanschoenbeck.com/zen-communication-in-everyday-life/ ↩
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https://philosophadam.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/life-changing-realizations-are-best-achieved-by-means-of-indirect-communication/ ↩
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