Sunday
October 25
Son of David
By Marsh Chapel
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The Bible is largely about failure and defeat.
Its stories and letters and teachings record ways people have lived with defeat. This makes the Bible difficult for us to understand. For we as a people have run and swatted and laughed our way past learning the language of failure. We don’t admit to it. We won’t accept it. We do not countenance it. So sermons, this one and others, which are fumbling footnotes to the Scripture, hit us from the side if they hit us at all.
But by grace, it is the resurrected Christ who addresses us in the preaching of the church, in the announcement of the gospel. The passages of the Gospel allow us safe passage to the Gospel because Jesus is present to us.“In all the sayings of Jesus which were reported, he speaks who is recognized in faith and worship as Messiah and Lord, and who, as the proclamation makes known his works and hands on his sayings, is actually present for the church.” (Bultmann, HST, 348).
Our blind beggar, ‘Bar Timeaus’, shouts out an unexpected nametag for Jesus. ‘Son of David’. To call Jesus such is to remember…failure…to remember…difficulty…to remember warnings unheeded from long ago…to remember David you have to remember Saul and to remember Saul you have to remember Samuel.
Bartimaeus calls Jesus by the name of David—David the personification of hope, of millennial portent, of national pride, of the chance to get things right. Son of David! He throws of his garment—maybe a sign of baptism—and comes naked to see if there is another chance for him. Here is another in Mark’s ‘book of secret epiphanies’ (Dibelius\Bultmann). His ‘faith has made him well’, a saying and a truth most precious to Martin Luther, whose Reformation we remember today, Luther who forever splintered the unity of the church into pieces, fragments, for the sake of the Gospel: faith is God’s work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. (M Luther, introduction to Romans).
Our Gospel seldom uses the title, ‘Son of David’, in order that Jesus not be mistaken for the hoped for national Messiah, the hoped for political conqueror, the hoped for restorer of Israel. Jesus is known by failure and defeat. But the name of David also carries the reminder, with Samuel, of surprise, of a second chance, of another chance, of new beginnings.
You remember Samuel’s story in 1 Samuel 15:34ff. read a moment ago. Samuel didn’t want to be a prophet, but he got saddled with the job anyway. He didn’t want anything to do with kings, but he had to pick one.
The people wanted a King, just like we at our worst always long for some imperial president, some imperious presence on which or on whom we may cast our concerns. Then we don’t have to live with our own freedom our own birthright from YHWH I AM THAT I AM, the Sinai God of freedom. We are free, though often we choose to misuse or underuse our liberty.
Samuel revered the God of freedom and the Godly freedom in each person. In fact he revered the people’s freedom more than they themselves did. So much so that he helped them choose, even when he knew they chose in error. You want a king? You shall have a king….. and much trouble.
So, Saul, trouble, came and went. Leadership is everything. I mean: leadership is everything. But leadership is not dictatorship. Authority is not domination. Integrity is not willfulness. Leadership, authority, integrity—they become real when they revere the God of freedom and the freedom of each person. Leadership increases personal freedom for all.
So Samuel, who knew about freedom and leadership, and who could have shouted “I told you so” to the children of Israel, instead went to Ramah, that place you remember from Christmas, of wailing and loud lamentation, and he wailed and lamented:
Why O God have you made my people a group focused on difference and not the common good? Why should there be a few rich and many poor? Why should our tongues carry words about death? Why should our distinguishing characteristics be so undistinguished? Are we forever to love appearance above reality, image above heart?
O my God, are we never to see your peace upon the earth, your gracious splendor among our people, your kingdom of love?
So, we may imagine, in a hot dusty cave near Qumran, Samuel wept. And wept. And muled and puked and wept. He cried in his beer. He cried in his soup. You get the picture. Until, at last, he stopped.
And as so often happens, once he stopped his weeping, his self-concern, a marvelous thing happened. God gave another chance. He said, “Samuel you old coot, codger, geet—get up and head over to Bethlehem and see Jesse. I’m going to give another chance.”Off Samuel went to the house of Jesse, in Bethlehem.
We worship a God of second chances, of new starts, of make up exams, of I for give you, of surprise opportunities. In a way, in Christ, God has simply become Another Chance.
Early on Sunday morning, we pray before worship We wonder about the congregation and the community. We think of people. Some giving birth and anxious. Some breaking up and anxious. Some struggling to stay together, and anxious. Some aging and anxious. Some ill and anxious. Like Samuel, we have our hurts.
Up Samuel goes to see what God will do. God tells him that there will be a new King, of God’s own choosing, out of the family of Jesse, who had seven sons.
Samuel sees the first son, and thinks—yes, this must be the one, right name, right place, right pedigree, right education. But, again, something strange happens. Samuel, given to hearing voices, hears a voice. God says, “easy big fellow, easy. Don’t look at the appearance. Forget the outside. Don’t be misled by the image. Look inside.” All that glitters is not gold. You can be a saint abroad and a devil at home. Cleanse the inside of the cup. Don’t judge a book by its cover.
We see the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.
Meanwhile, back in Bethlehem, Samuel still has the seven sons on interview.
Job title: King of Israel
Profile: Perfect leader
Responsibilities: Bring salvation, justice, and peace.
Salary and benefits: commensurate with experience.
But he remembers: look on the heart. ELIAB. No. ABINADAB. No. SHAMMAH. No. And so on. Seven no’s.
It is tough to live in between. Like many who are here today can testify. Samuel would have loved to have settled things early. But he remembered the God of Another Chance, and trusted and waited, and hoped. Anybody can make a decision. It takes real courage to be indecisive. Anybody can decide. It takes guts to wait. Anybody can judge by appearance. But God looks on the heart.
Mark and the early Christians knew this perhaps better than anything else. They knew about being in between. Maybe that’s why, providentially, their letters and writings have become our Bible. We are always a bit in between, and we need the confidence, daily, of Another Chance. The earliest Christians, Paul’s city Christians, Mark’s Roman community, were very much in between. They were often what the sociologists call status-inconsistent, like Paul himself. A Jew, yet a Roman citizen. Educated, yet a tent-maker. So they were too: Women, yet rich. Artisans, yet slaves. They knew about being in-between.
As the Apostle says:
In between the Body and the Lord
In between Sight and Faith
In between Home and Away
In between Judgment and Love
In between Crazy and Sane
In between One and All
In between Self and Others
In between Death and Resurrection
In between Old and New
In between Appearance and Heart
When you’re in between you know the joy of Another Chance. God sees the heart, and sees past appearances. The heart of a nation, or the heart of a person.
Well, dear old Samuel, is about ready to throw in the towel. He has been through all the sons of Jesse, and has not found the new king. He has found a lot of old king once removed, but nothing new. He is packing up his ephod and girding his loins and otherwise getting ready to shove off, when, again, something strange happens.
We worship the God of Another Chance.
If nothing else this morning, hear the Gospel.
Today is another chance for your family.
This week is another chance for you work.
This fall is another chance for our church.
This year is another chance for our city.
This decade is another chance for our country.
Where there is life, there is hope.
God in Christ is Another Chance.
Realism and Idealism are not alternatives. Either you have both, or you have neither: witness Isaiah 60, John 3, 2 Cor 5, and the Sermon on the Mount. There is still time. As the crusty Yankee said, when asked, “Have you lived in Boston all your life?” “Not yet”.
I Believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in Another Chance, God’s only Son Our Lord ANOTHER CHANCE! To stand in God’s presence. To learn to help others. To have a meaningful life. Meanwhile, back in Bethlehem…Samuel, turned as he was going, and looked at Jesse and said, “are these all your sons”?
Jesse got that sheepish look we all get when the truth starts to come out. Well, yes and no. I mean these are all the grown ones, the ones who are worth looking at. “You mean there is Another Chance?” said Samuel so excited he dropped his staff and ungirded his loins and lost his ephod. “Well there’s the little guy, but we left him to tend the sheep.”
Bring him.
And they brought David up and he was little and young and ruddy and handsome and beautiful, but mostly he had the right heart. A heart of songs and courage. A heart of love and strength. A real person. A real person. Another Chance. Like the Tibetan Buddhists hunting for three years in the outback of the universe to find the Dali Lama. Like the birth of Jesus, also of Bethlehem. Like the moment your child came into the world. Like every single outburst and outcropping and intrusion and explosion and invasion of the NEW CREATION—there was David, Another Chance. And Samuel, old superannuated Samuel could see what none of the young turks could see—the heart. And Samuel wept, this time for joy, and said, “THIS IS THE ONE”. Hire him.
We worship Another Chance God.
Beloved, you are not last chance, anxious people: You are God’s people
R. Niebuhr wrote, praising Christ Another Chance: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime. Therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or good or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history. Therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore we must be saved by love.”
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
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