3rd Sunday after
Pentecost
June 14, 2015
1 Samuel 15:34 – 16:13;
Psalm 20; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Mark 4:26-34
Last week, our Old Testament reading
was about the people asking God for a king.
Between last week’s reading and today’s the people have gotten a king,
King Saul, and it has not gone well. In
fact, things are so bad that in this week’s passage we’re told that Samuel
grieved over Saul and God regretted making Saul king. God gives Samuel a little time to grieve, and
then calls him to anoint the next king.
He sends him to Jesse of Bethlehem, because one of Jesse’s sons will
become the next king. You can imagine
Jesse parading his sons in front of Samuel, one by one, from oldest to
youngest, and imagine everyone’s surprise when Samuel keeps saying, “No, not
that one. No, not that one. No, not that one.” Even Samuel is surprised, which is why he has
this side conversation with God, in which God tells him, “Don’t pay attention
to how tall and handsome he is. Looks
aren’t everything. I don’t look at
things the same way you do. People look
at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.”[1] God looks at the heart. There are other ways of saying this, like
“don’t judge a book by its cover,” or “beauty is only skin deep,” or “looks
aren’t everything,” or “all that is gold does not glitter.” Or, to quote elsewhere in the bible, through
the prophet Isaiah, God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are
your ways my ways.”[2] God looks at the heart.
God choosing David to be the next
king is an obvious example that he doesn’t
look at things like we do. You see,
after Jesse presented seven of his sons to Samuel and Samuel said, “No, not
this one,” to all seven, Samuel then asked if Jesse had any more sons. And Jesse said, “Yes, there’s my youngest
boy. But he’s out keeping the
sheep.” The youngest son, David, was the
one that God chose to be the next king.
Not the oldest son, who would
have assumed it would be him, not even the second
oldest, but the youngest of eight
brothers, is who God chooses. A lowly
shepherd, obviously not thought highly of by his father, that’s who God wants, because God knows his heart. Subsequent passages in the bible in both the
Old and New Testament describe David as a “man after God’s own heart.”[3] That’s the kind of person God wants to lead
his people, someone who follows God with all his heart.[4] God doesn’t look at things like we do, he
doesn’t evaluate them the same way, he doesn’t use the same values we do. God looks at the heart, and as a result
sometimes the leaders of God’s people come from unexpected places. Saul was an obvious choice for a king; David
was not. The thing is that “God
frequently chooses the weak, common, unimpressive [people, at least], from a human
perspective to be his servants. [Even Jesus] himself was described by Isaiah
(53:2) as one whose outward appearance would not attract people to him.”[5] Another example of God doing this is in the
parable that Jesus tells in our Gospel reading about the mustard seed. The mustard seed is the smallest of all
seeds, and it grows to become the tallest tree in garden, the largest of all
vegetable plants. You wouldn’t think it
to look at it. It’s not obvious. But God knows what’s inside. David wasn’t an obvious choice, either, but
God knew his heart and knew that David’s heart was right with God.
Just as God doesn’t view things from
a human point of view, our Epistle lesson tells us that we are to no longer regard anyone from a human point of view, either. Paul tell us in this letter to the
Corinthians that we who are Christians do not live for ourselves, but for
Christ, and part of living for Christ means that we see things how Christ sees
them.[6] Why?
Because Christ’s love compels
us.[7] It urges us to see things how God sees them,
and not how the world sees them. Take,
for example, Jesus’ outward appearance.
By society’s standards, he was homeless, he was a migrant, he ate with people
that decent folk wouldn’t be caught dead with, like prostitutes and thieves, he
broke church rules, and rather than obey every jot and tittle of the law, he
emphasized love. That was Jesus’ outward
appearance and his actions. And we, as a
society, are still “obsessed with externals – with youth and beauty,
accomplishments and credentials, productivity and profit. We are constantly
tempted to judge our own worth and that of others according to ‘a human point
of view.’ We are tempted to view worldly success as a sign of God’s favor, and
conversely, to view weakness and suffering as a sign of God's absence or even
God's punishment. [And in this passage] Paul
reminds us that human standards of judgment count for nothing in God’s eyes.
The scandal of the cross is that God chooses vulnerability, weakness,
suffering, and death in order to bring new life.”[8] This homeless migrant, who ate with the
least, the last, the lost, and the left out, who didn’t appear to care about
church law, loved the whole world so much that he died so that we might be
saved.
That’s why our psalmist this morning says that “Some take pride in
chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God.” A modern way to phrase that might that some
take pride in their possessions, things like money and power and control, and
some place their trust in military strength, but we take pride and place our
trust in the name of the Lord our God. When
we view things like God sees them, then our focus is on others, then we are
humble about our own abilities and accomplishments, then our efforts go towards
pleasing God, and, as a result, the glory goes to God alone. If something great happens, to God be the
glory, because he is the one who brought it about. We do not take pride in superficial
appearances, but in what is in the heart.
And this can be hard to do with other people, especially people we don’t
know very well. God knows what’s in the
heart, but what we see is what spills out of the heart and into action. And I’m sure not all of your actions always
reflect your heart. As Paul says in
Romans, “I don't do the good I want to do; instead, I do the evil that I do not
want to do.”[9] Anyone identify with that? You don’t always do the good you want to
do? Sometimes, we do the wrong thing,
even though we know deep down in our
heart it’s the wrong thing? It
happens to all of us. The thing is, that
action is what people see, not what’s in our heart. And so we are often judged by our actions,
and not by our hearts. However, God
knows what’s in our hearts, and that’s how we are to regard to others, based on
what’s in their heart. And the only way
to make that judgment call is to be in relationship with them. You can’t tell what’s in someone’s heart
unless you know them, spend some time with them, walk a mile in their shoes. That’s not easily possible with most people,
because you can’t know everyone, and that’s where grace comes in. We allow ourselves grace and we allow others
grace. We give each other the benefit of
the doubt, until proven otherwise.
That’s how we view people from God’s standpoint, with lots of love and grace,
and even more love and grace when someone messes up. After all, Jesus tells Peter we are to
forgive seventy times seven times, or in other words, a lot. There is no end to God’s love and grace and
forgiveness. That’s God’s perspective.
And so Paul writes in our Epistle lesson, “No longer, then, do we
judge anyone by human standards. Even if at one time we judged Christ according
to human standards, we no longer do so. Anyone
who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come.”[10] The old
has passed; the new has come. I want to point out that this new creation
isn’t a brand new creation starting over from scratch. This is a re-creation of the old, a
transformation. Cowenton/Piney Grove is
still here, we’re moving into the next phase.
It’s different, but the basic parts, the core of the church, is the
same. There is always grief whenever anything changes, whether for worse or for
better. Samuel grieved for King Saul,
even though he wasn’t a good king, and it’s healthy and wise to take time for
grief and pain. Then, there’s still
ministry to do, and it’s time to move on.
As our final hymn says, “time to remember and move on… laying to rest
the pain that’s gone.”[11] Not forgetting, just moving on. I think forgetting is a fear of a lot of
people, that we’ll forget something when it’s gone. But “forgive and forget” isn’t actually
something Jesus says. What he says is
more like “forgive and move on.” The
past doesn’t cease to exist, and we honor the good in it and we forgive the bad
in it, allowing even grace for the past.
We don’t forget the past nor do we view it through rose-colored
glasses. The good old days are not
behind us. The last line of that passage
from 2 Corinthians today is “see, everything has become new!” The best
is still yet to come!
In the meantime, we try to view everyone how God
would see them, as our fellow brother and sister, as his beloved child,
allowing each person love and grace and forgiveness, trying to see into their
heart, into who they really are, aside from their external appearance and their
actions. As Paul writes, “we live by
faith and not by sight.”[12] Living by faith is seeing things through
God’s eyes, which is what he would have us to.
“Our goal is to be acceptable to him,” and he looks at the heart.[13] May our hearts be ever acceptable in his
sight. Amen.
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