Fear Not

1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, ‘You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.’ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to govern us.’ Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.’

So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, ‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’

But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, ‘No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.’

Samuel said to the people, ‘Come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingship.’ So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal. There they sacrificed offerings of well-being before the Lord, and there Saul and all the Israelites rejoiced greatly.

There’s a scene in the fourth episode of the second season of the very dark (and brilliant, in my opinion) comedy Fleabag in which the main character enters into a confessional booth with her priest friend, despite the fact that she isn’t religious. She treats it as a joke initially, but as she continues to list off her many sins she begins to break down. She’s coping with a ton of guilt, a ton of unresolved grief, and she’s been engaging in some really self-destructive behavior. As the scene gets more serious, the priest asks her what she wants, and she enters into a monologue and says:

I want someone to tell me what to wear every morning. I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like. What to hate. What to rage about. What to listen to. What band to like. What to buy tickets for. What to joke about. What not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in. Who to vote for and who to love and how to...tell them. I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, because so far, I think I’ve been getting it wrong. And I know that’s why people want someone like you in their lives, because you just tell them how to do it. You just tell them what to do and what they’ll get out of the end of it, even though I don’t believe [in it] and I know that scientifically nothing that I do makes any difference in the end, anyway, I’m still scared. Why am I still scared? So just tell me what to do.[i]

She was letting her fear of messing up, her fear of the past, as well as fear of the future dictate what she wanted in life. She didn’t trust herself, and she was desperate for the wrong kind of guidance.

This is what fear can do. It can make us desperate, it can make us lose ourselves, can make us lose our identity. And this kind of fear, this desperation, I believe, is what led the Israelites in this passage to making an ill-informed decision that would go against everything right and just. This incredibly vulnerable fear was exploited, and it would lead to years of war, and years pulling away from God. They asked for a king to make decisions for them. They asked for a king to guide them instead of trusting in God and trusting in each other, and continuing to trust in the very successful rule of the people and council of judges.

In the theologian and mystic Howard Thurman’s classic book Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman writes about the concept and the danger of fear. Whether it be valid fears of the disenfranchised, the underprivileged, for those who are statistically in more danger of being overpoliced, or stereotyped, or judged; or whether it be irrational and racist or bigoted fears people have of the other, when people live in fear, they are existing in a heightened state of anxiety. To quote Thurman, “Fear becomes a form of life assurance, making possible the continuation of physical existence with a minimum active violence.”[ii] So at its best, which is still not great, it’s a survival mechanism. But living this way is not sustainable. So as these folks continue to live in this heightened state of anxiety, whether it’s because truly oppressed folks can’t catch a break, as they experience more scarcity of security, more threats to their well-being; or whether someone is simply falling prey to unfounded and bigoted fears of what they don’t know “…this fear, which served originally as a safety device, a kind of protective mechanism…finally becomes death for the self. The power that saves turns executioner.”[iii] If we let fear take over, Church, we lose ourselves.

But why, if things were working so well for the Israelites, would these people ask for a completely new system, a king? If things were going well, what could these folks have been scared of? I think the answer comes at the end here: after Samuel pleads with them, tells them why they really shouldn’t want to live under a king, the people are persistent,  “‘No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.’” They felt threatened. See the Philistines, their rivals, essentially, were getting closer, and they didn’t trust the love of God in addition to their council of wise judges to save them. They wanted a strongman. They wanted military leader. They had violence and war on their minds, and it led them to forget about their identity and their God.

Just imagine being told that you’re a chosen people, that you are loved, knowing that you’ve been divinely delivered from slavery, and then saying we want to “be like other nations.” Maybe they saw people around them giving into fear and prepping for war and they gave into some peer pressure. They let their fear take over. But what is also very likely is that the more powerful folks were probably exploiting this growing threat or fear of violence. It’s a subtle tell, but it’s an important tell—in verse 10, it’s said that “Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king.” Samuel doesn’t go to all the people. He goes specifically to the group of people who wanted a king. Because only certain people really wanted a king. Israel was doing quite well not being governed by a king, so there was a certainly contingent of people who were probably pretty economically successful, who were wealthier, who had more to lose should war become a reality; but more important than this, they also had more to gain from changing the power structure.

When Samuel warns that this potential king “will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen,” and that he “will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers,” who do you think he’s talking about here? He’s certainly not talking about the rich merchants. He’s certainly not talking about wealthy landowners. The people who are forced to sacrifice themselves on chariots in war they didn’t choose are not people who have many other options. The people who are forced to enter into servitude of being cooks and maids to royals were not people who married well and have the option to comfortably stay at home and raise a family. Not only did the people who wanted a king not have to worry about their families being torn apart by war and the required luxuries of royalty, but they had resources, so they would have had leverage with this future king. They had more wealth and riches to gain. Instead of being content with the pretty idyllic situation that God granted them, they became both scared and greedy. They wanted to cement their status as better than, and so they exploited this growing fear of the encroaching Philistines. Another quote from Thurman, “…it is clear that [fear] arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness…in the face of violence to which the underprivileged are exposed.”[iv] Though they had less to lose, they also had less with which to defend themselves, and so they were likely made to feel trapped, isolated, and defenseless unless they had a strong king on their side.

People will of course always fear violence when it seems an immediate threat. It would be harmful for the lesson of this sermon to be something like, ‘so just sit back and mellow out man, we got nothing to worry about,’ so I promise you that’s not what I’m trying to convey here. We are living in a broken world, a world where the kingdom of heaven feels untouchable, feels so far away. There’s no denying that we do, in fact, live in a world of violence, with a threat of violence seemingly constant. But this is because the fear of violence begets more violence, and people who stand to gain from this fear know exactly how to exploit it. Church, this happens constantly today. There’s always an absolutely egregiously racist campaign ad during political campaigns that paints immigrants looking for a better life, escaping civil war or famine, as violent and inhuman, stoking racist fears that are deeply rooted in this country. After a school shooting, people will try to convince you that this is just a way of life in America and that we better remain scared and arm teachers instead of looking at the reasons we’re the only country in which these shootings occur at such a rate. Unfounded fears of conspiracy and voter fraud that did not happen are being exploited to make it harder for people of color and poor folks to vote. It’s Pride month, and there are bills and laws being through state houses that are incredibly harmful towards the already vulnerable trans population, which are, again, based on a hysteria of unfounded and false fears of predation. Things are so broken and so divided right now, and I absolutely believe it’s the exploitation of these fears that are driving us further apart, driving us into desperation, and driving us away from God.

And God tells Samuel to warn the Israelites. And Samuel does not hold back. Of this potential king, he warns his people, “…you shall be his slaves.” This might sound like a basic rhetorical device, but it is so much more than that—because many of these Israelites still have memories of living in slavery. To say this was a warning, “all this progress we’ve made, all these gifts God has given you, all this freedom, it will all be for naught.” But those who wanted a king stood their small-minded ground and they stoked the fears in enough people that God was moved to essentially allow them to start the process of destroying themselves. This is a recurring theme in the Hebrew Bible, Church. The people cry out for help, God helps them, they get complacent, they forget, they punish themselves. Over, and over, and over. How short their memories were. More than that—how powerful an emotion is fear.

So how do we fight this fear? How do we live in this world of division, violence and hatred without being ruled by fear? It’s hard. Because a lot of powerful people have really honed their skills of exploiting these fears. They know exactly what makes us tick, they know exactly which buttons to press. What we can work on is making sure we don’t have knee-jerk reactions to a clickbait-y or sensationalistic headlines thrown at us constantly. And if we ever do find ourselves feeling angry of fearful or even hateful, we can take a deep breath and try to figure out where those fears are coming from. Are they valid fears or a real immediate threat? Or have our heightened emotions been preyed upon?

Things move and change so fast these days—whether it’s technology, mask requirements, changing information about current events, virus mutations, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, confused, and ultimately scared. When things move too fast for us to keep up, and we lose our footing, we lose our stability, and we feel lost and isolated. This is when we become vulnerable. This is when we can lose ourselves and give into the uncertainty and the fear that surrounds us daily. This is when we look for easy answers, easy outs; this is when things can start to feel desperate and that sacrificing the security, rights and well-being of others is some kind of necessary evil, is the only move we can make.

Church, the Lord’s prayer we’ll say shortly makes it clear, “…thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We know it’s possible to have a just world for all. We know that’s what we’re called to fight for and to work towards. And when we make this earth as it is in heaven, it will be one without exploitation of our vulnerabilities and emotions. It will be one in which there will be no reason to be suspicious of our neighbor. It will be one in which we will no longer fear, and therefore, oppression will be no more. But before we get to that place, we have to get to the root of why these fears exist in the first place. We have to figure out why we’re scared of those who are different than us. We have to figure out why we’re so vulnerable to fear-mongering tactics. It’s hard work, and it’s humbling work, because in the process we might find that those fears come from some pretty dark places. But it is possible. It’s possible to rid ourselves of our demons and fears with trust in God and trust in the compassionate works of Jesus.

I leaned a lot of Howard Thurman for this sermon, so I figure I’ll just continue to lean into it and end my sermon with another passage from Jesus and the Disinherited:

[We] must recognize fear, deception, hatred, each for what it is. Once having done this, [we] must learn how to destroy these. In so great an undertaking it will become increasingly clear that the contradictions of life are not ultimate. The disinherited will know for themselves that there is a Spirit at work in life and in the hearts of [all] which is committed to overcoming the world. It is universal, knowing no age, no race, no culture, and no condition of men. For the privileged and the underprivileged alike, if [we] put at the disposal of the Spirit the needful dedication and discipline, [we] can live effectively in the chaos of the present the high destiny of a [child] of God.[v]

Amen.

[i] Fleabag, 2.4, “Episode 4,” directed by: Bradbeer, Harry, written by: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, performed by:

Phoebe Waller Bridge. Aired on 5/17/19, Amazon.

[ii] Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 41.

[iii] Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 46.

[iv] Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 37.

[v] Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 109.