Looking on the Heart

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.

The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.’ Samuel said, ‘How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.’ And the Lord said, ‘Take a heifer with you, and say, “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.” Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.’ Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, ‘Do you come peaceably?’ He said, ‘Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.’ And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.’ But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’ Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, ‘The Lord has not chosen any of these.’ Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons here?’ And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.’ He sent and brought him in. 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. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

To begin this sermon, I have to fill you in, very quickly, on what the lectionary skips over from what we talked about last week, to what we’re about go over for this week. Last week, you may remember, God’s chosen people had, as seems to be their MO, kind of forgotten how good God gave it to them, they had given into fear, and demanded a king, a military leader to replace their perfectly adequate council of judges. Last week’s scripture ended with Samuel and YHWH reluctantly anointing Saul as the people’s new king. What goes on between then and now was essentially a bunch of war and battles and mostly, to Saul’s credit, mostly military victories. But his downfall comes when he first becomes impatient and disobeys instructions to wait on Samuel before entering into another battle, and then he outright ignores a command from God in favor of his own aspirations of political gain and empire building. At this point, he is officially rejected by God as leader of the Kingdom of Israel; however, he is still technically king, though God has rejected him. He’s a lame duck leader, essentially. Now, this was a very quick and very surface-level catch-up. I will tell you that in the sections our lectionary skips over, there are some very complicated political, cultural, and economic dynamics, as well as some really difficult passages involving the kind of angry God that I know many of us (myself very much included!) have a lot of trouble with. I’ll be honest with you—very happy I’m not preaching on it.

So, back to the task at hand: finding the Kingdom of Israel a new leader. It’s pretty sketchy the way Samuel and YHWH go about this. Samuel knows Saul will have him killed if he finds out he’s going off on this mysterious journey, so YHWH essentially tells him to lie—maybe lie is too strong a word… Samuel is told to bring a heifer to sacrifice for some kind of ceremony—YHWH gives him a cover, essentially, and Samuel is told that one of Jesse’s sons will be the next king of Israel. It’s all very secretive and cryptic and mysterious.

I always try to be careful when preaching on the Hebrew Bible. It’s so easy to slip into a supersessionist reading—that is, a reading of the Old Testament that presumes that we have it right and anyone who reads the Bible differently, or anyone who doesn’t believe Jesus to be their LORD and savior has it wrong. So when I read 15:35: “And the LORD was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel,” at first, I was thinking of God being sorry in that God was evolving and learning from past mistakes. But that didn’t seem quite right. It didn’t seem right because first of all, God isn’t really God if God’s making mistakes and feeling guilty about it. And it also seemed wrong to think about this idea of God evolving because I think then you get into the dicey assumption that God was evolving towards giving us Jesus. And that line of thinking insinuates that this version of God isn’t as good. That this version of God that others believe in isn’t fully evolved and therefore is wrong. Now we, generally speaking, believe that this was all leading to the miraculous birth of Jesus, but thinking of it as an evolution just felt wrong. And since I had this nagging feeling and this anxiety that I was leaning into this sort of dangerous supersessionist idea of God, I ran it by a good friend of mine, Dan—I’ve mentioned Dan before, he’s my most religious Jewish friend and he’s always up for a tough theological discussion. I asked him, “is the idea of God sort of… evolving anything that’s prevalent in your theology?” Dan said, “In my theology or in Jewish theology in general?” and before I could answer, Dan said, “either way, no.” Glad I asked.  

So this made me think a little differently about last week’s scripture. Last week we had God, through Samuel, trying to warn the people of Israel, “these are all the bad things that will happen if you get this king that you think you want.” And they don’t listen. I imagine God sort of throwing their hands in the air, “Well, OKAY! This is what you asked for!” So God’s not sorry because God made a mistake. God’s sorry that Saul was made king over Israel because God knew all along that it wasn’t going to work out. God knew all along that this was bad news. God was sorry because God was upset. God was sad for his people, sad that they didn’t believe enough in the promised land they were given, in the just and peaceful system they had in place.

So in this story, we see God pretty directly guiding Samuel so he doesn’t make the same mistake again. Now, one of the reasons that Saul was chosen to be the first king of Israel was because of his looks. He was handsome, he was super tall and strong, apparently, 1 Samuel 9:2 “There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders about everyone else.” So when Samuel has Jesse parade his sons before him, the first one is Eliab, and Samuel is sort of blown away by how good-looking he is, and before seeing any of the other sons, “Surely this is one!” God responds to Samuel “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature…for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

When I was relating this scripture passage to Dan during our conversation, regarding God’s guiding Samuel not to make the same mistake of choosing a leader on looks and brawn alone, he said of God, “But he doesn’t really change there, he asks us to change. I’d say the theological question isn’t whether God changes, but whether humans are capable of change with God’s help.” What a blessing to have such thoughtful friends. So as Samuel is meeting Jesse’s sons, he’s not deviating from any of God’s command— because it’s not that God had learned from past history or mistakes made—Samuel is learning. He’s not being impatient. Because I do imagine that this was a pretty confusing process for Samuel. God told him that one of Jesse’s sons would be the next king, and Samuel sees seven totally adequate, fine-looking young men, and each time, “nope, not this one; not this one either…”. The procession ends after these seven, and Samuel’s like, “uhh… that everyone?” I imagine Samuel is starting to doubt just a tiny bit right there, but he remains patient. And the patience continues when Jesse lets Samuel know that there’s one more son, the youngest (which probably also means the littlest), out tending to the sheep. I sense a little frustration in Samuel’s tone here, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.”

We can speculate the reasons as to why David wasn’t part of this parade of sons. It was probably because he was not only the youngest, but also the eighth. In ancient tradition, both the eldest and the seventh son were thought to be specially blessed. So David had a couple things going against him there. But also, in practical terms, Jesse needed someone to tend to the sheep. So it only made sense to have the youngest, the smallest, the one who couldn’t possibly be the one chosen by God to lead Israel. And Jesse probably trusted David too. After all, being a shepherd isn’t an easy job. And in fact, being a shepherd is often, in the Hebrew Bible, a sign of a good and kind leader. Not to mention Jesus, of course, who would come later as the Good Shepherd. A good shepherd is someone who has kindness and compassion as well as the innate ability, instincts, and intuition to lead a people.

The fact that David was also very handsome, I guess is a bonus, since God made it very clear that Samuel shouldn’t judge someone by their looks alone when choosing a new king. But it was probably also some foreshadowing. David would be a good ruler, yes, but he would also be a womanizer, and he would get himself into some trouble.

But the key takeaway here is not that David was handsome. The key here is that he was unexpected. The key here is that Samuel, with God’s guidance, was able to change his concept of what a king looks like, of how a king acts. He wasn’t being ruled by the past, or his prior bad judgements, and he wasn’t allowing what the society around him considered to be the characteristics of a good leader block out the voice of God.

Church, we live in world that revolves around appearance, perceived attractiveness, stereotypes and harmful assumptions. It’s a world where when we hear the word ‘healthy’ in terms of people, the default there is to think thin, right? It’s a world where when we hear ‘poor’ in regards to a person’s attire, the default is often to think lazy. It’s a world that doesn’t look deep enough. It’s a world where everything is judged on a surface level. It’s a world that makes it easy to give into the white noise of consumerism and what corporations and movies and tv tell you is good and moral and right. It’s easy to let this white noise drown out the voice and guidance of God—the guidance that teaches us to expect the unexpected and to keep an open mind. It’s the guidance that points you to the heart of a person, and not their looks or their bluster or charisma.

Now, it’s easy to write a sweet, touchy-feely sermon about not judging a book by its cover. But this passage, this story is about so much more than that. It’s about working to change our concept of what is moral, of what is right. It’s about changing our preconceived notions about what makes a good leader or even simply a good person. I wish I could say things have changed a lot in the thousands of years since this event happened, but we still judge people by their outward appearance. We are conditioned to think that if someone is fit and conventionally attractive, this this is morally good for some reason. We are conditioned to think that if someone is wealthy, it’s because they’ve worked hard, they’ve pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, they have good work ethic, and again, are morally good. We don’t look deeper than that. We don’t look at their genetics, we don’t check to see whether or not they come from generational wealth, we don’t often assume they already had an advantage. We make assumptions based on the most one-dimensional notions of what this society tells us is success—of what society tells us moral, beautiful, healthy, or good. And that leaves so many people out. That leave so many people neglected and forgotten. It leaves so many people powerless. David, this small, young shepherd was the last person anyone expected. He was so disregarded that Jesse didn’t even invite him back to the house to meet Samuel until Samuel demanded it. David is the start of something new.

So for us Christians, this was a foreshadowing of what was to come. Here was David, a leader like no one had ever seen. Young, small, unassuming, and unexpected… foreshadowing Jesus’ soft-spoken, kind, compassionate nature—foreshadowing Jesus’ turning of assumptions and societal norms, customs, traditions, on their heads; even turning the nature of death itself on its head. 

But this isn’t just a story for us Christians. This is a story of quieting the noise around us. This is a story of trusting in the guidance of a God who will lead us to the what is right and just. This is a story of trusting in a God who really does want the best for us, even when the world we live fights tooth and nail against what’s best for us, even when we ourselves are our own worst enemy. This is not a story about God changing or evolving. This is a story about whether or not we can change and evolve, and about whether or not we can see even the smallest fraction of what God can see in the hearts of others. This is a story of learning to listen to God who is always good, all the time. Amen.