Scripture: 1 Samuel 8

This holiday season has felt incredibly dismal.

Something in the collective ether has shifted. My family, who was once excited about Christmas traditions and festivities was exhausted by the prospect of baking, wrapping gifts, and decorating.

It all just feels sort of grossly wasteful, performative, and capitalistic – it all feels sort of exhausting… shameful and gross, in fact. There is nothing more jarring than walking through a TJMaxx on December 24th having it look like Christmas village only to make a return on the 26th and see everything out for Valentines day and to have the sudden realization that all of the pretty stuff just ends up in a landfill or the ocean eventually. All of that hard work for it all to end up in an abyss somewhere to never decompose.

I walked with my best friend through the Garland district and we chatted about this – America’s excellence at capitalizing on the season. We walked passed quiet local businesses and mourned the loss of Advent season. I talked about how I wish Christmas cold return to what it once was, sometime long before either of us were born. Something more local and intimate – a time for reflection, service, wonder, stewardship, hospitality, and community.

My friend stopped to point on that the burden of creating a holiday experience like that will always be on us because it seems our culture doesn’t worship the Christ-child, our culture worships the profit. 

Consider now the eighth chapter of I Samuel:

Israel wants to be like the other nations

In this section of 1 Samuel, the Israelites are concerned with conforming to the standards of other nations and having a worldly king to protect and provide for them. After a period of political turmoil and conflict with the surrounding nations, the leaders of the community get together with Samuel. And the elders put it pretty frankly – “you are old and no longer capable of leading us in the ways that we need. And your sons are acting in ways that are completely inappropriate to be considered for this position – we need a king.” Not just any king to rule over them, not like the judges that came before or a prophet like Samuel. Israel wants a king that is “like the other nations.” Under military threat, Israel wants a worldly king.

Samuel is frustrated by this. He is Israel’s appointed leader – the prophet. He is supposed to be the one that is looked to for guidance – he acts as the mediator between the people and God. And the folks in leadership basically said without saying that Samuel’s time is coming to an end – they need a plan.

I can recognize the elder’s thought process here. It makes sense: “We are facing military pressure. We are unorganized. We aren’t protected. In order to compete with the other nations, we must be like them.”

            “Give us a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”

So Samuel goes to the presence of the Lord…

This is a rejection of God, because God is their king – his kingdom politics are different…

Samuel speaks his anxieties about Israel asking for a king. And God offers him this:

“Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done since I brought them up out of Egypt until now, forsaking and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Listen to them, but warn them about what this earthly king will claim as his rights.”

Israel once again has rejected God’s sovereignty over them and God instructs Samuel – go warn them.

​​Israel submits to this worldly desire for a king, at their own expense

I can hear Samuel saying this:

“This is the reality of what will happen under this worldly king. Your sons? They will die in battle, they will be forced to lead charges against enemy nations. And your daughters? They will toil in the bakery until their hands are numb, they will make perfume until the smell of balsam and frankincense becomes nauseating to them. This king will take a portion of your harvest – he will call your perfectly-ranch-broke-quarter-horse, your prime steer, your best hunting dog, and a tenth of your garden his. He will take your wine and the fruits of your labor for himself and his friends. The land and it’s workers – He will take. HE. WILL. TAKE.””This is the reality of what will happen under this worldly king. Your sons? They will die in battle, they will be forced to lead charges against enemy nations. And your daughters? They will toil in the bakery until their hands are numb, they will make perfume until the smell of balsam and frankincense becomes nauseating to them. This king will take a portion of your harvest – he will call your perfectly-ranch-broke-quarter-horse, your prime steer, your best hunting dog, and a tenth of your garden his. He will take your wine and the fruits of your labor for himself and his friends. The land and it’s workers – He will take. HE. WILL. TAKE.”

The phrase “he will take” occurs six times in 1 Samuel 8.

Juxtapose this with the law that occurs under God’s rule.

He says in Genesis: “I give you every seed-bearing plant, all the beasts of the earth and of the sky and ground, I give every green plant for food.”

He says in Exodus “Three times a year celebrate festivals to me. I will take away your sickness – you won’t be barren, you won’t miscarry, you will be healed.”

He says in Leviticus, “let the land itself rest on the seventh year – let the land fallow.” In his law, in his Jubilee, debts are forgiven, slaves are made free, and property is given back to its rightful owners.

He says in his law, which is the rule of his kingdom, “Worship me and me alone, and I will give you everything.”

God grants them their wish, knowing that they are consenting to their own enslavement, warping God’s previous gift

Israel asking for a king isn’t just a little dis at God or something to frustrate Samuel – it’s the insane suggestion that Israel would rather re-subject themselves to slavery. They would rather be ensnared to a system that keeps them dependent on an earthly king – just like they were before in Egypt. They will trade the King who fights their battles with pillars of fire and walls of water for an earthly one who only has chariots and horses.

God’s vision for Israel’s servanthood under his kingship looked like rest, order, and right-relationships. His vision for their culture and society was one who was submissive and obedient to his perfect Law. That Israel wouldn’t be like neighboring nations, but that they would be different. This, this friends, was their freedom: Freedom from the systems of the neighboring nations that enslave them.

We become what we worship. Israel in this story is doomed to become what they strived so hard to be different from. Same goes for the two twenty-somethings walking through Garland–they are exhausted by the capitalist system that exploits them as consumers around the holiday season. And yet, we continue with the same yearly traditions, worshiping the same worldly king that exhausts us.

And this goes for much more than holidays.

I had a close friend from Whitworth reach out to me about my experience with the pain and numbness from carpal tunnel syndrome that I have developed over the last handful of  years working with my hands at the bar, farm, and brewery. She, like me, is a full-time graduate student who works as a baker. I told her about the wrist braces I wear to bed, Advil, and ice. She asked me, “Well, what about rest?” “What about it?” I responded, “I’m just mad because why would God make our hands like this if they don’t work for working.” She replied, “Well, I think he’d answer by asking why we choose to work so much.” My tired hands, the reason why I had to turn down the offer to play cello for campus chapel. My tired hands that are braced by 7:55pm on school nights because I have to be up by 4:45 am tomorrow. My tired hands, too busy to journal. My tired hands, too tired to lift up the friends in my seminary who are mourning, poor, and sick. My tired hands, for you a quippy sermon metaphor – for me the actualized reality of continuously misdirected worship.

C.S. Lewis published an essay in 1963 about, amusingly, space-travel, in which he said this:

“How, then, it may be asked, can we either reach or avoid God?. . . in our own time and place, [avoiding God] is extremely easy. Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation.”

In submission to the culture of my surroundings, in trying to be like the other nations, I have ensnared myself in the classic sense of Hustle-and-Bustle culture of busyness and hurry that is concerned solely with capital gain at the expense of my embodiment and relationships. In serving another master, in wanting to assimilate to the culture around me, I tarnish the gifts of the gentle King who gave me them. Much like Israel, instead of receiving the blessing of God’s provision, of his just kingship over my life, I turn around to submit to the master who takes.

And that’s exactly the point that Samuel makes, too. “And you yourselves will become his slaves.”

So what?

What else do you worship? What do you let rule you? What do we willingly submit ourselves to in the world, in order to be part of the culture we deem better than God’s? What do we consciously ensnare ourselves to with the expectation that somehow, someway, it will be better than the provision given to us by God? That by our assimilation to a culture and kingship that is not the one we are called that we will be better off.

Friends, this was never his plan – for us to worship worldly kings who enslave us. To bow down to the culture. God’s greatest desire is to be the only King over and above all the noise we hear from the world.

The reality is this – the simple remedy for misdirected worship is to redirect it. 

To reuse Lewis’s quote:

Engage silence.

Find solitude.

Follow the train of thought that leads off the beaten track.

Forget about money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances.

Turn the radio off. Live in a small-ish community. Use no sedation.

Benediction

Brothers and sisters, receive this good news: we need not live as people ensnared to the world,

This message was given to Spokane Friends by Sarah Scott during Sunday morning worship on December 31, 2023.