Samuel was the child who was given to the childless mother, Hannah, when she prayed to God and asked to thus be blessed. Remember that Hannah had bargained with God. If you give you me a child, she prayed, then I will give him back to you to be consecrated to your service. Perhaps she did not really expect God to answer her prayer. This was her Hail Mary, except the Hail Mary had not been invented yet. It was a last ditch, desperate measure. And it worked.
Hannah kept her part of the bargain. When the child was still young, she took him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh, which was the center of Jewish worship. These were the days before the epicenter of Jewish life has moved to Jerusalem. The ark resided at Shiloh, which is more or less the same thing as saying that God lived there. Hannah took her young child, the answer to her prayers, and brought him to Shiloh to present him to Eli, the chief priest, as she had promised she would.
Eli’s own sons, Hophni and Phineas, had corrupted the priesthood they shared with their father. They were greedy men, who used their sacred office for their own profit. They took the choicest parts of the meat that was to be offered for sacrifice, and kept it for themselves, depriving not only the supplicant of his offering, but depriving God of what was meant for God.
Not only were Eli’s sons a disaster, it’s striking that the account of Samuel’s call is replete with details of deficiencies. “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” Eli was going blind. And, of course, Samuel himself - the child for the childless - might never have been born. And in an intriguing and ominous detail we are told that “the lamp of God had not yet gone out.” The circumstances are not auspicious or promising, but in the midst of all these limitations and deficiencies, God called Samuel.
Now, Israel was not yet a nation with a blue and white flag, the star of David, Holy Land sites to visit, and olive wood trinkets for sale in every gift shop. Israel was the confederation of tribal peoples whose prayers were directed toward Shiloh and the God who lived there. At more or less the moment that Hannah brought her young son to Shiloh to leave him there for the Lord, Israel was on the cusp of a political transition. The Philistines were a threatening external force. And for Israel, having been governed by what the Bible calls “judges” for generations, things were about to change.
Samuel grew up to serve Israel as prophet, priest, and judge, as well as commander of the military. But his sons were corrupt, as had been the sons of Eli, his mentor. And the people went to Samuel and asked him to choose for them a king. The judges had been figures of wisdom who mediated God’s law for the people, but they were no kings. And the people wanted a strong ruler with real power over them (and over others, too). They told Samuel that they wanted to be “like other nations.”
Feeling a bit rejected, Samuel took it to the Lord in prayer. And God heard the request for what it was, and reassured Samuel, “they have not rejected you,” God said to him, “but they have rejected me from being king over them.” (1 Sam 8:7) And eventually, God relented and told Samuel to “set a king over them.”
Did you notice how Nathanael reacted when he changed his mind about Jesus? Having first rejected the notion that anything good could come from Nazareth, Nathanael pivots quickly, once he realizes that Jesus has real power. And this is what Nathanael says, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God,” he says, “you are the King of Israel!” You are the king! You are the king!
Some part of Nathanael had been formed by the memory of a people who longed to have someone with real power in charge of them. Not satisfied with God’s rule, nor with the counsel of wisdom, they wanted a king. And Nathanael is not much different. The Roman Empire was an occupying force, and the fortunes of the Jews were subject to the whims of the emperor. No one wants to bow down to a distant foreign crown. But a king of our own? That would be something! So, at the slightest hint that Jesus is possessed of real power, Nathanael’s imagination is off and running. Here is a king of our own, so that we can be a power of our own. Maybe Nathanael hoped that Israel could again be like other nations.
Most of the time when I am reading and trying to interpret the scriptures, I read with the prejudice that the point of the writings is to teach us something about God. But of course, there are times when the point of the writings is also to teach us something about ourselves. One of the things that we learn about ourselves if we read the sacred texts is that nothing is never enough. We are never satisfied. In the midst of paradise it wasn’t enough for us. Being freed from the bondage of slavery wasn’t enough. Led to a land of milk and honey wasn’t enough. A covenant of love and favor wasn’t enough. Wisdom wasn’t ever enough. It’s never enough. This seems to be a pretty basic rule of the human condition.
The sacrifice of God’s only Son so that the love than which there is none greater could be made manifest for any and all ... is not enough. It’s never enough for us. So, give us a king! Maybe then it will be enough. (We have done this ourselves with Christ, of course. We hailed him as our matchless king just as soon as we decided that his death on the Cross wasn’t enough for us, nor his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension.) It is never enough for us, is it?
Maybe it’s a function of the times we live in that puts me in this frame of mind, seeing how self-destructive it is when it’s never enough. I’ll let you paint by numbers for yourselves to see the myriad ways that privilege has been transposed into grievance in our society, and how the grotesque disparity of wealth in our nation is the consummate assertion of the idea that it’s never, ever, ever enough. Maybe we really do want a king, and not just a wise old man who can make things work for people?
We have so much in common with our forebears. We are in the midst of countless limitations and deficiencies, and the circumstances of this present moment are not auspicious or promising for anything much, if you ask me. But the lamp of God has not yet gone out. And Washington is not Shiloh, thank God.
One reason to read the scriptures is to learn about ourselves - even though we mostly think that we have little in common any more with the simple-minded, unsophisticated people.
But we have this in common: nothing is ever enough for us.
And this: sometimes we think it would be a good idea to have a king who can have real power over us.
And this: the word of the Lord seems rare these days, and visions are not widespread. There are countless limits and deficiencies, blindness where we need vision, barrenness where we need hope. The times are not auspicious or promising.
But the lamp of God has not yet gone out. It is never enough for us, but God is not done with us yet.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
17 January 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
Samuel and Eli by John Singleton Copley