So you want a king?

6/10

preparing for worship at Good Shepherd-Faith 

Today, back to Good Shepherd Faith.  As I arrive, my friend elder John Gingrich is rehearsing "Ride On King Jesus," since I decided to talk about kings today, based on 1 Samuel 8. So what about kings?

Elder John rehearsws

I'm fascinated by the American fascination with royalty.  I was in Pittsburgh this summer and along with my aunt and her husband spent hours watching the royal marriage between Harry and Meghan. Of course I was rewarded with Bishop Curry's beautiful and powerful sermon, but I wondered why this seemed so captivating for so any of us. The MSNBC reporters kept finding Americans on the  crowd who had spent lots of dollars just to be there. And the question remained....why?

Is there some kind of leftover connection to the place and culture we came from? Some lingering romance around royalty?  In a Disney kind of way? There's not many monarchs left these days. England...and maybe Wakanda?

I remember Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude speaking of kings and kingdoms saying.."I don't miss the kingdoms, but ohhh the kings..."

Anyways, that's what attracted me to this passage today.

The people of Israel had had a pretty good thing going. A collection, confederation of tribes with judges to resolve issue between them and provide guidance. A pretty horizontal life.

But they wanted to be like everyone else. They wanted a king. God gave Samuel a pretty clear word to give to the people about what that might men..

“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; 12and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18And 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 they won't listen and they wind up with Saul.  And the next thing you know, there'll be David. Obviously God's words were written after they had become .a kingdom.  A knowing explanation of what they got.

A word about the Bible. Wes Howard-Brook in his Come Out My People argues that there are two theologies in the Bible.  Not Christianity and Judaism, but the theology of covenant and creation and the theology of empire. That both are there and are in constant tension. Did you realize, for example, that the first five books . were written around the time of Solomon? Creating a mythic history for an emerging kingdom?  That the two books of Samuel were among the first to be written? (Really wasn't much written before then)..So we get not only the royal propaganda but the critique as well. The writers who longed for the days of the judges.

We get such a critique in Joel Baden's The historical David: the real life of an invented hero. We get a David who is somewhere between Tony Soprano and one of the Lannisters on Game of of Thrones. 

Kings.  They wanted a king.

We Presbyterians aren't much on kings.  Being anti-monarchical is in our system. (And some clergy would tell you anti-clerical as well..) We don't much like kings. Or bishops. It's at the core of our theology. We forget that that's a principle difference between us and Episcopalians, Lutherans and even Methodists.  It's rooted in the reformed perspective of the basic flawed nature of humanity. That plus our theology of stewardship of the world around us gave us a working theology for civic involvement. Thus we get John WItherspoon's name on the Declaration of Independence. And always a disproportionate number of congresspeople. (And amazingly well thought and well spoken basketball coaches like Steve Kerr...)

A couple of weeks ago I was in Chile with the  Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Chile, which broke away from the Presbyterian Church of Chile in 1973. That name is meaningful. It's the whole Johanine notion of in the world, not of the world. They courageously broke away from a church they thought was actively collaborating with Pinochet. Like our ancestors who separated over slavery.  And like the Confessing Church, the too wrote a Credo that affirms Christ as the ultimate authority over our lives. When I asked them the greatest gift that our tradition had to  offer they said democracy. And they are not far off. It can be argued that our polity was the strongest influence on the emerging US system of government.

The Occupy Wall Street occupiers who stayed at West Park were surprised to learn about the horizontal nature of Presbyterianism.

It's not the best of days for democracy. Recent studies are finding millenials...around the globe...less and less interested in democracy, One could make the case that we're in a pretty precarious position ourselves. And have been heading that way for a while.

I love the fact that its a  Presbyterian minister from Union Seminary, Liz Theoharris, who along with William Barber is one of the leaders of the Poor Peoples Campaign seeking to bring a restored moral perspective to our public discourse. This of course, was to be Martin Luther King, Jr's focus had he lived. Fifty years after the assassination of MLK...and Bobby Kennedy...perhaps is good time to pick up that mantle again.

If underneath all this you detect a (not too) subtle critique of certain monarchical trends of a certain politician, well.....it's the Presbyterian  in me...

We can appreciate and enjoy royal weddings. But we don't need kings.The one thing that  is clear to me is that it will be increasingly important to affirm that the principle authority in our lives is Jesus Christ and to him do we give the authority in our lives. I'm often amazed how at certain times, that simple theological affirmation can have profound political implications. .

May God grant us the wisdom and courage for living in our own day

Amen




 First Reading 1 Samuel 8:4-11 (12-15) 16-20 (11:14-15)

8:4Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5and 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.” 6But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the LORD, 7and 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. 8Just 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. 9Now then, listen to their voice; only — you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

10So Samuel reported all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11He 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; 12and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18And 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.”

19But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, 20so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

11:14Samuel said to the people, “Come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingship.” 15So 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.



Gospel Mark 3:20-35

20... and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 21When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” 22And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” 23And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. 27But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

28“Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” — 30for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

31Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 33And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”