Samuel and Saul: 1 Samuel 15

You have all heard countless stories about the fundamentalist church I belonged to when I was a teenager, and you're about to hear another. That kind of lunacy can provide a bottomless well of moral detritus, lucky for me, as a preacher.

In our church there was a young Puerto Rican man of about 19 named Jose, who had surrendered to preach the Gospel. Now Jose was so "on fire for God", his sermons spit flames. He was orthodox, enthusiastic, obedient to our pastor, and quite frankly, there was no stopping him. Or was there?

Seems that there was a young woman in our church named Susan, a solid believer, if a little introverted, from old Norwegian stock. Now, you could probably see it coming from a mile away: Jose and Susan fell in love.

Theirs was a chaste romance, yet still full of life and not a little silliness. It did the hearts of everyone in the church good to see the two of them together. They were, of course, in the full flush of infatuation. And watching them made the whole world a little more carefree. Everyone thought so; well, almost everyone.

One day the pastor and the youth pastor called Jose and Susan into the "the big office" for some "counseling" on their relationship. The young couple went in innocently enough. But they came out of that meeting different people. For in the short space of an hour, they were told that God disapproved of the "mixing of the races." They were told that "mud people" and whites shouldn't mix, that their children would be an abomination unto God. They were told that the word of the Lord had come to the pastor and commanded him to put an end to this little tryst that would profane and condemn the whole church.

Now, I don't think that Jose and Susan bought a word of it, but they obeyed. They stopped seeing each other, and the life and light went out of their eyes like a snuffed candle. Their effortless zeal for God became strained, their open hearts, bitter and resentful. Finally, each of them stopped coming. I don't think they ever resumed their relationship, but both were certainly severely wounded by the experience.

I can see some of you positively squirming in your seats in righteous indignation. Let's all squirm a little! For heaven's sake, what the pastor told them was the biggest pile of manure east of the Mississippi! But when we're done squirming, we have some questions to ask ourselves: Did the pastor really receive "a word from the Lord?" Did he really speak for God. Did he really believe that he had received "a word from the Lord?" Did Jose and Susan really believe he had received "a word from the Lord?"

These are all fair questions, and are appropriate for us to consider in reference to our reading for today from the first book of Samuel. In this story, the Amalekites refused to let Israel pass through their land some 80 years ago. Apparently God really knows how to carry a grudge, because "he" decides that they should be destroyed utterly. But God is REALLY mad here, so instead of just defeating them in battle, God commands the Israelites to "kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."

Now, look, this is extreme. God said, "kill the babies"?? Is this for real? Well, what we have here is another case of a spiritual leader saying that he speaks for God. So we have two possibilities: either Samuel was speaking for god or he wasn't. What do you think? I'll give you a little time to think about it. That's probably enough time. Well? Is Samuel speaking for God?

But perhaps he was. Perhaps God did ask him to do that -- so does that make it right? Perhaps, and I know I'm going out on a limb, here -- perhaps Saul disobeyed God, and made the moral choice. Perhaps Saul was right, and Samuel -- and possibly God -- were wrong. This sounds ludicrous to Christians, but to Jews it certainly possible, since the Hebrew scriptures clearly state that God changes his mind, and even repents of his sin.

Let's look at another example from Scriptures. In Genesis, God commands Abraham to take his only Son Isaac, the fruit of his old age, the only hope of immortality in his world, and to slaughter him on the altar of sacrifice.
Now put yourself in Abraham's shoes. Would you have done what God asked of you, and murdered your own child? Would a loving God really ask such a thing of you? And if such a God did ask such a thing, would you not have passed another test by refusing?

Look at the passage in Samuel again. Why is this army marching off to commit genocide? Because eighty years ago the Amalakites felt threatened that an entire nation of people wanted to invade their land! Wouldn't YOU have felt threatened? The Amalakites responded in a conservative manner, a prudent manner. They had no reason to trust these strangers, did they? Let's see, an entire nation of escaped slaves several hundred thousand strong, entering our borders, eating our food, and who knows? Maybe sacking our villages, raping our women, and taking over the country. They might have had good reason to be cautious, don't you think?

And so now, even though everyone involved in that decision has been dead for years, God is still so mad about it that the Israelites have to return and commit genocide? Good heavens.

So what's the answer? How can God be morally wrong? Well, the idea of a moral God didn't emerge until about the time of Jesus. God made mistakes in the OT after all. Yet do any of us believe that God makes mistakes? We are too much a product of the philosophies of Plato to accept such a notion.

Again, we have two choices, either God is far from perfect, or the story didn't happen exactly like the author of Samuel says it did.

Let's examine both of these possibilities carefully.

The first possibility is that God is not perfect. I personally would generally agree with this statement. The only theological system which I come close to believing, is, as I've preached about many times before, the process theology of Alfred North Whitehead. In Whitehead's philosophy, God is not perfect, but is growing as we are growing. That is certainly consistent with the Jewish record.

But perhaps the Jewish record is wrong, which brings us to the second possibility. Perhaps the Old Testament is not a record of what God did or said, but instead is a record of what the ancient Israelites perceived to be God's actions in their lives. We humans tend to create our gods in our own image. The ancient Israelites certainly created him in theirs, painting a picture of an enormous tribal warchief up in the sky, wreaking vengeance on his enemies, and saving all of his love and attention for one small group of people. Them. Well, I think this is understandable, and I'm sure God met them where they were and worked with those images that were meaningful to them as a semi-barbaric, nomadic people. But I don't think those images are an accurate reflection of God in God's fullness. They were images that made sense to the ancient Jews, but they are not necessarily images that have much value for us today.

And so of course today, we project onto God those values we admire just as they did. We favor a God who values the life of a child, and would not ask anything of us that is beyond our power to obey.

Part of this is because we have Jesus, who played the Holy trickster, played fast and loose with the rules, and made it very clear that loving people and caring for them was much more important than keeping every one of the over 500 Pharisaic commandments. Jesus, for Christians, completes the puzzle of the amoral deity portrayed in the Hebrew scriptures.

For Jesus distrusted the spiritual leaders of his day His priorities were different, and often put him in conflict with Jewish Law and tradition. But when offered a choice between breaking a rule and healing a soul, Jesus chose the soul every time. And he told us THIS is what God wants. God wants compassion for the poor, and forgiveness for the offender. God wants us to stand on our own two feet and make moral, adult decisions. We do not worship a capricious monster. At least, I refuse to believe that we do.

So maybe the driving force wasn't God's command to Samuel, but the nation's longstanding bitterness towards a people who refused to help them when they were in a tight spot. Sounds likely, doesn't it? More likely than that God ordered a genocide.

Now Saul didn't do it perfectly After all, he only saved the one man he could relate to; the other king. If Israel were being attacked, hey, Saul, would want to be spared. In his own twisted way, Saul was "doing unto others as you would have others do unto you."

Of course, the idea that an ancient writer has read the situation wrong is not a new one. James, Jesus' flesh and blood brother was the leader of the church when Jesus left them. The Jewish Christian church which descended from James practiced an early form of source criticism, and identified descriptions in the Old Testament which they believed wereshall we say, not the whole story. Of course, much Jewish folklore is concerned with the same theme.

So where does that leave us? With a decision still to make. Did Samuel really speak for God? Or did Samuel simply represent the collective rage of the community? Did my pastor really speak for God, or was he simply a Texas preacher representing the collective rage of a South that would never "rise again"? This is not a question of faith, friends, it is an opportunity for exercising one's critical thinking skills.

In my opinion, Saul is the hero of our story today. An imperfect and idiosyncratic hero to be sure, to be sure, but a hero nonetheless. He heard Samuel's "word of the Lord," and then he followed his conscience. Good for him.

I wish that Jose and Susan had been so brave. The pastor told them that if they didn't cease this amoral yoking immediately, God would bring a harsh judgment upon their church. Jose and Susan accepted that Word as being from God, even at the price of their own love, their own youthful spirit, their own souls. They came into the church as bright angels, ready to set the world on fire for God, and they left the church broken and defeated, old beyond their time. But at least God's judgement was stayed. Or was it? For as little as five years later, there was "not one stone upon another" in that place. God utterly destroyed that church. I think, perhaps, it was because too many people listened to "the word of the Lord" and believed. When the man whose Son was dying cried out to Jesus, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief," he was asking God to remove his doubts. But I suggest another interpretation of his prayer for today. "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" "Lord, I believe; help me to grow in unbelief." "Lord, I believe; help me not to be so gullible next time." Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, we are asked to believe so many things which are said to come from you.
Every day, people are moved by you and utter inexplicable tongues,
Pour forth prophesies, and declare judgments upon persons and nations alike.
Yet how can we know when we have gotten on your bandwagon,
and when we are simply being taken for a ride?
Give us the courage, O God, to seek for your word within us,
So that we may have the moral courage to do what is right
Even in the face of "a man of God" who professes to speak for you.
"Lord, we believe, help our unbelief." For we ask this in the name of one
who thought for himself, and taught us to do likewise, even Jesus Christ. Amen.