Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Our reading from I Samuel this morning is a bit unusual. It’s likely not a story you’ll remember from Sunday School or Children’s or Youth Formation when you were growing up, but it’s an interestingly evocative passage, and, I think, an important one for us in our day.

In our reading, the people of Israel ask the prophet Samuel to find and anoint a king for them. Samuel is dubious as to the wisdom of this venture, but he may also be taking the request a bit personally. After all, Samuel’s been judge over Israel for some time (recently retired), and now that his sons are judges in his place, they’ve been revealed to be incompetent and wicked leaders…which must be rather disappointing and painful (the more so considering that Samuel’s first encounter with God was all about bearing a message regarding the High Priest’s sons being poor leaders). God suggests to the prophet that the people’s request really has nothing to do with him and more to do with God: the people’s request for a king is a rejection of God as guide and ruler. God also takes this a bit personally. Samuel announces to the people what a king will do (take take take take take) but the people insist: they want a king like other nations. Samuel relents when God tells him to relent, but in the end it’s pretty clear: the good thing the people think they want and will get will turn out to be a horrendously bad thing in the end.

Many scholars suggest that this passage of I Samuel was inserted by editors many years later. Given the realities of the destruction of Israel and Judah as well as horrors of the Babylonian captivity, these editors are trying to understand or determine where everything went wrong: how did we get to be captive in another land, our own cities in ruins, our culture in danger of dying out? The suggestion they make, through Samuel, is that the whole notion of secular human authority is sinful or is ill-conceived from the very start. This suggestion, of course, is countered and complicated by the David narrative which seems quite alright with the notion of kings, particularly David-like kings, but this sort of complication just adds to the richness of the text.

But there’s more here than just history and its interpretation. Twice the people say to Samuel that they want a king so they can be like other nations. This appears, for the people, to be the most compelling reason to institute a monarchy: they’re a little embarrassed by the fact that they’re not like everyone else. And perhaps even more than the idea of monarchy (or of any other particular form of government for that matter) it’s this embarrassment over difference that is really at the root of the problem here.

Saint Peter tells us that God has chosen for Godself a peculiar people, and Saint Paul encourages us not to be conformed to this world. Being a peculiar people is difficult. Being a sign of God’s love, God’s grace, God’s reign distinct from (not over against, but separate from- and alternative to) the way, rule and regard of the world is difficult. It’s hard, sometimes, in the midst of this difficulty or in spite of it, to remind ourselves of the blessings of difference, the giftedness of difference, and easy to want to be something we’re not and were never meant to be…something, in fact, that may consume us or be detrimental to our flourishing.

I hope today, whatever you’re facing or experiencing, that you’ll discover within yourself the grace of God that says to you: your uniqueness is blessed, and your difference is holy; your call to be a bright light of love in a dark world is no accident: it’s who you were made to be! Let your light shine!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+