Like Every Other Nation

1 Samuel 8:1-22

So, for the next few weeks, I would like to turn to the Old Testament, or what is more appropriately called, the Hebrew Scriptures. In Christ, we celebrate the New Covenant, a relationship of mercy and grace and love and forgiveness. However, when we follow Christ, we are following someone who was devoutly Jewish, steeped in the tradition of our most ancient ancestors in faith. Therefore, it is essential that we spend time “swimming” in that tradition, ourselves.

At an even deeper level, though, what constantly amazes me is how words that are thousands of years old can speak to our shared human experience still today. Sometimes, in order to see what we need to see, we need to get as far away as possible from what is familiar. Sometimes, in order to see things from a different perspective, we need to listen to something that comes from a very different time or place. Sometimes, if we push deep enough through layer after layer of history, what we discover is a new view of ourselves.

This is why I want to carry us back to some of the earliest days of our ancestors in faith. As we’ve mentioned more than a few times, our ancestors were slaves in Egypt. As slaves, their lives were determined for them. Life was about routine, not choices. Food was provided for them. Housing was provided, as well. As long as they were good slaves, life would be secure. They did the jobs that the Egyptians did not want to do. They were especially good at making bricks. People lived. People worked. People died.

One day, Moses shows up in Pharaoh’s court to announce that God wants the slaves to be freed. The response, for the most part is, “Which God?” and “Who are you?” Plagues happen. (Shouldn’t that be a bumper sticker?) The oldest sons of the Egyptians die. The slaves run for their lives, leaving so fast that they couldn’t even wait for the bread to rise (dooming their descendants to eating matzah for centuries to come!) The Red Sea parts. The slaves find freedom in the wilderness which is awesome, until they realize that they are in the wilderness, where almost everything is hard. It doesn’t take long for someone to suggest that maybe slavery was better than freedom, after all.

Let’s pause there for a moment… It never takes someone long to suggest that what was known was better than all the unknowns that are before us. Human beings vacillate wildly between the longing to be free, to discover what’s around the next corner, to want to find out if what we dream could be made real and to be safe and secure and comfortable. Who among us hasn’t had a bad job or been in a bad relationship or been caught in one of life’s addictions only to find ourselves one day set free—against all expectations and hopes? “I don’t know how this happened but this is amazing!” Until…the grind of living through what’s new and making choices and feeling a little growing pain makes us think to ourselves, “You know…maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t that bad.” How many people go back to a bad relationship or habit simply because it is familiar and comfortable? People relapse all the time, thinking, “This time, I’ll manage this differently!”

Our ancestors don’t go back to Egypt, though. I’ve always thought part of the reason for that might rest in one concrete fact: the last vision the people had of the sea was with the Egyptians drowning in it. When the parted sea closed back up, there was no going back. Maybe in your moments of liberation in your life you’ve been lucky enough to see the parted sea closing up behind you. Maybe you burned a few bridges just to stop yourself from retracing your steps. Maybe you leaked the truth about how bad things were to just the right people so that they would stop you if you so much as glanced back over your soldier.

For our ancestors, and I think almost always for us, the right direction is forward. So, they learned to eat manna and follow a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, all of which was their way of learning to trust God. God was with them and continuing to help them. In our wilderness times, God is with us and helping us, providing not everything we would ever dream of but providing enough—if we can trust, if we can learn to follow. That’s the hard part of living our faith, of trusting our way through this complicated life, of making one tentative choice after another. We feel so insecure. So much remains unknown and unknowable. There is so much room for doubt.

Which brings us to our text…Our ancestors have made it through the wilderness, not without plenty of challenging moments and a great deal of whining. Moses didn’t get to come with them because he broke a rule. The truth was that they all broke rules all the time. However, as they entered the promised land, they did so following God and carrying the Ark of the Covenant with them as a reminder that God was always with them, no matter what.

In the promised land, (which was someone else’s land until they conquered it), for a while, it was so new and amazing to have a land to settle into that they felt completely blessed. It was so nice to settle in after all that wandering. It was enough to build their homes and love the God who had brought them there. So, they didn’t worry about a lot of things. When there were conflicts, each tribe established a judge who would rule with fairness.

Everything was okay…until it wasn’t. In fact, almost as soon as power was given to one person to judge, that person or, often, that person’s son who inherited the job, would be corrupted by the power of their position. Those who were supposed to rule with fairness and with an eye toward God, mostly kept their eyes on their own self-interest. Having once felt so free and felt like everything new and wonderful was ahead for them, now the people feel frustrated and restless and enslaved in a whole new way.

Again, we have to be honest and say we’ve all been there and done that. I had a friend who told me that he lived on a set of five year plans. He would set out to do something. Somewhere about five years in, he would get restless and change what he was doing. Of course, change can be good. However, I always wondered if he really just had a problem with commitment. Everyone loves a great first date, right? How do you feel about a nice romantic evening sorting the bills? If you commit to living differently, to making conscious and deliberate choices rather than sleep walking through life, things will get complicated. It will take faith to make it through.

The commitment that our ancestors made was to organize their life around their faith. They were going to live without a king. The rules they were going to follow were not going to be about making a king rich. Instead, their rules, which come from God, would be in place to help them live in harmony with one another and in relationship with God. No other nation in the world lived this way. However, they weren’t like every other nation.

They weren’t like every other nation…that was the thought that grated away at their souls. Haven’t you spent a certain amount of time in your life wishing that you could just be like everyone else? I certainly have! Other nations don’t have to spend their time worrying about honoring God and caring for the poor. Why should we? Why can’t we just be like every other nation?

In Israel, there was one good man of faith left—Samuel. Samuel is beginning to age and his sons are growing into men. And what is obvious to everyone is that almost nothing of what made Samuel great is present in either of his sons. Samuel has risen to leadership because of his faith and his charisma. He has been the conscience of the people. Having kept the people on track for so long, though, this time, he has met his match. The people say that they want to be like every other nation. The people say that they want a king. Samuel shakes his head with sadness and whispers, “Oh no!”

So, here’s what the people should have known. They had seen what a little power did to the judges—it corrupted nearly all of them. They had seen what God had done for them—brought them out of slavery and through the wilderness and into the promised land. They had watched as God provided them with enough of what they needed and with enough good leaders to make it through. Yet, they dreamed of certainty and structure and security. They dreamed of just fitting in. They were willing to trade their freedom for security—and haven’t we all, in different ways, been willing to make that trade along the way. It’s hard to trust. It’s hard to be different. It’s hard to keep believing.

Samuel prayed for the people. God answered: “Go ahead and give them what they want. This is really nothing new. They’ve been wanting to worship everything and anything but me since the day that I set them free.” (At this point, we all should be honest enough to feel convicted ourselves of putting all sorts of things that are less than God on a pedestal and solemnly worshiping them.) Still, I can’t help but imagine that Samuel was thinking, “Really, God? You’re just going to give them what they want?”

So, Samuel tells the people that they will get a king and get to be like everyone else. Like every other king, this king will take advantage of them. “He will turn your sons into disposable soldiers and your daughters into concubines. He will take the best of your crops and your herds for himself. He will load up his best friends with all the wealth this nation has to offer. And remember this, when you are groaning under the load of the king’s demands, you will pray to God and God will not hear you.”

Doesn’t almost everything that we are sure will make us safe and secure end up enslaving us in the end? Doesn’t every person or object whom we worship as if they were God leave us crying out to God on our day of disappointment? Isn’t the quest to be like everyone else almost always a dead end?