June 14, 2009 - Proper 6, Year B (RCL)
It’s the failure
of a dream, a dream that began
a generation or more before.
A dream
of being a nation, a nation like every other nation they knew.
Their history already set them apart.
They’d come from nowhere, just one one small family
in a hostile land,
then the family extended, brothers and sisters and cousins and grandchildren,
until four generations later
they had become a tribe
successful and prosperous
until the famine that forced them into exile,
and there they continued to grow over the years,
becoming more and more powerful
until they became a threat to their exilic hosts
and were forced into slavery.
And finally escaped,
a long journey
into freedom.
And resettled in their homeland,
twelve tribes of them now,
governed by a string of tribal leaders and judges.
Their history set them apart,
and wound in with that history, their faith.
Not for them the clay and wood idols,
household gods
that could be carried around
at home or in battle.
They worshipped God, Yahweh,
the One who was and is and will be.
God who had called them,
God who had rescued them,
God who protected them.
But they’d got tired of it all.
Got tired of explaining
why this God, unseen,
and why the code of laws
this God had proclaimed,
and why judges and prophets and not kings guided their way.
They got sick of all the explaining
and not just to outsiders
but to their children
who kept wanting to know
why they were different.
And so they went to the prophet
who went to God.
“Please,
can we have a king?”
And no matter what God said
about the dangers of being ruled
by a single, fallible, human being,
they were insistent.
And God gave in
and gave them what they wanted,
a king,
a handsome young man
of the tribe of Benjamin,
who stood head and shoulders above everyone else.
And Saul was their king, and ruled them, and led them into battles, just as they had asked.
But as time went on
power went
to Saul’s head.
He ruled the people and let them into war,
and began to think
that it was all because of him.
He began to forget
that it was God who was on their side,
that it was God who was leading them into battle and giving them victory,
that it was God who had given them the law
and made the people
into a nation.
And he began to ignore
the word of God, he began to ignore
God’s direct
commands.
Until it came a time
when God could no longer
let things slide.
Saul was leading
the people astray.
The dream
was a failure.
Something needed
to be done.
And so we come to our Old Testament reading today,
the story of the choosing
of a new king.
But this time
God wanted to be clear.
This was not going to be
a popularity contest.
This king would be chosen
not because he was the most warrior-like,
the most handsome, the most likable;
this king would be God’s choice.
And so God sent the prophet Samuel
to a small town,
to a fairly ordinary family, though one well provided with sons.
And Samuel thought, when he met the first son, Eliab,
surely this is the one who will be king.
He’s handsome, and strong; just the sort of man we need as a king.
But God said no.
And so it went on. There was Abinadab, and then Shammah, and another four sons. Until the last one had come,
and still God hadn’t indicate to the prophet Samuel
that any of them were the ones.
Samuel was confused. Surely God had brought him to this family.
And so he asked the boys’ father, are these all the sons you have?
“Well, no, there’s the baby,
the boy David,
he’s out with the sheep.”
And Samuel had him
call David in,
and God said, yes, this is the one,
because his heart is pure.
Though it didn’t hurt
that he was also handsome.
And so Samuel anointed David
as king,
and then David went back
to his sheep.
The story ends
kind of abruptly.
Saul
was still king.
David was anointed, but was back with his sheep.
We have to wait
to see how it will all play out.
But there is hope.
That first dream of a king
had failed;
but God was redeeming the dream,
with a promise.
A promise
that would be fulfilled
by David.
Sometimes we look around us
and wonder
what on earth
went wrong?
How could God
allow this to happen?
Sometimes
it’s on the grand scale,
nations and peoples,
other times
on the small scale,
local and individual.
But God does, God allows us
human beings
to make choices.
We call it
free will.
We get the freedom
to choose.
Sometimes
our choices are good,
choices that God knows
are right
and will have wonderful
consequences.
And sometimes
our choices
are not so good.
And too often
we have to live with them.
But not forever.
Because God
doesn’t just abandon us
to our choices,
God guides us in them
and God so often
redeems them,
bringing unexpected grace
and unexpected blessings.
Recently, I’ve been following the story of Vasco Sylvester.
Vasco is an AIDS orphan, one of something like 15 million in the world today.
His parents died when he was small,
he lived on the street
before being found and taken to an orphanage.
Vasco
was dying.
A heart defect meant that and he couldn’t play like other kids; he barely had the energy to sit up. He was tiny, at nine years old, the size of a five year old, and frail.
A Chicago religion journalist
met Vasco a year and a half ago in Malawi,
and since then
has worked to get him the life giving surgery
he needs.
Three hospitals
donated support for surgery.
An airline
paid for his tickets, even though they don’t fly to Africa.
And hundreds, thousands of people
have been praying
for Vasco.
Two months ago,
Vasco and a caregiver
arrived in Chicago.
He’s been staying with the journalist,
discovering the city,
having playdates,
gaining the strength he needed
to undergo heart surgery.
It’s been a whole new world for him.
There’s TV, and ipods,
and the luxury of being able to pour a glass of clean drinking water from a faucet
instead of taking a bucket across a crocodile infested river
to a pump, and then boiling that
to make it drinkable.
And this week, Vasco had his surgery,
and is now sitting up, watching the Disney channel,
and getting ready to leave hospital
with his heart working properly
for the first time
in his life.
Vasco’s life until this year
had been a series of mistakes and failures.
Not on his part.
It wasn’t his fault
that he was born with a genetic defect,
that his parents died of AIDs,
that he was born in Malawi,
where there are crocodiles in the river,
and no safe drinking water
and none of the medical care he needed.
The mistakes are his parents’
and his governments’
and the worlds’
and some are just the problems of a part of the planet
with too large a population
to bear.
But Vasco’s life
has been redeemed.
Redeemed by a chance meeting with a journalist
who by the grace of God
somehow knew
that she was called
to help to make Vasco’s
life
new.
God has been at work.
God has saved Vasco
through the faithful actions
of his servants.
And we are the servants of God.
We make mistakes
but we are also the means by which
mistakes are redeemed.
God uses the faithful
to heal people,
to heal nations,
even
to heal
the world.
Dreams
will always fail, at least as they are originally conceived,
simply because they are dependent
on too many
fallible
human beings.
But fallible human beings
can also be the means
by which dreams can be realized,
when we hear the whisper
of the voice of God
and choose
to allow God’s grace
to flow through us.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009