And the LORD said to Samuel, “Look not to his appearance and to his lofty stature, for I have cast him aside. For not as man sees does God see. For man sees with the eyes and the LORD sees with the heart” [1 Samuel 16:7, THE HEBREW BIBLE, translated by Robert Alter].
The year was 1,000 B.C.E., more or less. The Israelites—not much more than a loose confederation of tribal groups—were gripped by a crisis that largely was of their own making. They had allowed Yahweh’s religious institutions to become corrupted. No longer tied together religiously, what little unity they had ever enjoyed was spiraling away. Externally, the Israelites faced a powerful foe—the Philistine empire—which sought to impose its hegemony onto Israelite territory.
Samuel, the last of the so-called Judges, had cautioned that there was but one answer to their dilemma: return to Yahweh. They should rely upon the One who had never forsaken them. Alas, the Israelites thought they had a better idea. They’d get a king. Samuel reminded them that they didn’t need a king; they had Yahweh. The Israelites said he was naive, that all their hostile neighbors had kings. If it worked for the neighbors, why not for the Israelites? In short, they wanted a king worse than anything else in the world, and that’s what they got in Saul—a king worse than anything else in the world.
As we come to the Old Testament reading appointed for this upcoming Sunday, the Fourth Sunday in Lent (RCL, Year A) [1 Samuel 16:1-13], we miss an important verse from chapter 15. It’s a verse that gives us a view into Yahweh’s mindset:
And the LORD was sorry that He had made Saul king over Israel [1 Sam. 15:35b].
And so, as we begin this week’s reading, we know that Yahweh has fired Saul. It’s just that Yahweh hasn’t told Saul yet. Yahweh delegates that task to Samuel, who is naturally reluctant. Saul has a temper.
Yahweh tells Samuel some additional news. Yahweh’s chosen the new king. He’s one of Jesse’s boys. Jesse, by the way, is a Bethlehemite [1 Sam. 16:1]. Yahweh tells Samuel that he’s to travel over to Bethlehem and anoint the son that Yahweh has chosen.
Because of the passage of 3,000 years, and particularly because of an even that occurred in the first few years of the first century C.E., we can’t see the scandal in what Yahweh has just told Samuel that he’s to do. We think, “Oh yeah, Bethlehem, that’s where Jesus is to be born; wonderful place to find a king.” Yet, in Samuel’s day, Bethlehem was literally on the other side of the tracks. Jerusalem wasn’t yet the capital city. It’s as if Yahweh had told Durham’s local chiefs that the new town leader can be found living in a run-down, 5-room house at the corner of East Pettigrew and South Driver Street. Samuel has to be thinking, “Yahweh, you don’t choose a king from Bethlehem! It just isn’t done.” And yet, as Samuel is beginning to recognize, Yahweh has some funny ideas about how to order His kingdom. Yahweh doesn’t follow humanity’s rules.
Yahweh gives Samuel a plausible story to explain his travel: he’s going to Bethlehem to offer a special sacrifice. Samuel will throw a true barbecue, grilled brisket, and all. He’ll invite Jesse and his boys and Samuel will then get to see Yahweh’s choice for the second king of Israel.
The ruse works. At the banquet, the sons are presented, one by one to Samuel. Samuel looks first at Eliab, Jesse’s first born. Samuel gazes at the man and thinks to himself, “Surely this is the one.” From Yahweh’s discussion with Samuel, it appears that Eliab looks the part of king; he’s tall, powerful, and handsome, much like the current king, Saul. According to Yahweh, humanity has a vision problem. And so, Yahweh says to Samuel:
For not as man sees does God see. For man sees with the eyes and the LORD sees with the heart [1 Sam. 16:7b, THE HEBREW BIBLE].
Samuel sees seven sons walk by; none make Yahweh’s cut.
It is only when the youngest son is called in from the fields that we learn who is to be the next king. “Little” David—the smallest son of an unknown member of the smallest clan of the smallest tribe in all of Israel is the one to be anointed with the special oil brought by Samuel. Later, a man from the line of David would say, “The last shall be first.” Even here, however, there is some ambiguity. Samuel can’t help but comment at how beautiful were David’s eyes, and oh my, how handsome! [1 Sam. 16:12]. Will this ambiguity cause David problems later?
Jesse thinks his youngest is so insignificant that Jesse hasn’t even bothered to invite him to the party. Of course, Yahweh, who sees with the heart and not the eyes, has a way of broadening His guest list when it suits His purposes.
Throughout the history of humankind, it seems that Yahweh has looked for emissaries of Grace in persons whom society says are unlikely candidates. For example, when it was time to choose who might be the father and mother of “a great nation,” God’s chosen people, Yahweh chose an old man and a barren old woman—Abraham and Sarah. Yahweh chose the second-born, Jacob—a momma’s boy—over his more powerful brother, Esau. Yahweh chose Moses, a murderer with an identity crisis, to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. Yahweh will later choose a barren older woman to conceive and bear John the Baptist and will chose a young, unmarried girl named Mary to be the Theotokos—the bearer of God. The LORD, it seems, delights in choosing the unlikely candidate and then in doing the impossible.
Particularly in the American South, dominant society gazed at brothers and sisters of color and judged them with the eye. These “outsiders” were different, subordinate, inferior, so many said. And yet Yahweh had fashioned them out of His own image, just like those whose skin was lighter. During the first 70 years of the 20th century, relatively affluent people in my hometown gazed at those who worked among the countless spindles of the textile mills and thought that they were inferior. “Proper folks” often referred to these “others” as “lint heads,” because they carried bits of cotton home with them at the end of a long and difficult workday.
Somewhat “sophisticated,” moneyed people in the American North gazed at some of Jane’s ancestors in southern Georgia and called them “crackers.” Yahweh saw them with His heart and called not a few into itinerant ministry within His great church.
Descendants of those who came over on the Mayflower later gazed upon their neighbors from famine-stricken Ireland and called them all sorts of names. Others did the same for Jews who fled the persecution of Europe, forgetting that American ancestors came here because of similar persecution. Yahweh gazed upon all these people with His heart.
The list goes on. Some of humanity, who sees only with the eye, gazes at groups of society, treating them as unlovable because those groups happen to love in what may appear to be unconventional fashions. Likewise, however, many of those in the unconventional groups see their so-called adversaries primarily as “deplorables” who cling to guns and faith.
So many within our society gaze at the unborn and fail to see them at all. After all, the thought process argues, they aren’t God’s creatures, they’re only choices to be made. With His heart, Yahweh, I argue, tenderly looks at those being carefully knitted together in their mother’s womb [Psalm 139:13]. They are as special and as worthy of His divine love as are you and me.
A thousand years after the little barbecue in Bethlehem, where they had to find an extra chair for the forgotten son, Yahweh gazed upon the world with His heart and sent the ultimate king. This new king didn’t have a sword or a shield. He didn’t ride a war horse. He didn’t command a treasury. He needed a borrowed pillow each night as He lay down His head. This new king—this second Adam—showed us what it means to see with one’s heart. He offered an Eleventh Commandment, a “new command”: that we love each other as He loves us. And then, He laid down his life for us. He became the ultimate Parable, where the innocent is crucified, and the guilty go free.
I suppose it’s just an issue of viewpoint. Are you content with 20/20? Or do you long for a more “cardiac” sort of vision? Jesus has shown us the Way.
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