Message for worship at West Richmond Friends Meeting, 11th of Seventh Month, 2021
Speaker: Brian Young
Scripture: I Samuel 15:34–16:13, NRSV:
15:34 Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. 35 Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.
16:1 The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” 2 Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ 3 Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” 4 Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” 5 He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
6 When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” 7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 8 Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 9 Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 10 Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” 11 Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” 12 He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” 13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.
Samuel Anointing Young David. Reuven Rubin, 1971
Good morning, Friends!
I am planning to spend the next several Sundays when I speak on some parts of the story of David, from First and Second Samuel. David is a fascinating character, and his story is perhaps the longest unified narrative in the Hebrew Bible— it sort of depends on how you measure the accounts of Moses, but it's definitely one of the longest.
There’s an early mention of David in I Samuel that calls him “a man after [God’s] own heart” (13:14), and so some readings of David want to emphasize only his good points, making him all but blameless. In fact, as you might remember, and as we shall certainly see over the next several Sundays, he was deeply flawed. Eugene Peterson says of David’s life that it “disabuses us of the idea that perfection is part of the job description of the men and women who follow Jesus” (TJW, 79). So in what I share with you today and in coming Sundays, the lesson will not, I hope, be “go and do likewise.” The Biblical account here makes it clear that David is not a paragon; the picture is much more complex, much more nuanced, much more human.
The passage that we’ve heard this morning is David’s first entrance, but you’ve probably already noticed that most of it has to do with this fellow Samuel, and also Saul. To fill in the background a bit, Samuel is a prophet, and Saul is Israel’s first king. As God’s representative on the scene, Samuel anointed Saul, essentially making him king by the direction of the Lord—though some suggest that Samuel didn’t hear God correctly, and was instead acting on his own intuition. This interpretation is possible because Saul's kingship as we have it here is the very definition of a fiasco: something that starts out well, but then goes horribly wrong. Saul is a mighty general, and his campaigns against Israel’s neighbors go well to begin with. Samuel is right there with him, representing the Lord, egging Saul on but also correcting him. But then Saul disobeys God, and God withdraws favor from him. (This account is mostly in I Samuel 9–15.) Hence the mournful tone of the beginning to the passage today; Saul and Samuel have parted ways, not to meet again, and as it says in 15:35, “Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel.”
Now, it’s serious business, to replace one king with another, especially when the first king is still living. The process of David taking Saul’s place occupies much of the rest of the book of I Samuel, in large part because Saul resists it and goes to war. That may be why the elders of Bethlehem tremble when they come to meet Samuel, and want to be sure that he comes in peace (16:4). Perhaps they have heard that Samuel and Saul have parted ways, and from that they’ve intuited that Samuel is seeking a replacement—and if Saul hears that Bethlehem is where a rival king dwells, it could be very bad for their town.
The account of how David is chosen puts me in mind of the wider Biblical witness on how God chooses vs. how people choose. First, we remember that God most often chooses from among the least and the marginalized, rather than the greatest and the most powerful. David is not even there when his father presents the older seven sons; Jesse hasn’t even considered him, and has left him to menial work with the flocks. And Samuel, of course, is ready right off the bat to anoint Eliab, the first, the biggest and the best-looking of the whole bunch—”That's got to be God's anointed! Look how big and strong he is!!” Commentators point out that Eliab looks a lot like Saul appeared, at an earlier point: in chapter nine, it says, “There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than [Saul]; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else” (9:2). So this part of David’s story echoes in Jesus’ words that “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first...“ (Mt 19:30 & par.), as well as in what Paul says, that “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (I Cor 1:27b).
Second, we see that when God chooses, it is the inward condition that matters: “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (16:7). Robert Alter’s translation is even more visceral: “[humans] see with the eyes and the Lord sees with the heart” (TDS, 142). There’s the sense that God’s heart—in the Biblical understanding the seat of not just emotion, but also will and judgment and discernment—that God’s heart sees our hearts directly, in a way that no one else can. Samuel’s focus on outward strength is clearly inadequate. I think we see the same thing going on when Jesus chooses his disciples—he sees their hearts with his, knowing every way in which they are limited and flawed, and yet also seeing the strength and potential—and seeing all of this, he chooses.
For the rest of this message, I want to focus on anointing, the sign by which Samuel indicates God’s choice of David. This is a practice that has varied purposes in the Scriptures. Both people and things can be anointed. Most Biblical instances of anointing are with oil, as Samuel does with Saul and David, but others can involve things like perfume, and even blood. Often, the purpose is a commonplace one: cleansing or cosmetic. In other instances, sick and dying people are anointed in hopes of their healing, and after death, anointing is part of preparing a body for burial.
In the Hebrew religious law, anointing is most often related to consecration, or setting apart. This is done for sacred objects, to make them fit for service in the tabernacle or the Temple (e.g., Lev 8:10, Num 7:1). Similarly, there are anointings for priests, sometimes with blood from the sacrifice; and there are also anointings that the priests administer to cleanse those who come to make the sacrifices.
A little bit about the language here: there are several words that are used for this practice in the Hebrew Bible, but the verb that's used for anointing David as king ismashach; As you might notice, there’s a connection here to another important word in the Hebrew Bible, mashiach, which is only one vowel sound different. This is the word we generally translate as “Messiah”. And all this word means is “the anointed one”; mashach is to anoint, mashiach is the one who has been anointed. So David becomes the mashiach of God, God's Anointed, the king that God has chosen.
In the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, mashach was translated chrio, and maschiach as christos; sothe title for Jesus the Messiah, in English, is Christ. An important part of the New Testament where the root word chrio, “to anoint”, shows up is in Luke chapter 4, when Jesus rises in the synagogue in Nazareth to read from the scroll of Isaiah. You'll remember that he reads,
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Lk 4:18–19)
This is an important expression of the royal anointing of Jesus, chosen and sent by God to establish God's purposes—and note the focus of that work: again, it’s not with the high and the mighty, not the wise andthe powerful, but the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed.
What does anointing mean to us; how is this helpful?
Well, I don't know how it's helpful to you; I can say that it's been helpful to me in one instance. There's really only one time in my life that I've been anointed with oil—maybe some of you have also had this experience.
But (if Eden Grace is here with us this morning?), Eden and I had an experience of being anointed with oil at the Stoking the Fire conference that we helped to organize in 2015. Part of the point of this gathering was to take us out of our comfort zones a little bit. So one of the attenders asked for an anointing session, saying that he wanted to be able to anoint those who were called to be ministers and evangelists and pastors. Well, Eden and I, as part of the organizing team for the conference, we couldn't say no to that—we sort of had to show up. It was kind of in the spirit of things, even as unprepared for it as we were. This was not something I had encountered previously; this is the sort of thing of which we would often say, “well, Quakers don't do that,” right?
This fellow—who was, if I remember correctly, from Wilmington Yearly Meeting, from one of the meetings in Tennessee—had been reading some of the passages from the Jewish law, specifically where a priest was to anoint someone by touching their right earlobe and their thumb and their toe with oil. (He didn't actually get down to the toes, he just did our earlobes and our thumbs.)
More than the anointing itself, the most powerful thing about this experience was the prayer that came afterwards. So there was an anointing with oil—a physical anointing—but there was also a spiritual anointing—the anointing in prayer.
Whether we do it outwardly with oil, or not, God has an anointing for those who seek to follow after Jesus. I said that David’s story should not inspire us to “go and do likewise”—but in at least one respect, David’s anointing does set a pattern, because anointing is not something we can determine, or plan, or force. Neither Saul nor David chose their anointing, or even had any inkling it was coming. Anointing was a gift from God, and similarly for us, it is something we receive from God as a gift.
In I John 2:27, John writes:
27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
(The Greek word that is used here for anointing, chrisma, comes from the root chrio, just as christos does.)
John writes of an anointing which abides. The anointing which abides is the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This is not the anointing of a king, for we trust that Jesus is the only king—God’s one anointed—the only one who has authority in the Reign of God. Rather, this is an anointing for each one of us. It abides in us as we abide in God; it teaches us, inwardly, all we need to know; it enables us to discern truth from falsehood, and light from darkness.
And this is not the anointing of the priests, at least not in the sense of being a class of special ones separate from the rest of the people. This is not an anointing of separation, or setting apart, at all. Rather, the anointing which abides is an anointing that should enable us to live more fully in the world, with a compassionate heart for our fellow creatures, listening always for the guidance and direction of the Inward Teacher on how we can take part in God's purposes for the world. It’s like what William Penn says of “true religion,” that it doesn’t “turn us out of the world... but excites our endeavors to mend it.” That's the kind of anointing that we seek.
Anyone who seeks to walk in that way—to walk in the way of Jesus, the anointed one of God, can receive this anointing of the Spirit. It is not something we ourselves can determine, or plan, or force. But it comes as the free gift of God. Let us seek to experience this anointing together, as we wait in quiet.
Samuel Anointing Young David. Reuven Rubin, copyright © 1971. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/. You are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work, as well as to make derivative works based on it, as long as: 1) you attribute whatever part of this work you use to the author, Brian Young, by name; 2) you do not use the work for commercial purposes; 3) you distribute your resulting work only under the same license or a license similar to this one.