In today’s first Scripture reading, 1 Samuel 16: 1-13, God
asks Samuel to go to Bethlehem to meet Jesse, “for I have chosen my king from
among his sons.” Samuel is
frightened. “How can I do that? Saul
will kill me,” is Samuel’s response. How
often do we not use a similar excuse” “I can’t do that, Lord! So and so will kill me.” “I can’t do that Lord! What if so-and-so hears
about it; my name will be mud!” “What
will so-and-so think if he/she hears what I’ve done?” “No, Lord! No way; I will get into trouble if
I do that. I will lose friends. I will
lose that promotion. I will be looked upon with disdain,” and so on and on we
go with excuses of why we cannot follow the Spirit’s lead!
When Samuel gets to Bethlehem and meets Jesse’s sons, he is
awed by the ones Jesse presents. In fact, he is so enamored by the appearance
and lofty stature of the first of Jesse’s sons, Samuel is convinced that he is
the one God has chosen. But God lets Samuel know that it is not so. “Do not
judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him.
Not as man sees does God see, because he sees the appearance but the Lord looks
into the heart.” Among the seven sons Jesse presents none is the one God has chosen
for His anointed. So Samuel asks: “Do
you have any other sons?” And Jesse says
“Yes, my youngest son is tending sheep.” “Send for him,” Samuel orders. It is
the youngest son, the one excluded, the one assigned menial tasks, the least
likely humanly speaking that is chosen to be anointed the next king of
Israel. Samuel anoints him “and from
that day on, the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David.”
Jesus, in today’s Gospel, Mark 2: 23-28, is also doing the
unthinkable. He and His disciples are traipsing through someone’s wheat field
and, not only that, stripping the wheat of its grain! Furthermore, they are
doing so on the Sabbath! Jesus ignores
two rules: 1) you do not create a path through a neighbor’s wheat field nor do
you strip the ripe grains and 2) you do not work on the Sabbath! For Jesus, there is a human need that must be
met: His disciples are hungry and need something to eat to continue the
journey. And furthermore, as He tells
those objecting to His behavior, the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath!
What might we learn from these readings? 1) that judging by
appearances is usually off base, 2) that it is the Spirit of the Lord that
empowers one, including me and you, to
do what God is calling us to do, 3) that,
sometimes, the unthinkable is the right thing to do and 4) that the objection “what will others think of me” can be Satan’s
cunning way of luring us into the temptation of choosing human will
over God’s will!
