We are coming up on about a month since my family and I made a major transition, as my husband Chris received a promotion and our entire family moved across the state to settle in and start our own “news”—new job for me, new schools for the girls.
I could make quite a list of all the “news” but if you have ever made such a move yourself, you know.
One of the patterns which has changed for me in this time has been to have come to a place where each week—really each day—I am balancing reflections on at least four different portions of scripture:
- Our family devotion—Chris and I decided for this year to follow the Abingdon Press Deep Blue curriculum with our girls, so we have a text we read and reflect on for each week.
- My personal devotion—challenged by my colleagues at this summer’s Pastors’ School in Zimbabwe, I’ve committed to reading through the Bible in a year, though the move slowed my pace and I need to up my game to make that goal!
- My sermon preparation—being in a new appointment, I’ve decided to follow the lectionary, and for now at lest, generally preach on the Gospel (it’s hard to go wrong with, you know, Jesus).
- My Bible study preparation—starting this week, my church’s Friday eveningBible Study restarts and I’m tasked with teaching, and for the fall I’ve decided to move through a selection of Biblical passages that speak to who are called to be and what we are called to do as the people of God.
Whew!
Generally I try to have fewer threads out there, but it’s been interesting, as you might imagine, to see these various paths cross, conjoin, and diverge. Already it is feeling like some crazy Biblical cacophony that at times weaves into the most beautiful (or beautifully challenging) symphony.
This week, our family devotion is the story of Samuel anointing Saul as king. (If you’re using the Deep Blue curriculum at church, you’ll know we’re behind a week or so, but hey, don’t tell anyone!)
I have been struck this week, as each morning with our girls we have read a different translation or telling of this story. Our girls’ curriculum has the story filled with repetition—the people calling again and again in words like, “Long live the king!”
If you know this account you know that the people of Israel until then had been led by a rag-tag succession of judges and leaders who primarily saw themselves as those conveying the will of God. But in a move any parent of small children (or you know anyone trying to keep up with the Joneses) can recognize, they see that the other peoples around them have a king and so they cry out to God for one too.
Samuel, being a prophet of God and so a bit wiser and less reactive than everyone else, essentially tells them to be careful what they wish for. And in a move that boggles my mind, God finally concedes and tells Samuel to anoint Saul. (SPOILER ALERT: it won’t go well, for neither Saul nor almost any of the kings which will follow.)
As our nation continued and deepened into discussions of patriotism—specifically whether one ought to be able to knee during the playing of the national anthem at a football game—as well as ongoing debates about the nature of government and its role and most deeply, how we as a nation have been co-opted by the worst, darkest sentiments we carry especially around issues of race and privilege...well, I couldn’t help but be struck each time we would read that story and the people (voiced by my children) would cry out for a king.
We like power.
This is a sad, painful truth of humanity. It is rooted in the darkest part of who we are, as it was seen first in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve didn’t crave community, love, even provision—they HAD all those things. What they wanted was power. Wisdom. To be like God.
And we have continued the struggle. It is as base what Christians for generations have understood as Original Sin. It is on its face today racism, bigotry of all stripes, economic disparity, gender inequality. Human power is always POWER OVER.
And dammit, if anyone is going to have POWER OVER, it should be ME.
As I watch, read and listen to accounts of our political leaders, our church fights, and even the brokenness in our homes and communities, I hear the echoes of this ancient yet disturbingly contemporary sentiment all around us.
Meanwhile, my sermons these weeks have led me and my congregation through some of Jesus’ parables, especially those which challenge us to worry about ourselves (not others) and our own faithfulness. Last week we read Matthew’s account of Jesus’ parable of the workers. Some workers worked all day in the hot sun, and though they received the fair pay promised, they balked that others who worked only an hour also received the same. They felt like they deserved more. But the landowner essentially says, “You got what was fair and what was promised, why should it bother you if I’m generous to others?”
Well, because.
Because otherwise how can we know what we need to do to have POWER OVER others. If God’s grace isn’t based on merit, then perhaps this entire competitive, power-hungry game we’re playing is based on the wrong rules.
And we can’t win. Because winning entails POWER OVER.
But we can’t admit maybe we’re not called to have POWER OVER so we get angrier and more belligerent and we stop listening to each other all together, because we know that to listen often leads to sympathy and even, God forbid, changing our minds and maybe even having to face truths that force us to need to confess and change. Rather than having POWER OVER, maybe we’re called to submit and humble ourselves.
And after all, this Jesus thing is great, but no one told us it might lead us to have to give up some (or all) of what little POWER OVER others we have.
Dammit.
WE WANT A KING.
LONG LIVE THE KING.
We want someone to come fix everything and protect us and hey, we’re willing to give them some POWER OVER us if only they’ll protect some of our POWER OVER others.
I’ve reached the point in my reading through the Bible that I’m wading into Leviticus (see, I told you I was going slowly)...and so far I’m really struck by how God’s laws are directed at “you.” Now I know God means this communally, but I also kind of take it individually. Like here’s what to do if YOU make a mistake. I know later I’ll read about what to do about other people. But I’m kind of struck now by the ways God’s laws, as absolutely communally-oriented as they are (and should be) also encourage us to STAY IN YOUR OWN LANE.
Many years later Jesus will remind God’s people of this when he tells them to worry about the plank in their own eye before trying to pull the splinter out of their neighbor’s eye.
This week, as I begin this new BIble Study with my congregation, we’re looking at Joshua 24–Joshua’s speech to the people as they prepare to enter the Promised Land. The part where he tells them, “Choose this day who you will serve.”
Maybe that’s our problem. From the beginning. That God gave us a choice.
We’re good at making bad choices.
And given the choice between faithfulness or God or striving for POWER OVER others, we almost always choose the latter.
After all, from the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden, faithfulness to God has always been the OPPOSITE of POWER OVER.
So that’s where I find myself this week. Cringing when my children recite cries of, “Long live the King!” Because I know I’ve cried those words in so many different ways.
Convicted by the ways my POWER OVER (both the power I’ve gained and the power I was given through often arbitrary biological traits) drag me into fights and battles I too often feel I have to join without stopping to think whether they are faithful battles to fight at all.
So this week, I’m trying to ask questions of myself about when and how I have chosen the wrong battles, and when I have chosen the wrong sides...and who, this day, I will choose to serve. Perhaps you might join me in the same.
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