How long will you grieve over Saul?
Samuel is mourning the king who looked the part and failed at the job. Remember, God’s people had demanded a king to fight their wars and bring them glory. But Saul was driven by the lust for power and self-preservation.
He still wears the crown. But it is already an empty symbol.
As Samuel laments what is lost, God is moving on.
Samuel, fill your horn with oil. Be on your way.
Samuel is afraid. Saul sits on the throne. He’s prone to anger.
The old order remains. God's future is not clear.
Still, Samuel has learned not to argue when God has decided.
He travels to the little town of Bethlehem, home of Jesse, grandson of Ruth and Boaz,
father of eight boys.
Eliab is the eldest. Samuel sees him.
There. That one looks like a king.
He looks like Saul. That’s reassuring. Samuel reaches for the oil.
But before he can act, God speaks.
Do not look on his appearance or the height of his stature.
The Lord does not see as mortals see.
You look at outward appearance. I look on the heart.
One by one seven sons stand before Samuel. And one by one, God says no.
The prophet who heard God’s voice as a child cannot yet see as God sees.
Finally, he asks Jesse, Are these all the sons you have?
Well, there is the youngest. But he’s out watching the sheep.
The youngest. He’s given no name. Still in the field. An afterthought.
Seven sons. And God’s chosen one wasn’t even in the room.
Send for him, Samuel says. No one sits until he arrives.
His name is David. He will be Israel’s greatest king. His story takes many turns.
But first the shepherd boy is anointed. God’s unlikely choice.
If you heard this story as a child, I’m guessing it was taught as the triumph of the underdog. The youngest child, the one consistently overlooked in his own family, gets the leading role.
That’s how I was prepared to preach it.
But last week, I took this text to Colorado and began to see something different in it.
I was with leaders of new worshiping communities from across our denomination and around the country. My wife, Sara, has served and led in this movement, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, for seventeen years.
I’ve heard her stories. But this was my first gathering.
The headlines about the future of faith are mostly dire these days; charts and graphs move down and to the right. I wonder whether we have become so accustomed to bad news that reality is filtered through its lens.
At lunch on Wednesday, I sat with my friend Rafael Viana, organizing pastor of Casa Brasil, a fast-growing congregation north of Atlanta. Rafael has an infectious energy and contagious laugh. He simply radiates the light of Christ. He’s one of the most gifted pastors in our denomination. Everywhere he has served, churches have grown in number and impact.
And right now, the community he has built is at risk.
He described it. Some worshipers afraid to leave their homes. Employment opportunities shrinking. Grants that have sustained his ministry and helped cover his benefits coming to an end.
To follow his call and pastor his people, Rafael delivers for Amazon.
Here is an anointed pastor whose church is growing.
Here are people finding community, sustaining hope, growing in faith.
While we worry about churches in decline, here, across from me, is a pastor building one.
And the support that allows him to do it is running out.
We worshipped each day. Voices from a dozen countries folded into one prayer: Korean, Spanish, Swahili, French, English, Portuguese. We sang in the language of our hearts. The music melted and molded me. I saw the fruit of Sara’s years of encouragement, mentoring, and pastoring these leaders. I watched our sons being embraced by a new community. I held the baby of a pastor from Rochester. I listened to stories of struggle and God’s sustaining power. The mantra of the week was God is able.
I had been preparing to preach this story too small. Yes, the underdog is chosen. But the message reaches far past the shepherd boy.
It is about the breadth of God’s vision and the limits of our own.
God is already renewing life in places we have stopped looking.
Rafael does not need someone to tell him he’s called.
He’s already out in the field.
The same is true of all the leaders I met.
The question is whether people like me, often slow to see, will open our eyes to see what
God is doing.
I know the statistics. I see the charts.
But sometimes I mistake one part of the story for the whole truth.
We're skilled at counting what we’re losing.
We've gotten out of practice when it comes to noticing what's being born.
That's Samuel's mistake. Ours too.
We hear that God looks on the heart as a verse of comfort.
Even when the world overlooks you, God doesn't. And that's true.
But it’s not what’s happening here.
David isn’t even in the room yet. God is speaking to Samuel.
The prophet sent to find a king.
God is not reassuring the overlooked boy.
God is correcting the man he sent to anoint him.
This isn’t only assurance that God sees who we overlook.
It’s a command for us to see.
The Apostle Paul makes this demand of those who follow the way of Jesus:
From now on, we regard no one from a human point of view anymore.
In Christ, there is a new creation.
The old ways of deciding who matters, whose gifts are worth seeing, no longer apply.
Samuel pours the oil on David's head. David goes back to the field.
Saul is still king. David is still a shepherd.
Nothing has changed.
But a new day has begun. God’s future is set in motion. Just you wait.
Samuel is grieving what he thought would be.
When we lose the future we imagined, it’s hard to imagine any future at all.
Maybe you carried that grief in here this morning.
Maybe you’ve been praying for someone you love but fear that nothing will change.
Maybe the sting of absence makes it hard see anything beyond this heavy moment.
Maybe faith that once felt so alive has gone quiet; you’re wondering if it’s gone for good.
David is anointed.
Saul is still king.
But that is no longer the whole truth.
This story makes no empty promise of instant transformation.
It asks us to trust that God is at work beyond our narrow vision.
Listen. What you see right now is not all there is.
Our last evening in the mountains we were anointed with oil and blessed with prayer.
Sara anointed our son Ben. Then me.
Her thumb pressed to my forehead with a prayer for renewal.
I don’t remember the exact words.
I do remember the tears.
The feeling of grace. The scales falling from my eyes.
Samuel stands with the oil in his hands, waiting for the boy he almost overlooked.
The one God has chosen.
The ones God still chooses.
They are in the field:
gathering people, building community, making room for faith to find root.
They are the reformers of this age.
There is more than you can see.
Even here, in our grief, God is building something new.
In the church. In the world. In your life.
Join the movement.
Fill your horn with oil.
Be on your way.