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I Samuel 13:1-15

 Samuel Rebukes Saul

     1Saul was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned over Israel forty-two years.

     2Saul chose three thousand men from Israel; two thousand were with him at Mikmash and in the hill country of Bethel, and a thousand were with Jonathan at Gibeah in Benjamin. The rest of the men he sent back to their homes.

     3Jonathan attacked the Philistine outpost at Geba, and the Philistines heard about it. Then Saul had the trumpet blown throughout the land and said, “Let the Hebrews hear!” 4So all Israel heard the news: “Saul has attacked the Philistine outpost, and now Israel has become obnoxious to the Philistines.” And the people were summoned to join Saul at Gilgal.

     5The Philistines assembled to fight Israel, with three thousand chariots, six thousand charioteers, and soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore. They went up and camped at Mikmash, east of Beth Aven. 6When the Israelites saw that their situation was critical and that their army was hard pressed, they hid in caves and thickets, among the rocks, and in pits and cisterns. 7Some Hebrews even crossed the Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead.

   Saul remained at Gilgal, and all the troops with him were quaking with fear. 8He waited seven days, the time set by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and Saul’s men began to scatter. 9So he said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings.” And Saul offered up the burnt offering. 10Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.

     11“What have you done?” asked Samuel.

   Saul replied, “When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Mikmash, 12I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the Lord’s favor.’ So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering.”

     13“You have done a foolish thing,” Samuel said. “You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. 14But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.”

     15Then Samuel left Gilgal and went up to Gibeah in Benjamin, and Saul counted the men who were with him. They numbered about six hundred.

Once again today, we base our Reflection on a story from the First Book of Samuel – a book that relates events from 3,000 years ago, but that often deals with issues that still crop up in our common life in the digital age.

You might remember that a couple of days ago, we read and thought about an earlier story from the reign of Saul, who came in from plowing his fields, heard a report of aggression against his country, and raised an army and came to the rescue of the town of Jabesh Gilead when it was attacked by Ammonites.

Our reading for today tell us about a conflict between the Hebrew people and another of their neighbors, the Philistines. The Philistines are understood to be the ancestors of the Palestinians who are engaged so often in conflict with modern-day Israel. Some of their cities have been excavated by Israeli archaeologists, and can sometimes be visited along the Mediterranean coast. The scholars and historians say the Philistines were a Hellenic people related to the Greeks, and that they had migrated southward and settled in the eastern Mediterranean.

If you remember your world history from high school, you might remember that the Greeks developed some highly effective military traditions that would allow them to prevail in bloody wars against the huge Persian Empire. These traditions would reach their fullest flower in the conquests of Alexander the Great, who achieved military victories all the way to India. So you might imagine why the Philistines would be a threatening enemy to the Israelites, who had only just begun to come together in national unity. What’s more, the Philistines had superior weapons because of metallurgical technology that was regarded as essential to their national security — technology they refused to share without outsiders.

In our reading for today, Saul’s son Jonathan leads an attack on a Philistine outpost, provoking an angry military response from the enemy. Saul raises an army to lead against the Philistines, mustering three thousand troops. But the enemy forces vastly outnumber the Israelites – the Philistines have as many chariots as Saul has total troops.

The prophet Samuel had told Saul to assemble his army and wait. Samuel, the nation’s leading priest and prophet, would come out of retirement to perform a sacrifice and call on God for help against the Philistines. But while Saul waited for Samuel to arrive, he saw his army melting away as his troops began to desert in the face of the superior Philistine forces.

Finally, and in desperation, Saul decided to perform the sacrifice himself. But when Samuel finally arrived, he angrily declared that because of Saul’s action of performing the sacrifice, God would withdraw his blessing from Saul’s reign and give it to another – “a man after his own heart.” (As you might remember, that man would turn out to be David.)

Most people probably read this story and wonder what the big deal was with Saul’s performance of the sacrifice. From a practical standpoint, it seems understandable. In the face of a larger, better-equipped army, and with his own troops disappearing into the countryside, getting on with the sacrifice seems reasonable. Samuel’s furious response to Saul’s sacrifice – and maybe God’s response, for that matter – seems like an over-reaction.

It seems to me that there were two aspects of Saul’s decision that seemed objectionable to Samuel and to God. The first objection, I think, is that Saul had substituted his own judgment for the direction of God’s appointed spokesman. Samuel was understood to be a prophet, which meant God was understood to be speaking through him. But Saul had failed to obey the commandment to wait, and had gone ahead on his own.

The second objection – and one that might have been regarded as even more problematic – is that Saul, in his capacity as king, had taken upon himself the role of religious leader of the people. Saul was meant to be a military and political leader – God had appointed Samuel as the spiritual leader of the covenant people. In terms we use in our world, Saul had violated the separation of church and state.

It seems possible that God might have wanted to prevent the blurring of the line between rulers and “gods” in the ancient world. It was very common for ancient kings and emperors to declare themselves to be gods. The kings of Persia did. So did the emperors of Rome. And the pharaohs of Egypt. God might have intended that there be a bright line between those who provide political and military leadership and those who are religious leaders among his people.

David, for all his well-known sins, seems to have been scrupulous about observing this separation. He was an enthusiastic worshipper, a writer of psalms, and mostly a supporter of God’s Law. But unlike Saul, he would not usurp the role of priest mediating between the people and God. And it seems to me that’s why it was David, and not Saul, who would become the model for godly leadership and the founder of the house into which God himself would choose to be born.

Among God’s people, political and military authorities are not meant to be religious authorities, as well. They are not to use their political power to enforce one theology. The founders of our nation formalized that principle in the “establishment clause” of our constitution. It seems they were wise enough to recognize that the greatest horrors in Christian history have come at times when people failed – as Saul did – to respect that principle. Kings and popes joined in the slaughter of the Crusades. The power of the state was harnessed as the enforcement arm of the Spanish Inquisition. The church in Germany called on its leaders to pledge personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler. When the church and state act together, the result is almost always something that Jesus would never bless.

You might remember that at first, Saul acted as a humble and faithful king. But it seems that it wasn’t long before he began substituting his own judgment for God’s direction as it was being expressed through the prophet Samuel. And once that happened, Saul had begun to slide downward into the kind of abusive reign the people of Israel had been warned about when they demanded a king in the first place.

Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the lessons you teach us out of these ancient stories, and for the way those lessons shed light on the questions we deal with in our own time and place. Open our hearts and minds to be taught and guided by what we read in these stories from the history of your interaction with your people. Amen.

There will be no Reflection tomorrow in observance of the Fourth of July. New Reflections will begin Monday.

Have a great Fourth of July and a great weekend,

And may you worship God joyfully on Sunday,

Henry