1 Samuel 16:1-13; John 9:1-7, 15-17, 25-41
The word from God to Samuel is direct: “God doesn’t look at things like humans do.” How do human beings look on things?
- If the human being is a loan officer at the bank, she’s looking at your bank balance and your FIFO score – are you credit worthy?
- If the human being is the professor, he’s looking at the term paper that is two weeks late and looks a lot like something copied from Wikipedia – Is this work original and did you really try?
- If the human being is a doctor, she’s looking at your MRI, CT scan, ultrasound, and blood tests – What is this patient’s diagnosis and what is the prognosis of wellness?
- If the human being is a human resources director, he’s looking at your employment application and checking primary and secondary references – Does this person have the skills necessary for the position and can she grow with the position?
In all these situations, and countless more, the human being – perhaps you and me – is looking at specific sets of metrics for particular requirements. But if these are examples of how human beings look at people, how then does God see?
Samuel is cast as the human resources director in today’s reading. He’s done this before. He had been in on the anointing of Saul. The donkeys of Saul’s father had wandered off and Saul had no luck in finding them. The servant boy searching with him finally suggested that they find the seer – Samuel – who knew everything. Samuel had been alerted by God that a man from the tribe of Benjamin would be seeking him and Samuel was to anoint him leader of God’s people Israel. Saul was the most handsome young man in all Israel and he stood head and shoulders above everyone else. Saul found Samuel, who relieved his mind about the donkeys, gave him a feast, anointed him as Israel’s leader, and told him how his commission would be confirmed (1 Samuel 9).
Unfortunately Saul's ruling became problematic. He broke the commands which God had given him. Samuel was forced to revoke Saul’s commission, declaring, “The Lord will commission [another] as leader over God’s people, because you didn’t keep the Lord’s command” (1 Samuel 13:14). At a later time, Samuel announced to Saul, “The Lord has ripped the kingdom of Israel from you today. He will give it to a friend of yours, someone who is more worthy than you” (1 Samuel 15:28).
So God sent Samuel to Bethlehem and Jesse’s family to anoint a new king. That was a politically risky move. It could have been seen by Saul to be an act of rebellion. But Samuel went in peace to perform a ritual.
Samuel was all set to find another Saul – hand-some, strong, massive. Jesse’s eldest son fit that description. Samuel was ready to pounce, but God reined him in. I don’t “look at things like humans do.” The divine perception of reality differs significantly from our limited human view. When Samuel stopped using just his eyes and relied instead on the spirit of God, he immediately “saw” that the “ruddy,” harp-playing, dancing shepherd-son of Jesse offered the spiritual strength and leadership that Israel would need from its next king.
How many of us, if we were in Samuel’s place as God’s human resources director, would have jumped at the chance to pick Eliab? All right, we might have looked at Abinadab and then chosen between the two. But as God told Samuel, “Humans see only what is visible to the eyes, but the Lord sees into the heart.” God sees what people are made of. Remember the psalmist said “You have examined me. You know me. You know when I sit down and when I stand up. Even from far away, you comprehend my plans” (Psalm 139:1-2). God sees very differently than we do. A comment made by Sherlock Holmes comes to mind: “My dear Watson, you see, but you do not observe.” How many of us are “seeing” but not really “observing” because we aren’t seeing from a spiritual perspective?
Samuel was invited to see spiritually, to see as God sees, when it came to anointing David as the next king of Israel. Seeing spiritually amounts to believing before seeing. Samuel had to align his faith with God’s will in order to see a king in the ruddy-faced, gangly teen, runt of the Jesse litter, which is how everyone – Jesse included – saw David. The fundamental principle of quantum physics is this: First you believe it, then you see it. If you want examples of this, just watch the new “Cosmos” television series hosted by Neal deGrasse Tyson. Believe then see. In the Christian tradition it was Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th century, who said, “I believe, in order that I might understand.”
The man blind from birth to whom Jesus gave sight not only came to see physically, he came to see spiritually, see as God sees. Following his healing he encountered Pharisees who could not see as God sees. The man’s spiritual sight allowed him to see how the Pharisees couldn’t see. The once blind man knew that Jesus was at the very least a prophet. And at a second interrogation by the Pharisees, the man observed,
“This is incredible! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he healed my eyes! We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners. God listens to anyone who is devout and does God’s will. No one has ever heard of a healing of the eyes of someone born blind. If this man wasn’t from God, he couldn’t do this.”Then when the man met Jesus again, Jesus asked him, “Do you believe in the Human One – the Son of Man?” The man said that he wanted to believe. “You have seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
Jesus continued, saying he came into the world to exercise judgment so that those who don’t see can see and those who see will become blind and that failure to see is the consequence of sin.
There are many reasons we can’t physically see. Just look around and see how many of us wear glasses. Then there are some who wear contacts. And many of us have had issues with cataracts that impair our vision. Those can be fixed in several ways: removal, implants, laser surgery. And we are glad for that when any of those are appropriate for our situation.
It is harder to deal with spiritual cataracts. What are those things in us that God can see but we cannot see which prevent us from seeing spiritually? What makes us cataracted Christians? When we are looking for Sauls and Eliabs and Abinadabs, God is looking for people of faith.
Paul told the Corinthian faithful that the first Christians included those who by ordinary standards were not wise, powerful, or from the upper classes. God chose those the world considered foolish to shame the wise, those considered weak to shame the strong, and those considered low-class and low-life – considered by the world as nothing – to reduce what the world considered something to nothing (1 Corinthians 1:26-28).
But look how God used unacceptable people to do wondrous and mighty things. Ordinary people like Moses, who couldn’t talk before people; ordinary people like the twelve disciples, none of them rich, or famous, or studied – just twelve common men with uncommon faith. And if you read the Bible with an eye toward whom God chooses, you will see over and over again that God has let the gospel hang by a thread, committing the future to insignificant people, unnamed and unknown in many cases, but ordinary, not outlandish, in their talents. Look at the young David, a scrawny adolescent chosen to replace the hand-some and charismatic Saul. But David’s obedience to God's word, his faith in God’s presence in his life, and his humility before God when he failed, established him as Israel’s greatest ruler.
So we have two kinds of cataracts: the one which can’t imagine that God can use us for anything to advance the Gospel; and the one which can’t see how God can use someone around us to further Christ’s presence in the world. There is a larger cataract. The cataract that prevents us from seeing that God is still active in the world, that the crucifixion and resurrection still have meaning for the world – not just for me personally, but for every human being other than me, regardless of their worldly status.
Whatever our cataract may be, Christ can remove it. A little spiritual spittle and mud, some confession and repentance, some believing to bring seeing. God sees us as followers, believers, servants, redeemed children of the kingdom.
Once I was blind, but now I see.
Thanks be to God.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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