The Rev. Dr. Seth Weeldreyer, Kalamazoo First Presbyterian Church
Mark 4:1-9; 1 Samuel 8:1-22
June 9, 2024 – Third Sunday after Pentecost
Do we know the tune? “Come thou Almighty King … Father, all glorious, o’er all victorious, come and reign over us …” It’s a strong melody, stately with a touch of majesty to match the words. Italian hymn, from the 18th century. Nearly three millennia earlier the Israelites didn’t know this rhythmic rise and fall on a musical scale. But Psalm 146 among many others show it’s a desire, an inclination common across generations. Italian hymn was composed about the time of our American Revolution against King George which Lin Manuel Miranda gloriously lampoons in variation on the tune: “…when push comes to shove, I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love.” George Washington “yields his power and steps away” to John Adams in a way King George can only croon “Good luck!” Da, da-da, da dah; da, da-da, da-da, da, da …[i] Despite our real revolution and Miranda’s melodies, truth is “Come Thou Almighty King” could be a tendency even in our time.
I wonder if we know the tune. A tune of yearning for security, prosperity, fullness of life in peace. All good. What we all want. However we affiliate and vote, friends, I believe that refrain repeats in all of our minds and hearts. At best we compose this melody of security / prosperity / peace through respect and honesty, humility, compromise, common values and purpose. It’s a communal life of equity and equanimity that definitely is not always easy. At worst, we start riffing on the melody amid uncertainty, when fear and anxiety, selfish defensiveness, greedy desires cause us to strike discordant tones of division, even demonization.
The Bible tells us, Ancient Israelites started playing a variation on that tune. After they conquered and cleared out the Promised Land, they tried to live a long time with everyone equal under Torah Law. Of course, we can’t put 21st century political constructs on their life—maybe like a blend of pure democracy and communism at their best. It’s actually theocracy—God made everyone equally in the Divine image to live as one community. People with extra authority are military leaders, priests in worship, judges to resolve disputes based on faith – each limited in power by their function. No one is number one, above the Law. Honestly, it’s a bit of a holy mess. Few clear, absolute, certain guarantees. No winner takes all. No one perfect. Remember God called Samuel to the job of prophet because Eli’s sons were corrupt. Now Samuel’s sons take bribes and twist justice, violating Torah covenant life. “Power corrupts” and all that. They subvert the very foundational shared reciprocity that defines Israel’s identity and purpose – without privilege, with equity for all. Samuel’s sons’ behavior begins the undoing of Israel’s life and faith.
The people say: enough of this! They sing, “Come, thou Almighty King.” They see it in other nations. They want what seems a simpler way—like them. They yearn for security from invaders. Or maybe, scholars say, those who accumulate excessive wealth want to protect their privilege. Maybe it’s all stories written much later, crafted as literary historical critique of leader abuses, David and Solomon’s excesses. We don’t really know, of course. Inasmuch as motivation for human behavior stays consistent across time and place, it’s not hard to imagine these possibilities based upon what we see in our society and personal lives.
Yet, Samuel warns that having a king contradicts their most essential identity. From the beginning, God makes clear Israel will be different than other nations. Rather than autocrats and domineering warrior ways, God calls Israel to orchestrate their life together by odd and complicated ways of Torah; lived with messy, hard, frustrating interpretive debates about details: ever based upon the promise of Holy Love that endures forever. You see, more than rejection of Samuel (though again his sons triggered this crisis); ultimately, their request for a king rejects God, turns from faithful trust in God’s way of life by Love, ordered in Law.
Friends, a simplistic desire for autocratic authority may be appealing or, at least, something we accept in a moment as an immediate means to an end. But God and Samuel warn us don’t be deceived—it’s naïve and short-sighted, and costly consequences endure a long time. People ensconced in absolute power take money through taxes and economic practices, take children barely become adults through military service or unfair labor, take land and resources, take, take and take ever more. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Lord Acton once warned. For a people whose central narrative identity is Exodus from Egypt, here’s the shocker: you will effectively be made slaves again, Samuel warns.
Walter Brueggemann is a great prophet like Samuel in our time. Commenting on this text, he asserts: For both the church and the civil community, this text at least makes clear that public questions are central to the Bible. Difficult but unavoidable … believing people cannot withdraw from public questions. It’s about advocating public policy, resisting prejudice in all of its forms, and how practices of monopoly inevitably lead to bondage, oppression, and exploitation. Ancient Israel and other communities that organize power for some at the expense of others reject what Yahweh holds dear, fought mightily against, and sadly wishes were otherwise. Is it possible, Brueggemann asks, to trust the oddness of God’s ways, the hope of the Exodus dream, such that public power need not be for taking but sharing and giving?[ii]
I wonder if we know the tune the ancient Israelites sang: make our nation strong, prosperous, powerful, respected again – dominant over other nations, or at least able to defend itself with unrivaled might, guaranteed not to fail. This melody gets echoed often over time among nations at all levels of world power. Spain or France or Britain in the Colonial era. Some post-colonial African nations. Maybe most extreme and heinous in recent history, Nazi Germany—people accepting Hitler’s fervor after unfair World War I humiliation. Maybe it’s the compelling yearning and illusion of Russia, China, or India today, and yes, heard even in our American discourse. Warn them, God urges Samuel, that this false God seduces us with the illusion of security and the delusion that greed can make us happy and at peace.
Now, friends, let’s pause a moment to be clear: this sermon reflection is not for or against any specific person or party. Though I feel it’s a real concern at this point in our culture. Six or seven years ago at Chautauqua a lecturer laid out research about characteristics of countries that descend from democracy into autocracy. We’re prone to think of nations in Africa or Asia. But he warned that seeds of such a typical process are growing in our society—like growing inequity, acceptance of corruption, and hyper-partisanship that stress our democratic processes. It’s only gotten worse since. We hear people on both sides of our rancor claim the other party in the White House is abusing power, unchecked if not abetted by courts and Congress. We need to distinguish fact from false accusation. We need to respect prosecution of allegations of corruption related to large Ukrainian companies and corruption in hush money payments or elections. As we lament our current acrimony, while paddling down the Kalamazoo River yesterday, a friend among us affirmed that we must extend faith to engage these questions and public concerns. Otherwise, faith isn’t really relevant. Though not raised Presbyterian, he gets what’s been the orientation since our beginning, affirmed time and again, alongside many other faithful Christians. Like Germans in the Nazi era who declared Jesus is my Fuhrer / Leader not Hitler.[iii] Like Americans in the 1960s who affirmed “God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ embraces the whole of human life: social and cultural, economic and political, scientific and technological, individual and corporate.”[iv] And so our Book of Order makes clearly lays this foundation for life together. Truth we pursue, is made clear by the fruits of goodness, flourishing life we share. We pursue that true living faith through compromise, exercised with mutual forbearance, built on freedom of conscience, affirming that people of good faith will differ.
It’s no surprise founders of our nation, many of whom were Presbyterian, built on these beliefs in our own American Exodus journey into the wilderness from British colony to new country. “We the People of the United States,” they wrote, “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Not he or she the powerful autocrat / dictator, “We the People …” Friends, I believe we hear the melody of our desire for security, prosperity, fullness of life in peace as much like Jesus’ way. You know, while it’s simply not true that our nation’s founders created an explicitly Christian nation, it’s fair to say that’s what most people at least nominally were. And I do believe that the way our nation at best tries to sing this familiar melody is much like the stately, majestic tune Jesus taught and embodied. Jesus didn’t leave one all-powerful successor. He promised the Spirit would move among us together—with power in sharing and giving. So open our hearts humbly to accept compromise on some particular policy to affirm what’s most important—honest, fair, generous process of sacrificial service to others.
One of the great confusions and disappointments about Jesus in his time is that he doesn’t proclaim and embody the kind of reign people imagine. They want King David to come again, expecting political–military conquest. He tells parables of the Heavenly Kingdom, stories of ordinary life with a little twist that shows how Holy Love reigns among us. Like God the Sower casts seeds of grace upon the world. Sometimes we hear this parable helpfully as the choir sang—imagining our hearts and minds as the different kinds of soil in which Sacred Grace sprouts and bears fruit, or not. In our rows of pews maybe we imagine a field sown, being nourished for harvest.. And through parables the Spirit speaks many meanings based on life reflected—assumptions about who we are, questions how community works, imagination of Holy Love in the form of which we are created and sent with responsibility to care for our world and ever create new life. Maybe after we’ve grown, we are the seed that God sows throughout the world.
Friends, aren’t we often moved by the power of common will and collective effort? We felt it over this weekend as our whole downtown transformed, teeming with the creativity of art, the pride of affirming love and identity, the fun of doo-dah parading. We feel it when a sports stadium in an historically poorer city resounds with fans singing in unison: You’ll Never Walk Alone. We feel it when as much as public policies, which are important and impactful, our community is built every ordinary day when parents get their children up, dressed and fed. When teachers, shop owners, and larger company employees unlock the door. When medical staff heal another wound or illness. When public safety officers chat on the sidewalk, while workers nearby pick up trash and plant flowers, and a few miles away someone opens the gate at a county park.
You see, friends, the melody I hear Jesus sing is that God reigns through our humble shared service. We know the tune of yearning to live God’s way of abundant life. I pray we all reclaim the familiar melody sung by those who want a king. With thanks again to Lin-Manuel Miranda, can we carry the tune? Da, da-da, da dah; da, da-da, da-da, da, da … Everybody now!
Now that’s a warm up … for the rest of our singing to come today and throughout our lives ahead. Better than solo concertos, God calls us to orchestrate our efforts with a full harmonic choir of all humanity and creation. We know the tune, God’s melody of grace and compassion. Longing for light and truth, longing for peace and hope, longing for food, water, shelter, “Christ be our Light! Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness of whatever we feel about our world. Shine in us, your church gathered today.”[v]
Then we get to sing the melody of the Lord’s Prayer. And finally, we’ll sing the familiar melody of our first hymn again as we go from worship into the world. Same tune. And here’s where Autumn gets to be the star of the show. Well, really, Autumn gets to lead us all in feeling and committing to be the embodiment of God’s way for our world. As we sing, let’s appreciate how she plays a fuller harmony. I’m not setting her up. We’ve discussed and devised together this week. A fuller harmony of our shared efforts – sing out strong as God sows our seeds of life to bear fruit in the world.
We move from Come, Thou Almighty King to Jesus image of God the Sower.
“God of the fertile fields … we would be stewards true, holding in trust from you all that you give; help us in love to share, teach us like you to care for people everywhere, that all may live!”[vi]
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton: An American Musical, edited by Jeremy McCarter, Grand Central Publishing, 2016.
[ii] Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel in Interpretation series (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 68-69
[iii] See the Theological Declaration of Barmen,
[iv] The Confession of 1967 (UPCUSA), paragraph 9.53.
[v] Bernadette Farrell, “Longing for Light, We Wait in Darkness” in Glory to God #314 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).
[vi] Georgia Harkness, “God of the Fertile Fields” in Glory to God #714 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).