The Devil's Deal
Commentary
The old television game show, Let’s Make a Deal, featured a studio audience full of oddly dressed people, eager for their chance to be on TV and eager for an opportunity to win big. And there were, indeed, opportunities to win big -- appliances, living room sets, cars, boats, and expensive vacations. The fascinating twist of the show, however, was the equal opportunity to get stuck with something altogether worthless.
The contestant almost always began by earning some easy money. The host, the inimitable Monty Hall, would give $50, for example, to a woman who had a pen in her purse. Once that person was up and playing, now with cash in hand, Hall would offer to trade them that fresh cash for something else. This is where the gamble began to come in. Was it preferable to hold onto the small but known winnings, or to trade it in for whatever was behind “Door Number Two.”
The deal-making might go on through several layers with a given contestant. They might trade one thing in, only to get a somewhat better thing. Then Hall would ask if they would trade that better known thing for yet another unknown, which of course might have been better still. Up and up it might go, until the person ends up trading in a brand new living room set for a year’s supply of tuna fish. Or, alternatively, they might trade in that living room set and win a Caribbean vacation.
The appeal for the contestants, of course, was all that they might win. The appeal for the audience was watching the contestants agonize through the tough choices. Shall I hold onto what I know is pretty good, or shall I trade it in for what might be really great?
By the design of the show, however, no one was ever asked to trade it what was truly great for something that, at best, would only be pretty good. Yet that is always the devil’s deal. And this week’s passages offer different angles on the silly trades we make.
1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)
This scene is all kinds of human.
Our selected Old Testament passage comes from the end of the era of the judges. That was an indefinite period. It was the vagueness that came between the conquest of the land under Joshua and the beginning of the monarch under Saul and then David. Israel was not so much a united nation as a loose confederation of tribes, as likely to fight each other as to fight an enemy on the outside. And the leadership structure was equally indefinite: no elections, no line of succession, no clarity about where the next leader would come from or what he or she would do.
The judges were mostly ad hoc military heroes, raised up by God to meet Israel’s need in a time of some enemy oppression. Their “reigns” were sporadic, and sometimes very localized. And without strong leadership, the nation was characterized by lawlessness and they seemed to be spiritually adrift.
The last of the judges was Samuel, and he exceeded all the judges that were before him. He was truly recognized as a national leader. He led Israel solidly for a generation. He brought spiritual direction and strength back to the land. One senses that the right hand was on the wheel during Samuel’s lifetime.
But then the people saw what was ahead, and it may have looked to them very much like what they had left behind. Samuel was getting old, and there was no one on the horizon that seemed suitable to succeed him. Would Israel again revert to the mess that had characterized the generations prior to Samuel?
And so the people came with a solution. “Give us a king to govern us.” A king, they reckoned, would provide the things they had lacked before. A king would bring strong, centralized leadership. A king would be a national figure. And a king would create a royal line, a natural succession.
We know from history, of course, that any system of government is only as good as the people who run it. Each system has its pros and its cons. But the chief pro or con of any system -- and the factor that is impossible to write into a constitution -- is the quality of the person or people who are in charge. Yes, a monarchy would bring some stability that the era of the judges lacked. But succeeding generations would prove that a good judge is still better than a bad king.
Meanwhile, the people bring another factor to their calculation: “like other nations.” They are not only looking back and looking ahead for Israel, they are also looking around. And when they look around, they see how other nations are doing it. Since we always want a car, a kitchen, and a playset like the neighbors’, it shouldn’t surprise us that Israel wants a king like the kind their neighbors have, too.
And so the people came looking for Samuel to appoint for them a king, and Samuel did not cotton to their idea. Of course, they could have packaged their proposal better. Telling him that he was getting old and his sons were no good was hardly a winsome approach. The fact that the Lord had to tell Samuel that it was God, not Samuel, being rejected by the people is probably a good indication of what was going on inside of Samuel.
The Lord gives Samuel permission to grant Israel’s request. But like any potent product, it must come with a warning label attached to it. The people had better know what they’re getting into before they get into it. And so the Lord issues the people a sober warning through Samuel about what a king might bring.
In the end, it is a terribly human scene. The people are making their very human kinds of calculations. They are, in the words of the proverb, leaning on their own understanding, but not so much trusting the Lord (Proverbs 3:5). Samuel, too, for as admirable as he is, is still an utterly human being. One senses that his reaction was not entirely spiritual, but that he had some skin in the game. And then there is the ever-present human problem of looking around, comparing ourselves to others, and coveting -- desiring our neighbor’s wife, our neighbor’s donkey, and our neighbor’s king.
2 Corinthians 4:13--5:1
Paul begins this part of his correspondence with the Corinthians by making a sort of side point that deserves a sermon all its own. He quotes from Psalm 116:10, “I believed, and so I spoke,” and he connects that to his own ministry. In “the same spirit of faith,” he notes, “we also believe, and so we speak.”
This phrase, and the underlying truth, would be a suitable statement for us to make each time we step into the pulpit. And it seems to resonate with a larger principle within Paul. We remember the recipe for salvation he articulated for the Romans: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Romans 10:9 NASB). Speaking our faith is essential, you see. And, in the next breath, Paul notes that speaking is essential to others’ faith, as well: “How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14 NASB).
The larger context for this excerpt is the seemingly awkward relationship between Paul and the people of Corinth at this moment in time. It appears that 2 Corinthians was written in the midst of a conflict between Paul and these people that he knew so well and with whom he had spent so much time. Along the way, Paul makes several references that suggest misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Furthermore, it seems that the Corinthians had fallen under the influence of a group that Paul disparagingly refers to as “super apostles” (11:15), and Paul is forced to reassert his authority with them.
In the process, Paul has to present his spiritual resume in a way that troubles him (he says, “I am talking like a madman” in 11:23), but that is the sort of thing that is needed to work with the people in Corinth. The advantage to us is that it gives us some elements of Paul’s biography that we would not otherwise have. And it also affords us a generous glimpse into his understanding of his apostleship.
So it is that, in our selected passage, Paul is telling the Corinthians about the what and the why of his ministry. “Everything is for your sake,” he declares, while tacitly making clear that what he does is not for his sake -- or at least not to his benefit in any worldly sense. Indeed, by worldly standards, his ministry is a truly costly and painful business. Yet “we do not lose heart,” he insists. For whatever struggles he is experiencing in his work for the Lord (and he gives a remarkable list of his hardships in 11:23-28), he understands all of it to be a “slight momentary affliction.”
Moreover -- and this is a key point to grasp in a New Testament theology of suffering -- the so-called “slight momentary affliction” is not just a temporary inconvenience we go through. Rather, it is an essential step on our way to our destination. For it “is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”
Finally, Paul’s conclusion in this pericope reminds us of our larger “let’s make a deal” theme for this week. The old game show routinely featured the offer of something unseen: the potential of either treasure or trash behind some Door Number Two. Paul acknowledges that we trade in our present assets, such as they are, for things that are unseen. But there is no question about the surpassing value of what is beyond, for it is made by God.
Mark 3:20-35
The scene that Mark reports seems to have two strains within it. On the one hand, there is Jesus’ natural family. On the other hand, there are “the scribes who came down from Jerusalem.” Both groups misunderstand Jesus. And Jesus offers different responses to each.
Jesus’ family bookends the pericope. At the beginning, they are patently worried about him, and so they make the trip to come “to restrain him.” At the end, they have arrived at the house where Jesus is, and Jesus learns of their arrival and their wish to see him.
The family’s misunderstanding of Jesus is that “he has gone out of his mind.” It is not necessary the condemnatory assessment of the Jerusalem scribes. It is rather, I think, the frightened lay diagnosis of family members who care and are confused.
The 1970 rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, begins with a worried Judas explaining what troubles him. “I don’t like what I see,” he cries, as he laments the great hubbub of public excitement and expectation surrounding Jesus. And then he offers this poignant perspective: “Nazareth's most famous son should have stayed a great unknown. Like his father carving wood, he'd have made good. Tables, chairs and oaken chests would have suited Jesus best. He'd have caused nobody harm, no one alarm.” (http://www.lyricsdepot.com/jesus-christ-superstar/heaven-on-their-minds.html)
We don’t have any clue that the actual Judas felt those things, but it seems very plausible that Jesus’ family did. Perhaps they feared that things were getting out of control. Perhaps they sensed that this could only lead to trouble for him. Perhaps they yearned for him to be, again, “a great unknown.”
At the end of the passage, when the concerned family members arrive to see Jesus, Jesus takes the opportunity to redefine family. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asks. And then he points to those who do the will of God as his true family. It is a redefinition of family that helps us to understand the church. And that is where Mark leaves it, while the concern of Jesus’ family and their misunderstanding of events remains, for the moment, unresolved.
Meanwhile, between the bookends of Jesus’ family, we have the assessment of the Jerusalem scribes, as well as Jesus’ response to them. Their conclusion is much more sinister. They have seen Jesus’ work, and they attribute it to the devil himself.
Jesus’ response to them comes at two levels. First, he refutes their logic. It makes no sense for “the ruler of demons” to “cast out demons,” and thus that cannot be who Jesus is. But then Jesus goes on to condemn their misunderstanding as the worst sort of sin.
The teaching about the unforgivable sin has troubled many an earnest soul. Eugene Peterson’s rendering of this passage adds helpful insight: “If you persist in your slanders against God’s Holy Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives, sawing off the branch on which you’re sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives.” It’s an interpretive translation, to be sure, but it helps to frame the unforgivable sin as a persistent rejection rather than some careless foot-foul. I like, too, Peterson’s logic about the relation between this sin and forgiveness.
Finally, we always do well to keep any teaching in its context. In this case, the teaching on the unpardonable sin is part of Jesus’ response to the scribes, which suggests that the unforgivable sin is the very thing they are doing. They are witnessing the work of the Spirit in their midst, and rather than rejoicing in it, they condemn it as the work of the devil.
Application
When the children of Israel asked Samuel to appoint for them a king, God was never mentioned. Samuel was mentioned. Samuel’s sons were mentioned. Other nations were mentioned. God was not. They know not what they do.
The reader finds out what is really at stake at the same moment that Samuel does. “They have not rejected you,” the Lord explains to Samuel, “but they have rejected me from being king over them” And this is nothing new. “Just as they have done to me,” God says, “from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods...”
God wasn’t mentioned in Israel’s request, but it turns out that God is the real issue. Of course he is! For what Israel failed to recognize in their circumstance was that they already had a king. The Lord God was their king, and any other king that Samuel might appoint for them would represent an incalculable loss.
“Let’s make a deal,” the enemy suggests, negotiating with our misguided human instincts. “You can keep the grand prize that you already have -- the pearl of great price, the priceless treasure -- or you can trade it in for some blemished, finite, fallen thing behind Door Number Two. And Israel traded the Lord God for Saul son of Kish.
And the trades go on. The people of Paul’s day, you recall, “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles... They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:23, 25 NRSV).
Such foolish trades, of course, come from not seeing clearly. Jesus told of the gentleman who stumbled on the treasure buried in the field and the merchant who came across the pearl of great price. Both saw clearly enough to trade gladly all that they had for what they knew was worth even more. The rich young ruler, by contrast, did not.
Most of the people of Jesus’ day did not see clearly what they had in him. In the selection from Mark, his family evidently did not comprehend who and what he was. Moreover, the religious leaders from Jerusalem were completely wrong about who and what Jesus was, scandalously attributing his work to the devil rather than to the Spirit of God. And some months in their wake and under their influence, the mob in Pilate’s courtyard foolishly exchanged Jesus for Barabas.
Meanwhile, when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he tried to help them see more clearly. What could be seen was the present suffering. Whatever suffering we may be experiencing is always plainly in the field of our vision as human beings. But Paul wanted them to see what is not always so apparent to us -- that which is within and that which is ahead. The obvious part is the superficial, the material part. But Paul reminded them, “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” The obvious part is the present, but Paul reminded them about the future: “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”
From Eve to Esau to Demas, human beings have always been suckered by the devil’s deal. And so we must hold tightly to the truth. We must see clearly both what we have in the Lord and what he has in store for us.
Alternative Application(s)
Mark 3:20-35 -- “Victims of Circumstance”
How often and how easily we judge a person by what is going on around that person, or by what is happening to that person. Job is a fine case in point. As readers, we observe that Job did nothing wrong, that he was an innocent victim of unthinkable calamity. Yet his friends gathered around, saw what had happened to Job, and made judgments about Job as a result.
In the episode from Jesus’ ministry recorded in our Gospel lection, Mark simply reports Jesus’ popularity. There is no teaching or behavior on Jesus’ part that should have elicited condemnation. On the contrary, the powerful work he was doing was drawing great crowds of people to him. Yet this circumstance leads Jesus’ family and the religious leaders from Jerusalem to arrive at very harsh conclusions about Jesus himself.
Perhaps we still do the same thing in our day. Some entertainer, athlete, or politician becomes a phenomenon -- the center of considerable attention and hype. For great segments of the population, that hype snowballs, drawing still greater crowds. But for others, not swept up in the hysteria, the judgment swings in the other direction. They view the phenomenon with suspicion and the person with uncharitable skepticism precisely because of the hype surrounding him or her. Their opinion is no more informed than the enthusiastic crowds -- indeed, perhaps less -- but the very momentum of popularity raises certain eyebrows.
As a sports fan, I find I am often guilty of this with college or professional athletes. I will hear the buzz about a particular player before I ever see him play, and certainly before I know anything about him personally. I find, though, that the very buzz turns me off, and so I dislike him before I know anything about him. I internally root against his success for no reason other than a sort of anti-bandwagon reflex within me.
But this uncharity may also be at work in us in ways that are closer to home. Perhaps there is someone in our workplace or in our field who makes a great splash. Perhaps someone in our neighborhood or social group becomes the sudden center of inordinate attention. To join the enthusiasm may be an unthinking reflex. But to oppose the person may be an uncharitable reflex, and that is even worse.
The contestant almost always began by earning some easy money. The host, the inimitable Monty Hall, would give $50, for example, to a woman who had a pen in her purse. Once that person was up and playing, now with cash in hand, Hall would offer to trade them that fresh cash for something else. This is where the gamble began to come in. Was it preferable to hold onto the small but known winnings, or to trade it in for whatever was behind “Door Number Two.”
The deal-making might go on through several layers with a given contestant. They might trade one thing in, only to get a somewhat better thing. Then Hall would ask if they would trade that better known thing for yet another unknown, which of course might have been better still. Up and up it might go, until the person ends up trading in a brand new living room set for a year’s supply of tuna fish. Or, alternatively, they might trade in that living room set and win a Caribbean vacation.
The appeal for the contestants, of course, was all that they might win. The appeal for the audience was watching the contestants agonize through the tough choices. Shall I hold onto what I know is pretty good, or shall I trade it in for what might be really great?
By the design of the show, however, no one was ever asked to trade it what was truly great for something that, at best, would only be pretty good. Yet that is always the devil’s deal. And this week’s passages offer different angles on the silly trades we make.
1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)
This scene is all kinds of human.
Our selected Old Testament passage comes from the end of the era of the judges. That was an indefinite period. It was the vagueness that came between the conquest of the land under Joshua and the beginning of the monarch under Saul and then David. Israel was not so much a united nation as a loose confederation of tribes, as likely to fight each other as to fight an enemy on the outside. And the leadership structure was equally indefinite: no elections, no line of succession, no clarity about where the next leader would come from or what he or she would do.
The judges were mostly ad hoc military heroes, raised up by God to meet Israel’s need in a time of some enemy oppression. Their “reigns” were sporadic, and sometimes very localized. And without strong leadership, the nation was characterized by lawlessness and they seemed to be spiritually adrift.
The last of the judges was Samuel, and he exceeded all the judges that were before him. He was truly recognized as a national leader. He led Israel solidly for a generation. He brought spiritual direction and strength back to the land. One senses that the right hand was on the wheel during Samuel’s lifetime.
But then the people saw what was ahead, and it may have looked to them very much like what they had left behind. Samuel was getting old, and there was no one on the horizon that seemed suitable to succeed him. Would Israel again revert to the mess that had characterized the generations prior to Samuel?
And so the people came with a solution. “Give us a king to govern us.” A king, they reckoned, would provide the things they had lacked before. A king would bring strong, centralized leadership. A king would be a national figure. And a king would create a royal line, a natural succession.
We know from history, of course, that any system of government is only as good as the people who run it. Each system has its pros and its cons. But the chief pro or con of any system -- and the factor that is impossible to write into a constitution -- is the quality of the person or people who are in charge. Yes, a monarchy would bring some stability that the era of the judges lacked. But succeeding generations would prove that a good judge is still better than a bad king.
Meanwhile, the people bring another factor to their calculation: “like other nations.” They are not only looking back and looking ahead for Israel, they are also looking around. And when they look around, they see how other nations are doing it. Since we always want a car, a kitchen, and a playset like the neighbors’, it shouldn’t surprise us that Israel wants a king like the kind their neighbors have, too.
And so the people came looking for Samuel to appoint for them a king, and Samuel did not cotton to their idea. Of course, they could have packaged their proposal better. Telling him that he was getting old and his sons were no good was hardly a winsome approach. The fact that the Lord had to tell Samuel that it was God, not Samuel, being rejected by the people is probably a good indication of what was going on inside of Samuel.
The Lord gives Samuel permission to grant Israel’s request. But like any potent product, it must come with a warning label attached to it. The people had better know what they’re getting into before they get into it. And so the Lord issues the people a sober warning through Samuel about what a king might bring.
In the end, it is a terribly human scene. The people are making their very human kinds of calculations. They are, in the words of the proverb, leaning on their own understanding, but not so much trusting the Lord (Proverbs 3:5). Samuel, too, for as admirable as he is, is still an utterly human being. One senses that his reaction was not entirely spiritual, but that he had some skin in the game. And then there is the ever-present human problem of looking around, comparing ourselves to others, and coveting -- desiring our neighbor’s wife, our neighbor’s donkey, and our neighbor’s king.
2 Corinthians 4:13--5:1
Paul begins this part of his correspondence with the Corinthians by making a sort of side point that deserves a sermon all its own. He quotes from Psalm 116:10, “I believed, and so I spoke,” and he connects that to his own ministry. In “the same spirit of faith,” he notes, “we also believe, and so we speak.”
This phrase, and the underlying truth, would be a suitable statement for us to make each time we step into the pulpit. And it seems to resonate with a larger principle within Paul. We remember the recipe for salvation he articulated for the Romans: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Romans 10:9 NASB). Speaking our faith is essential, you see. And, in the next breath, Paul notes that speaking is essential to others’ faith, as well: “How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14 NASB).
The larger context for this excerpt is the seemingly awkward relationship between Paul and the people of Corinth at this moment in time. It appears that 2 Corinthians was written in the midst of a conflict between Paul and these people that he knew so well and with whom he had spent so much time. Along the way, Paul makes several references that suggest misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Furthermore, it seems that the Corinthians had fallen under the influence of a group that Paul disparagingly refers to as “super apostles” (11:15), and Paul is forced to reassert his authority with them.
In the process, Paul has to present his spiritual resume in a way that troubles him (he says, “I am talking like a madman” in 11:23), but that is the sort of thing that is needed to work with the people in Corinth. The advantage to us is that it gives us some elements of Paul’s biography that we would not otherwise have. And it also affords us a generous glimpse into his understanding of his apostleship.
So it is that, in our selected passage, Paul is telling the Corinthians about the what and the why of his ministry. “Everything is for your sake,” he declares, while tacitly making clear that what he does is not for his sake -- or at least not to his benefit in any worldly sense. Indeed, by worldly standards, his ministry is a truly costly and painful business. Yet “we do not lose heart,” he insists. For whatever struggles he is experiencing in his work for the Lord (and he gives a remarkable list of his hardships in 11:23-28), he understands all of it to be a “slight momentary affliction.”
Moreover -- and this is a key point to grasp in a New Testament theology of suffering -- the so-called “slight momentary affliction” is not just a temporary inconvenience we go through. Rather, it is an essential step on our way to our destination. For it “is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”
Finally, Paul’s conclusion in this pericope reminds us of our larger “let’s make a deal” theme for this week. The old game show routinely featured the offer of something unseen: the potential of either treasure or trash behind some Door Number Two. Paul acknowledges that we trade in our present assets, such as they are, for things that are unseen. But there is no question about the surpassing value of what is beyond, for it is made by God.
Mark 3:20-35
The scene that Mark reports seems to have two strains within it. On the one hand, there is Jesus’ natural family. On the other hand, there are “the scribes who came down from Jerusalem.” Both groups misunderstand Jesus. And Jesus offers different responses to each.
Jesus’ family bookends the pericope. At the beginning, they are patently worried about him, and so they make the trip to come “to restrain him.” At the end, they have arrived at the house where Jesus is, and Jesus learns of their arrival and their wish to see him.
The family’s misunderstanding of Jesus is that “he has gone out of his mind.” It is not necessary the condemnatory assessment of the Jerusalem scribes. It is rather, I think, the frightened lay diagnosis of family members who care and are confused.
The 1970 rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, begins with a worried Judas explaining what troubles him. “I don’t like what I see,” he cries, as he laments the great hubbub of public excitement and expectation surrounding Jesus. And then he offers this poignant perspective: “Nazareth's most famous son should have stayed a great unknown. Like his father carving wood, he'd have made good. Tables, chairs and oaken chests would have suited Jesus best. He'd have caused nobody harm, no one alarm.” (http://www.lyricsdepot.com/jesus-christ-superstar/heaven-on-their-minds.html)
We don’t have any clue that the actual Judas felt those things, but it seems very plausible that Jesus’ family did. Perhaps they feared that things were getting out of control. Perhaps they sensed that this could only lead to trouble for him. Perhaps they yearned for him to be, again, “a great unknown.”
At the end of the passage, when the concerned family members arrive to see Jesus, Jesus takes the opportunity to redefine family. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asks. And then he points to those who do the will of God as his true family. It is a redefinition of family that helps us to understand the church. And that is where Mark leaves it, while the concern of Jesus’ family and their misunderstanding of events remains, for the moment, unresolved.
Meanwhile, between the bookends of Jesus’ family, we have the assessment of the Jerusalem scribes, as well as Jesus’ response to them. Their conclusion is much more sinister. They have seen Jesus’ work, and they attribute it to the devil himself.
Jesus’ response to them comes at two levels. First, he refutes their logic. It makes no sense for “the ruler of demons” to “cast out demons,” and thus that cannot be who Jesus is. But then Jesus goes on to condemn their misunderstanding as the worst sort of sin.
The teaching about the unforgivable sin has troubled many an earnest soul. Eugene Peterson’s rendering of this passage adds helpful insight: “If you persist in your slanders against God’s Holy Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives, sawing off the branch on which you’re sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives.” It’s an interpretive translation, to be sure, but it helps to frame the unforgivable sin as a persistent rejection rather than some careless foot-foul. I like, too, Peterson’s logic about the relation between this sin and forgiveness.
Finally, we always do well to keep any teaching in its context. In this case, the teaching on the unpardonable sin is part of Jesus’ response to the scribes, which suggests that the unforgivable sin is the very thing they are doing. They are witnessing the work of the Spirit in their midst, and rather than rejoicing in it, they condemn it as the work of the devil.
Application
When the children of Israel asked Samuel to appoint for them a king, God was never mentioned. Samuel was mentioned. Samuel’s sons were mentioned. Other nations were mentioned. God was not. They know not what they do.
The reader finds out what is really at stake at the same moment that Samuel does. “They have not rejected you,” the Lord explains to Samuel, “but they have rejected me from being king over them” And this is nothing new. “Just as they have done to me,” God says, “from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods...”
God wasn’t mentioned in Israel’s request, but it turns out that God is the real issue. Of course he is! For what Israel failed to recognize in their circumstance was that they already had a king. The Lord God was their king, and any other king that Samuel might appoint for them would represent an incalculable loss.
“Let’s make a deal,” the enemy suggests, negotiating with our misguided human instincts. “You can keep the grand prize that you already have -- the pearl of great price, the priceless treasure -- or you can trade it in for some blemished, finite, fallen thing behind Door Number Two. And Israel traded the Lord God for Saul son of Kish.
And the trades go on. The people of Paul’s day, you recall, “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles... They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:23, 25 NRSV).
Such foolish trades, of course, come from not seeing clearly. Jesus told of the gentleman who stumbled on the treasure buried in the field and the merchant who came across the pearl of great price. Both saw clearly enough to trade gladly all that they had for what they knew was worth even more. The rich young ruler, by contrast, did not.
Most of the people of Jesus’ day did not see clearly what they had in him. In the selection from Mark, his family evidently did not comprehend who and what he was. Moreover, the religious leaders from Jerusalem were completely wrong about who and what Jesus was, scandalously attributing his work to the devil rather than to the Spirit of God. And some months in their wake and under their influence, the mob in Pilate’s courtyard foolishly exchanged Jesus for Barabas.
Meanwhile, when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he tried to help them see more clearly. What could be seen was the present suffering. Whatever suffering we may be experiencing is always plainly in the field of our vision as human beings. But Paul wanted them to see what is not always so apparent to us -- that which is within and that which is ahead. The obvious part is the superficial, the material part. But Paul reminded them, “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” The obvious part is the present, but Paul reminded them about the future: “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”
From Eve to Esau to Demas, human beings have always been suckered by the devil’s deal. And so we must hold tightly to the truth. We must see clearly both what we have in the Lord and what he has in store for us.
Alternative Application(s)
Mark 3:20-35 -- “Victims of Circumstance”
How often and how easily we judge a person by what is going on around that person, or by what is happening to that person. Job is a fine case in point. As readers, we observe that Job did nothing wrong, that he was an innocent victim of unthinkable calamity. Yet his friends gathered around, saw what had happened to Job, and made judgments about Job as a result.
In the episode from Jesus’ ministry recorded in our Gospel lection, Mark simply reports Jesus’ popularity. There is no teaching or behavior on Jesus’ part that should have elicited condemnation. On the contrary, the powerful work he was doing was drawing great crowds of people to him. Yet this circumstance leads Jesus’ family and the religious leaders from Jerusalem to arrive at very harsh conclusions about Jesus himself.
Perhaps we still do the same thing in our day. Some entertainer, athlete, or politician becomes a phenomenon -- the center of considerable attention and hype. For great segments of the population, that hype snowballs, drawing still greater crowds. But for others, not swept up in the hysteria, the judgment swings in the other direction. They view the phenomenon with suspicion and the person with uncharitable skepticism precisely because of the hype surrounding him or her. Their opinion is no more informed than the enthusiastic crowds -- indeed, perhaps less -- but the very momentum of popularity raises certain eyebrows.
As a sports fan, I find I am often guilty of this with college or professional athletes. I will hear the buzz about a particular player before I ever see him play, and certainly before I know anything about him personally. I find, though, that the very buzz turns me off, and so I dislike him before I know anything about him. I internally root against his success for no reason other than a sort of anti-bandwagon reflex within me.
But this uncharity may also be at work in us in ways that are closer to home. Perhaps there is someone in our workplace or in our field who makes a great splash. Perhaps someone in our neighborhood or social group becomes the sudden center of inordinate attention. To join the enthusiasm may be an unthinking reflex. But to oppose the person may be an uncharitable reflex, and that is even worse.
