A tale of two boys
Commentary
Object:
If we are familiar with both stories, the one inevitably reminds us of the other. The Old Testament lection tells us about Samuel as a boy. The gospel passage tells us about Jesus as a boy. And the similarities between the two episodes are striking.
The Bible is not full of stories of individual children. Children are referenced as a group many times, but very few individual children work their way into the prominence of a story. Yet here we have one of two stories about Samuel as a child, as well as one lone story from Jesus’ childhood.
Both boys’ stories are associated with the Lord’s house, though the setting is more established and permanent in Jesus’ day than it was in Samuel’s. Both episodes feature parents making an annual festival pilgrimage. And both accounts conclude with broad statements about how the young men continued to grow, including specific references to finding favor with both people and God.
The stories are not identical, of course. Samuel’s mother goes to visit him in the place where she had delivered him some years earlier. Jesus’ mother, by contrast, finds her son in the Lord’s house, having feared that he was lost. The apparel is a prominent detail in Samuel’s case, with no parallel in Jesus’ story. And the gospel account presents Jesus as exceptional in several ways, while we have to look elsewhere to make such discoveries about Samuel.
These two similar but not identical passages are linked for us in this week’s lectionary assignment. Is there profit in linking them in our people’s minds? How shall we bring Samuel and Jesus together in a meaningful way?
1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26
The Man in a Gray Flannel Suit, which told the story of Tom Rath, began as a popular novel and was turned into a successful movie in 1956. Perhaps we might preach the story of Samuel this Sunday and title it “The Boy in a Linen Ephod.”
Just as a gray flannel suit connoted certain things in 1950s America, the linen ephod referenced by the writer of 1 Samuel also suggested some things to his original audience. The marked difference is that it was standard fare for an American man to wear such a suit. It was altogether surprising, however, for a child to wear a linen ephod.
The ephod is a priestly garment. We read in Exodus God’s instructions concerning the priests: their qualifications, ordination, apparel, and behavior. Those instructions are part of the larger corpus of material featuring God’s designs for the tabernacle and all that would take place there. And one of the patterns we see in those directions is that the things dedicated to God’s service were meant to be distinctive, exclusive. The ephod appears in the Old Testament as such a distinctive garment for the priests. And so we see that this is the role and identity accorded to Samuel from an early age.
In the larger context of the story, beyond the rather narrow scope of our Old Testament lection, we see that the priesthood is about more than just a uniform. The example of Eli’s adopted son, Samuel, stands in dramatic contrast to Eli’s natural sons, Hophni and Phineas. They are biologically qualified to wear the ephod, but they dishonor their office and their God. Samuel, on the other hand, embodies the holiness befitting a priest of God.
The scene offered by the narrator is lovely and poignant. Previously barren Hannah had promised to dedicate to God a son that he would give her. Samuel was that answered prayer and dedicated child, and so he didn’t live at home with his mother. Instead, the text suggests that she only saw him on this annual occasion, and it was sweetly marked by the making of a new, handmade robe.
We may be more sentimental about our children today than many previous generations have been. Others worked their children harder and earlier. Others married them off younger. And others sent them away to boarding schools at ages that seem to us quite young to be away from home. It may be, therefore, that this arrangement was not as intolerable for Samuel and his family as it seems to us. I have known parents who have had to bid farewell to adult sons and daughters who are called to some distant mission field. In Hannah’s case, that life of service away from home began very early for her son.
Finally, the narrator concludes our passage with a big-picture summary. “The boy Samuel continued to grow,” he reports, “both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people.” In a remarkable economy of words, the author reveals a great deal.
That Samuel grew in stature is to be expected; it is the natural order of things. We see throughout 1 Samuel a recognition of how important stature is (9:2; 10:22-23; 16:7; 17:4). At the same time, however, God’s word to Samuel regarding Eliab combines with the demise of Saul and fall of Goliath to reveal the limitations of physical stature.
The additional growth noted in Samuel is his “favor with the Lord and with the people.” This is a far more substantive and meaningful growth. While growth in stature is an entirely superficial matter, favor with God and people suggests something more internal: something about Samuel’s growth in character. He is not just becoming a man, you see; he is becoming a man of God.
Colossians 3:12-17
Our people are accustomed to church being a place of theology. They may be less inclined to recognize it as a setting for anthropology. Yet the scriptures contribute much to our understanding of human beings. And it is essential for us to be as clear in what we believe about humankind as in what we believe about God.
The problem with a secular approach to anthropology, of course, is that it ignores, perhaps necessarily, an enormous dimension and factor in who and what we are. We have come to understand human beings more and more through both the medical sciences and the social sciences. We increasingly recognize the ways in which we are the product of our genes, our environment, our culture, our childhoods, and more. Yet none of these properly accounts for our intersection with God.
An anthropologist’s view of an individual’s or a community’s religious life is almost certain to be a bit one-sided. Religion is assumed to be a product of a culture. And so it is treated more like the art they create than like the other communities with which they might deal. In other words, there is little or no anthropological accounting for religion as relationship.
As Christians, however, we cannot comprehend our religion apart from relationship. The biblical record bears witness to a God who, from the beginning, is in -- and desires to be in -- relationship with us. That relationship might be close or distant; healthy or broken; antagonistic, reconciled, or intimate. It could be a good relationship or a poor one, but it is always a relationship.
So it is that the apostle Paul offers in this passage three great adjectives that inform and summarize our anthropology as Christians. And they are, we observe, adjectives that assume a relationship. Paul says that we are chosen, holy, and beloved.
Each adjective reveals that what we are begins with God. We are certainly not holy on our own, for only God is truly holy. All other holiness is derivative. “Chosen” and “beloved,” likewise, suggest an other -- someone else who chooses us and loves us.
This Sunday’s sermon could go no further than just those three words. How much gospel, truth, and grace are contained in just those affirmations! Almighty God loves us, and as a result he has chosen us and made us holy. It is a three-point sermon that begs, instead, to be a three-part series.
That our sense of anthropology begins with God is essential, meanwhile, to understanding the rest of the passage -- and to understanding ourselves, for that matter. What we are and are meant to be, you see, flows from him. For our character and our behavior are supposed to be extensions of the one who loved us, chose us, and sanctified us.
The attributes that Paul lists in the second half of verse 12 are all statements of what we are called to be. They summarize the Christian’s character. And that is not a claim of moral superiority on our part, but the presumed byproduct of the divine starting place.
The prophet Hosea lamented about his people that they “consecrated themselves to a thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved” (Hosea 9:10). The issue, you see, is not a holier-than-thou pretense. Rather, there is a spiritual cause-and-effect at work in us human beings. We become like that which we love, that which we worship. And so if we love and worship the one who is kind and compassionate, patient and humble, then we shall become more and more like him.
So the starting place is God himself and our relationship with him. Our character flows out of that relationship. And our behavior, in turn, flows from our character.
The “one another” instructions that Paul gives to the Colossians are behavioral. They are part of a larger genre that we see throughout the New Testament epistles, and they are instructions that should form our behavior today as well. But the outward, interpersonal behaviors are only fully understood as extensions of our character. And our character is only rightly comprehended when seen as an extension of our relationship with God.
Luke 2:41-52
Luke is often credited with being the gospel writer who is most attentive to populations that were often overlooked, including the poor, women, and children. Perhaps it is his general concern for children, then, that prompts him to include the one episode we have from Jesus’ childhood. As such, this week’s gospel lection is a unique treasure, for no other gospel writer gives us a glimpse of Jesus between Christmas and his baptism as an adult.
The story is a marvelous juxtaposition of the routine with the extraordinary. The narrator begins with the observation that this trip to Jerusalem was something the family did every year. Annual occasions are special, to be sure, but still it suggests a routine. Here we go again.
Into that lovely routine, however, came an irregularity. And it was no small departure from the norm; it was the stuff of tragedy. It was every parent’s nightmare. Mary and Joseph lost their child.
We can imagine how easily this might have happened. In all likelihood, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were part of a larger contingent of pilgrims. “Caravans, which afforded protection from robbers, were common on pilgrimages for the feasts in Jerusalem,” Craig Keener explains. “Traveling with a caravan, in which neighbors from their town would watch the community children together, Mary and Joseph might assume that the near-adult Jesus was with companions, especially if by now they had younger children to attend to” (Craig Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament [InterVarsity Press, 2014], p. 186).
It was arguably the very routine nature of the trip that made Jesus getting lost more possible. When we are in the midst of a setting or occasion that is unusual, we cling more tightly and watch more carefully. It’s precisely in the midst of the routine that we relax. And so it wasn’t perhaps until the caravan stopped for the night on the journey home that Joseph and Mary realized Jesus was missing.
The routine has been interrupted by calamity. But the extraordinary part is still yet to come. That is what Luke reveals when the anxious parents return to Jerusalem.
We read that Mary and Joseph searched for their lost son for three days. Any of us who have lost track of a child in a store or neighborhood for even two minutes knows the panic. If it extends beyond an hour, the panic becomes torture. We can only imagine, therefore, the grief and anxiety of these parents who go day after day without knowing the whereabouts of their son.
Beyond the poignant human element, meanwhile, we also observe the symbolic beauty of the account. Joseph and Mary searched for Jesus in Jerusalem for three days. Their desperation and grief anticipates that of Jesus’ followers thirty years later, when they too would be without him in Jerusalem for three days.
Finally, Joseph and Mary find their missing son. And here is where the episode turns extraordinary. The boy Jesus has located himself in the temple.
After an exhaustive search, the person who has finally found what was lost commonly remarks, “It’s always the last place you look.” Apart from the obvious principle that it is by definition the last place you look because you stop looking, there is this larger pattern: namely, that the thing wasn’t where you expected it to be. Indeed, it was perhaps found where you did not expect to find it. And evidently the temple was the last place Mary and Joseph looked -- they did not expect to find their 12-year-old son there. And so, of all the places in the big city that he could have chosen for himself, it is telling that young Jesus chose the temple.
Furthermore, his remarkable choice is accompanied by a remarkable performance. It seems that young Jesus is able to hold his own with his elders. And it is not in some superficial matter -- that he is tall for his age, or as strong as a grown man, or some such. No, he amazes the teachers with his understanding and his answers.
Finally, when Jesus’ parents express their understandable dismay at his absence, he answers as though the Jerusalem temple was the most natural place in the world for him to be. And he identifies himself with the place in a very personal way, calling it “my Father’s house.” In the context of a conversation with his human father, it is a striking statement. And it is an early and extraordinary indication of Jesus’ understanding, even at 12, of who he is.
Application
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews is not one of this week’s contributors. Yet we make take a cue from him or her this week, for that letter trains us to read the Old Testament a certain way. Hebrews looks back at the Old Testament through the lens of typology, and through that lens we are able to see Jesus.
This type of hermeneutic is susceptible to mischief and abuse, of course, but then so is every hermeneutic employed by human beings. If we grant the underlying premise of the approach, however, we and our people will find it a fruitful way to read scripture. And the underlying premise is that God’s omniscience lies behind the text of the Old Testament, using its rituals and characters to anticipate and foreshadow Christ.
The writer of Hebrews makes a big point of Melchizedek. The high priest is also an important figure. But Hebrews does not make more than a passing reference (11:32) to Samuel. Still, the interpretive logic of the letter to the Hebrews may apply.
Samuel emerges from the pages of the Old Testament as a unique and remarkable figure. He is dedicated to God from before he is born, and he is engaged directly by God while he is still rather young. He becomes the unquestioned leader of Israel, even though he is neither a king nor a conqueror. Rather, his unrivaled leadership springs from one truth: God speaks to Samuel, and everyone knows it. He is priest. He is prophet. And he becomes the kingmaker in Israel before he dies.
Samuel is not shrouded in the mystery of Melchizedek, nor is he strictly a type like the high priest. But it may be that this week’s pairing of passages invites us to see more about Jesus through the character of Samuel. The New Testament affirms Christ’s preexistent purpose. His unique role in God’s plan is announced while he is still a baby, and he demonstrates some sense for it while still a boy. He was widely recognized as a prophet in his own time. We come later to recognize his unique priesthood. And the New Testament declares that, in the end, he will be the unquestioned, unrivaled, universally acknowledged Lord of all.
Alternative Application(s)
1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26; Colossians 3:12-17. “Don We Now” The Old Testament author is conscious of Samuel’s apparel. He notes at the start of our passage what the young boy was wearing, and then he adds the story of the clothes that his mother would bring for him. Together, the two details paint a poignant picture of a boy who has been dedicated to the Lord’s service.
The apostle Paul, meanwhile, is equally concerned with the Christian’s apparel. For us, however, the proof that we belong to the Lord and serve him is not found in our physical clothing. Rather, Paul has in view a kind of spiritual garb.
This is not a small theme, a passing thought, for the apostle. On the contrary, he finds and invests great meaning in the image of what we wear spiritually. He offers an extended metaphor about the Christian solider and the armor of God in his letter to the Ephesians (6:10-17). And elsewhere he speaks of putting on (or dressing oneself in) Christ (Romans 13:14), the imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:53-54), and the new self (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). This passage’s pair of exhortations to “clothe yourselves,” therefore, is central to Paul’s vision of the Christian life.
It’s a beautiful idea: to be clothed with certain attributes. It suggests an all-over, head-to-toe quality. It also conveys the truth that this is what people see when they encounter us. And in our own vernacular, we can imagine the people around us seeing the kindness, patience, and love that characterize us and exclaiming, “I just love your outfit!”
In our present culture, we make a great fuss over appearances. We look in the mirror and try to make sure everything looks just right. If only we were so attentive to the interior world of our character and motives. And so Paul’s imagery helps us to translate from what we treat as important to what really is important.
What young Samuel wore evidenced that he served the Lord. Paul would say that the same thing ought to be true of you and me.
The Bible is not full of stories of individual children. Children are referenced as a group many times, but very few individual children work their way into the prominence of a story. Yet here we have one of two stories about Samuel as a child, as well as one lone story from Jesus’ childhood.
Both boys’ stories are associated with the Lord’s house, though the setting is more established and permanent in Jesus’ day than it was in Samuel’s. Both episodes feature parents making an annual festival pilgrimage. And both accounts conclude with broad statements about how the young men continued to grow, including specific references to finding favor with both people and God.
The stories are not identical, of course. Samuel’s mother goes to visit him in the place where she had delivered him some years earlier. Jesus’ mother, by contrast, finds her son in the Lord’s house, having feared that he was lost. The apparel is a prominent detail in Samuel’s case, with no parallel in Jesus’ story. And the gospel account presents Jesus as exceptional in several ways, while we have to look elsewhere to make such discoveries about Samuel.
These two similar but not identical passages are linked for us in this week’s lectionary assignment. Is there profit in linking them in our people’s minds? How shall we bring Samuel and Jesus together in a meaningful way?
1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26
The Man in a Gray Flannel Suit, which told the story of Tom Rath, began as a popular novel and was turned into a successful movie in 1956. Perhaps we might preach the story of Samuel this Sunday and title it “The Boy in a Linen Ephod.”
Just as a gray flannel suit connoted certain things in 1950s America, the linen ephod referenced by the writer of 1 Samuel also suggested some things to his original audience. The marked difference is that it was standard fare for an American man to wear such a suit. It was altogether surprising, however, for a child to wear a linen ephod.
The ephod is a priestly garment. We read in Exodus God’s instructions concerning the priests: their qualifications, ordination, apparel, and behavior. Those instructions are part of the larger corpus of material featuring God’s designs for the tabernacle and all that would take place there. And one of the patterns we see in those directions is that the things dedicated to God’s service were meant to be distinctive, exclusive. The ephod appears in the Old Testament as such a distinctive garment for the priests. And so we see that this is the role and identity accorded to Samuel from an early age.
In the larger context of the story, beyond the rather narrow scope of our Old Testament lection, we see that the priesthood is about more than just a uniform. The example of Eli’s adopted son, Samuel, stands in dramatic contrast to Eli’s natural sons, Hophni and Phineas. They are biologically qualified to wear the ephod, but they dishonor their office and their God. Samuel, on the other hand, embodies the holiness befitting a priest of God.
The scene offered by the narrator is lovely and poignant. Previously barren Hannah had promised to dedicate to God a son that he would give her. Samuel was that answered prayer and dedicated child, and so he didn’t live at home with his mother. Instead, the text suggests that she only saw him on this annual occasion, and it was sweetly marked by the making of a new, handmade robe.
We may be more sentimental about our children today than many previous generations have been. Others worked their children harder and earlier. Others married them off younger. And others sent them away to boarding schools at ages that seem to us quite young to be away from home. It may be, therefore, that this arrangement was not as intolerable for Samuel and his family as it seems to us. I have known parents who have had to bid farewell to adult sons and daughters who are called to some distant mission field. In Hannah’s case, that life of service away from home began very early for her son.
Finally, the narrator concludes our passage with a big-picture summary. “The boy Samuel continued to grow,” he reports, “both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people.” In a remarkable economy of words, the author reveals a great deal.
That Samuel grew in stature is to be expected; it is the natural order of things. We see throughout 1 Samuel a recognition of how important stature is (9:2; 10:22-23; 16:7; 17:4). At the same time, however, God’s word to Samuel regarding Eliab combines with the demise of Saul and fall of Goliath to reveal the limitations of physical stature.
The additional growth noted in Samuel is his “favor with the Lord and with the people.” This is a far more substantive and meaningful growth. While growth in stature is an entirely superficial matter, favor with God and people suggests something more internal: something about Samuel’s growth in character. He is not just becoming a man, you see; he is becoming a man of God.
Colossians 3:12-17
Our people are accustomed to church being a place of theology. They may be less inclined to recognize it as a setting for anthropology. Yet the scriptures contribute much to our understanding of human beings. And it is essential for us to be as clear in what we believe about humankind as in what we believe about God.
The problem with a secular approach to anthropology, of course, is that it ignores, perhaps necessarily, an enormous dimension and factor in who and what we are. We have come to understand human beings more and more through both the medical sciences and the social sciences. We increasingly recognize the ways in which we are the product of our genes, our environment, our culture, our childhoods, and more. Yet none of these properly accounts for our intersection with God.
An anthropologist’s view of an individual’s or a community’s religious life is almost certain to be a bit one-sided. Religion is assumed to be a product of a culture. And so it is treated more like the art they create than like the other communities with which they might deal. In other words, there is little or no anthropological accounting for religion as relationship.
As Christians, however, we cannot comprehend our religion apart from relationship. The biblical record bears witness to a God who, from the beginning, is in -- and desires to be in -- relationship with us. That relationship might be close or distant; healthy or broken; antagonistic, reconciled, or intimate. It could be a good relationship or a poor one, but it is always a relationship.
So it is that the apostle Paul offers in this passage three great adjectives that inform and summarize our anthropology as Christians. And they are, we observe, adjectives that assume a relationship. Paul says that we are chosen, holy, and beloved.
Each adjective reveals that what we are begins with God. We are certainly not holy on our own, for only God is truly holy. All other holiness is derivative. “Chosen” and “beloved,” likewise, suggest an other -- someone else who chooses us and loves us.
This Sunday’s sermon could go no further than just those three words. How much gospel, truth, and grace are contained in just those affirmations! Almighty God loves us, and as a result he has chosen us and made us holy. It is a three-point sermon that begs, instead, to be a three-part series.
That our sense of anthropology begins with God is essential, meanwhile, to understanding the rest of the passage -- and to understanding ourselves, for that matter. What we are and are meant to be, you see, flows from him. For our character and our behavior are supposed to be extensions of the one who loved us, chose us, and sanctified us.
The attributes that Paul lists in the second half of verse 12 are all statements of what we are called to be. They summarize the Christian’s character. And that is not a claim of moral superiority on our part, but the presumed byproduct of the divine starting place.
The prophet Hosea lamented about his people that they “consecrated themselves to a thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved” (Hosea 9:10). The issue, you see, is not a holier-than-thou pretense. Rather, there is a spiritual cause-and-effect at work in us human beings. We become like that which we love, that which we worship. And so if we love and worship the one who is kind and compassionate, patient and humble, then we shall become more and more like him.
So the starting place is God himself and our relationship with him. Our character flows out of that relationship. And our behavior, in turn, flows from our character.
The “one another” instructions that Paul gives to the Colossians are behavioral. They are part of a larger genre that we see throughout the New Testament epistles, and they are instructions that should form our behavior today as well. But the outward, interpersonal behaviors are only fully understood as extensions of our character. And our character is only rightly comprehended when seen as an extension of our relationship with God.
Luke 2:41-52
Luke is often credited with being the gospel writer who is most attentive to populations that were often overlooked, including the poor, women, and children. Perhaps it is his general concern for children, then, that prompts him to include the one episode we have from Jesus’ childhood. As such, this week’s gospel lection is a unique treasure, for no other gospel writer gives us a glimpse of Jesus between Christmas and his baptism as an adult.
The story is a marvelous juxtaposition of the routine with the extraordinary. The narrator begins with the observation that this trip to Jerusalem was something the family did every year. Annual occasions are special, to be sure, but still it suggests a routine. Here we go again.
Into that lovely routine, however, came an irregularity. And it was no small departure from the norm; it was the stuff of tragedy. It was every parent’s nightmare. Mary and Joseph lost their child.
We can imagine how easily this might have happened. In all likelihood, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were part of a larger contingent of pilgrims. “Caravans, which afforded protection from robbers, were common on pilgrimages for the feasts in Jerusalem,” Craig Keener explains. “Traveling with a caravan, in which neighbors from their town would watch the community children together, Mary and Joseph might assume that the near-adult Jesus was with companions, especially if by now they had younger children to attend to” (Craig Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament [InterVarsity Press, 2014], p. 186).
It was arguably the very routine nature of the trip that made Jesus getting lost more possible. When we are in the midst of a setting or occasion that is unusual, we cling more tightly and watch more carefully. It’s precisely in the midst of the routine that we relax. And so it wasn’t perhaps until the caravan stopped for the night on the journey home that Joseph and Mary realized Jesus was missing.
The routine has been interrupted by calamity. But the extraordinary part is still yet to come. That is what Luke reveals when the anxious parents return to Jerusalem.
We read that Mary and Joseph searched for their lost son for three days. Any of us who have lost track of a child in a store or neighborhood for even two minutes knows the panic. If it extends beyond an hour, the panic becomes torture. We can only imagine, therefore, the grief and anxiety of these parents who go day after day without knowing the whereabouts of their son.
Beyond the poignant human element, meanwhile, we also observe the symbolic beauty of the account. Joseph and Mary searched for Jesus in Jerusalem for three days. Their desperation and grief anticipates that of Jesus’ followers thirty years later, when they too would be without him in Jerusalem for three days.
Finally, Joseph and Mary find their missing son. And here is where the episode turns extraordinary. The boy Jesus has located himself in the temple.
After an exhaustive search, the person who has finally found what was lost commonly remarks, “It’s always the last place you look.” Apart from the obvious principle that it is by definition the last place you look because you stop looking, there is this larger pattern: namely, that the thing wasn’t where you expected it to be. Indeed, it was perhaps found where you did not expect to find it. And evidently the temple was the last place Mary and Joseph looked -- they did not expect to find their 12-year-old son there. And so, of all the places in the big city that he could have chosen for himself, it is telling that young Jesus chose the temple.
Furthermore, his remarkable choice is accompanied by a remarkable performance. It seems that young Jesus is able to hold his own with his elders. And it is not in some superficial matter -- that he is tall for his age, or as strong as a grown man, or some such. No, he amazes the teachers with his understanding and his answers.
Finally, when Jesus’ parents express their understandable dismay at his absence, he answers as though the Jerusalem temple was the most natural place in the world for him to be. And he identifies himself with the place in a very personal way, calling it “my Father’s house.” In the context of a conversation with his human father, it is a striking statement. And it is an early and extraordinary indication of Jesus’ understanding, even at 12, of who he is.
Application
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews is not one of this week’s contributors. Yet we make take a cue from him or her this week, for that letter trains us to read the Old Testament a certain way. Hebrews looks back at the Old Testament through the lens of typology, and through that lens we are able to see Jesus.
This type of hermeneutic is susceptible to mischief and abuse, of course, but then so is every hermeneutic employed by human beings. If we grant the underlying premise of the approach, however, we and our people will find it a fruitful way to read scripture. And the underlying premise is that God’s omniscience lies behind the text of the Old Testament, using its rituals and characters to anticipate and foreshadow Christ.
The writer of Hebrews makes a big point of Melchizedek. The high priest is also an important figure. But Hebrews does not make more than a passing reference (11:32) to Samuel. Still, the interpretive logic of the letter to the Hebrews may apply.
Samuel emerges from the pages of the Old Testament as a unique and remarkable figure. He is dedicated to God from before he is born, and he is engaged directly by God while he is still rather young. He becomes the unquestioned leader of Israel, even though he is neither a king nor a conqueror. Rather, his unrivaled leadership springs from one truth: God speaks to Samuel, and everyone knows it. He is priest. He is prophet. And he becomes the kingmaker in Israel before he dies.
Samuel is not shrouded in the mystery of Melchizedek, nor is he strictly a type like the high priest. But it may be that this week’s pairing of passages invites us to see more about Jesus through the character of Samuel. The New Testament affirms Christ’s preexistent purpose. His unique role in God’s plan is announced while he is still a baby, and he demonstrates some sense for it while still a boy. He was widely recognized as a prophet in his own time. We come later to recognize his unique priesthood. And the New Testament declares that, in the end, he will be the unquestioned, unrivaled, universally acknowledged Lord of all.
Alternative Application(s)
1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26; Colossians 3:12-17. “Don We Now” The Old Testament author is conscious of Samuel’s apparel. He notes at the start of our passage what the young boy was wearing, and then he adds the story of the clothes that his mother would bring for him. Together, the two details paint a poignant picture of a boy who has been dedicated to the Lord’s service.
The apostle Paul, meanwhile, is equally concerned with the Christian’s apparel. For us, however, the proof that we belong to the Lord and serve him is not found in our physical clothing. Rather, Paul has in view a kind of spiritual garb.
This is not a small theme, a passing thought, for the apostle. On the contrary, he finds and invests great meaning in the image of what we wear spiritually. He offers an extended metaphor about the Christian solider and the armor of God in his letter to the Ephesians (6:10-17). And elsewhere he speaks of putting on (or dressing oneself in) Christ (Romans 13:14), the imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:53-54), and the new self (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). This passage’s pair of exhortations to “clothe yourselves,” therefore, is central to Paul’s vision of the Christian life.
It’s a beautiful idea: to be clothed with certain attributes. It suggests an all-over, head-to-toe quality. It also conveys the truth that this is what people see when they encounter us. And in our own vernacular, we can imagine the people around us seeing the kindness, patience, and love that characterize us and exclaiming, “I just love your outfit!”
In our present culture, we make a great fuss over appearances. We look in the mirror and try to make sure everything looks just right. If only we were so attentive to the interior world of our character and motives. And so Paul’s imagery helps us to translate from what we treat as important to what really is important.
What young Samuel wore evidenced that he served the Lord. Paul would say that the same thing ought to be true of you and me.
