In Search of a Leader
Sermon
ORDINARY PEOPLE, EXTRAORDINARY GOD
Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost
Anyone who has served on a nominating committee knows how crucial talented leadership is to any group, including the body of Christ. God, our story reminds us, shares that concern. God is unhappy with Saul's leadership and sends Samuel on a mission to secure a replacement.
Look Who Is Doing the Calling
Perhaps the most salient features of this story is the fact that it is God who is doing the calling, with Samuel as his agent. Leaders in the church vary in their understanding of the call to ministry, but all would agree that in church vocations (vocation comes from a Latin derivative meaning "to call") there needs to be some sense of being summoned to a particular ministry and summoned to that ministry by God. It is that underlying sense of having been summoned that makes Christian leadership distinctive from securing a job simply in order to have something to do or to pay the bills.
Clearly, there are occasions when the sense of call has been too casual or easy or even bizarre a matter, as it was, so the story goes, for a man who had been a farmer. One hot humid day, while escaping the weather's oppressiveness by sitting under the shade-bestowing branches of a tree, the farmer looked up and saw a cloud formation that looked precisely like the letters "g" and "p." Seeing that, the man knew in an instant that he had been called to the ministry, for surely those letters were God's way of saying to him, "Go preach." A friend, with whom the farmer was sharing this experience, asked him, "Did you ever consider the possibility that God was telling you, 'Go plow'?"
Struggling with a call to ministry lends validity and depth to any ministry that follows in its wake; and even if the struggle ends in the sense that there has not been a call, that struggling, at the very least, lends integrity to one's life. To deal with questions of origin and destination, of sustenance and truth, is no mean matter and it should be no cause for wonderment that the author of Hebrews declares, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Hebrews 10:31)
A few years back Beverly Gaventa addressed the graduating classes of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Bexley Hall, and Crozer Theological Seminary, and on that occasion raised the issue of the distinctive nature of vocation. She commented:
I raise this issue tonight because I think that we have lost a proper understanding of vocation. We have domesticated the term; it has become a stage in the bureaucracy of ordination. Individuals are asked whether they have a "calling" and are expected to respond with a one word answer. My fear is that we have lost not only a "doctrine" of vocation, but a sense of vocation as well.
Professor Gaventa shared Paul Minear's description of vocation:
The sense of vocation ... gives a person a point of origin around which his memories can coalesce, a destination that can include all expectations, and a set of priorities that enables him to order his conflicting desires ... [Vocation] connotes an identity conferred on a person and accepted by that person as his own.
(Bulletin From the Hill, June 1982, p. 3)
One cannot speak of Christian vocations without immediately implying the role of God in that process, and arduously struggling with that dimension bestows upon one's life (and one's ministry too if one feels that God is indeed doing the calling), a blessed sense of redemptive struggle.
Not As We Judge
In God's search for a leader, our story also reminds us that in matters of evaluation, God's criteria are apt to be different from ours.
The man I am remembering was quite polished. He found it easy to speak in front of groups; he was able to pray spontaneously whenever asked; he was supportive of church programs; he would often show up at people's homes at the point of crisis; he had a kind of avuncular way about him. People in the church family would regularly comment, "Harry should have been a minister."
If this person had ever appeared on that old television show where three persons presented themselves as having a particular identity and then folks in the audience voted for the one who was authentic, more than a few would have pointed to Harry and aped Samuel's words when he beheld Jesse's son Eliab: "This man standing here in the Lord's presence is surely the one he has chosen." (1 Samuel 16:6 TEV)
But all the protestations never took root within me. Harry, as I experienced him, fulfilled Thomas Merton's description of what he called "the plaster saint":
The stereotyped image is easy to sketch out here. it is essentially an image without the slightest moral flaw .... He flings himself into fire, ice water or briers rather than even face a remote occasion of sin. His intentions are always the noblest. His words are always the most edifying cliches, fitting the situation with a devastating obviousness that silences even the thought of dialogue. Indeed, the "perfect" in this fearsome sense are elevated above the necessity or even the capacity for a fully human dialogue with their fellow men. They are without humor as they are without wonder, without feeling and without interest in the common affairs of mankind. Yet of course they always rush to the scene with the precise act of virtue called for by every situation. They are always there kissing the leper's sores at the very moment when the king and his noble attendants come around the corner and stop in their tracks, mute in admiration ...
(Life and Holiness, pp. 18-19)
We do not need ministers, ordained or lay, like that. They retard the beauty of an incarnational faith, God expressing himself through the humanness of life. Disciples who are themselves, warts and all, are infinitely more winsome than those who try to pass themselves off as the very embodiment of holiness and succeed only in establishing that they are its very antithesis. God is not looking for blow-dried, glib-tongued, unctuous sons and daughters; God is calling authentic sons and daughters who see in themselves what Paul saw in himself: "So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close to hand." (Romans 7:21)
"But the Lord said to him, 'Pay no attention to how tall and handsome he is. I have rejected him, because I do not judge as man judges. Man looks at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.' " (1 Samuel 16:7 TEV)
There Is Still the Youngest
After eight interviews Samuel is still batting zero. "Do you have more sons?" Samuel asks Jesse. Yes, Jesse does, but he seemed such an unlikely candidate that he wasn't even thought to be in the running. "There is still the youngest, but he is out taking care of the sheep." (1 Samuel 16:11 TEV) The call goes out to this youngest son and the Lord says to Samuel. "This is the one -- anoint him." (1 Samuel 16:12 TEV)
God, it seems, is a God of surprises. We look for God in the west and God comes from the east; we search in vain for God in the south, and God comes from the north. We want God now, but are told that those who wait for God shall find their strength renewed. We conceive of God in categories of strength, but find God in vulnerability. We think to dress God in robes regal and resplendent, and behold, God comes as a baby. We think God's choice will be one thing, and much to our chagrin, it is quite another. The Gospel is full of surprises and reversals, and God, as the psalmist expresses it, has often "given us wine that makes us stagger" in astonishment. (Psalm 60:4 NEB)
That God should surprise us in the area of Christian leadership should then be no cause for surprise. It has always been that way. "... God chose what is foolish in the world," says Paul, "to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are ...." (1 Corinthians 1:27-28) That is still the pattern of God. Regularly God's presence flows from lives we would never take, at first glance or even fifth glance, to be potential channels of grace.
An Accompanying Spirit
The story ends, "Immediately the spirit of the Lord took control of David and was with him from that day on." (1 Samuel 16:13 TEV)
"... and was with him from that day on." That truth alludes us. It is easy to fall into the trap where we pay too handsomely for the salutes of those around us and forget that our strength is ultimately in the presence of God. If we don't have that awareness going for us, then Christian leaders quickly become sychophants who pour syrup on anyone's waffles for a pat on the back, deserved or not.
When I was installed as minister of the First Baptist Church of Milton, Massachuetts, many years ago, a friend, Mablon Gilbert, gave me a card and I have kept it. It has three panels. The first panel pictures a missile-like object speeding down from on high and heading directly toward a snail on the ground below. The missile is many times the size of the snail. The second panel shows the missile squarely and forcefully hitting the snail. In the third panel the snail is wholly intact, but the missile lays broken in two, next to the snail. The two halves of the missile appear to be looking at each other and in amazement asking, "What on earth has happened?!" Mahlon's note to me that day said:
Bob:
There is nothing more one needs in the ministry with a congregation than an understanding of the theological and personal truths of this card.
Blessings upon your work in Milton.
For a time as I thought about that card, I identified the minister with the missile and thought this to be the message: Don't come down too hard on your congregation or they will break you in two! For some, perhaps, that would be an accurate reading.
But later I came to identify the minister with the snail and the missile with what sometimes does happen to the minister, or other Christian leaders for that matter, in a congregation. Whenever we don the mantle of leadership, missiles will occasionally come our way. Of that we can be sure. But they need not become our undoing. For beyond what men and women can give us, as precious as all that can at times no doubt be, our ultimate strength is rooted in the Lord of hosts.
God is always involved in the search for leaders. God is searching hearts right this moment and looks not for perfection, but for faithfulness. And when the missiles come, if God has truly called us, our leadership will be nourished by that "peace of God, which passes all understanding." (Philippians 4:7)
Look Who Is Doing the Calling
Perhaps the most salient features of this story is the fact that it is God who is doing the calling, with Samuel as his agent. Leaders in the church vary in their understanding of the call to ministry, but all would agree that in church vocations (vocation comes from a Latin derivative meaning "to call") there needs to be some sense of being summoned to a particular ministry and summoned to that ministry by God. It is that underlying sense of having been summoned that makes Christian leadership distinctive from securing a job simply in order to have something to do or to pay the bills.
Clearly, there are occasions when the sense of call has been too casual or easy or even bizarre a matter, as it was, so the story goes, for a man who had been a farmer. One hot humid day, while escaping the weather's oppressiveness by sitting under the shade-bestowing branches of a tree, the farmer looked up and saw a cloud formation that looked precisely like the letters "g" and "p." Seeing that, the man knew in an instant that he had been called to the ministry, for surely those letters were God's way of saying to him, "Go preach." A friend, with whom the farmer was sharing this experience, asked him, "Did you ever consider the possibility that God was telling you, 'Go plow'?"
Struggling with a call to ministry lends validity and depth to any ministry that follows in its wake; and even if the struggle ends in the sense that there has not been a call, that struggling, at the very least, lends integrity to one's life. To deal with questions of origin and destination, of sustenance and truth, is no mean matter and it should be no cause for wonderment that the author of Hebrews declares, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Hebrews 10:31)
A few years back Beverly Gaventa addressed the graduating classes of Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Bexley Hall, and Crozer Theological Seminary, and on that occasion raised the issue of the distinctive nature of vocation. She commented:
I raise this issue tonight because I think that we have lost a proper understanding of vocation. We have domesticated the term; it has become a stage in the bureaucracy of ordination. Individuals are asked whether they have a "calling" and are expected to respond with a one word answer. My fear is that we have lost not only a "doctrine" of vocation, but a sense of vocation as well.
Professor Gaventa shared Paul Minear's description of vocation:
The sense of vocation ... gives a person a point of origin around which his memories can coalesce, a destination that can include all expectations, and a set of priorities that enables him to order his conflicting desires ... [Vocation] connotes an identity conferred on a person and accepted by that person as his own.
(Bulletin From the Hill, June 1982, p. 3)
One cannot speak of Christian vocations without immediately implying the role of God in that process, and arduously struggling with that dimension bestows upon one's life (and one's ministry too if one feels that God is indeed doing the calling), a blessed sense of redemptive struggle.
Not As We Judge
In God's search for a leader, our story also reminds us that in matters of evaluation, God's criteria are apt to be different from ours.
The man I am remembering was quite polished. He found it easy to speak in front of groups; he was able to pray spontaneously whenever asked; he was supportive of church programs; he would often show up at people's homes at the point of crisis; he had a kind of avuncular way about him. People in the church family would regularly comment, "Harry should have been a minister."
If this person had ever appeared on that old television show where three persons presented themselves as having a particular identity and then folks in the audience voted for the one who was authentic, more than a few would have pointed to Harry and aped Samuel's words when he beheld Jesse's son Eliab: "This man standing here in the Lord's presence is surely the one he has chosen." (1 Samuel 16:6 TEV)
But all the protestations never took root within me. Harry, as I experienced him, fulfilled Thomas Merton's description of what he called "the plaster saint":
The stereotyped image is easy to sketch out here. it is essentially an image without the slightest moral flaw .... He flings himself into fire, ice water or briers rather than even face a remote occasion of sin. His intentions are always the noblest. His words are always the most edifying cliches, fitting the situation with a devastating obviousness that silences even the thought of dialogue. Indeed, the "perfect" in this fearsome sense are elevated above the necessity or even the capacity for a fully human dialogue with their fellow men. They are without humor as they are without wonder, without feeling and without interest in the common affairs of mankind. Yet of course they always rush to the scene with the precise act of virtue called for by every situation. They are always there kissing the leper's sores at the very moment when the king and his noble attendants come around the corner and stop in their tracks, mute in admiration ...
(Life and Holiness, pp. 18-19)
We do not need ministers, ordained or lay, like that. They retard the beauty of an incarnational faith, God expressing himself through the humanness of life. Disciples who are themselves, warts and all, are infinitely more winsome than those who try to pass themselves off as the very embodiment of holiness and succeed only in establishing that they are its very antithesis. God is not looking for blow-dried, glib-tongued, unctuous sons and daughters; God is calling authentic sons and daughters who see in themselves what Paul saw in himself: "So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close to hand." (Romans 7:21)
"But the Lord said to him, 'Pay no attention to how tall and handsome he is. I have rejected him, because I do not judge as man judges. Man looks at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.' " (1 Samuel 16:7 TEV)
There Is Still the Youngest
After eight interviews Samuel is still batting zero. "Do you have more sons?" Samuel asks Jesse. Yes, Jesse does, but he seemed such an unlikely candidate that he wasn't even thought to be in the running. "There is still the youngest, but he is out taking care of the sheep." (1 Samuel 16:11 TEV) The call goes out to this youngest son and the Lord says to Samuel. "This is the one -- anoint him." (1 Samuel 16:12 TEV)
God, it seems, is a God of surprises. We look for God in the west and God comes from the east; we search in vain for God in the south, and God comes from the north. We want God now, but are told that those who wait for God shall find their strength renewed. We conceive of God in categories of strength, but find God in vulnerability. We think to dress God in robes regal and resplendent, and behold, God comes as a baby. We think God's choice will be one thing, and much to our chagrin, it is quite another. The Gospel is full of surprises and reversals, and God, as the psalmist expresses it, has often "given us wine that makes us stagger" in astonishment. (Psalm 60:4 NEB)
That God should surprise us in the area of Christian leadership should then be no cause for surprise. It has always been that way. "... God chose what is foolish in the world," says Paul, "to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are ...." (1 Corinthians 1:27-28) That is still the pattern of God. Regularly God's presence flows from lives we would never take, at first glance or even fifth glance, to be potential channels of grace.
An Accompanying Spirit
The story ends, "Immediately the spirit of the Lord took control of David and was with him from that day on." (1 Samuel 16:13 TEV)
"... and was with him from that day on." That truth alludes us. It is easy to fall into the trap where we pay too handsomely for the salutes of those around us and forget that our strength is ultimately in the presence of God. If we don't have that awareness going for us, then Christian leaders quickly become sychophants who pour syrup on anyone's waffles for a pat on the back, deserved or not.
When I was installed as minister of the First Baptist Church of Milton, Massachuetts, many years ago, a friend, Mablon Gilbert, gave me a card and I have kept it. It has three panels. The first panel pictures a missile-like object speeding down from on high and heading directly toward a snail on the ground below. The missile is many times the size of the snail. The second panel shows the missile squarely and forcefully hitting the snail. In the third panel the snail is wholly intact, but the missile lays broken in two, next to the snail. The two halves of the missile appear to be looking at each other and in amazement asking, "What on earth has happened?!" Mahlon's note to me that day said:
Bob:
There is nothing more one needs in the ministry with a congregation than an understanding of the theological and personal truths of this card.
Blessings upon your work in Milton.
For a time as I thought about that card, I identified the minister with the missile and thought this to be the message: Don't come down too hard on your congregation or they will break you in two! For some, perhaps, that would be an accurate reading.
But later I came to identify the minister with the snail and the missile with what sometimes does happen to the minister, or other Christian leaders for that matter, in a congregation. Whenever we don the mantle of leadership, missiles will occasionally come our way. Of that we can be sure. But they need not become our undoing. For beyond what men and women can give us, as precious as all that can at times no doubt be, our ultimate strength is rooted in the Lord of hosts.
God is always involved in the search for leaders. God is searching hearts right this moment and looks not for perfection, but for faithfulness. And when the missiles come, if God has truly called us, our leadership will be nourished by that "peace of God, which passes all understanding." (Philippians 4:7)
