Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 9, 2024

Sermon

Rocky Supinger
Associate Pastor

Psalm 130
1 Samuel 8

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Here are the ledes to three news stories from the past week. See if you can identify a common theme.

A retired four-star admiral was arrested on Friday on charges that he took part in a bribery scheme while commanding American naval forces in Europe, Russia, and most of Africa, the Justice Department said.

A longtime Chicago political operative pleaded guilty Friday to a scheme to bribe a state senator on behalf of a suburban construction company that needed state approval for a development.

A New Jersey businessman testified on Friday that he bribed Senator Bob Menendez, telling a jury in the New Jersey Democrat's bribery trial that he gave the lawmaker's wife a Mercedes in exchange for his influence.

Did you hear a common theme? No, they weren’t all from the same news source. Yes, the subjects of the stories were all men, but that’s not the common theme I have in mind. Do you give up? I’ll give you a clue: it’s a word that starts with “B,” and I don’t mean Beersheba.

The people of Israel we meet in 1 Samuel 8 have a bribery problem. That is the first thing to know. And because the people taking the bribes are judges — that is, the main leaders the people have at this point in biblical history — it’s a problem that affects everyone.

Bribery is a public problem. Bribery isn’t one of those offenses you can dismiss as the extravagance of consenting adults. Bribery is worse than that. Bribery is a religious problem. It’s a straight-up sin, and like all sins, the consequences of it are not contained to the people directly implicated.

Bribery is a religious problem because (in case you didn’t know this), God is against bribery. Yeah, it says it right there in the Bible: “God is not partial and takes no bribe.” Bribery is ungodly.

The Torah, that is the law God gives to the Israelites at Mount Sinai in the book of Exodus, says, “You shall take no bribe.” Bribery is on the “you shall not” list. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall take no bribe.

Why? (The Bible usually provides reasons for its prohibitions.) Because “a bribe blinds the officials and subverts the cause of those who are in the right” (Exodus 23:8). That formulation is repeated almost verbatim later in the book of Deuteronomy: “You must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.”

Bribery is a religious problem. And because it is a religious problem, it’s also a social justice problem. In taking bribes, Samuel’s sons have, in the words of one biblical commentator, “struck at the foundational social commitment of Israel … which is the practice of justice for all, without privilege or preference” (Walter Brueggeman).

How can a society order public life fairly and justly if those with wealth can purchase preferential treatment before judges and other officials? Why would anyone believe in or place their trust in a system that tolerates bribery?

You wouldn’t. And so the elders ambush Samuel and demand he give them a different system, one more like the system other nations have: a monarchy.

Take the Philistines. The Philistines have a monarchy. In fact, they’ve got about five kings, one for each of the city states in their empire. The Israelites are in battle against the Philistines practically every Tuesday, so they’ve seen a king up close. And now they want one of their own.

A king who rules, who issues commands and appoints for himself commanders, who takes — not bribes, of course, but whatever he wants from whomever he wants whenever he wants it, a strong king who will make us strong like other nations are strong.

Here’s the problem with what the elders are asking for: the biblical Israelites are not like other nations. They’re not meant to be like other nations. They never were meant to be like other nations, with their kings and courtiers and chariots and horsemen, commanders and implements of war.

Instead, in the phrasing of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, “Early Israel had emerged precisely as a subversive alternative to human kingship.” And yet here they are clamoring for Samuel to make them into the very thing they are meant to be an alternative to. That’s bad for them. That’s bad for the world.

The community of faith is not like other communities. People of faith do not share the same foundational commitments as everyone around them. In fact, we may be called to embody a subversive alternative to prevailing commitments of our day.

I wonder if coming to church on Sunday hasn’t become a subversive alternative in itself, because we live in a time that prizes personal autonomy and independence. In a few moments you are going to be invited to come forward to a table and experience a common moment with a common loaf and a common cup with people you probably may not even know, people with whom you may have nothing in common. How totally alternative.

And a few moments ago you all pledged — I heard you do it! — to love and support other peoples’ kids, people you probably don’t even know. That feels kind of subversive.

Also, nothing we do in here is going to grow your stock portfolio or pad your resume or do anything else that improves your economic output. In fact, in a little bit Pastor Nanette over here is going to flash her winning smile and invite you to share some of your money so that the church can use it to feed people and offer them showers and clothes. That feels like a pretty subversive alternative in a capitalist economy, doesn’t it?

And isn’t it a strange alternative, in a time of constantly refreshing new information — news, commentary, advice, analysis — to sit in here and listen together to a story from ancient scripture, to draw guidance for our lives from it rather than, say, an op-ed in today’s New York Times?

The life of faith is a peculiar life, which makes church an exceedingly peculiar kind of community. Church, do you hear me? Am I making sense to you?

One of my favorite peculiarities about life in the community of faith is a covenant. Baptism is a covenant, because it involves the making of certain promises. Marriage is a covenant. Communion celebrates the new covenant of forgiveness Jesus makes with us.

Covenant is primarily about relationships — relationships with God and with one another.

I make covenants with our youth groups when we go on retreats or mission trips. They’re basically lists of things we all commit to during our shared experience, things like “treat everyone with respect” and “listen when others are talking” and “don’t make fun of Pastor Rocky’s bald head.”

Here’s the thing about a covenant, though. A covenant is voluntary. You have to opt in. And you can violate a covenant. You can even reject it.

God tells Samuel that in rejecting the system of judges for a monarchy the people have rejected God from being king over them.

Wait a minute. That’s not what they said. They didn’t say, “Give us a king to govern us instead of God.” They’re not upset at God but at Samuel’s sons. Still, Samuel knows well that, in appointing a king to rule over them from a throne, he will be ending the era of their life together when God reigned among them through a covenant. Their covenantal loyalty to God and their desire for a king to rule over them — those two things are at odds.

Faced with uncertainty and vulnerability, surrounded by forces that feel hostile to our faith and our foundational commitments, the temptation to hitch our wagon to a person or a power that promises to go out ahead of us and fight our battles for us is very real. The church must remain vigilant against appeals to our faith and our devotion that come from things that are not God.

Because in going after them, we may be rejecting God. That won’t be what we think we’re doing or what we say we’re doing. But Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters.”

Some church leaders in Germany understood this clearly in 1934 when they gathered to voice a response to the ascendant Nazi ideology of German Christian nationalism. They produced the Theological Declaration of Barmen, which rejected outright the assertion that there were “other events and powers, figures and truths” that demand the church’s devotion besides “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture.”

About fifty years later, church leaders in the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa understood that allegiance to the power of a state that is enforcing an apartheid system of racial prejudice amounts to a rejection of the reign of God. They produced the Belhar Confession, which rejected “any ideology which would legitimate forms of injustice and any doctrine which is unwilling to resist such an ideology in the name of the gospel.”

Church, we may not need to write a declaration or a confession today, but just as much as the church is called in every age to align itself with God’s reign of truth and justice, beauty and reconciliation, over against other powers, other ideologies, other figures, so must we today.

This is never so simple as it sounds. Those Christians in South Africa and Germany I just quoted sound so certain, so clear in their conviction — thanks be to God for that! But I am certain that they did not experience their situation so simply.

Because those other forces calling for our commitment don’t seem evil, and they aren’t inherently; devotion to and love of your country or your party is not sinful in and of itself, just as, for the ancient Israelites, monarchy will not turn out to be theologically irredeemable. They will have good and just kings who lead them in faithfulness to the covenant.

It's just that no one can serve two competing powers at the same time. In choosing one, we will reject the other, and we probably won’t even realize it until we’ve done it.

So we have to pray, and we have to attend to this story again and again that tells us who and whose we are. Because the choice will be ours; God will not take it away from us.

It’s such a striking feature of the story of how the ancient Israelites came to have a king that God opposes it clearly and emphatically and yet God goes along with it. The peoples’ desire for a monarchy goes against God’s will for them, so how stunning it is that God says to them, essentially, not my will but your will be done.

Make no mistake: God has a will for us and for how we should live. It’s clearly expressed in some biblical commandments, like Don’t commit murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t lie (there are seven more — you know them).

The church also hears God’s will in Jesus’ teaching: Judge not, lest you be judged. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.

God’s will for us is pretty clearly conveyed throughout scripture, but God’s will is not a straightjacket. God’s will is God’s desire for us — that we might flourish in a relationship of faith and trust in God and in bonds of covenanted love with one another as we join together to care for the needs of the world. But God will not force God’s will on any of us.

And God will not reject us, even if we find we have rejected God. Should we say no, God’s word will still be yes.

Just a matter of moments ago we experienced together one of the most powerful expressions we have of those bonds of covenant life, the Sacrament of Baptism. Rachel and Ahmed stood before us and professed their own trust in Jesus Christ and their intent that Kenzie and Sophie would follow God’s Word and show Christ’s love in their lives. We all, then, promised to guide and nurture Sophie and Kenzie as they grow.

Nobody made any of us do any of that. I didn’t. God didn’t. Rachel’s and Ahmed’s families didn’t. Those covenant obligations were chosen and expressed freely, and in their freedom lies their power.

And when the day comes when Sophie and Kenzie are invited to profess their own trust in God and their intention, for themselves, to follow God’s Word and show Christ’s love, whether that’s in Confirmation or some other way, they will not be forced to say yes to that invitation.

The integrity of God’s invitation to believe and to trust in God depends on our freedom to decline that invitation. And if we do — whether out of doubt or defiance — God does not decline us.

God’s love for us is sovereign; it was for us before we knew anything of it. God’s love is with us, no matter what doubt we may harbor about it. And God’s sovereign love will go ahead of us, in life and in death, regardless of what we choose or what we do, or even what we believe.

Believe that. Amen.

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church