We Want A King

It’s an incident I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

It wasn’t long after I’d come to faith at the age of about 18, and one of my friends, Norman, had been asked along to a big gathering of Christians on Boxing Day in the King’s Hall in Belfast. And other than that, we didn’t know a whole lot about it.

Norman’s friend Bobby stopped in to pick us up on the morning of the event and straightaway we clocked that something was wrong. Bobby was in his Sunday best, but Norman and I were just in jeans and sweatshirts, and although he tried to put a brave face on it, it was pretty obvious that we were about to transgress some dress code we didn’t know anything about.

Sure enough, when we got to the King’s Hall, we were the only two out of the 800 men there who weren’t wearing suits. It turned out that this was a brethren convention, and although this particular strand of the Brethren weren’t quite as closed as some, they obviously felt it was important to dress up for worship.

Now in fairness to them, there wasn’t much in the way of sideways glances or outright disapproval; in fact they were so nice we began to wonder if they thought we were unsaved people who’d just wandered in off the street out of curiosity. But for all their niceness, neither Norm nor I felt able to open our mouths when it came time for small group work and discussion. The sartorial gulf between us was just too great to be bridged!

We stood out like sore thumbs that day, and that’s never a comfortable place to be in.

There’s something in all of us that just likes to fit in and to be the same as everyone else. And that instinct is so deep rooted within us, we often find ourselves trying to fit in without stopping to think ‘why’?

When I was thinking about that I remembered a clip from one of my favourite films – Dead Poet’s Society. And in this part, English Teacher John Keating is trying to impress on his students the power of conformity.

(Showed clip - boys told to walk around courtyard but pretty soon ended up marching, all the others were clapping in time. Keating highlighted how quickly they conformed and encouraged them to keep their individuality)

 Very early on in life we learn that things tend to go more smoothly for us if we just blend in. If you blend in, and become part of the crowd, you don’t draw attention to yourself, especially not unwanted attention.

Mercifully we’re not quite at the stage with our kids where which brand of trainers they wear has become a life-or-death issue, but I’m guessing it won’t be too long. Perhaps more than any generation before them, this cohort of young people is under immense pressure to approve of what the herd says is good and disapprove of what the herd says is bad, whether we’re talking about clothes or music or behaviour.

And in a culture that’s a spiritually emaciated as ours, it’s having these material things that defines you. You are what you have. and in no small part, I’m, pretty sure it’s that philosophy, taken to it’s logical extreme, that led to the mass looting we saw in London and other cities last summer. If the herd’s telling me I need this to be a part of things, and I can’t afford it, I’m damn well going to take it.

And those of us who are parents feel the pressure of this too. Is our child deprived if he or she doesn’t have a telly in their own room, and all their friends do? Are we crippling them socially if they’re not on Facebook at age 10, when they’re actually not supposed to be on it ‘til they’re 13? Do they really need that sophisticated phone at that age, or will the herd reject them if they don’t have it?

And of course, we’re not immune to those pressures as adults either!

We’ve been thinking long and hard about replacing our old laptop and after much to-ing and fro-ing and some token resistance we finally found ourselves on the steep slippery slope towards buying an Apple Mac. This has been a long and tortuous road for us because we didn’t just want to be slaves to the culture, but after some research, and a sustained campaign by Ross and his friends which included their changing the startup sound on my PC to “Please Buy A Mac, Please Buy A Mac!”, we finally caved in.

We went to see the friendly people in blue T-shirts at the Apple Store and sure enough, they were lovely. And when we got the thing home it was like a piece of sculpture. It was so sleek and beautiful and ergonomic I genuinely couldn’t find the ‘on’ button. I had to look up the wee manual to find out where it was. Beautiful design.

It’s too early to say if our lives are immeasurably better for it, but we’ll keep you posted!

But what struck us throughout this process was the sheer power and enticement of the brand. It felt like we were being offered a lifestyle, not just a good computer.

Our culture has such a seductive story to tell; and it’s all about getting in on what’s good, being a part of the latest thing; joining the club.

Israel, all those years ago, wanted to join the club. “We want a king” they told Samuel.

And in some senses, there’s nothing wrong with that. Israel had escaped from slavery in Egypt and they’d now settled into the land that God had promised them – the land of Canaan. And up until this point in their history they’d been ruled by women and men called judges – people who’d risen to that role in society through a combination of natural gifting and divine call. Joshua, Samson, Deborah, Samuel – those are some of the names you might know.

And there’s no reason to suppose a King would have been any worse.

But what gives Samuel pause for thought, apart from the fact that his own sons weren’t coming out of this too well, was a telltale phrase that appears twice in the passage we heard earlier:
 
v5 “Appoint a king to rule over us so that we will have a king, as other countries have”.

v19: “The people paid no attention to Samuel but said “No! We want a king so that we will be like other nations”.

Do you hear what’s slipping in there? They’re looking around and realising that they’re out of step with the culture. It’s the national equivalent of the teenager realising that they’re wearing a socially unacceptable brand of trainers. They’ve all got kings and we haven’t and it’s so unfair and you have to do something about it, Samuel!

As is the way in these situations, when the culture seduces us, judgment goes out the window. They forgot that they’d come this far without a king; they forgot that the nations they were envying were nations they’d fought and overcome - without a king. Despite spending years in captivity under the Pharaohs of Egypt, they forgot the kind of things some kings are wont to do to preserve their power, even though God – via Samuel – gives them a sharp reminder.

They’ll take your sons and daughters; they’ll take your land and crops; they may even take you and force you into slavery.

But most importantly, Israel forgot that they already had a King. Their God was their King – the only King they had ever needed.

God had chosen Israel for a special calling – not to mimic the other nations around them, but to be a light to them. To be a nation whose identity was defined not by their land or their possessions or their king, but by their trust in God.

They were never meant to be the same. They were called to be different.

And for the people of God, nothing has changed from Samuel’s day ‘til Jesus’ day, til now. Nothing.

The seductions of the culture are always there; the call to resist those seductions and live differently is always there….

You are the salt of the earth, Jesus says. But if the salt loses its saltiness, what good is it? You are the light of the world, but if the light’s hidden under a bushel, what use is it?

In other words, if, as a Christian, you blend in with the culture to the point where you’re no longer living differently or thinking differently, what good is it?

Once again, I remember a poster I saw in the mid 1980’s in the days of the Cold War and horrendous persecution for Christians in communist countries. It said: “if you were put on trial for the crime of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”.

If someone were to do an in-depth study of your habits and your relationships and the way you spend your money and your time and your effort would they conclude that your faith has made a real difference to the way you choose to live?

Today’s story is a reminder that it’s so easy to get swept along by the culture.

“Give us a King, Samuel. We need a King. Everybody else has one!”.

But my prayer for you and me this morning isn’t that we escape our culture – it’s that we learn to live in it and enjoy the good things that it has to offer without being enslaved by them. Without falling into the trap of believing that the narrative our culture wants us to live by is the only one worth living by.

I want to see a generation of young people growing up who really don’t care too much if they’re wearing the right clothes or using the right phone because their sense of identity comes from their grounding in God and not from Hollister or from the Apple Store. Young people mature enough not to stress about playing the game, because they’ve wised-up to the game.

I want to see a generation of men and women enjoying God’s good world and the fruits of their labour but knowing in the depths of their souls that the thing that defines them isn’t their car or their home or their work or their bank balance, but the fact that they are a beloved child of God, and are living as such.

What I long to see is a church that can be in the world, but not of the world: so secure in who we are in Christ that we don’t need any other king, or any other thing, to know contentment.

Sounds impossible, I know, but it can be done.

Listen to these words from the Apostle Paul: I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything IN MY OWN STRENGTH? NO - through him who gives me strength.

We can’t do this alone. Left to our own devices we’ll end up falling into step with everyone else, or standing on the sidelines clapping like in our video clip. But if we put down deep roots into Christ, and learn to live out of his story, not the culture’s story, we’ll find the strength to make our own way in the world and to live differently. Not to meekly blend in, but to be salt and light in the places where God has placed us.

Amen

Trinity and Community

He had a smile in his eyes as he said “Paul, I’m finally beginning to understand that my family are not the enemy”.

Few people I know love their families more than my friend and colleague Matt Canlis, so why on earth would he be describing them as the enemy?

Well he was saying it tongue in cheek; but the comment came out of the tension that all clergy with family experience. The tension between the demands of work life and the demands of home life, because in our vocation those two are pushed together more than they are for many people.

You work from home much of the time, and there are aspects of your work that need extended periods of concentration and peace. It takes most of a day to nail a sermon. There are complex problems and strategies to think through. There are pastoral situations needing attention. There’s time you need to spend in reading and prayer so your work doesn’t degenerate into soulless ecclesiastical management.

Now imagine it’s the summer holidays. Everyone’s in a holiday mood -  except you. You’re still working. Working at home, where your four lovely but very noisy children, all under the age of 10, are all wanting a piece of you. Your darling wife keeps gently, or not-so-gently, reminding you about all those wee jobs you’d promised to do when you had the time, and adding a few more to the list every time you pass her in the kitchen.

Is it any wonder that most clergy with family wonder every now and again if it’s too late to sign up for the monastic life?

How on earth are we expected to be about the kind of work we’re called to, when there are days when we can’t seem to get two minutes peace without some kind of interruption?

Too often, it can feel like our families are the enemies of our vocation.

And that’s why Matt’s comment was a breakthrough. “Paul, I’m finally beginning to understand that my family are not the enemy”.

I’ll tell you later what it was that brought about that change. But I begin with that little introduction because today is Trinity Sunday and though the doctrine of the Trinity is an immense mystery, some very important and easily grasped truths follow from it – not least, that if community is at the very heart of God’s being, it’s also at the heart of God’s plans for creation.

As human beings, we were made to live in community.

Remember Adam, brought into a world already teeming with life and beauty and wonder. Lacking nothing and yet still ultimately lonely?

Remember God’s words? “It is not good for the man to be alone.” And lo and behold, there was Eve.

“It is not good for the man to be alone.” Before those words are about marriage or procreation or any of that stuff, they’re about community.

It’s in community that we grow and mature and discover who we are and become – that is how God has ordained things.

And the whole sweep of Scripture can be read as one long endeavour by God to draw us out of ourselves and into communion with himself, and with one another. And I want to look at both of those aspects this morning.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord”  writes Isaiah.

Scholars reckon that would have been about 758 BC, and it’s interesting that Isaiah chooses to place this experience in time. In all likelihood that’s his way of saying “I know this sounds strange, but this really happened. And this is when it happened.”

And how did the Lord appear in this vision? “He was sitting on his throne, high and exalted, and his Robe filled the whole temple. Round him flaming creatures were standing, each of which had six wings. Each creature covered its face with two wings and its body with two and used the other two for flying. They were calling out to each other: Holy, Holy, Holy! The Lord Almighty is Holy! His glory fills the world”

So it’s a vision of God as King that Isaiah’s granted – a King so glorious that even the creatures around the throne have to shield their eyes from his radiance.

And as is the way, when we find ourselves in the presence of someone or something of such staggering, immense glory, we become painfully conscious of our own inadequacy.

“I said, “there’s no hope for me! I am doomed because every word that passes my lips is sinful and I live among a people whose every word is sinful. And yet, with my own eyes, I have seen the King, the Lord Almighty”.

In the presence of God, Isaiah is rightly humbled.

A few months ago a friend of mine from University was invited to go and preach at Crathie Kirk and there’s a tradition that when you’re invited to do that you dine with the Royal Family the night before and stay at Balmoral.

And that got me thinking - how do you make small talk with the Queen over dinner without appearing like a complete tube!? Here’s this woman who’s been the matriarch of the nation for 60 years; who’s image is the most reproduced image in human history; a woman who regularly dines with world leaders and statesmen and has them in awe. What would a wee nyaff like me have to say to someone like her!?

And yet, the testimony of those who have met her and spent time in her company is that she goes out of her way to make her visitors feel at home and at ease in her presence.

In a similar vein, I was told a story a while back by a lady in this congregation who used to work at Balmoral. It was the Gillies’ Ball and she found herself dancing a set dance with Prince Charles and though she reached out her arm to swing her first partner, she didn’t think that was appropriate when it was Charles’s turn, so she respectfully kept her hands down at her side; at which point he promptly grabbed her by the arm and said “Oh no! If you’re swinging him, you can swing me as well!”

It’s a mark of grace when someone who could easily overawe us, reaches out and chooses to engage in a way that brings us comfort.

And that’s what God does for Isaiah. There he is, the prophet, trembling in awe before the Lord. Knowing the unbridgeable gap that’s between them. And God reaches out to him. “Then one of the creatures flew down to me, carrying a burning coal that he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with the burning coal and said “This has touched your lips, and now your guilt is gone, and your sins are forgiven”.

God takes the initiative; deals with the awkwardness; and draws Isaiah into communion with himself. Why? Because more than anything, he wants to be in communion with us.

And if we needed proof of that, we need only consider the lengths that God was prepared to go to to draw us back to himself. How far would he go? All the way to the cross.

All the way to the incarnate Son of God standing before a baying crowd, a bloody ruin - dressed in mockery as a King. Ready to submit to death, so he could become the burning coal held to the lips of the whole world, to take away our guilt and forgive our sins.

That is how far the God of Isaiah’s vision is prepared to go, to draw you and me into fellowship with him.

Community is at the heart of God’s being; and that means it’s also at the heart of his plans for creation. We were made for him.

But we were also made for one another. It is not good for the man to be alone.

Community is integral to life.

The community of the family is one which none of us choose, but which has a huge influence on how we develop. It’s no accident that farming families tend to produce farmers, musical families, musicians, sporty families sporty kids, delinquent families, delinquent kids. We learn what we grow up with.

There are other communities we find ourselves in by default rather than choice – the community of school, college, or university; the community of the workplace.

We have choice over where we live, but we don’t choose our neighbours. They’re a community we belong to but can’t legislate for. And it’s the same with church we attend.

Perhaps the only truly free community is the circle of folk we choose to keep as friends. That circle is as tight or as expansive as we choose to make it.

But here’s the thing. All of these communities bring blessings, but all of them bring their own stresses too.

Families protect and provide and love, but they also squabble and hurt one another and fall out.

Our time in education broadens our mind and abilities, but it can also expose us to cruelty and peer pressure.

Our friends and colleagues can become trusted companions, but they can also be a disappointment to us, or even become enemies.

Our neighbours can be a blessing or they can be a thorn in the side, and that’s true whether we’re talking about the place where we live, or the place where we worship.

There is no perfect community. Anywhere! And yet God never allows us to go solo. In a hundred different ways, God urges us to stay in community and keep working at it. The communities of marriage, and family, and neighbourhood and church.

Why? Why?

Because community is the only place where we unlearn the tyranny of the self.

Left to my own devices, I can do as I like, unchecked. In community I have to learn to accommodate and be accountable to others. I have to learn that my way is not the only way; that there are other voices that have to be heard.

Left to my own devices I can avoid people who disagree with me or annoy me. In community, I open myself to the possibility that they might have something to say that’s worth hearing.

Left to my own devices, I’m oblivious to my own rough edges. In community, not only do I become aware of them, some of them might even get knocked off, helping me become a more rounded and generous person.

Community is our best chance for unlearning the tyranny of the self. That’s why, since the very beginnings of the church, the followers of Jesus have met in community. We cannot do this alone. Like it or not, we need one another. It can get ugly and it can get messy. But community, not solitude, is the environment in which we grow up into Christ.

Look at the men Jesus chose for disciples. Four big, argumentative, ‘my way or the highway ‘fishermen. Two disgruntled revolutionaries who were just itching to slit some Roman throats. A former tax collector that most folk wouldn’t have touched with a barge pole. It’s not exactly a recipe for harmony! And if you read the New Testament letters, you’ll discover that all the early churches were exactly the same!

But those very communities were the fertile soil in which people grew into mature disciples of Jesus Christ; and they grew not by evading the other but by engaging with them.

Even the early monastics who took themselves off to the desert to live in caves, knew that they needed one another. Very few lived an entirely solitary life. Most struck a balance between seclusion and companionship by living in dispersed communities. They recognised that we need each other.


“Paul” my friend said . “I’m finally beginning to understand that my family are not the enemy”.

I wish Matt could tell you the story himself, but to put you in the picture, he and his wife Julie are quite different characters. She’s got this can-do attitude which doesn’t always worry about the detail, while Matt’s more cautious and likes to have it all figured out. His favourite T-shirt sums up their relationship really well. It’s a picture of a cactus trying to hug a red balloon and the caption just says “Impossible Love”.

A few years back they were going to France on holiday and at the last minute Julie decided it would be a great idea to take their bikes and she ordered a towbar bike carrier which Matt eventually got fitted the day before they were due to leave. The only problem was that once the bikes were on you couldn’t open the boot anymore, which, with four kids, wasn't ideal.

So they headed off to France. All the way down from Aberdeenshire to the south coast of England, across the channel, and then half-way across France 'til they reached the Atlantic. They were there for two weeks. And they didn’t ride the bikes once. Then on their way back to catch the ferry home, Julie suggested that they really ought to use the bikes before they went back to the UK. Against Matt's better judgment, they got the bikes off, went for a ride, and by the time they got to the harbour they’d missed the sailing they were booked on.

And as Matt stood at the quayside watching the ferry disappear into the distance, a little part of him wished he could have been like one of the pioneer monks who crossed that same channel some 15 centuries earlier. Men who were following the call to go and preach the gospel, happily unencumbered by wife, children and under-used bicycles.

But as he watched the kids play, he knew that that wasn’t the answer. The answer was to see this little community God had blessed him with for the gift that it was.  The gift of a people who, through all the ups and downs and complications and interruptions, were helping him become more of the man God wanted him to be. A community who in their own wonderful, maddening way, were helping rescue him from the tyranny of the self.

It’s in community that we come to maturity.

So may God – Father, Son and Spirit – keep drawing us into communion with himself, and with one another, for the sake of his Kingdom, and the good of our souls.

Amen