Thankful Memorial, Chattanooga
June 8, 2021
Year B, 2 Pentecost, Proper 5

1 Samuel 8:44-20
Psalm 138
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Mark 3:20-35

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Next year Queen Elizabeth II will have reigned in England for 70 years. Thinking of that fact, I confess to feeling a little bit of monarchy envy despite my pride in being an American.  And let’s face it – I’m not alone.  One report has it that 29 million Americans watched the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and another says the same number watched Prince Phillip’s funeral earlier this year.  We’re all for democracy in the U.S.A., but I think a number of us have a wee bit of monarchy envy nonetheless.

So we can sympathize with the people of ancient Israel that we hear about in 1 Samuel this morning.  They have some monarchy envy, too.  Throughout its history, Israel has been a tribal nation based on the ancestries of the sons of Jacob and “governed,” loosely, by a series of judges and prophets.  The judges that are set to negotiate the needs of the nation after Samuel’s death are his sons and as the elders of Israel point out, Samuel’s sons “do not follow in [his] ways.”  Instead, they are corrupt and useless.  So, the people of Israel look around and notice that the powerful empires around them all have one thing in common: kings.  Kings, they think, establish order; kings fight (and presumably win) battles; kings create mighty kingdoms.  And the Israelites want to be like these kingdoms, “like other nations.”

But, the problem is, Israel was specifically created to be unlike other nations.  The Hebrew Bible told Israel that God had called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and all of Jacob’s descendants as a chosen people, to lead other nations to the one true God, to be set aside as a blessing to all God’s children in the world.  And now, Israel has become the petulant adolescent who wants something else just because that’s what all the other kids have and God, the Father, shakes his head as if to say “But I didn’t bring you up to be just like all the other kids” – like all the other nations.  No wonder God sees rejection of God as their one true King at the heart of Israel’s request for a human, and imperfect, imitation.  But God goes ahead and lets them have a king.  Perhaps God has just gotten used to rejection by this point.  Israel has rejected God many times before and will reject God many times still to come. 

But having a monarch isn’t the solution, as events go on to show. Indeed, the only monarch we find in Scripture who really shares in God’s kingship is Jesus, and how different he looks from worldly monarchs.  Both the religious authorities who have come down from Jerusalem and Jesus’ own family question Jesus’ power over evil, sickness and “unclean spirits.”  The scribes blaspheme by mistaking God’s Good Spirit for the Evil One.  And Jesus’ family, embarrassed by his surprising miracles and his odd ministry in Galilee, “restrain him.”  Jesus is behaving too much unlike others; his power is too far beyond the rules and expectations set by the political, religious and social boundaries of his time.  Many of the people surrounding Jesus don’t understand his true power and authority – that true kingship always and only belongs to God the Father, and to his Son, who will be consecrated on the cross by his victory over evil and death. 

And sometimes, God’s people still don’t understand God’s authority.  Even today, we are tempted to reject Christ’s kingship in favor of more limited, tamer authorities, for governance under a rule that isn’t such a mystery, that doesn’t require so much faith.  Even today, we are distracted from our longing for Christ our King by a desire for something that looks more like our own ideas of health and wealth, strength and assurance. 

But in God’s kingdom, there are no such promises of political power, physical health, or social achievement.  There is only eternal life in Christ, the assurance that however else things may seem to our limited senses, “our inner nature is being renewed day by day,” our very selves are dwelling in the heart of God’s love for us and that love is more powerful than any evil or suffering that may afflict us.  Living in God’s kingdom means seeing things that are not always apparent – victory on a cross, Christ’s body in a wafer of bread, Jesus in the faces of even those we would despise.

The temptation is to be fooled by appearances, to see only death on the cross, only bread where there is the Body.  We can be tempted, like the ancient Israelites, to want to be more like everyone else, to shrug off our calling to a life in Christ’s kingdom in order to find success as it is defined by our world today.  We can be tempted to strive for what it seems others are striving for and forget to strive for the good news of Christ and the spread of God’s kingdom.  But we should beware such temptation, for, as Jesus points out, it is along that road that real blasphemy lies.  When we begin rejecting God’s kingship, we risk rejecting God’s grace.  If we insist that “what can be seen” is the only reality, then we risk losing sight of that which is eternal. 

And yet, no matter how many times we reject God as our King, God keeps reaching out to us.  God, that ambitious lover, keeps pursuing us.  No matter how many times we look around us for something else, some other option, some better offer, God continually asks us to belong to Christ’s family, to come into his kingdom.

And I hope that, in the end, that’s where my own monarchy envy comes from.  I don’t really want a king or queen of the United States, but there is something very moving about seeing a whole nation come together to celebrate and honor the one figure who stands at their head.  And isn’t that what we’re called to do?  In all we are, in all we have, in all we do, to honor and serve the God who is our one true Monarch, to make the whole of our lives into one unending Jubilee, celebrating our belonging in the kingdom of God.  Amen.