Is God Enough?

Is God Enough?--July 25, 2016

"Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, 'You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.' But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, 'Give us a king to govern us.' Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, 'Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you,  but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only--you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.' So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, 'These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.  He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. he will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers..." [1 Samuel 8:4-14]

God should have been enough.

As a rule, in fact, without exception, God really is enough--enough and more than enough, abundant and all-sufficient--except that we so often tell ourselves that what God has laid at our feet and placed in our hands is insufficient, while we imagine that what the people next door have is so, so much better. 

This story from what we call First Samuel reminds me of that--and it reminds me of how God has a way of telling us the truth we do not want to hear, and nevertheless surprising us with grace we do not know we will need yet.  The scene is in the days of Samuel, this last of the judge figures  who led Israel and first of the prophets, and the collective voice of the people is envious of what they think "everyone else has." (You have surely seen this logic around small children, too: "He has one--why can't I have one?"  Turns out that we may never really grow out of that immature jealousy.  They are unsatisfied with the current arrangement of things; they have told themselves that they can only be satisfied if they get a king, "like other nations."  And at first it's Samuel who is taking this request as a personal insult--he feels it like a rejection of his leadership over the people.  But God then tells Sam, "No, it's not really you they have been rejecting... it's me." 

That by itself blows me away--a God who is so faithful as to accept rejection, rather than forcing obedience with bitterly thrown lightning bolts to make the people come back to him.  The God of the Bible is indeed all-powerful, but chooses to risk unrequited love when the people believe the lie that God is not really "enough." 

Now, here's the rub--here is where grace and truth are intertwined with one another. God does not lie to the people, or cover up the uncomfortable truth about the consequences of their actions.  So often this is where we miss the mark in our own lives and relationships--we refuse to be honest for fear of upsetting someone, so we don't mention what's really on our minds, or what really is going to have to be dealt with.  God doesn't lie--not by outright deception, and not by omission or technicalities.  God tells Samuel to be up front with the people: if they get a king, they will not like what they get.  The candidate they choose to lead them is Saul, whom they choose because he is tall and good-lookin' (1 Sam. 9:2), and they all believe wrongly that he and he alone can make Israel great and rid them of the threats they fear from other nations.  And, of course, at one level, you can understand why the people might think a king would be great--rather than having to trust in an invisible God to provide satisfaction, they want to have someone they can see, someone they can imagine as their great protector and provider, someone who will make them feel safe and treat them well.  Sure, I get that.  God's point, however, is that the people have missed that God has been protecting and providing for them all along--and that God really would have been enough for them if they would not have determined their wish-lists by comparing themselves to other nations.

But because the people have fallen for that sad old thinking that they can only be happy if they have what their neighbors have, Samuel warns the people that a king will become a tyrant, and will take the best of what they have to use for himself.  He will make them big promises--that they will win military victories after being trampled on by enemy armies, that they will be prosperous and safe, and that they will at last be like other nations.... and Samuel tells the people ahead of time that there will be consequences to having a king, too.  Their children will be conscripted to build an army, to construct palaces, and to serve the king and his elites.  They will see their best resources taken and used for the king's pleasure and military campaigns.  In a way, it's like Samuel is giving Eisenhower's famous 'military-industrial complex' speech, warning that having a king will lay the groundwork for a society built on the need to keep having wars to enrich their territory, a society that will be paid for with the lives of their sons and daughters. 

All of this is to say that God tells the people the truth--the truth they do not want to hear at the moment, but which they need to hear.  God doesn't just send Samuel to shrug and say, "I hope this king business works out for you--good luck." God tells the people that even though they think they will at last be happy if they get the king they want at the top of their wish-list, a king will not really satisfy them--only create more heartache and at the same time distance them from the One who really did love them, protect them, and provide for them.

So the truth is spoken.  And yet--and this is the wonder of our God!--God also gives the people what they ask for.  Having told them the consequences of letting them have what they want, God allows them to reject him. And then--most amazing of all--God continues to love them even after they reject God.  That's right--read that sentence again: God allows the people to reject him, and then loves them and stays faithfully at their side even after they have rejected God's kingship and insisted that God wasn't "enough."  And God doesn't do it with passive-aggressive eye-rolling or bitter jealousy.  In fact, God will one day make a promise Israel's king (David, the next one after good ol' handsome Saul) to keep one of his descendants on the throne forever.  There is, in other words, grace.  Instead of a condescending divine "I told you so" when the people get the rotten consequences of choosing an arrogant authoritarian to be their leader (and man, if you don't know the stories of how thin-skinned and petty Saul could be, read more in the book of 1 Samuel--he's pathetic), God bears with the people's rejection and continues to be faithful to them even when they have chosen the hard way.

This is who the God of the Bible really is--both truth-telling and grace-giving at the same time.  There are times when God sends Samuels into our lives, and they tell us things we do not want to hear: they tell us that chasing after "what everybody else has" will not make us happy, or they warn us that the choices we are making could be disastrous.  They are the voices we do not always like, but which we usually need, who force us to think things through and consider just what might happen if we really got what we thought we wanted.  And as much as those voices may make us uncomfortable, we need them.  But amazingly God does not just stop with giving us those Samuel voices who have wisdom to share if we would only listen--God also bears with us when we make stupid choices, and stays faithful to us anyway.  That is what real Love does--it risks our rejecting it, and then does not abandon us when we slap it in the face by saying it was not enough.

There are voices like this in your life right now--instead of ignoring them because they force you to think through your actions and choices, what if you and I dared to think of them as gifts of God?

There are also voices in our lives who remind us of the unflagging grace of God--they are the ones God has sent, too, who tell us that even when we have messed up, and even when we have told ourselves God wasn't enough, God has remained faithful and stayed with us all along.  What if you and I listened to those voices, too, today, before we make a new wish list of what we have to have in order to be happy?

What if--as the Bible has been saying all along--God really is enough after all?

Lord God, be honest with us and be gracious to us... we need both, whether we know it or not.  Thank you, Lord, for both.