Saul Rejected

Preparing for the Fourth Sunday in Lent: Three Days before Sunday (Year A)

Scripture

Psalm 23; 1 Samuel 15:10-21; Ephesians 4:25-32

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Prayer

O Lord and Master of my life, give me not the spirit of laziness, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of sobriety, humility, patience and love to Thy servant.

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages. Amen. (St. Ephraim the Syrian - AD 305-373)

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Reflection

1 Samuel 15:10-21

The next three posts tell the story of God’s rejection of Saul as King. I present each post in free verse.

The word comes like a wound
to the prophet in the night.

It grieves the Lord
that Saul sits on a throne
once bright with promise,
now dulled by the thin film of his own will.

“I regret,” says the Holy One,
not as one surprised,
but as one betrayed by a son
who has learned the language of obedience
and forgotten its meaning.

Samuel does not sleep.
He cries out in the dark
until morning thins the sky.
Grief is a long vigil
when a king has turned his back.

Saul rises early too,
but for another purpose.
He sets up a monument
to himself at Carmel,
stone remembering what God will not.

When prophet and king meet
there is a pause,
a silence thick with sheep’s breath.

“Blessed be you to the Lord,”
Saul says, smiling,
as though the air were not trembling
with the bleating of spared lives.
“I have carried out the command.”

But the hills themselves testify.
The sheep cry out.
The oxen low their accusation.
Sound becomes evidence.

“What then is this noise?”
Samuel asks,
and the question is a blade
sliding between words and truth.

“The people,” Saul replies.
The people took the best.
The people spared Agag.
The people meant it for sacrifice.
The people, the people.

Piety is an easy garment to wear
when stitched from disobedience.
“We saved the finest,” he insists,
“to offer to the Lord your God.”

Your God.
Not mine.
Distance hidden inside devotion.

Yet the command had been clear as fire.
Utterly destroy.
Leave nothing breathing.
No king standing.
No spoil shining in the sun.

But Saul’s mercy is selective.
He keeps what glitters.
He spares what flatters his victory.
He edits the command
until it fits his desire.

And somewhere,
beneath the protest,
beneath the monument,
beneath the religious phrasing,
there is fear

fear of losing favor,
fear of displeasing the troops,
fear that obedience might cost him
more than a crown can bear.

So the sheep continue their chorus,
a ragged hymn of compromise.

The prophet stands in their noise
like a man at the edge of a grave,
knowing something has died
that cannot be easily raised again.

Obedience was asked.
Partial obedience was given.
And the difference
echoes across the fields
in the restless voices
of sheep that should not be alive.

PRAYER: Fill us with your strength to resist the seductions of our foolish desires and the tempter’s vain delights, that we may walk in obedience and righteousness, rejoicing in you with an upright heart. Amen. (Revised Common Lectionary)