I did not choose this morning's scriptures. In the past twenty years, Catholics and Protestants working together have developed a Common Lectionary of readings from scripture. These scriptures are being read this Sunday morning in many churches of different denominations--although occasionally some denominations change them. (As Murphy's Law would have it, on this Sunday, my own United Methodist denomination is following a different set of readings!) If you follow the lectionary readings for three years, you will have read the entire New Testament and a lot of the Old Testament. It's a discipline I've accepted to preach on whatever lessons are named for a particular Sunday.
That much of the story doesn't have much to do with us, so I was tempted to move on. But before I did, a phrase caught my attention. "Now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him." Here was a thought I wasn't used to--and frankly, didn't like: An evil spirit from the Lord tormented Saul. Does the God we worship do things like that?
Now I was hooked. I had to read the whole life of Saul -- from chapters 8 to 31 -- to see what this evil spirit of the Lord could be. It's a story full of drama. I'm surprised I haven't seen it at the movies or on stage.
First in the cast is Samuel in whose honor these two books of the Bible are compiled. When the story opens, Samuel, as prophet and judge, is as much of a ruler as Israel has, but the people are asking for a real king. This offends Samuel, who eloquently tells Israel how wrong it would be for them to have a king. Samuel's God tells him, "don't be upset, if they want a king, that's not a rejection of Samuel, that's a rejection of God, but if they want a king, a king they shall have.
Next in the cast is the early Saul, driver of oxen on his father's farm until Samuel anoints him to be Israel's first king. After hearing Samuel's attitude about kings, why are we not surprised when Saul never gets it right, never gets the esteem or respect he desperately wants from Samuel? Samuel's God's first task for Saul is to totally destroy the Amelikite nation, men, women, children, cattle and sheep, possessions, an act which strikes us as reminiscent of My Lai, or Rwanda. Saul is obedient when it comes to slaughtering people, but spoils it all by allowing his soldiers to keep the cattle and sheep. Soon thereafter he becomes a tormented person.
Then there is David, brought in from his father's flocks first to play the soothing harp and then to hurl the winning stone at Goliath of the enemy Philistines. His best friend is Saul's son Jonathan, he marries Saul's daughter Michal, he wins battles, and the crowds adore him; he can do no wrong. Driven out by a jealous Saul, David goes off to fight for the Philistines.
And there is the later Saul, increasingly jealous of David, whose continuing contest with David slides his life downhill with whatever Saul tries going wrong, while David's efforts are met with success. Finally Saul faces his last battle. Failing to get an answer from God to his pleas for advice, he turns to his old mentor, Samuel. Samuel has already died, so Saul breaks God's law by going to a medium who conjures up Samuel's spirit from the dead. Samuel's spirit promptly tells Saul that he has blown it once again, and will die on the morrow. A sad ending to a tragic story.
As a Vietnam veteran, I hear echoes of our experience.
I hear a tale of a young man who is taken from his father's home and his hometown tasks and sent into a terrible battle that's beyond his ability to deal with -- and as a result of that war he is changed forever.
I hear the story of a young man put by the political and religious leadership of his day into a situation where he can't win, certainly not according to his own understanding of winning.
I hear the story of a young man whose own mistakes contribute to his problems, who does well as a fighter, but who messes up his life by his judgments off the battle-field.
I hear a story that didn't have to happen, but did. I hear a story I find myself increasingly sympathetic with, and I don't like its end.
How could Saul's story have turned out differently? This morning's passage, where David first appears and where Saul begins to "lose it", tormented by an evil spirit and soothed by the music of a harp, seems to be the place to look for a clue.
Saul's torment might sound familiar to anyone who read the Spring 1994 VVA Maryland State Council newspaper, which gives a self-assessment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD.
Sounds to me like PTSD is a good description of what Saul was going through.
If that's the diagnosis, do we have a cure? We still don't know how things might have turned out differently, and all of this still doesn't answer the question of this odd turn of speech: "an evil spirit of the Lord". Since when is God in the business of sending evil spirits, or even in the business of sending people depression or headaches?
I asked my friends on a computer bulletin board. Richard Hunt, a lawyer in Texas responded with the following thought:
I see in these verses an idea of the relationship between God's justice and mercy.
The evil spirit is justice, as seen by Saul, who has disobeyed God's command. Justice is never pleasant for us sinners, and so always appears evil.
David, the harp player who can soothe Saul's insanity, shows that even in the midst of punishment there is mercy, also from God.
What is paradoxical and interesting about this is that David is the instrument of God's mercy, but is also Saul's problem, as the rest of I Samuel shows.
Saul's real descent into madness begins not when God punishes him for his disobedience, but later, when Saul turns on David.
Saul fails to recognize that in giving him David, not only to soothe his madness but also to bring him military victory, God has been merciful.
Saul rejects this gift of mercy, seeing it instead as a usurpation of his own power and prestige.
One reading then is that justice will be tempered by mercy if we accept that mercy, which we can do only by acknowledging our dependence on God for all things. If we try to stand on our own, forgetting that all good things come from the Lord, we will reject God's mercy and be left, as Saul was, with only the justice we deserve but cannot endure.
We could debate whether Saul, like Vietnam veterans, was just an innocent victim of a situation he didn't ask for, or whether Saul, like Vietnam Veterans, was now suffering torment because of appropriate guilt for real offenses that had been done. Most likely Saul, like Vietnam veterans, suffered some combination of the two.
But the debate wouldn't get us anywhere. The bottom line is that Saul, like many of us, was tormented.
The critical element my friend pointed out is how God's mercy was right there in the story--and Saul couldn't see it.
Saul saw only an affliction -- the evil spirit; and the threat -- David.
The true tragedy of the Saul story is not that his life went progressively downhill -- but that God sent him an opportunity to change and he couldn't see it, he didn't take it.
That is why Saul's torment is attributed to an "evil spirit of the Lord". It was a red light on our dashboard warning us to take immediate action if we don't want to be stopped dead in our tracks. But Saul couldn't see God's mercy, and therefore he couldn't accept it.
There is another ending to the story which never got written because it never happened.
In that ending Saul poured out to God and maybe even to his friend David the burden of the many things that troubled him. The battle he had been sent to, straight from plowing with oxen, the battle to destroy the Amelekites--it was a terrible thing, and anyone like Saul brought up on the Ten Commandments should have been angry at being ordered to kill every living thing, men, women, children. In this other ending to the story he pours out to God his anger at having been involved in such a thing. He pours out to God his fear about the basic values of his life, for if he can be asked to do such a thing as this, what values remain secure? He pours out to God his guilt at the things he has done which violate all he has been trained from childhood to do.
And in this other ending, Saul thanks God for David--not just for the music of David's harp, but for the leadership he can see in David. In this other ending Saul, who wished to be a truly great king, mourns tears of grief as he acknowledges to God that he can see David will be a greater king than he. And in this other ending, he lets go of his own wishes, and tells God, "Lord, I can see what you are leading to, and if that's what you want, I will help you."
This other ending that never happened wouldn't have been easy, but if it had happened, the story of Saul would not have been a tragedy, and David, who loved Saul, would not have had the people of Israel sing, at Saul's death, "Lo, how the mighty are fallen."
What is there about us humans that keeps us from God's mercy, that keeps the second ending from happening? One thousand years after Saul rejected David, another ruler of Israel named Herod rejected a descendant of David named Jesus, and sent him to die on the cross. In this morning's Gospel reading, Jesus, like his ancestor David, is helping people deal with their evil spirits, and the population is ready to accuse him of doing Satan's business, not God's.
There is a song about looking for love in all the wrong places. Saul looked for God in all the wrong places, and couldn't see God right before him.
The choice faces us today as it truly faced Saul 3000 years ago. When we find ourselves in a place of torment, could it be that we are experiencing an evil spirit of the Lord? When an experience of the absence of God weighs heavy on us, could it not be because, as St. Augustine once prayed, "Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."?
The restlessness we feel may be what the book of Samuel calls "an evil spirit of the Lord." Even in the midst of feeling God has deserted us, the feeling itself may be proof that God has not deserted us.
Saul's story is a challenge to each of us to accept the torments which come our way as a spirit sent by God to wake us up, to accept the Davids sent to sooth us, as companions not enemies, and to rest our hearts in the One of whom we say, "you have made us for yourself."
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