Like Other Nations

There are fracture lines that forever divide our lives into before and after. 
A broken vow. A sentence we wish we could take back. A slammed door.
If you walk out, don't ever come back.

Once the words are out, there is no tomorrow where they weren't said. 
What we do to one another can outlive us.

Communities make choices that change them forever. So do nations.
Moments of horror haunt our collective memory.
Slavery defended by clergy waving Bibles. Internment camps justified by fear of strangers. Lynchings promoted as public spectacle. Such history shames us. We cannot erase it.

A friend, a senior leader in our city, wrote me last week. For a long time, she’s wondered how people of faith would respond as we’ve grown more willing to look past, or even mimic, the casual cruelty of our leaders.
She wrote: “Our children’s lives will reap what we have sown."
She’s right.
We are living through a time that will divide our story. Before. After.
Our collective conscience is under immense pressure.
What will we allow ourselves to get used to? To accept without flinching or grieving?
How will we answer when our children ask us where we stood, what we said?

The Hebrew scriptures, our Old Testament, tell the story of a people set apart. From the moment Abraham and Sarah are commanded to leave home for an unknown land, the word of God is a word about particular people. And from the beginning, God’s chosen ones are unlikely candidates. Elderly couples with no children. Stuttering shepherds with no connections. Younger sons and reluctant prophets. As Moses reminds them in Deuteronomy: You were the fewest of all people. You were God’s treasured possession.
Those truths were also hard for God’s people to hold together.

And now, generations later, all they want is to be a normal nation. To be like them.
Samuel has grown old.  His sons have strayed from his ways, taking bribes in plain sight. 

The last verse of Judges reads: In those days there was no king in Israel. All the people did what was right in their own eyes.
Neighboring tribes have amassed armies. The Hebrews want their own.  
So the elders assemble at Ramah to deliver their demand to Samuel. 
Give us a king. Like other nations. 

God delivered them from Egypt with a mighty arm and outstretched hand, led them forty years in the wilderness to the land of promise. Instructed them to show the world another way shaped by mercy and justice.

They were set apart. Now they imagine their future only in the image of their rivals.

Before you judge them, consider their reality. 
The fewest of all people in a brutal world. 
They want a warrior. A God they can see. A ruler who will fight their battles.
Search your heart. Don’t we all want what they want? Security. Safety. 
Borders protected by armies. Prosperity delivered by trade deals. 
The certainty of centralized power. 
Someone who will fight for you. That’s what the ads all say. 

They weren’t wrong to be afraid. 
They were tragically mistaken about what would save them.
Samuel is devastated by their demand. He takes it to God. 
God tells him: give them what they want. But make sure they know what it will cost.
Samuel does not hold back. 

No king will fight your battles. You will fight his. 
He will take your sons for his chariots and sacrifice them for his wars. 
He will not share prosperity. He will hoard it.
He will take your daughters for his household. 
He will take your best land and your vineyards. 
He will take your harvest, your livestock, your labor.
He will take your dreams. And in the end, he will take you.
He will take. And take. And take. 
And in the end, you will be not citizens or even subjects, but slaves. 
They know what it is to live under empire. 

God brought them out of Egypt so they would never build for a tyrant again.
And still this empty promise, I will fight for you, is enough to make them forget.

They insist. And God relents.
But first, listen to what God says to Samuel. 
They have not rejected you. They have rejected me. It has always been this way.
Listen to their voice. Give them a king.

This is not an isolated story. It’s more like a pattern. God frees us. We are scared. We reach for what we can hold. We lose our way. God calls us back. Again and again. 

God’s grief in this story moves me to the core. It hurts God’s heart that we choose the violence of human kings because a tyrant will slay our enemies, while God asks us to lay our weapons down.

God sets them free to choose captivity. It goes as Samuel predicted. 
When you put your trust in the coercive power, you wed yourself to its excesses.
It is a fortress. And a prison. Once you have made that bet, it is hard to break free. 

What about us? Have we not grown accustomed to cruelty? 
Have we not become numb to the abuses and the casual hatred and the personal attack? 
Contempt earns applause. Abuse of power barely merits a shrug. 
Shamelessness parades as leadership.
We’re being changed. You can feel it.
Grief for what is happening to our souls.

Samuel's warning light flashes still. 
The one who promises to fight your battles will fight them with your children. 
The one who promises to protect you will be the sole decider of who needs protecting. The one who promises to make you safe will fashion an enemy to keep you afraid.
The elders get their kings. 
A few are wise. Most are corrupt. They do what is evil in the eyes of the Lord. 
The kingdom is divided by schism in its first century.
There is always a larger empire. 
Assyria. Egypt. Babylon.  

The descendants of those who demanded a king are deported by King Nebuchadnezzar, who loots their temple and burns it to the ground. 

All is lost. End of story. No. 
Listen to this: God goes with them. To Babylon. 
God commands them: 
Build houses and live there. 
Plant gardens and eat the fruit. 
Have children and raise them.
Seek the welfare of the place I have sent you. Pray for the city. For your new neighbors. 
No instruction to take the city. No promise they will rule. 
They do not need to control the city to serve it.

Lately there’s been loud demand for a more muscular faith: Christian dominion.
It’s being preached in pulpits not far from here. 
It asks us to treat public life as a battlefield to conquer. It trades public service for political rule: own the opponent, punish the enemy, give friends the place of privilege regardless of what justice demands.
The faith of empire keeps confusing the power to crucify with the power of the Crucified.

Centuries after Ramah, after Babylon, in the shadow of Rome, another king comes to Jerusalem. An exile. A refugee at birth. No place to lay his head.
In the Holy City, he does not commandeer a chariot; he borrows a donkey. 
He does not seize a throne; he kneels to wash his friends' feet. 
He does not send our children to die for his glory. He dies for our salvation.
If you need the weak to suffer to prove your strength, you are following Caesar not Christ. 
Faith leaders who target the vulnerable do not follow Jesus. They use him.
God grieved: they have rejected me.
And still, God says: listen to their voice.

This is the God we have. Heartbroken and steadfast. 
You can love a place, a people, a country and grieve what they have become.
God won’t let them go. Won’t let us go.
We can’t let each other go either. To stay and build and plant is to act in faith.
We can lose elections without losing our faith. 
We can win without mistaking political victory for the kingdom of God. 
Our call to serve does not depend on the power to rule. 
Your king never raised an army, never needed a throne, never stamped his face on a coin, never traded his conscience for power.
He was executed by the state. Rome preferred a procession. A public road. A spectacle.
The governor scribbled a sign above his head. King of the Jews. 
All was lost. End of story. No.
This taunt told the truth. The cross, empire’s instrument of terror, revealed a kingdom no tyrant could destroy. 
Whose kingdom are we serving? What is becoming of our souls?
Kings will always take. 
Jesus gives. Build. Plant. Pray. Serve.
But do not bend the knee; do not bless wicked ways; do not be afraid.
Cling to the cross.
Let nothing else claim you.