As I remember it, it was always a coach who taught phys ed
in my high school, and when it came time for baseball or football or
basketball, the coach always selected two of the star jocks to captain the
teams, and the rest of us got lined up. Then the two stars began alternately
picking team members, and the rest of the story causes queasiness in my gut. Jocks
picked other jocks first, and the rest of us, whose group photos in the
yearbook were on pages listed as Science Club or Latin Club or Honor Society,
waited in shameful silence as the line thinned out. Then each team captain
would have to think a long time before making the next pick, because now he was
down to picking liabilities instead of assets. And that is exactly how we on
the sideline felt—like liabilities.
There is nothing quite so embarrassing as being lined up for
selection when we realize that we are not going to be anyone’s first choice.
There is nothing that so clearly and publicly demonstrates our failings as when
the determination is made that we are not good enough and thus we are passed
over. And that is exactly why the story of David’s selection is so important in
our tradition. It gives hope to those who stand on the sideline.
That is not the way that I originally felt about David. He
was, after all, the great king of Israel, the one who brought the nation
together and made it possible that his successor could build the Temple in
Jerusalem, the one who wrote many of the psalms we still use in church on
Sunday. For the early Christian witnesses, Jesus was no less than David’s heir,
the heir of David, not some other monarch in the long line of Jewish kings. For
the writers of so many Christian hymns, it is David’s kingdom that never ends,
especially as evidenced in his descendant Jesus.
But then one day I noticed the beginning of this story. When
it came time for Samuel to find someone to anoint as a future leader, David’s
own father did not find him important enough to even let him be on the sideline
to be reviewed. It had the makings of another horrible phys ed class
experience, when those who are not already on the team are made all too aware
of their deficiencies. David was on the margins, left out in the pasture to
tend the sheep, perhaps because his father was blind to any other way of
looking at his family.
Today’s lessons are about hope for the people who are left
on the margins. In the case of the story of David, it is about the reality of
hope for the child whose own parent apparently can’t see his potential In the
case of the gospel, it is about a blind man whom the world would say has no
potential precisely because he has a history of blindness. But in both cases,
the commonly accepted wisdom is wrong. David fathers a dynasty, and the blind
man becomes one of the most eloquent witnesses to Jesus. In both cases, those
who were once marginalized become central to the proclamation of the good news
that unconditional love cannot be extinguished.
Now, the gospel story is one of the most carefully written
among all the Jesus stories. Go back and reread the story at home. The blind
man is the very one who eventually comes to see clearly who this Jesus is. For
centuries this story was read at baptisms because it shows so very clearly how
we who are baptized gradually come to know who Jesus is, first as no more than
a name and eventually as the tangible presence of God in the world. It is a
story of the marginalized as central to the proclamation of the good news
But the lesson from 1 Samuel goes a step further. Not only
is David chosen to proclaim God’s good news. By the end of the story, the very
child whose father thinks him unimportant in comparison to his other sons is
declared ruddy and beautiful and handsome. In this story not only are the
marginalized central in the proclamation of the good news, they are now
declared beautiful. The good news becomes that among the marginal there are
beautiful people; among the little forgotten ones there is the potential for
greatness. God declares beautiful those whom no one else would choose.
Part of the purpose of Lent is for us to take the time to
see clearly who we really are. And we do well to remind ourselves that we do
not love as we should, that we are deaf to God’s call to serve, and that we are
self indulgent, to name some of things we confess on Ash Wednesday. In some
ways we have no right to think that we should be chosen first; our performance
has been fairly clear. It is sort of like the fact that I need not remind you
that there was a reason so many of us were never chosen early on when the teams
were forming in phys ed class; we were bad athletes.
But to see who we really are also involves seeing that there
is beauty even in the ones in whom the world has little interest, in those whom
the world might label as liabilities. In fact, God can use that sort of person
more than anyone else to present a tangible picture of unconditional love.
God’s love for the perfect would surprise no one. God’s equal love for the last
person in line might be the only thing that will shake up humankind to the
point that the kingdom is ushered in. God uses young children who have been
left out of the picture. God uses blind men who only slowly get the picture. In
fact, God declares such people beautiful. And that can be good news for any of
us who have ever felt we would never be anyone’s first choice.
Unconditional love
takes away the humiliation. Unconditional love stops separating the world into
worthy and unworthy. Unconditional love stops the process of having the
strongest decide who will be losers. Today the prophet Samuel showed how to
play the game: look for the least likely and declare him the handsomest of all.
Today the gospel says the man born blind can see more clearly than all the
religious professionals. I like that good news; it has a godly wisdom. If we
could find a way to translate that wisdom to high school phys ed classes, we
might could turn all sorts of sidelines into places of honor.
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