Reading 1 1 Sm 16:1-13
The LORD said to Samuel:
“How long will you grieve for Saul,
whom I have rejected as king of Israel?
Fill your horn with oil, and be on your way.
I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem,
for I have chosen my king from among his sons.”
But Samuel replied:
“How can I go?
Saul will hear of it and kill me.”
To this the LORD answered:
“Take a heifer along and say,
‘I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.’
Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I myself will tell you what to do;
you are to anoint for me the one I point out to you.”
Samuel did as the LORD had commanded him.
When he entered Bethlehem,
the elders of the city came trembling to meet him and inquired,
“Is your visit peaceful, O seer?”
He replied:
“Yes! I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.
So cleanse yourselves and join me today for the banquet.”
He also had Jesse and his sons cleanse themselves
and invited them to the sacrifice.
As they came, he looked at Eliab and thought,
“Surely the LORD’s anointed is here before him.”
But the LORD said to Samuel:
“Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature,
because I have rejected him.
Not as man sees does God see,
because he sees the appearance
but the LORD looks into the heart.”
Then Jesse called Abinadab and presented him before Samuel,
who said, “The LORD has not chosen him.”
Next Jesse presented Shammah, but Samuel said,
“The LORD has not chosen this one either.”
In the same way Jesse presented seven sons before Samuel,
but Samuel said to Jesse,
“The LORD has not chosen any one of these.”
Then Samuel asked Jesse,
“Are these all the sons you have?”
Jesse replied,
“There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said to Jesse,
“Send for him;
we will not begin the sacrificial banquet until he arrives here.”
Jesse sent and had the young man brought to them.
He was ruddy, a youth handsome to behold
and making a splendid appearance.
The LORD said,
“There–anoint him, for this is he!”
Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand,
anointed him in the midst of his brothers;
and from that day on, the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David.
When Samuel took his leave, he went to Ramah.
Gospel Mk 2:23-28
As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the sabbath,
his disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain.
At this the Pharisees said to him,
“Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?”
He said to them,
“Have you never read what David did
when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry?
How he went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest
and ate the bread of offering that only the priests could lawfully eat,
and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them,
“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.
That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
Recently I saw a product advertised on Facebook, it was so attractive and compelling, I checked it on amazon and I purchased it, when it arrived, I was very excited but after examining it, I found it totally disappointing. What I got was totally different from what I expected. I bet some of you have had similar experiences.
One of the aspects we often make great mistakes in life is in the area of our judgement of persons particularly and situations in general. We judge people and situations based on what we hear, what we see or what we think but in many cases, we miss the point.
In the first reading of today, we are told Samuel was grieving for Saul but God instructed him to get up and go and anoint another king. Samuel was right to be afraid that Saul will kill him.
If anyone hears that Samuel is going to or he has even anointed another king while Saul is still alive, what do you think they will say of Samuel? Of course, people will accuse him of betrayal, treason and conspiracy. People will say he is a bad Prophet because he is involved in conspiracy but they would have been very wrong because he was acting on divine instruction.
In the house of Jesse, Samuel himself would have made the mistake of anointing Eliab because he looked so kingly and his height princely but God told Samuel a truth we should never forget, God does not see as man sees, men look at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart. Can we pause for a moment and think about that? The Lord looks at the heart.
The mistakes many people make in many spheres of life, especially in marriages, is because they judged by appearances but they were wrong, they judged by what they saw, heard and thought only to experience a reversal of expectation.
In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees judged the disciples of Jesus as lawbreakers because they were picking ears of corn. Jesus defended and justified his disciple’s actions as appropriate.
In all of these, the Lord is teaching us to be slow to judge people because of how they look, what we see, what we have heard especially single narratives or even what we think about them.
In Harper Lee’s book “to kill a mocking bird, in chapter 24, we read about a group of “pious church women” who met in the house of one of them and in their holy discussion they were passing judgement on a man named Tom Robinson, a victim of racial prejudice, an innocent black man who was falsely accused of rape. They were totally wrong in their judgement.
Let us be very slow to judge people just as we do not want to be judged wrongly too.
Similarly, we also need to also seek God’s enlightenment in making decisions in life because our judgement can be and in many cases is highly fallible. Proverbs 14:12 says some ways seem right to a man but the end is death.
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr Emmanuel Okami on January 21, 2020