In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
From time to time, every couple of years or so, someone decides that it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good cathedral, must be in want of a man.
Now, I am not in principle opposed to this idea. Though the practicalities of making such a thing happen have always eluded me.
“Ah” they say with some enthusiasm, “what apps are you on?” And they proceed to list a bewildering number of apps that I could download onto my phone in order to seal the deal.
I am not on any apps, I explain. I’ve never been convinced that they would work for me.
“Oh no!” they cry, “you need to be on an app. That’s how it works for everyone these days, even people like you.”
Reader, I have never been brave enough to enquire what, “people like you” actually means.
But we go through the whole pantomime again. They show me some app on their phone and get me to download one to mine. “Put a smile on your face” they say as they take my picture. A few dozen intrusive questions later and lo and behold, it is serving me up other people’s profiles.
And I look. And I am encouraged to swipe. Right for any possibles. Left for any impossibles.
And it tends to be left, left, left, left. And then I get fed up and very quickly delete the app and proclaim this will never work for me.
I heard an interesting statistic recently – it was that someone had measured one of the apps and the
average time that people took to reject someone was 3.2 seconds. On the other hand, if they were interested in someone they tended to linger for about two and a half minutes thinking about it before swiping right.
Let us turn our thoughts to our first reading this morning. Where we find the Lord our God in an interesting mood.
Saul the king has died. In the end, the project of making him the King of Israel hadn’t ended well. Samuel the prophet grieves the way it all ended, no doubt carrying the despair of the people with him.
Come on says the Lord. Put a smile on your face and let’s be going. You need to find a new man. A new man to anoint as King. And off they go to the home of Jesse the Bethlehemite to assess the possibilities.
And I’ve always thought that this passage is one of those in the bible that has inherent comedy written right into it. The whole process is genuinely funny.
Along comes the first candidate. He’s a maybe thinks Samuel but the Lord has better ideas. No, swipe left on that one he says. He’s not the one.
We’re looking for someone who is lovely on the inside remember, not just someone who looks good.
And along comes another son. No, says the Lord. I don’t fancy this one’s chances. And tells to swipe left and dismiss him.
And so it goes on. One after another, a parade of possibilities. But none cut the mustard.
But there’s just one left. The youngest. Who just happens to be ruddy and handsome and has beautiful eyes.
Hey ho, says the Lord and lingers, I’m sure of it for 2.5 minutes before telling Samuel that this one, this must be the one. And the choice is made.
What are the qualities that we look for in someone, either as a partner or as a leader.
It seems to me that that question of what we are looking for in our leaders is central to a series of overlapping crises that beset our modern life.
For what it is worth, I think we are capable of getting into incredible muddles when trying to choose religious leaders. But the kind of person and the kind of leadership we want in our common political life is simply something we no longer agree on.
I want someone with integrity, who tells the truth and who looks out for those who need to be looked out for. I want leaders who hear the call of peace more clearly than the siren voices who cry out for war and vengeance. I want those who govern and guide to be wise, knowledgeable and in it for the common good and not individual gain.
In both politics and religion I have met many such people. But I have come to the reluctant conclusion that those values are less shared universally than they have ever been in my lifetime.
And this is partly what has led us into a world where oligarchs and autocrats (religious and secular) hold sway. And war seems an inevitable consequence of broken systems and human greed.
As it happens, I am not a pacifist. I think that some things are worth fighting for. However, it is probably worth saying publicly that the most prominent war we hear of in these days seems to have neither legal basis nor any moral justification. It is war for war’s sake. A tool of chaos where no-one knows the long term consequences.
Those of us who life in democracies who wish for something different have much to think about and much of it will bring us no comfort.
Peace, it seems, must be built.
Decency must be argued for and cannot be assumed.
And I want leaders who talk about the wellbeing of all rather than the enrichment of the few.
I come to those views from a religious perspective. But I think I have common cause with many others.
My faith gives me hope in a time where hope seems scarce.
My faith gives me hope because my conviction is very deep that God cares not only for the few, nor even for the many but for all.
Notwithstanding the comic story that we read of God (through a strangely confident Samuel) rejecting one person after another until he got to the most handsome one… notwithstanding the exitance of that story. I believe without any doubt at all that everyone is included in the love of God, everyone deserves the
peace of God and everyone should expect nothing less than all the blessings of God.
For God swipes right on everyone. God choses each of us.
Whatever our profile looks like.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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