An Oracle of Leadership
Connie Frierson
2 Samuel 23: 1 - 7
Today’s passage is styled the last words of David, the very last words of David. This started me thinking, “My, my what in the world would I say in my last hours, What advise, what reflections, what eulogy, what inanity might I utter? What understanding would I have reached about my life; about the world I was leaving, about God? Famous last words, those are the gist of today’s passage.
I thought I might need some help with this so I went to the Internet. There I found all sorts of famous and not so famous last words. What I found is that people have vastly different orientations to what they say at the end. Some look inward, some look outward, some look back, some look forward, some are flippant, some are unaware and caught off guard, some turn to their regrets, some to the hope of the future. For instance Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24th president uttered, “I have tried so hard to do the right.” Grover took stock of where he had been. Oscar Wilde was flippant. He muttered, “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.” And then he died. Edmund Gwenn, the actor who played Kris Kringle in the Miracle on 34th Street, was asked if dying was tough. His last words were, “Yes dying is tough, but not as tough as doing comedy.” Last words reflect our struggles and hope and even our foibles. Some last words are profound, as Jesus last words from Luke, “Father into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
But David’s last words were special. They were Psalm, a song like David wrote throughout his life, yet more. They were as special for what he didn’t say as for what he did. What did David say? The Psalm starts out with the titles of David. He was the son of Jesse, the one who God exalted and appointed. He was God’s favorite. This says who David was at his core. By the time you die you need to figure this out. In fact it would be best if you figured this out right now, this day and lived into it for the rest of your life. Notice what David didn’t say. He didn’t recount his victories, his trouncing of a giant and the Philistines the defeat to the Edomites, the expansion of Israel’s borders. Titles tell us what we think of ourselves. Queen Victoria was styled “By the grace of God, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and empress of India. But David’s titles are stripped of any boast, and every external, it starts with who he was in the humblest of terms, Jesse’s son, local livestock guy, small time farmer. The glory of David’s life was in his relationship with God. David was God exalted, not David pulling at his bootstraps, God appointed, God loved, God’s favorite.
This is the wisdom we need to get. You are God’s favorite. Now we live in a world of limits and hierarchy, with ladders and pecking orders. So we think there can only be one favorite. God is beyond these limits. How in the world do we think we can set our limits on the limitless God? You get to be God’s favorite. In the book The Shack, Wm Paul Young pictures Papa, the God the mother/father figure of saying again and again, ‘I am especially fond of Mac, of Missy, and that person and that person.’ This is God’s way of saying, “Oh my goodness you get to be God’s favorite, and you and you.” David got to the end of his life knowing who he was, not much in himself, everything in God. This is who David was, this is who I am and this is who you are, God’s favorite.
David’s last words were special. They were special because David’s last words weren’t even David’s own words. They were an oracle, a prophecy, a revelation and a vision. They were God’s own words placed in David’s mouth. “The spirit of the Lord speaks through me, his words are upon my tongue.” This is what God says though David’s last words, “One who rules over people justly rules in the fear of the Lord.” Read this in light of the love relationship of the favorite of God. This fear of the Lord is married with the love of God. This is a paradigm that is new to us and so often misunderstood. Love abides in us from God, yet we are not God. Fear of God faces the gulf between our puny selves and this spectacular God. God is always beyond us, fabulously, ridiculously beyond our limits and understanding. So when we act as leaders, in what ever capacity that is. We are or should be painfully aware of our limits. This is leadership from humility, leadership mindful of God’s highest standards, God’s love and justice for all God’s people of the earth.
You know what we can’t do this. This is impossible for us. We will mess this up. Positional power will go to our heads. Pride will motivate actions and blind our vision. We will dominate and abuse and alienate. The only way to do this ‘fear of the Lord’ leadership is spirit born, God leads and we place ourselves so much in his will that life giving actions result.
Leadership is so slippery because it is gift from God that comes in some surprising and seemingly accidental ways. God leadership comes not from technical manuals and motivational gimmicks, but from an anointing power that comes from the spirit. This is the power that comes from a barefoot lunatic like St. Francis, who led the church into a new understanding of humility and service. This is the power that comes from Mother Teresa, a tiny little nun from Romania in a foreign land with gigantic needs like India. This is God using a stuttering murder, a drop out from the Egyptian court like Moses. And this is the leadership that comes from the littlest brother in the bunch, the shepherd David. Leadership that is anointed doesn’t come from position; it comes from someone doing what God calls, listening and taking up the job at hand, big or little. The right relationship with God, this psalmist calls it ‘fear of the Lord.’ is humility and love. There isn’t a person here that is not called to something. We don’t even need to call this leadership, with all its oppressive baggage. We can call it listening for God and doing. We can call it building God’s world, answering the spirit call to our souls.
What does this oracle of leadership, God’s world building look like? Verse 4 has to resort to poetry because normal language won’t touch what being this kind of Friend of God looks like. Verse 4 says, “It is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain the grassy land.” Put your self in that place, the freshness of a new morning, the fragrance that comes only at that time of day, the light that is golden. This is like the in breaking of that first day of creation. There is a newness, a crispness that comes from joining in with God’s world building, no tired old been there, tried that gee it didn’t work mentality. This is gleaming, creative, new. I think the word that encapsulates this kind of being and working in God is Joy. Periodically we need to do a ‘Joy Check.’ Is what we are doing giving us joy? Now joy can coexist with frustration and tiredness and even suffering. But in a Joy check we ask, am I following God? I can only speak from my own experience here. School and work and family have frustrated me, they make me tired and sometime even cranky. But if I quiet myself and ask, “is this what God wants me to do?” I sense God’s joy. It bubbles through the surface weariness and the routine. This is more than satisfaction. It is a wellness in the soul. This is the light of the morning.
Being in God’s will, Kingdom Building, servant leadership has a special character. It creates a climate for health. I have been turning this idea of climate over and over in my mind. It has popped up several times this week. As I read a commentary on 2nd Samuel, the commentator wrote of the climate that come when people lead from God’s spirit, He wrote that the images of verse 4 create a climate of light and warmth and moisture enabling people to grow. A God lead leader enables individuals to develop, to grow to into the God vision of who they are to be. In the introduction to Agnes Sanford’s book, The Healing Light, the writer describes a climate of healing that occur when people pray and be with each other in a God led way. Actually the description is of a negative example, a terrible climate. The writer uses an example of a port in Siberia. The port has all the requirements, equipment, docks, and water depth to be a good port. But it’s frozen. The climate is wrong. We need this light, this warmth that will help us use all the hard wired talents, and functionality and equipment of our lives.
Last week as I came into the church before worship there was a climate of joy. The children’s choir was practicing in fellowship hall. I set up my power point and all the technical expertise of Dwayne and Graham all worked. The kitchen was full of Marsha’s and the Women’s Association soups ready to go out and feed families a quick nourishing hot meal on a busy night. The sanctuary was full of the set for Joseph, the Saturday performance was fantastic. Graham’s sermon and film clip were wonderful. This is a climate that nourishes God appointed leadership. All of these people, hundreds really, were each leading from some call of God to their heart. This is a little slice of the Kingdom of heaven. This was “like the light of the morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.”
The last words of David look ultimately look forward. David looks forward to hope of an everlasting covenant with God. This is the end of David’s life but not the end of life, not the end of hope. “All things will be ordered and secure and prosper.” It is from that hope that David looks forward. In our final hymn I have chosen “Be Ye Glad” by Michael Kelly Blanchard. It is an insert in your bulletin to take home to read and ponder. Verse 3 reads, “So be like lights on the rim of the water.” That is our job description; each of us leads in hope. We are to be the light, pointing out, “Look. God is here. Christ has come. Light has infused this life.” God’s spirit has provided this oracle of leadership, not for the end of life, but to all of life, your transformed life.
Amen.
