What do you do with a narcissistic and corrupt king?

Let’s recap what we’ve learned so far in our The Prophet and the King worship series: Prophets don’t tell the future, they tell consequence. The people wanted a king due to internal dysfunction and outside pressure. Samuel tells of the consequence of having a king: they conscript your sons, take your daughters and livestock, and make their battles your battles. Saul was chosen for no good reason other than the lot fell to him. He leads a battle against a neighboring tribe and gives glory to God.

Then things go off the rails. Saul offers a sacrifice that Samuel should have offered. He has weapons that no one else in Israel has, so there’s a sense that this guy is becoming less concerned for the welfare of the people, and more about his own status and power.

God gives the order to conquer the Amalekites in total war. Kill everything from the king down to the livestock. But Saul doesn’t. He pardons the king and takes the best livestock. That’s the context for today’s reading.

The word of God came to Samuel and said, “I regret making Saul king.”

This is a very freeing verse here. It makes people who want to be puppets on a string nervous though. Protestant Reformer John Calvin and his followers really don’t like it. A God that regrets? We can’t have that. That means God’s not all knowing. This shouldn’t be a problem for us here though. I’ve preached before that we are co-creators with God. We have our personal autonomy yet we’re in covenant community. This is a reflection of the Trinity, three persons in a covenant community so tight that they’re one. God will always invite but never force. And we know God’s plan: Love something bigger than yourself and your neighbor as yourself. Upon this hangs all the law and prophets.

This theology really came into its own after the Holocaust. If God’s plan involved the death of 6 million Jews and the horrors of war, then that God is not worth worshipping. Jewish author Elie Wiesel’s work often grapples with the theological and existential questions surrounding God’s role in human suffering, especially in the context of the Holocaust. In his seminal work Night, Elie writes about his profound crisis of faith. One of the most poignant lines that reflects his disillusionment with God during the Holocaust is:

“Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.”

This expresses Elie’s internal struggle and the shattering of his belief in a benevolent God amid unimaginable suffering.

Another powerful moment comes during the hanging of a child in Night, when someone asks, “Where is God now?” and Elie writes:

“And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.’”[1]

God’s regret over Saul is not a denial of divine foreknowledge but a profound acknowledgment of the partnership between God and humanity. By honoring the people’s request for a king, God affirms human autonomy, while God’s narrative of regret serves as a reminder of the responsibility and challenges that come with free will. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch interprets this narrative as showing that God remains engaged with humanity despite our failures. God does not simply reject Saul outright but gives him opportunities to repent and grow, even after expressing regret.[2] This balance of divine sovereignty and human agency reflects a God who is deeply engaged in the human experience, working with us to bring about growth and redemption.

What do you do with a narcissistic and corrupt king?

Saul tries to justify himself for not killing everyone and all the livestock, “I was gonna do it. But the soldiers took all the stuff. I did obey the Lord, but like… not all the way…”

To which Samuel says, “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
²³ For rebellion is like the sin of divination,
and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has rejected you as king.”

God is interested in ritual or tradition only if it results in correct behavior. And what does the Lord require of us? To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.[3] That’s the plan. Human thriving. Community.

This is the fall of Saul. Saul becomes more and more egotistical and unhinged. All this results in the rise of David, which we’ll cover next Sunday. What do you do with a narcissistic and corrupt king? Get one that’s less so, is 1 Samuel’s answer, but I think there is another route for us to take.

The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber answered this very question when I went to her speech “Let there be snacks! And sex and song! Finding defiant hope in what makes us most human” at Case Western recently.

She was asked to give a presentation about what if it’s too late? Ecologically. She found the writing prompt oddly relaxing. She was able to be refreshingly honest with herself about what’s going on.

If we’re honest, we’re seeing cracks. Half the country is on fire, the other half is frozen. We have floods in the mountains, and cities underwater others without enough water.

Today, Saul’s heart has been revealed. He builds a monument to himself. He went from being the tall handsome guy hiding in the baggage to a narcissistic leader. He does exactly what Samuel warned Israel that kings do back in chapter 8.[4]

Nadia pointed out how we’re genetically identical to people from the ice age. We’re not equipped for all that is coming at us. Social media, 24/7 cable news, the social isolation, global politics, and more and more and more. We’re like her old apartment she used to live in. If she had the audacity to want to listen to the radio and run the hairdryer, it’d blow a fuse. We’re like that building with old wiring. We have overloaded emotional circuit breakers. We keep glitching.

All this super convenient access to things have cost us the loss of pleasure. Can you enjoy an apple after 32 oz of Mountain Dew? Can you enjoy your middle-aged spouses body after seeing youthful, flexible, hairless actors on your screen?

Her answer to all this that’s facing us? Walk 500 miles on the El Camino de Santiago Norte in Spain. She walked 15-20 miles a day and got blisters in new and exciting locations, ate wet eggs and under-cooked ham, and was the happiest she’d ever been in her life.

Spain used to be the global superpower. Twenty-two other countries speak Spanish. Yet they decided that an afternoon with family is more valuable than making money. After all the fake glory, they found contentment is best. Their empire fell, they are no longer the top country, and they’re fine with it.

If you can’t make it to Spain, then do the following: Eat food made out of food. Move your body. And sing. Basically, be has human as possible. Put down the dopamine quick fix of your smart phone. Step away from the TV. Be here now. Walk a lot. Be around people doing something. Play with your dog. Take the time it takes to enjoy intimacy of every sort. Be of service and receive help.

When we’re out in nature, we can hear birdsong. Nadia stated that the #1 Google search during the pandemic was, “are the birds getting louder?” No, it turns out, we were quieter. There was less noise. And birdsong means there’s no predators around. It relaxes us.

Our ancestors spent a lot of time sitting around fire. They told stories, they cooked, they danced. Nadia’s sister has a traumatic brain injury. She has found that when everything becomes much too much and her head hurts, staring into a roaring fire resets things for her.

Nadia gave me a lot of hope, she always does in her snarky way. I’m a hopeful person. I learned that from you. I’m still not a glass half-full person, I’m a “Hey, I ordered an IPA!” person. I want to know what the purpose of the glass is. I want to know what we’re doing around it. I want the facts.

What do you do with a narcissistic and corrupt king? We shall eat together. We have the chili cookoff. Spending time at table helps us connect. It’s literally a sacrament in our tradition. The table is vital to our theology. We shall move our bodies in all the ways they can move. We shall remind ourselves what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr stated, “We are called to be people of conviction, not conformity; of moral nobility. We are commanded to live differently and according to a higher loyalty. If the church of Jesus Christ is to regain once more its power, message, and authentic ring, it must conform only to the demands of the gospel. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.”[5]

And we shall sing. We are music making animals, the singing voice is a standard feature. Even though I may quack like a duck, I feel better after singing a song. And we sing when we’re happy. It’s a stress reliever.

What do we do when the king is corrupt and God is regretting this whole situation? Eat food made out of food. Move our bodies. And sing.

In that spirit, I would love if you would turn to your neighbors to your left and right and say, “Hey neighbor… I just can’t wait… to hear you sing.”

This is a song near and dear to my heart. We learned it in seminary, and it has sort of followed us around. We sang it to our kids when they were little at the end of the day. It’s one that reflects what Samuel said to Saul today… Faithfulness to God is better than sacrifice. Better than a 1,000 prayers. Let us sing our faithfulness!

Works Cited

[1] Wiesel, Elie, Night. Hill and Wang; Revised edition, January 16, 2006.

[2] Hirsch, Samson Raphael. The Pentateuch: Translation and Commentary. Translated by Isaac Levy. Jerusalem: Feldheim Publishers, 1998.

[3] Micah 6:8

[4] https://www.uccmedina.org/sermons/the-weight-of-leadership/

[5] King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Transformed Nonconformist.” In Strength to Love, 11–20. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.