1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20, Mark 3:20-35

Introduction
Both the passage from 1 Samuel and the passage from Mark deal with good intentions, moments when we think we know best despite what someone else, including God, might say. The passages also deal with something that often goes along with good intentions—peer pressure. The elders who come to Samuel believe that their people need a king. Samuel is getting old and his sons are corrupt, so surely it’s time to be like everyone else. In God’s scheme succession is not hereditary but in human schemes it often is. The priesthood wasn’t really hereditary. God just called the whole tribe of Levi’s descendants to be priests for generations. The kingship was hereditary but that was a human set-up and God intervened in there as well. Samuel was a Judge and this role was not inherited at all. What they should have been doing was praying for God to call Samuel’s successor.

In this passage we see three problems besetting the Israelite leaders: fear, forgetfulness, and imitation.

Fear.
On the surface, the elders of Israel appear to be fearful that they might be saddled with the leadership of Samuel’s mercenary sons. But, as I say, Judges did not inherit their role. Every one was called to it by God. So what was really going on? I think they were afraid to wait for God to call their next leader. The time of the Judges covered many years and followed a consistent pattern. There would be a period of prosperity followed by a period of drift from God bringing a period of oppression by neighbouring peoples. the Israelites would become desperate and pray to God who would respond by calling a Judge to lead them back to peace. The leaders who approached Samuel didn’t want to go through that but nor did they want to trust God entirely. Better, they thought, if they had a military leader who could hold off the oppressors and they were worried that Samuel was not a military leader. Samuel was never known as a warrior. He would never have saddled up and put on armour if Israel were under attack. He was known as a prophet of God. Of course, directed by God, he was every bit capable of dealing with invading armies, albeit in a creative, non-military way.

Some previous Judges had led the army to victory in battle so this request for a king who would go to battle on their behalf may have been a thinly-veiled complaint that they were not completely satisfied with the leadership that God had given them this time. So were they afraid that God would not provide leadership or that God would not provide the kind of leadership that they thought they wanted? What is the real nature of our fears? Is it what we think it is, or is it something deeper? Often our fears stem from a trust issue – trust in God that is.

Forgetfulness.
Returning to the initial complaint that
you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways (8:5) we see how short memories can be. How quickly the people had forgotten that Samuel received his call when Eli was old and his sons were known for great sacramental wickedness! God granted a child to a barren woman and groomed him in the house of the Lord for the leadership that Israel would need in the days to come. That was Samuel, who is often listed as the last of the Judges and represents a time in Israel’s history when God repeatedly provided leaders from seemingly nowhere who would lead them back to faithfulness and represent them in battle when they were oppressed or attacked. This is to say nothing of the Patriarchs who should have been part of their faith memory. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua and others whom God had raised from obscurity.

How quickly we all forget what God has done and is doing in our lives! What has God done in your life that you need to recall, give thanks for and draw meaning from to light your way forward?

Imitation.
“We are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8:19b-20 NRSV). This insistence upon having a king proved to be the undoing of Israel. High points in her history are told by counting the few good kings who ruled under God. Her sorrow is told through the lens of bad kings who led the people into sin and apostasy and even physical bondage. We, like Israel are resistant to the notion of being a peculiar people (Titus 2:14, 1 Peter 2:9, KJV), people who unmistakably belong to God.

The urge to imitate people who are not in covenant with God continues to ensnare the people of God today. Why would you follow people who aren’t following God? But we do it all the time. One key to resisting this urge is to remember the reciprocal nature of the Covenant: I will be your God, and you will be my people.

Jesus’ family
The members of Jesus’ family who come to get him believe he is out of his mind. Why else would he be teaching such radical ideas and putting his life at risk? Most likely they just want to protect him and perhaps themselves as well. They also wish he would be like everyone else and stop drawing all this attention to himself.

Family loyalties.
This is the same person who, at the age of twelve, went missing on the way home from the temple only to give his parents the cheeky reply that he had to be in his Father’s house (
KJV, about his Father’s business). Now it feels like he is “dissing” the family again in a statement that practically disowns them. “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:34b-35, NRSV). What does a family make of a child who consistently and persistently rubs against the grain of family loyalties in this way? What do we make of this statement and that found in Luke 14:26 – “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26, NRSV)? To be certain, Jesus is much more than a champion for the rights of disrespectful children, and the passage goes beyond defining kinship within the Body of Christ. This incident and statements that Jesus made later concerning the cost of discipleship point to the need to remain ideologically unfettered. Following him often means believing and doing things differently to other family members. Most of us are slow to realise how much of a socialising influence our families have on us. They instil values (for good or for ill), they teach us how to relate to others in the world, and they often provide our first lessons about the character and nature of God. These lessons don’t always provide us with godly instruction.There are, indeed, times when the disciple will have to choose between the values of home and the values of the gospel.

Theme Engagement Question
Think of a time when you regret having doubted your intuitive sense (God’s voice) of what should be done and bowed to what everyone else thought should be done.

Now think of a time when you followed your intuitive sense (God’s voice) of what should be done against what everyone else thought should be done and now rejoice that you got it right.

Conclusion
Peer pressure is easier to resist when it is pushing us to do something that is clearly wrong, e.g., to lie, to steal, or to hurt someone. It is harder to resist when it’s clothed in good intentions, when it looks like the logical or even safe thing to do. We all find ourselves in situations where bowing to peer pressure seems like the right thing to do, whether it’s at work, at home, in the community, or at church. Both Samuel and Jesus try to point out that the seemingly logical or safe path is not necessarily the right one, the one that God wants us to take. But in the end, it is up to us as individuals and as a church to decide whether we’re going to bow to peer pressure or listen for and respond to God’s voice.