Homily for Laetare Sunday on Vocation, the choosing of David as King (1 Samuel 16) and trust in the Lord.
When we were little boys, my parents took my brother and I to an English Heritage Open Day in the grounds of some castle or other in the Hampshire countryside. It’s one of those days out that sticks in the memory; there was an enormous campsite, with re-enactors of every period of British history from the Vikings to the Second World War pitching tents and putting on demonstrations. On the main field they re-enacted famous battles throughout the ages like Bosworth Fields, and Marston Moor, and Salamanca. It was everything a young boy could possibly want in a summer’s day out: dressing up in suits of armour, swinging blunted swords at each other, and getting to watch cavalry charges and canon fire.
One of the side attractions I remember from this day out is a bit of a tradition in a lot of English re-enactment events: King Arthur pulling the sword from the stone. They stick a sword in an anvil attached to some kind of electromagnet, then they call out boys from the audience to try and pull the sword from the stone. They call out bigger and bigger boys, strong looking boys, to try and pull out the sword, but each of them fails and the sword doesn’t budge. Then, they call out a much smaller, scrawny-looking boy, and have him try, and through some clever stage trick release the magnet and allow the smaller boy to pull the sword from the stone. They crown him as “King Arthur” – dressing him up in a crown and robes and getting the boys who couldn’t pull out the sword to follow him round the field as knights of the round table.
It's this image that came back into my mind reading the First Reading for this Sunday. Immediately before the passage we read this morning, Saul (the King of Israel) has lost God’s favour through disobedience, and God has decided to choose a new king. He sends his prophet Samuel to the family of Jesse in Bethlehem to anoint one of his sons as king to take the throne. When Samuel arrives, he sees the impressive-looking Eliab and assumes this must be the Lord’s anointed. He was not. Nor were any of his adult brothers. Instead, the Lord chose David, the youngest, the shepherd out tending the fields. The Lord chose weakness over strength; the strong man would have trusted in his own strength, but David had to trust entirely in the Lord because he was not strong enough.
All of us are called by God to do Him some service, to be Fathers and Mothers, or to consecrate our lives as priests or religious brothers or sisters, or to serve him in the world in some other way. We are called to be his witnesses, light for the world, salt for the earth, to show others what it means to be a Christian in every walk of life. Yet, when God calls us, we often worry, we often refuse the call. Our first response is often to say “I am not good enough.”
When I first heard the call to be a priest, I was 21 years old, sitting by the Lady Chapel in my home parish during the Maundy Thursday Mass. My degree was going less well than I had hoped. My future and career were uncertain. I asked the Lord “what do you want of me?” and he responded, like a whisper in my ear “I want you to be a priest.” I refused the call then. I refused because I was not good enough, not holy enough, not brave enough, not strong enough to do what a priest had to do.
What I hadn’t learned then, what Samuel hadn’t realised until that point, is that God does not call us for our strength. God doesn’t call us because we are holy enough, or good enough, or clever enough, or simply enough. God chooses us because we are weak. Because He needs us to understand what it means to need a saviour before we can bring that Saviour to his people. Jesus didn’t come as a conquering king, he wasn’t another Saul, he came as a meek and humble servant, he came to suffer and to die. He was, in every sense, a second (more perfect) David. He chose weakness because we each need to learn the lesson he taught St Paul;
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9
I am not good enough to be a priest because nobody is good enough to be a priest. Nobody is good enough, or strong enough, or wise enough, or holy enough, for the calling God has given to them. Whenever he calls us, whatever he calls us to be, he is not calling because we are perfect but because he wants to make us perfect in the image of Christ, whose strength was in weakness and whose glory was in his suffering on the Cross.
If we rely on our own strength, our own holiness, our own power, we will fail. Our lives will be barren and produce no fruit at all. Instead, we have to be weak. We have to be vulnerable. We have to turn towards God and ask instead for His strength. The same Jesus who healed the man born blind can work even greater wonders in us.
He makes those blinded by Sin to see, and helps them turn their life around.
He feeds those who are hungry for meaning, giving their lives purpose.
He casts out what is evil and strengthens what is good.
In our weakness He is strong, if only we open the door and let Him in. If only we trust him.
There is a simple prayer we can say, when we feel overwhelmed, or when we don’t know what to do, to invite Him into our weakness; to simply say and repeat, Jesus I trust in you. Jesus I trust in you.
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