Through the words, witness, and personality of St. Paul—and, of course, the power and providence of God—a community of new Christians was founded in the commercial port city of Corinth.
Paul was proud of them—a paternal pride in them as his spiritual children—and was distressed when he learned about their infighting and divisions. In part that provoked his writing a strong letter to them. In a loving rebuke, he reminded them:
Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the worlds to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God. (1 Cor 26-29)
This was one of the great lessons Paul and every devote Jew learned in studying the history of their people.
In that history, the greatest of their kings was David—and yet David was an unlikely candidate for such a role.
1 Sam 16 tells a story of how God, having rejected Saul as king of Israel, sent Samuel to Jesse of Bethlehem to anoint his choice for Saul’s replacement from among his sons.
Jesse introduced them to Samuel in age order, the oldest first. Each time, Samuel was impressed by what he saw and thought he had the likely candidate, and each time the Lord disagreed: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature . . . God does not see as a mortal, who sees the appearance. The Lord looks into the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7)
Finally Samuel met the youngest, who had been called home from the field where he was tending the sheep. This wasn’t the greatest job, but then the boy was too young to have much experience at anything else.
Samuel may have wrinkled his nose when the grubby teenager appeared, but the Lord said: “There—anoint him, for this is the one!” (1 Sam 16:12)
The shepherd boy became the great shepherd-king of his people. One of his remote descendants was the Good Shepherd—also an unlikely candidate for the great role of Messiah that was his.
We’re no Samuels, you and I. We’re not great prophets with huge destinies in our hands. But, then, in some sense we are, in that God uses each of us as instruments to achieve his purposes—in spite of our often misconstruing his choices and plans!
As Samuel, we are often mislead by appearances when we deal with other people, by externals which are superficial and give little clue as to the nature and possibilities of what’s before our eyes.
We may or may not suspect the depth and quality of another, but in any case we cannot see their heart—meaning, of course, the essence of the person, the power of their love and generosity.
Also, although we ourselves may not be “wise by human standards . . . powerful . . . of noble birth”, God may chose us to “shame the wise . . . shame the strong . . . reduce to nothing those who are something.”
“We” means you, me, and everybody else, no matter how unlikely they may appear.
Only God sees into the heart!
5 July 2020