God's Histories

This week we start two new Bible Studies at St. Paul's. On Tuesdays at lunchtime we read the New Testament book of Acts and on Wednesday mornings we read Samuel. Both are histories and, in the early chapters we are reading now, both concern the birth of something new in the way that God relates to God's people. In Acts, it is the birth of the church. In Samuel, it is the birth of the monarchy.

For both classes I have marked out the textual territory for exploration. In Acts, we are reading up through the death of Stephen. At this exact point in the narrative we are introduced to Saul, who becomes Paul, and we are told that the church is scattered into the countryside of Judea and Samaria. Up until that point, the church exists only in Jerusalem, and we are witnesses to both the movement of the Holy Spirit and to a kind of idealized vision of the human reactions to the divine transition of the followers of Jesus from a band of followers to God's Church.

If the first chapters of Acts show an early, condensed community starting to spread, in Samuel we have the beginning of a consolidation. The textual territory I have marked out for our Wednesday morning exploration takes us up to the place where God's prophet, Samuel, gives his farewell address. Up until that point, the book has been rightly named for him. He is the last of the Judges of Israel, that is the leaders of one of the twelve tribes that constitute the Israelites. At this point in the book, Samuel names a new kind of authority for God's people, a king. The twelve separate tribes become one nation with one human leader. Is this a good thing?

If Acts has only positive things to say about the first days of the church and even the persecution that caused the church to scatter, the book of Samuel is deeply ambiguous about whether or not a king is a good thing for Israel. The first two kings are complicated figures and the narrative often sends mixed signals. In the end, we feel mostly negative about the first king, Saul, and mostly positive about the second king, David. But we get there by a narrative as rich and nuanced as anything by Shakespeare. We are left wrestling with the text ourselves, trying to discern the ways of God in the midst of the recognizable vagaries of historical events and the recognizable flaws of compelling but imperfect human leaders.

In both studies, we will be pondering the ways of God with us human beings. The Holy Spirit is still with us, shaping events in ways known and unknown. If we wish to be wise people, responding to the movement of the Spirit with faith, hope and love, we must immerse ourselves in these Biblical narratives and so allow our imaginations to be shaped by the Word of God.