Lucy and I know Miss Pennsylvania; well, a former Miss Pennsylvania. She had won the state beauty pageant, then went on to compete in Atlantic City for the title of Miss America. She didn’t win, but she did receive: college scholarships, a wardrobe of nice clothes, and a wealth of experience. She also gave: incredibly hard work at the gym with a personal trainer, years of instruction and practice to perfect her talent, countless hours devoted to learning manners, style, poise, answering interview questions, hair style, make-up… and the constant drive to raise money to pay for all of this attention to her physical self. But, that’s what brings in the crowds. I found out on-line that the Miss America beauty pageant began in 1921 to try to keep tourists in Atlantic City after the Labor Day weekend. What attracts the tourists? Sell physical beauty. Who are the most admired in the world? The wealthy, the powerful, the well-known and connected, the beautiful people. Our standards of success are mostly physical, what we can see. The pattern is repeated endlessly.
Watch who is nominated for Homecoming queen and king this fall. What kind of houses do we oogle over and slow down to look at? On America’s Next Top Model, a T.V. show, judges debate which contestant has “the look” that it takes to be a model. And, every week, in season, on Celebrity Apprentice, Donald Trump looks for someone who can outfight, outsmart, and outtalk the others to be the last one standing. The Donald does not judge others for personal integrity or for inner characteristics. No, success is defined by the outer marks of what we can see and touch.
I have to say, I am surprised the prophet Samuel falls into the same trap of looking at the physical side of a person to decide if a person is successful. Now, Samuel is no lightweight. He has two books in the Old Testament named for him, after all! From boy-hood, he is raised in the ways of God. You might remember the story of when he was a boy, sleeping in the tent structure that served as the temple in Israel. In the middle of the night, he hears a voice calling his name, “Samuel, Samuel.” He awakens, going into the old priest’s room, thinking that’s who called him. No. He goes back to bed. Again the voice calls, “Samuel, Samuel.” Turns out it’s God who wants him. Early in his life, Samuel becomes attuned to the whispers of God. Now, as an older man, he should know the kind of person God wants to be king.
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After all, he’s had some experience in selecting kings. The first king of Israel, Saul, as a man, did he look the part. In a crowd, he stuck out. He was a head taller than anyone else. Saul was strong, big, a powerful warrior. He was exactly the kind of person you would want leading the army to fight the invading enemy. Yet, Saul struck out as a king. He had the bad habit of disobeying God’s instructions spoken through the prophet Samuel. So, God withdraws his blessing on Saul and begins preparing for a new king. Who will be next?
God tells the prophet Samuel to hold a religious feast. He tells him whom to invite, including a man Jesse, who lives in the area, and his sons. When they arrive, Jesse lines his sons up, starting with the oldest. Eliab is brought forward to meet the prophet. Samuel is waiting to hear something from God or to see some sign that Eliab is the next king. In fact, we’re let in on Samuel’s thought process. “Surely this is the one, the one whom God wants me to anoint as the next king.” Makes sense. He’s the oldest. Back then, the oldest was always the most favored. Eliab is the biggest of the bunch, fully grown. There’s a hint here that he looks the part of a king, too. He had, what we might say, that “presidential look” about him. He has the most experience, too. Looking only at a person’s outside is such an easy trap to fall into.
I’ve fallen into that trap. After my second year in seminary, I served a small, rural church in northwest Missouri for the summer. The town had a paved road; one. Part of the time I lived with an elderly couple on their farm. One afternoon, they invited me to help them pick strawberries in their patch. Out we went. They handed me a bucket and they started picking strawberries. Well, I had never done this before, so I tried to figure out which strawberries were ripe to pick. I noticed some were bigger and some were smaller, so I started picking the biggest ones, figuring they had the longest time to grow, but I didn’t know. After a couple of minutes, I embarrassingly asked which strawberries were ripe. Those of you who know can laugh now along with the elderly couple, who thought it funny that a city slicker didn’t even know how to pick strawberries. It’s not how big the berry is; it was whether the top of the strawberry was fully red, or almost red, rather than white. We humans keep picking the wrong standards to choose things, don’t we?
We evaluate others by what we see: how they look, how they dress, what they drive, where they live, what they do, the color of their skin or hair, their tattoos, what group they hang around with, how much money they have. We pass judgment on others by what we see. Because we use these appearance standards, we miss so much. We use them to exclude others. We don’t want to be around “them.” Consciously and unconsciously, we erect walls between us and “those types of people.” But what I can’t get out of my head is that Jesus hung around with people others had judged as unworthy. He spent time with prostitutes, tax cheaters, and “sinners.” He even had dinner with them! Jesus turned the standard of judgment on its head, while the real religious people, those who were commonly judged to be closest to God, condemned Jesus for accepting the ones they judged unworthy. Here’s the thing, it seems to me; Jesus didn’t just hang around street walkers and strippers and tax cheats to illustrate the point that God loves everyone. He really liked them. He liked spending time with them. We cut ourselves off from people because they seem less to us, and we miss so much. They have much to offer us, if only we could look past appearances.
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But, even more, when we judge others by these physical standards, we are really comparing ourselves to them. We are measuring ourselves against them. We can never win at that game. My cousin was a good swimmer growing up. He set several swimming records for the swim team. They wrote his name on little brass plates and attached them to a plaque on the wall of record holders. All the way through high school, his records stood. No one beat them. Four more years through college, no one beat them. For 10 years, his records remained in every category. Another 10 years; his record remained. Another 10 years went by and I happened to go by the pool and stopped to look at the plaques. His times had been beaten in every category. He was no longer the record holder. Oh, it took 30 years all right, but someone came along and bettered his time. They always do. We can never be the best and stay that way. No matter how good we are, there will always come a time when someone better will come along. Always. When we compare ourselves to others, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Our successes will not last. Our beauty crumbles to the years and to wrinkles. Our money shrinks with inflation and stock market dives. The people we know who are powerful or connected retire, are arrested, or die. When we look on the outward appearance, we are using temporary standards that will not last.
But, there is even a greater hurt in judging by outward appearances. We compare ourselves to others and so often grab the short end of the comparison. We think worse of ourselves. We decide we don’t have as much as the next guy. Regarding looks, money, charisma, possessions, you name it, we come out on the short end and we de-value ourselves. I boarded for a year when I was in school with a single mom with 2 children. At one point, I heard her 8 year old daughter, Jennie, say, “I’m no good.” Where did she get that? Eight years old! Not from her mom. She had picked up the standard out of external standards and decided she didn’t measure up. When we fall into the trap of external standards, we entrap ourselves.
How can we escape the trap? Listen to God’s response to Samuel: “The Lord does not look at the things humans look at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (verse 7) We’re talking about the insides of a person. It’s a different way of looking at people. We can think of such inner qualities as integrity, compassion, perseverance, what my parents called stick-to-it-ive-ness. We might go on to think of the qualities of Jesus that his Spirit wants to grow inside us. There’s a great list of some of these qualities in Galatians, chapter 5, such inner features as kindness, patience, joy, love, self-control, gentleness…. These are all wonderful inner traits to seek after, but that is not what God is saying to Samuel who is judging only the outside of a person. God says, “The Lord looks at the heart.” What does he mean by the word, ‘heart?’
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We use heart to refer to our feelings. We say, “Where does your heart lead you?” or, “my heart is broken.” To the Hebrews, everything that you couldn’t see about a person was included when they spoke about the heart of a person. For them, our thoughts came from the heart. Our feelings emanated from the heart. What we determine to do is from the heart. When God looks at us, He looks at the insides, not the outside. Isn’t that amazing? We judge others according to their looks, their money, their possessions, and their status in the community. God doesn’t care about that one bit. He wants to know what’s going on in our thinking and our feelings and our desires and our deciding. It’s a completely different standard.
This word, ‘heart’ is used many times in the Old Testament. It’s used, for instance, when David commissions Solomon, his son, the next king, to “know God and serve him with a whole heart ….” (I Chronicles 28:9) A ‘whole heart.’ Not a divided heart, but a whole heart. One. One person who gathers thoughts, emotions and purpose to pursue God and God’s will. In our terminology, God is looking for those who unite head and heart and resolve to pursue God and God’s will for their lives. God looks on the heart.
Furthermore, God delights in marking in bright lime green what wholehearted pursuit of God means by using people others would consider weak by outward appearances. It’s almost as if God is making a joke of the way we evaluate others by the examples he provides. For instance, God bypasses the oldest son of Jesse. Nope, it’s not him. The next oldest is brought forward. Not him, either. You can almost see the despair creeping into the prophet’s eyes. With each next youngest son, the son looks less and less like a king. Nope, not the third oldest, either, all the way down to the last son there. They think they’ve struck out. But, God’s still tapping at the window, motioning that the process isn’t done yet. So, Samuel asks if there is anyone left at the ranch. Anyone? Jesse’s responds that he does have one more son, but he is too young. Besides, all he’s been doing is watching sheep. He didn’t even think to bring David along. He’s that young. And God chose what everyone else had already rejected because he didn’t measure up to their human standards. God says this little boy has a whole heart. God overthrows our outward standards by peering into what really counts – the heart.
Foreigners come seeking a king. They arrive at the palace but they do not find the king. Instead, God directs them to a stable where they find a new born baby squirming in a feeding trough! How could he be a king? He doesn’t look the part! Yet, the baby grows up, and as a man, Jesus says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the One who sent me.” (John 6:38) God uses what we consider weak to make his point: it’s what’s inside that counts! And, if God uses what is weak, that means God can use anyone, even you.
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We escape the trap of comparing ourselves to others by rejecting appearance and outward standards. We throw them away. Instead, we turn to a different way of living; developing an inner heart, united in pursuing God and God’s will for our lives with a focused intensity.
The Boy Scouts have a special award, called the Order of the Arrow. It can not be earned. It is awarded to a scout who upholds by his living the Scout Oath and is a leader. I’ve seen the ceremony once, at night. The scouts gather around a bon-fire. At the conclusion, an arrow, attached to an invisible wire, streaks down from a nearby tree like a laser beam into the fire. It shoots down a focused direction.
Oh, may you and I have a heart for God, a single-hearted passion for God’s will in our lives. Only this focus will avoid the trap of self-comparing, over-valuing things and a life spent chasing dreams that are at best short-lived. May our life’s purpose be that of Jesus, who said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me….” (John 4:34), a wholehearted focus upon our Lord – that is the standard that counts!
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