Today’s
Scripture Reading (March 1, 2019): 1 Samuel 15
Jane Austen in “Pride and
Prejudice” writes that “vanity and pride are different things, though the words
are often used synonymously. A person may
be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves,
vanity to what we would have others think of us.” In other words, pride can be
healthy in small amounts. There is a level of pride that is necessary if we are
to move forward in pour lives. If there were
not a certain amount of pride, none of us would get out of bed in the morning.
Vanity is a little different. Vanity
involves the little things that we do to change other people’s impression of
us. A few years ago I was conducting an Ash Wednesday service when a woman came
up to me desiring to have a serious conversation just before the service began.
Her message was to the point. It was a sin, specifically the sin of vanity, for
a pastor to color his hair. What was left unsaid was that maybe I should
consider giving up that sin during the season of Lent. She made her accusation,
and then left me to consider what she had said. Confession time. I have colored
my hair. In my twenty’s I had an inclination that I wanted to lighten the color
of my hair just a little bit. I used an application designed not to dye my
hair, but to lighten it. The application failed. Instead of going to a little
bit more blond, the way my hair looked when I was a child, my hair went red. I
was the butt of the jokes told by my friends. And I decided that coloring my
hair was not for me. That was the last time that I tried to color my hair (and to
be precise, at that time I was not a Pastor, but I have repented of that sin
anyway.) I have a little grey in my beard, and so I shave every morning. I have
a little grey in my sideburns, which my hairdresser solved one day, without me
asking, by removing them. But I remember my encounter with this woman, and
sometimes I wonder what she thinks of me since I obviously have not followed her advice and gone grey. We have never
spoken about the sin of my hair color since that Ash Wednesday conversation happened.
(And for those of you who might color your hair, I am not convinced of her declaration
of sin.)
Saul starts off his reign as king
with great humility. But Saul’s humility
does not last. We are about fifteen years into the reign of Saul at this point
in the story, and Saul no longer questions his appointment as king. Now he is
celebrating his position. Austen may insist that pride and vanity are
different, but here Saul is guilty of both. He goes to the town of Carmel,
which needs to be differentiated from
Mount Carmel. Mount Carmel is in northern Israel, while the town of Carmel, now
called “al-Karmil,’ is in the southern portion of what we would now call the
“West Bank.” At Carmel, he erects a
monument celebrating himself. Saul has begun to see himself as the true leader
of Israel; Saul considers himself to be above even the dictates of God. And
this is an example of how his humility had turned into pride. But by erecting
the monument, he is also trying to influence the way that the people see him,
and this would be vanity. Both Saul’s pride and vanity have carried him away
from God and has placed his role as king
at risk. A reign that started with promise
has failed because of the pride and vanity of the king.
It is interesting to note that both
the Saul and David, the first two kings of Israel, fall into sin. The
difference between the two kings is found
in their reaction to sin. Saul, guilty of sin, goes and builds a monument to
his reign. David, guilty of sin, falls down before God and mourns the sin that he has
committed. As a result, God rejects Saul and embraces David.
Tomorrow’s
Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 16
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