The Flight to Endor

I realize my title sounds like a scene from Star Wars. My readers who know their Old Testament well might recognize something else in the name. I will get to Star Wars eventually, but my inspiration for this piece is from the book of 1 Samuel. Samuel was the last in the line of judges who ruled Israel until God gave in to their whining and granted their wish for a king like everyone else. God advised Samuel not to take it personally because they had rejected Him not Samuel.

Enter Saul, Israel’s first human king. And my oh my, was he ever human. From his first appearance, or rather non-appearance, he proved to be anything but regal and certainly not godly. He hid from the crowd when Samuel came to anoint him, and his weakness and insecurity only became more evident as he took on the role of Israel’s king. The pivotal point in his short reign came when he became frightened while waiting for Samuel to bless his military efforts against the Philistines. Afraid his troops would abandon him before Samuel’s appointed arrival, Saul assumed Samuel’s priestly role and offered an illegitimate sacrifice. Before the ritual smoke cleared, Samuel arrived and rebuked Saul for his indiscretion. Because he disobeyed God and tried to write his own rules, the throne was taken from him and his descendants.

You might think Saul would have been chastened by his punishment, but he repeated his blunder almost immediately by disobeying God’s command to utterly destroy the Amalekites. Whether through greed or simple stupidity, Saul decided to keep some of the plunder from the defeated people, and he brought their king back to his camp alive. Again, Samuel arrives too late to stop Saul’s foolishness and confronts him. Saul tries to paint his disobedience as righteousness, pretending he was saving the spoils to offer them to God. Samuel is not fooled and delivers an even more devastating prediction of Saul’s demise.

At this point in the narrative, God instructs Samuel to anoint a replacement for Saul, none other than David, the shepherd-poet son of Jesse. The ceremony of anointing with oil by God’s prophet is intended to represent the spiritual anointing of the king by God. Saul had that anointing briefly, but at this point it was transferred to David. Saul on the other hand, in one of the most curious turns in the Old Testament, was visited by an evil spirit from God as a consequence of his disobedience. The rest of Saul’s reign is characterized by fits of rage and constant attempts to murder David. By contrast, David spends the next few years following God’s leading and respecting the chosen king, Saul, even though he is trying to kill him.

Now we come to Endor the city, not a planet in a galaxy far, far away. After Samuel died, Saul was desperate to know God’s will. He again broke a command of God and sought help from a medium, the witch of Endor. Things become curiouser and curiouser when Samuel actually does return from the grave to speak to Saul. The prophet’s message is not a happy one: “The Lord has done accordingly as He spoke through me; for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, to David As you did not obey the Lord and did not execute His fierce wrath on Amalek, so the Lord has done this thing to you this day.”

This begins my Star Wars comparison. Saul lost his connection with the true Force, God, and sought help from the dark side. George Lucas was wrong to portray dark and light as equally powerful, but he was correct in his depiction of a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil. Ever since Adam relinquished his regency of Earth to the Devil, humans have been caught in the crossfire of the heavenly battle. David astutely recognized who is the supreme force in the cosmic war, and he pledged his allegiance to God. Saul through his disobedience chose the other side.

We are given the same choice today and every day. Our options are both simple and difficult: simple because the only thing required of us is obedience; difficult because our human nature still rebels against the rule of God in our lives. If I were to translate Obi Wan’s advice it would be, “Use the Spirit, Luke.” The New Testament repeatedly tells us to walk in the Spirit, be led by the Spirit, pray in the Spirit, sing in the Spirit. Paul told the Ephesians that our real battle is in the spirit realm. The alternative to living in the Spirit is to live in the flesh, which doesn’t sound as ominous as Darth Vader or the Sith Lord, but the consequences of choosing the dark side are hellish – literally. The Apostle Paul warned the Romans that living in the flesh brings death and makes God our enemy. Living in the Spirit brings peace and avails us of the very power that raised Jesus from the dead.

Saul’s flight to Endor is repeated regularly by Christians who seek worldly wisdom instead of the wisdom that comes from above. James goes so far as to call worldly wisdom demonic. Pair that with Peter’s depiction of the Devil as a roaring lion seeking someone to devour and you have your Darth Vader. If we don’t set our minds on things above as Paul directed, we leave ourselves open for the enemy’s attack. Yoda was right to tell Luke that the Force is all around us; he was also right to tell him to choose wisely. Believers have an advantage Luke didn’t: the true Force, the Spirit of God lives in us. Turn from the dark world and access the force within you, then victory is assured. I know that is true – I’ve read the end of the Book: we win.

 

Related posts: Judge me by my size, do you?; Look in the Mirror; Friendship With the World