What is the Kingdom of God like? This is a question that people of faith have wrestled with and argued about for generations. In the Gospels, Jes s devotes a great deal of time to spinning parables that compare the reign of God to images and situations taken from the ordinary lives of his listeners. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, a pearl, a woman who loses a coin, a sower; it is like everything imaginable and like nothing we know. The kingdom of God is a bit of an enigma - close enough for us to glimpse in our own lives, but not fully realized yet. It is the dream that God has for us, the world God longs to build among us. But, while it gets a great deal of attention in the Gospels, wondering about the nature of the Kingdom of God is not unique to the time of Jes s. These questions of authority, kingship, and God’s role in it all have their roots deep in the stories of the people of Israel, including the portion of 1 Samuel we heard today.

Where the Gospels use parables to describe the Kingdom of God, 1 Samuel offers us a story: a story of how God’s kingdom, God’s dream - plays out on the canvas of human history, complete with plenty of plot twists and unexpected detours. In this story, tension occurs when God’s dream collides with human ambition and greed. God adapts, listens, and responds, bending the arc of human history toward justice. Here, God and the people of Israel desire two incompatible things - and through the divine engagement with that tension we glimpse what the Kingdom of God is like.