Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel. The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.”
1 Sam. 15.34-16.1
These are the opening lines of yesterday’s first reading. I didn’t address them in my sermon last night, but they’ve been weighing on my mind ever since. I wonder how we should interpret the fact that Samuel is rebuked for grieving Saul, while the Lord himself is also said to be mourning. Does the text imply that the Lord is not grieving for Saul and his sorrows but only regrets making Saul king? Is God’s grief, unlike Samuel’s, driven by shame and regret? That would suggest the Lord was foolish, short-sighted, and rash, and that Samuel is more compassionate, with a heart more tender and easily broken. This, clearly, cannot be right. There must be a deeper, hidden meaning at work here.
Late last night, I remembered a passage in one of Origen’s homilies on Jeremiah that holds the key to unlocking this text. He insists God’s regrets must be altogether and entirely unlike all we know about regret just as God’s anger is altogether and entirely unlike what we know of anger and God’s deceit is altogether and entirely unlike what we know of intrigue and deception. So, he concludes, if we hope to understand what the Scriptures mean when they speaks of such things, we must approach them reverentially and discerningly:
I was also saying that a certain regret of God immediately seems unsuitable, since it was written, I have regretted that I anointed Saul as king, but inquire about the regret in a worthy way and do not suppose that his regret has some sort of relationship to the regret of those who have regretted. For as his word has something special, his anger has something special, his wrath has something exceptional, and nothing in them is akin to words of the same sound. Likewise also his regret is a homonym to our regret. And a homonym is where the name alone is common, but its concept, according to the name of its substance, is other. Thus only the name of a wrath of God and a wrath of anyone is common, and only the name of an anger of anyone and the anger of God is common. So also with respect to regret it should be understood, and the one who is able will inquire: What does the regret of God accomplish? (Hom. on Jer. 20.2)
What does the regret of God accomplish? That is the right question to ask. And Scripture gives at least the beginnings of an answer in St Paul’s response to news of how the Corinthians responded to his so-called sorrowful letter:
For although I grieved you with my letter, I do not regret it. Although I did regret it (for I see that that letter caused you grief, though only briefly), now I rejoice, not because you were grieved but because your grief led to repentance, for you felt a godly grief, so that you were not harmed in any way by us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves guiltless in the matter. (2 Cor. 7.8-11)
What does the regret of God accomplish? Our healing, our wholeness. It does not harm but heals, leading to life and life more abundant, to clearness and clarity, to wholeheartedness and lasting joy.
But that, of course, raises other questions. If God’s regret is so unlike our own, why speak in such terms at all? (That, of course, is a way of asking the larger question: Why, if God does not change or suffer, does Scripture say he does?)
It’s not enough to say God adjusts to our weaknesses and limitations, accommodating our misunderstandings and misrepresentations. It must be that God takes our experiences, all that we suffer, so personally that all of it in some sense becomes his. Whatever happens to us, whatever happens in us, he takes to heart, into his sacred heart. Look again at what Paul tells the Romans: nothing can separate us from God’s love. Why not? Because God has decided his own life depends on our being delivered from death. Just so, he grieves and begrieves. As Donald MacKinnon says:
Nihil humanum a me alienum puto: you could call that the very motto of God in the Incarnation. Nothing human alien: there are no depths to which descent is not made, no point, no phase of the being set beyond the reach of healing. All, all can be, is converted into the instrument of response to God.
Paul was capable of radical solidarity and empathy: “Who is weak, and I am not weak?” (2 Cor. 11.29). What, then, must the Lord—the one from, through, and to whom all things come and go—be able to share with us? What of ours can the thrice-holy One not bear? And if this God suffers not only with us but for us, in our stead, bearing us and our experiences as his own, what do we have to fear?
All to say, when we read that the Lord was sorry he had made Saul king over Israel, we should hear that the Lord has taken Israel’s sorrows—all of Israel’s sorrows, including Samuel’s, including Saul’s—as his own and in order to make an end of them. This is why he immediately instructs Samuel to put aside his grief. The prophet’s grief is mixed with resentment and fear, which can only lead to more and greater sorrows. God’s grief, however, delivers from every sorrow and brings an end to all sadness. Because of that grief, infinite and glorious, everything old has passed away and behold! all things are made new. We live in a world continually renewed by the tears of our begrieving God.
God is not at the mercy of His emotions, right?