From my Facebook, NOV. 6 2013. Please note: I usually seek clarity in community on grammar, but did not have the opportunity this time.

Suddenly election night is looming again and it’s time to finally publish the message that I was given to share as the votes were tallied in 2008. Four years ago I was living at Pendle Hill. Thankfully being in that place spared us the bombardment of political advertising and media coverage unless we went looking for it. I did not follow the election closely but I was certainly one of the millions who thrilled at the idea of Obama’s election to the Presidency. On the night of the election many gathered around the lone television between the Barn and Chace to watch the results come in. A few gathered that evening for worship which I had volunteered to lead.

We gathered, as usual, in the dim living room of Main House settling into couches and chairs and silence. In the four years since this brief worship I have forgotten how I selected the passage I felt led to read. I went to school to study religion for seven years, but to be honest I am a pretty terrible student. I was raised in an unprogramed Meeting with no First Day school to speak of so I have never been one to rattle off quotes from the Bible; though I quote what I can when it serves my rhetorical aims. In this case I believe the passage was released from the depths of memory by the leading of God.

After several minutes of silence I reached for the Bible on the coffee table. I took a moment to center myself and flipped it open to 1 Samuel chapter 8. In the story the people of Israel come to Samuel, their priest and leader, and demand that he appoint a king to rule over them. They say they want to be like the other nations. The Judges have provided leadership and law to the people of Israel since they were led out of slavery. Some Judges followed God’s leadership and others, like Samuel’s own sons, followed the greed in their hearts but their purpose was to be loyal to the commands of the God who had freed them. Samuel goes to God and prays saying, “they have rejected me.”

To which God replies, “They have not rejected you; they have rejected me. Go and tell them what a worldly king will do.”

Samuel returns to the people and he tells them how a king will rule. He tells them that a king will turn their sons into warriors and their daughters into servants; he will take the best ten percent of their crops and give them to his friends whom he has put into positions of power, and he will use all of the resources of Israel to make war with other nations. The people say emphatically, “yes! We want a king.”

No matter who is elected to the presidency of the United States they will do what kings have always done. They will indulge the worst in humanity and seek wealth and power for themselves and their friends. As Friends we are called into a relationship with God where we seek guidance directly and through our collective sense of God’s will. I believe that in the moment of worship in which I was directed to this passage I was shown a glimpse of a Society led and governed by God and a Law of Love, not by the worldly bureaucracy and laws that perpetuate and reward the fruits of fear; greed, and hate that divide us from one another and from God.

I believe that the Religious Society of Friends is called, like George Fox, up through the flaming sword and into the Edenic state. The story of the Bible is an account of falling from a world of abundance and love into a world of scarcity and fear and the struggle to return to God's paradise through the leadership of judges, kings, and prophets including Jesus. Friends cannot rely on corporate capitalism or the American empire to lead us from slavery. We must reject worldly powers and seek God's leadership together again becoming a peculiar people striving to restore Paradise on Earth. As we submit ourselves to God’s authority and are transformed by it all Friends can be elected as ministers leading others from slavery into God’s world.