Do people still say, when they're searching for lost items, "It's always in the last place you look"? If that's true, why don't we start there and save some time? We could add years of productive time to our lives if we started looking for our keys in the "last" place. When I hear the story of God choosing David as king, I want to say, "Look in the last place." God always seems to choose the youngest anyhow, so why not start there? When Saul, the biggest man in Israel, is chosen king, he is a flawed leader, and God finally rejects him, but that's the nature of covenant. It's not covenant relationship unless both parties are free to choose and respond, and so it is that God chooses again.

Samuel the king-maker is now the king-breaker, but when the scene opens, he's pouting. God tells Samuel to pull up his socks and move on. Understandably, Samuel is hesitant. There is no vacancy in the throne right now, and to blithely set about anointing another king at this point in time is what we call "treason." Of course Bethlehem's elders are afraid. Court officials come to town to punish or seize or conscript. Not "worship"! Whether Samuel is for or agin' Saul, his presence in town is not good news. The pageant of sons is part of the worship ritual. God is choosing something, we're just not sure what. Even after David gets the nod, is anointed, and filled with the spirit, Bethlehem doesn't know "anointed to what." Even David isn't told.

Do you remember what it was like to stand in the school gym as your classmates took turns calling the names of people they wanted on their team? Anxious. The good athletes are always chosen first. Here, God goes through the whole roster before picking the player voted least likely. It reminds me of an email story I got this week about a farmer trying to sell a litter of puppies. The little boy chooses the crippled runt, the one the farmer couldn't have sold if he'd tried, because that least-likely puppy and the boy had a lot in common. The one least likely to be chosen, the ones who need each other the most. And that's who God chooses as the next king of Israel. A kid. Because "God looks on the heart."

That's what happens at the Samaritan well that hot noonday-a couple of hearts doing some looking. Jesus and the outsider woman have been coming to grips with his thirst, her town well, his offer of Living Water, and the stark truth about her private life. Jesus has just used the sacred name of God in reference to himself when his disciples show up with lunch. They don't notice a thing. The woman stands there, speechless with holy terror at the words Jesus has just uttered ("I Am"), and the rabbi's students try to figure out the appropriate response to Jesus' social misstep. Do we say something or not? Do we point out to him-to our teacher-what he's doing wrong? Are we supposed to correct him? Would our correction even help? Is something been going on that we should know about? Do we just ignore her and hope she goes away? If only these nice Jewish boys had read the story of God choosing David as king. "God looks on the heart."

The woman is a prophet. Prophets see the revelation of God in ordinary things, interpreting that revelation for others. Instead of seeing their differences, the things that divide them, seeing Jesus as simply a Jew, this woman sees the revelation of God. She hears him when he says the "water" he offers is more than wetness or thirst-quenching. She understands that what he gives is new life. She's not seeing the water in the well become Living Water, she is seeing Living Water in what is already there.

While the disciples wonder how to set Jesus straight, the woman experiences seeing not herself, but Jesus-the-revelation-of-God where her sin and failure used to be. She sees Jesus-the-revelation-of-God in the townspeople instead of people who shun and insult and hurt her. Drinking Living Water, her existence becomes life. Instead of judging her tormentors, she can love them enough to want them to also drink the Living Water. Of course she drops the jar. This water doesn't need a clay container. "Come and see" are the words of a prophet, hospitality is her prophetic gesture. She invites Jesus into her town.

And those poor disciples, so firmly anchored to the literal. As they frantically thumb through the kosher edition of Miss Manners, all they can come up with is, "How about a sandwich, Jesus?" Jesus is in the sacred space of doing God's work, and the disciples wonder if Jesus got enough vegetables and whether they were kosher. The disciples are still scratching their heads when the townspeople get to the well. The hated Samaritans-the outsiders, the people absolutely not like us-they get it. The disciples think Jesus is the Messiah, the new David, the next one in line to Samuel's anointing of the shepherd boy, but the Samaritans--! They know he's the savior of the world.

The woman is a prophet. She knows that God starts it, that God initiates the relationship, because she has experienced it. She knows this in the way a person knows the vastness of the universe, gazing up into the summer night sky and seeing a meteor streak across. She knows God starts the love the same way a child knows a parent's love at the end of a long day, sitting on the lap to be rocked to sleep. She knows God calls, because she has heard it. She has had a conversation, of all things, with someone who loves her enough to make her part of the covenant community-God's community. And now she is finally free-free to be loved and to love.

That's what relationship with God is about-freedom. But the goal of our relationship, as it was for Jesus' ministry, is "completion" of God's work. God starts it, we are the completion. Most kids would love to be able to use that excuse-"I didn't start it!" And here it is, just when we need it. We didn't start it, God did. God comes looking for us. We are chosen, and we bring God's work to completion, a completion which is our genuine-ness and our integrity, the coming to be of who we really are. David's story reminds us that God is free to choose. Just as God is free to choose, we are free to obey. We are called and anointed like David, but our anointing is not with oil done by a prophet. We are called in the waters of our baptism. And then, like David, we wait-patiently, expectantly, for God's will to unfold. That unfolding will look like discovering what we are good at, helping others or learning or teaching-in ways that are joyful and life-giving. God calls us to be the completion of God's work, but that call is not a call to be miserable. God's call is to life, and it is our joy to use those gifts that God gives us.

Today we witness the ordination of Renate Ryan Jeppeson as an elder. As part of her ordination, she will reaffirm her baptismal vows. I invite you to reaffirm your own vows as you witness this act of God through the Church. As you do, will you also reaffirm your desire to expectantly wait for the completion of God's work through you. God calls you to be the completion of God's work-to genuineness and integrity, to be completely who you were created to be.

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