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Good morning. So this passage uh is interesting, David is not even present for the sacrifice. Uh He doesn't get numbered among Jesse's sons until uh the prophet has to ask like, is there someone else

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that you're maybe hiding? Um And the response comes well there when there's the youngest, he's, he's tending the sheep. And then you may have noticed in the reading that there's this almost um a side

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that's, that's added into the text that uh by the way, he was, he was handsome and had nice eyes and a ready complexion as if like that, maybe he would explain why uh David was

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, was chosen by God. I can imagine that uh that, that Jesse's sons were talking among themselves . Why him? He tends the sheep. Um Well, it's because he has nice eyes. Um

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It's not a great explanation, but somehow it made it into the uh to the author's uh account of , of this story. But I'm reminded every time I hear this story about a conversation that I overheard

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during uh my doctoral work, actually, it was uh between my doctoral advisor and uh some other students who were talking about Gustavo Gutierrez's uh phrase God's preferential option for the poor that God has a preference,

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has made a preferential option to choose the poor. And my doctor advisor said that's, that's correct. That's true. We see that. But, but maybe it doesn't go far enough. Maybe, maybe

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the way to really phrase what we see throughout scripture is God's preferential option for the unlikely God's preferential option . Yes, for the poor, but for the unlikely in every way. And we see this preferential

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option for the poor and for the unlikely expressed in the fact that God continually chooses the underdog, the weak, the small, the unimpressive that uh the people that no one else would choose, except they

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might have a ready complexion and nice eyes. And God chooses those people to smuggle God's grace into the world. The elderly couple, Abraham and Sarah, unlikely to be the one through whom all nations are

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blessed. They have no child and yet God makes a way unlikely. The annoying little brother in the multicolored coat who uh you know, gets caught up in a prank gone too far. But in the

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end, God chooses and uses Joseph to bring a through famine and to bring them and bring him into power in Egypt. God's choosing of Moses, one who stutters and doesn't speak well and might have a

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manslaughter or a murder charge pending. And God chooses the unlikely or Elijah, the depressed prophet and the wet firewood. That's the way that I like to title the story of the prophets of bail. It's

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really a story about wet firewood and the depressed prophet and yet God somehow chooses that or the helpless baby born in a manger. God's greatest incursion of grace into the world in Christ or even continuing in jesus'

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own ministry where he breaks all school room lunch regulations and takes a little boy's lunch and then feeds 5000 people with it. If you know anything about lunch rooms where you're no longer supposed to share food like

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this, this is not kosher, this doesn't work , but God uses the lunch of a little boy and saul the persecutor of Christians. I mean, we could go on and on and on. And

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when I finally heard uh this idea that God has this preferential option for the unlikely. It helped me to begin changing the way that I read all of scripture, seeing page after page, the way in

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which God chooses and uses unlikely people to smuggle God's grace into the world. And if God exercises a preferential option for unlikely people, then this means as well that God must have a preferential option, not

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just for the poor, who are unlikely, but for teenagers and Children in our midst. If God does in fact choose to use unlikely people, then God is very likely to speak and act powerfully through

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youth and not just any youth, but often the most unlikely teenagers, the ones that you're prone to ignore or pass over or focus upon less as a culture. We love to pass over young people.

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We have a group in Children and teenagers who remain really one of the last groups in society that it's ok to stereotype and to make fun of. I was on a Southwest flight a few years ago when

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the uh flight attendant came over the loudspeaker and announced that there was a group of teenagers on plane in the back and they would give free drink coupons to any adults who would want to sit in the back

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of the plane and apologize for the presence of this group of teenagers. Imagine if we had done this with any other group in society, but the response of the plane was to chuckle and laugh and a

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few folks even got up and took the free drink vouchers. I think God's preferential option for the unlikely includes Children and teenagers. And what's interesting is that we see this over and over in scripture as well

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in this very story, David is not just the youngest, he's, he's either a young boy or a young teenager at this point who yes, has nice eyes and a red complexion and maybe has some

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qualities that that could be redeemed, but he's been overlooked. He's not the likely candidate in any sense . And I wonder how often we overlook those in our midst who are just too young, just kids

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. And maybe not the most likely kids in my time in youth ministry. I spent, uh, about 10 years of, uh, of my time in youth ministry in Idaho in southern Idaho, about

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three hours north of Salt Lake. And if you look on the map, uh, it is in the middle of nowhere, um, which is the town over from where I was at, uh,

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nowhere Idaho. Um, and I encountered hundreds of teenagers during my time there and it's been so interesting to watch the ones that God has used along the way where I routinely get on Facebook and go wait

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a second. Jessica is doing, doing what Jessica , the one who I had to dismiss from at least two youth retreats for things that we can't talk about in chapel. Um Her and her boyfriend both

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were dismissed from youth retreat numerous times. Came to youth group with the worst attitude I've ever encountered in youth ministry. But Jessica somehow is doing medical missions in, in Western Australia with indigenous peoples. Um

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feeling called by God to this. How, how , how does God use Jessica or, or, or Maya, a deaf teenager that we had in the ministry who was an immigrant from, from Finland

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. So not only was she uh hearing impaired, but she was trying to learn English only speaking Finnish . And now she's a missionary in Africa, not what I would have imagined for Maya um or Kent

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, the, the consummate nerd. Uh the kid who you'd kind of want to be on youth trips , like you need to take a bath today. It, it's gotta be today. It can't be

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tomorrow. It should have been two days ago. But today is the day Kenton, that kid, the unlikely kid who somehow got a heart for kids in Sub Saharan Africa who didn't have shoes and invented

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a shoe that grows. You can look this up on the internet even it's a shoe that is expandable for multiple years of use. And Kenton's entire life has been dedicated to ministering to kids through giving them

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footwear that lasts. Or Clover. Clover, the kid who at 15 found herself in foster care is part of our church family. We put people in place to, to care for her who got licensed

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to be her foster parents across the four years of high school who when she came to the first home , I got a call and they said she doesn't know how to brush her teeth like she doesn't know

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any personal hygiene at all. And it was because of the fact that she'd grown up in a home where she was the primary caretaker of her two younger siblings and her parents were constantly either in jail or

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strung out on drugs. She had no life skills and yet today, Clover lives up the road a couple hours and oversees um foster care for uh the state of Texas. How does God choose? Unlikely

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kids like this. How do these unlikely kids come to this place of being used by God? These aren't the pretty ones, the, the ones that are put together, the ones that we are drawn

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to, even if you're not in youth ministry or children's ministry, you know, the kids that when you go to church you're like, oh, that kid, that, that, that's a good kid

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. They're, they're dressed nice and they're, they're respectful and they interact well with adults and, and maybe they even, you know, greet you or , uh, or pass the peace and, and

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, and, and these are the kids that are well spoken more and more. We look for kids that are the influencers as well. The ones that are charismatic, the ones that have a following on

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social media, the ones who are put together, the ones who have straight A's the ones who are involved in all the activities. Yeah, I can imagine those kids going on and being used by God

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in ways that are amazing. But I have a hard time imagining the other kids, the ones that aren't desirable, the ones that don't seem to respond to you at all as an adult. The ones

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who, even if you wanted to go up to them, they still are needing to take that bath that Kenton, you know, needed to take a few days ago and they're unlikely people. God's preferential

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option for the unlikely continues in an almost embarrassing fashion . Throughout scripture because it's such an ongoing theme and when you start becoming attuned to it, you see it on every page. It's embarrassing how much God

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overuses the choice of unlikely people to smuggle God's grace into the world. But what's more embarrassing is the fact that we often miss it. It's embarrassing that we so easily miss this clear themes throughout scripture that

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God's calling in action doesn't go to the rock stars or the Charismatic, the brilliant, the ones that are the cool kids, the popular, the ones that we would expect. But God chooses over and

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over to use people that are unlikely like David tending to the sheep. So two things that I think I take away from this passage. The first is that just like God chose an unlikely teenager in David

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and just as God chose an unlikely teenager in Mary to be the theo the God bearer, the one who literally bore God into the world just as God chose those. So God is still choosing unlikely teenagers

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and Children to bear God's grace into the world. But will we see it? Will we be attentive to where that's happening? How will you respond to the young people you encounter who don't seem likely conduits

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of much at all, much less God's grace into the world? What if we approached each child and each teenager as the one through whom God's grace could spring forth into the world in any moment? Not

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that they would develop into some great person that they'd have this personal turnaround, but that God's grace would spring into the world through them. Uh When I was 14, I felt a call to youth ministry

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, which I knew it was a call because um I did not want to do that. Uh I wanted to be a scientist. I had my life mapped out. I was the nerdy, nerdy kind

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of guy. Um, Not a lot has changed . Um And I was walking with my youth pastor in an event and I said, Tom, I think I wanna be a youth pastor when I grow

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up. And I went, where did that come from? I, I took it back and I'm like, uh uh before I could say anything to be like, well, that's a, that's a

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decision that, you know, takes a lot of thought and prayer and gave the kind of standard brushing off kind of answer, but I couldn't shake this call. Um And yet I wanted to, I

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wanted to be an astronomer or a chemist and uh and I felt called by God. So I told the um the, the chief volunteer uh in youth ministry at our church, a guy that was legendary

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, had been volunteering in youth ministry for 20 years and everybody in the church knew him and, and uh I told him um I, I, I , I wanna be a youth pastor when I grew

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up and he laughed um and said, look, um, you're not, you're not cut out for youth ministry. That's like, that's not who you are because I wasn't the, not musical, definitely

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not athletic. Um And we don't need to prove that anymore than it's already been proven. Um, the nerdy kid who, instead of buying the Nintendo , I bought a telescope in ninth grade, uh

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saved up all my money for it. Didn't really uh um fit well with the youth ministry stereotype and he laughed at that. Um but I kept pursuing God's call and I got to college and the Christian

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education professor, you know, those professors are a problem and um he taught youth ministry and Christian education and, and uh he had this group of, of college students that uh he'd kind of take under

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his wing who were the, the superstars and, and youth ministry coming up and I applied to be a part of the group. And uh he brought me into his office and said you really should consider

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a philosophy major. Um that might be really where you fit a lot better than this youth ministry thing . And he, he wasn't wrong. I didn't fit with the, with the ethos, with the

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, with the feel, with the look. And I applied for um an internship the following year and got the same response. You're not really like the youth ministry type. And um by this point,

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I, you know, was engaged to be married and trying to figure out what, where my life was headed, finishing college. And, um, I said, well, I'll volunteer to teach Sunday

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school. And I'm like, ok, we can , we can take you for that. We can take you for Sunday school because we don't turn down volunteers for that. Um, and, uh,

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I remember the first day that I walked in to that Sunday school class, which happened to be filled with professors, kids from the local college, which worked out really well. Um And I knew that

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this was where God wanted me to be. I was unlikely an unlikely choice for this according to what the world looks for. But God simply looks for places and people through whom God's grace can be born

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into the world, which I think brings us to the last point that God's grace continues to flow into the world through unlikely people like Jessica and Clover and Kenton and me. And probably a lot of you

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here this morning who have been deemed unlikely people for conveying God's grace, unlikely people for conveying God's action into the world, whether by token of your gender or your sexuality or your nationality or your race or

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your abilities, or because of your beliefs or your lack thereof or because of your age or your politics or so forth, you've been deemed unlikely to do things that matter and very unlikely to be used by

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God. And yet I think this passage in Samuel reminds us that in the economy of God's upside down kingdom, you may be the most likely of all to be a conduit of God's grace into the world

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. Don't question God's call or that God can and will use you. But rather may your words be as Mary's words were when the announcement from the angel came most unlikely as it was. Her response was

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simply this. Here, I am a servant of the Lord that it may be to me according to