I’m sure
we’ve all seen ads for movies or books or TV shows that “quote” reviewers . . .
“A Wonder!” (A.O. Scott, New York
Times), or “Brilliant” (David Ansen, Newsweek) or maybe “A Masterpiece!” (John
Jacobs, L.A. Times). But if you read the
whole reviews, you’ll see that sometimes, they really said “It’s a wonder
this lousy script ever got filmed” or “I’m sure they wanted to make a brilliant
film, but didn’t come anywhere close” or “’War and Peace’ is a masterpiece, but this thing is really bad.”
The words have been taken out of context, haven’t they? The entire quote hasn’t been . . . quoted, because to do so would change
the message the quoter wants to convey.
Whenever you
run across some parentheses like in today’s reading, which mean the verses are optional, you should I think the same
thing: hmmm . . . like the movie quotes, are there verses in this passage that
don’t fit the message the lectionary is trying to get across? I know as a preacher, it makes me suspicious,
and causes me to dig deeper to find out just what it is that the lectionary
committee doesn’t want read to the congregation.
It might be
just length—apparently, they the folks who put the Lectionary together don’t
think Christians have too long an attention span. Or, it might be that the verses don’t fit the
theological theme for the day, or what’s worse, don’t fit the collective
theological biases of the Lectionary committee.
And I think it’s kind of a combination of the last two in this
case. The lectionary wants this Sunday
to be about God’s call—thus the cute story of Samuel, sleeping in the
temple. But verses 11 through 20, which
clearly belong with the first ten, take us away from calling
into—gasp!—judgment. And the lectionary committee
thinks think that congregants don’t want to hear about judgment, and they’re
probably right about that—it tends to make them uncomfortable. I know it does me . . .
Without the
second half of our passage, this is just a nice little call story, with a
pretty simple upshot: Answer the call!
Samuel answers the call, and look where it gets him: he becomes the last
of the judges (or maybe the first of a new kind of prophet), and he’s able to
assist Israel in the transition to a full-time King. Be like Samuel, goes the story, answer the
call, ‘cause you never know what the Lord has in store for you.
But the
second half, the judgment half, contains rich lessons for our life together as
a congregation, and how we figure out God’s preferred for our congregation . .
. so let’s look at both, shall we? We
open on an ominous note: the word of the Lord was rare in those days, and given
the general Biblical observation that the Word of God is the prime creative
mover in our world,., that’s saying a mouthful, isn’t it? The word of the Lord—the motive force of
creation, that spoke the planet into being, and that gives guidance and comfort
to God’s people—hadn’t been around much.
Further, visions—whether waking or, like most, during sleep—were not
widespread. It was like a drought of the
Lord, a dry spell from God’s guiding presence.
And it’s a
biting commentary when the word of the Lord is rare in the Temple, just where
it should be the most abundant . . . we’ve all been in churches where that
seems to be the case. Maybe even in our own church, that’s sometimes true . . .
and in this case, it might be due to what‘s going on in the house of Eli, was
the hereditary head of the priests. He’d
been ignoring the shenanigans of his sons who were, not insignificantly, his
heirs. As priests themselves, they’d
been misusing their positions, taking the best of the sacrifices, before the
fat had been burnt off, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they’d been having sex
with the serving girls at the temple. As
the narrator put it, they were scoundrels, with no regard for the Lord.
And as our
story opens, Eli—whose name, ironically enough, means “my God”—is laying down
in his room, and his eyesight has grown dim and he can’t see, and there’s more
than physical blindness afoot here, because he refuses to see his sons
transgressions, or at least do anything about them. And then there were all those visions, which
he didn’t see, but as head priest certainly should
have . . . And Samuel is laying down in the temple itself, for the lamp of
the Lord hasn’t yet gone out . . . and there’s symbolic weight here as well . .
. even though it might seem so, even though nobody is seeing visions, the light
of the Lord has not quite gone out, and to prove it, God speaks to Samuel . .
And God says;
“Samuel! . . . Samuel!” But Samuel, whose name means—again
ironically—“hears God,” doesn’t hear
God, despite his ministering in the
Temple, and it may be because he who is named “hears God” doesn’t yet know God, maybe he thinks Eli is his
God—after all, he’s got the name for it.
Whatever the reason: he goes
running into Eli’s bedroom, waking the old fellow up, and saying “Here I am,
for you called me.” And here’s the
thing: despite being the head priest and all, and having that name to boot, Eli
doesn’t get it that it’s God who’s
doing the calling, and tells him to go back to bed. Have I mentioned that irony is a staple in
Jewish humor?
Well, again
the Lord calls him—“Samuel! . . . Samuel . . . Hears God, hears God!” and again Samuel goes running to Eli, saying “Here I am,” and once
again the old priest—whose job it is
to know when God is talking—doesn’t, and
sends him back saying “I didn’t call, my son.”
Finally, a third time—get the
perfect number three?—a third time God
calls out “Samuel! . . . Samuel!,” but this time, when Hears God
runs to My God saying “Here I am,” all of the old priest finally perceives who
it is doing the calling, and tells the boy to lie back down, and if God calls,
this time answer, for Pete’s sake.
And on the
fourth call, notice it’s once beyond
perfect, he answers God’s call . . . and is rewarded with an earful. “I’m gonna tell you something that’ll make
you ears tingle,” says the Lord, and
suddenly, the humor drains right out of our story, it gets real serious all of a sudden, because God’s not talking some
gossip-girl, Bobby-told-Brenda-who-told-me”
smack, here, but that God is going to bring down the house of Eli because of
all the bad stuff that’s been going on.
And this is serious business, because Eli is the hereditary high priest,
and a judge to boot, one of those hired guns that the Hebrews would bring in from
time to time to take care of leadership matters, and here God was, fixing to get
rid of that powerful man.
And not only
was God going to remove Eli, stripping him of power, but he was going to
replace him with Samuel, which may explain why he was, ah . . . reluctant to tell Eli about it. Eli, who held supreme power over the Hebrew
people, could have just as easily said “Aha!
How interesting . . . listen, my boy, will you check that the door to
the temple is closed, and that there are no other priests about . . . and fetch
me that ceremonial knife while you’re at it, would you?”
Truth be
told, Samuel had some affection for the old man, who was the only father he’d
ever known, so it saddens him to be the storm crow, the bearer of bad news, but
Samuel says no: go ahead and tell
me. He tells him to go ahead, that he
wants to hear what the Lord has said.
Though he was experienced enough to know that the Word of God inevitably
brings change, and with it often turmoil, he also knows that it is his job as a
priest and child of God to hear, to discern what God has planned, whether it
means pain for him personally or not.
As I
mentioned earlier, we can read this—especially the first ten verses—as a simple
little call story, one faithful response, rewarded by an appointment as the
highest official in the land, but there’s more to be had here . . . we can all
feel like the word of God is rare, that vision—that vision thing—is scarce, but
is it really as rare as all that? Or is
it that we in churches don’t hear it, don’t recognize it when it happens? Look at Samuel . . . he hears, with his ears,
but doesn’t understand that it’s God . . . and his mentor, Eli, the one with
all the experience . . . God has to speak three
times before he figures out that
it’s the word of the Lord.
Maybe, in our
churches today, the word of God isn’t as rare as we might think . . . maybe, as
in the case of Eli and Samuel, we just don’t notice it when it comes. Benedictine monks know this, and they
deliberately practice seeking God in all things . . . they look for God in the
people they meet, listen for God’s word in whatever they say, watch for God’s
word in whatever they do, and whatever happens to them throughout the day. And at night, before they sleep, they recite
the Song of Simeon—mine eyes have seen your salvation—and they go back over the
day, looking for where they have seen the Word of God, looking for where they
have seen Christ.
But the word
of God comes not just to individuals, or perhaps not even primarily to individuals, it comes to communities of faith, like
churches and synagogues, and like the one surrounding the temple in our
passage. And it often takes a community
to interpret, to discern that word as
well . . . it certainly did in Samuel’s case, didn’t it? If it weren’t for Eli, the more experienced
member of the priestly caste surrounding the temple, the word of God would have
gone unheeded, unnoticed, even. And
that’s how it is in any faith community, or the way it’s supposed to be, at any rate.
The wiser heads, those with more experience in those matters, perhaps
with more biblical knowledge, provide guidance and wisdom to hear and decipher
what God is saying.
Finally, it
takes courage to hear God’s word, because it often upsets the apple cart. Eli had gotten complacent, he’d gotten used
to things as they are . . . he knew what his sons were doing, yet he did
nothing . . . and he surely knew what God was going to say, or at least the
gist of it, because he’d been warned before.
Yet he heard it anyway. When
Samuel came looking for him to speak to him that word, he said—like Samuel had
said to him before—“Here I am.” Here I
am, Samuel, here I am, Lord, I will hear what you have to say.
Sisters and
Brothers, listening for and hearing God’s word is hard, complicated
business. It’s also scary business
because we know, like Eli, that God’s word—as it did when it first blew across
the waters at creation—God’s word brings change. Much easier, I think, to sit back on our
laurels, do what we know how to do, what we know works and makes us comfortable. God’s word brings anxiety. Commotion.
Turmoil.
But . . . it
also brings . . . hope. After Samuel
became the high priest and judge, the nation of Israel was transformed, God
gave them a king, a monarchy, a perpetual house of David. And for churches the Word brings the same
thing: new programs, new people, new life. Hearing and heeding the word of the Lord
leads to transformation and a growing, vibrant, healthy ministry as we rest in
God’s will and let God lead us into his preferred future. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment