(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on June 3, 2018, Proper 4)
A Beloved Bible Story
Today’s scripture begins with a
beloved Bible story: Samuel and the call of God.
[Read 1 Samuel 3:1-10.]
Today’s story reads a little bit like
a children’s fable or fairytale.
We imagine little Samuel lying in sleep when he hears a voice call his
name. Three times Samuel hears the
voice, three times he runs in his innocence to the priest Eli. Finally Eli figures out that the little
boy is having more than a dream.
He’s hearing a call from God.
And so we end up with a simple,
soft-hearted lesson about personal piety: about the significance of our evening
prayers or about showing God full attention the way that Samuel finally did,
when he said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
Both are important lessons. But they are also ways we domesticate
this story. This sentimentalized,
soft-hearted reading of the story turns faith into a private matter, something
we reflect on at night, at our bedside, in the quiet of our hearts.
When really this story portrays
faith as the seed of sweeping and subversive social change.
Where God’s Change often Starts:
on the Margins
To put this story in perspective,
it helps to remember that when Samuel was born, his mother sang a song: a song
about the lowly lifted up and the powerful laid low, about empty wombs bearing
children and empty tummies filled with food. In other words, when Samuel entered this world, his mother
was dreaming of another world.
Samuel embodies the dream of change. Change will be his story.
So instead of imagining the boy
Samuel in his pajamas and night slippers, kneeling piously by his bedside and
praying to God in the safety of his heart, picture him instead as you might
picture the hobbit Frodo at the start of The
Lord of the Rings, dozing off in the hillside peace of the Shire about to
be taken by a wizard and adventure; or the farmer boy Luke Skywalker at the
start of Star Wars, going about his
business on the remote dusty planet of Tatooine about to be engulfed in the
fate of the universe.
These timeless stories echo a
timeless truth, one that we find repeatedly in the Bible. The change that saves our world often
begins on the margins in the unlikeliest of characters. The change that Samuel’s mom hopes and
dreams for, is not a change that God enforces with a flick of the wrist or a momentary
visit to earth. It is a change
that starts in the smallest and strangest of ways. In a whisper.
In the dead of night. To a
boy. It goes without saying that
the boy is not an ordained priest.
(A reminder, if nothing else, that God does not follow our rules.)
What God’s Change often Becomes:
Public and Political and Precarious
If our story today begins on the
margins with a rather personal and innocent touch, focusing on the boy Samuel
as he hears from God for the first time, it quickly becomes public and
political and precarious.
But again, we need some of the
background to understand this.
Right after Samuel is born and his mother sings her song of the lowly
lifted up and the powerful laid low, the storyteller tells us about the leaders
in Israel: the judge and priest Eli (cf. 4:18) and his two sons who were also priests. Eli’s sons, the Bible says, were
scoundrels with no regard for others or for God. They stole from the people’s offerings. And if someone confronted them, they
would threaten them in return (2:13-17).
They took advantage of their power. This included, the storyteller says, the way they treated
women who came to the holy tent of meeting (2:22).
Having domesticated the Bible, we
often miss out on its all-too-human overtones of privilege and power struggle
and political intrigue. But it’s
all here. Today’s #MeToo movement,
our world’s increasing distrust of the establishment, its jaded eye toward
anyone who might have a vested interest—it’s not that different from the world
we find in 1 Samuel. Abuse of
power, threats and intimidation, corruption and sex scandals—it’s all here,
three thousand years ago, in these priests, these sons of Eli. Behind the brief and suggestive
sentences of our storyteller lies a familiar story: the privilege of a few, the
ruin of many, and the hopeless inertia of the status quo.
What does God think about all of
this? That’s what some people
might be asking today. Where is
God in the plight of the disadvantaged?
How does God feel about power that preys on the poor? Well, today’s scripture gives us an
idea. [Let’s look now at the
remainder of our passage. Read 1
Samuel 3:11-20.]
Where is God when power goes
awry, when the mighty mistreat the lowly?
The answer of today’s story is unsettling. No longer is this an innocent tale of a private, bedside
faith. No, God delivers to the boy
Samuel an ominous message: “I am about to do something in Israel that will make
both ears of anyone who hears it tingle” (3:11). In other words, change is on the way. Not just for Samuel. Not just for the sons of Eli. But for everyone. This is not a pious, religious change,
but a sweeping, social change.
That will make ears “tingle” and hearts tremble. This truly is the God of whom Samuel’s
mother sang, who lifts the lowly and lays low the powerful, who cares for the
hungry and barren.
How We Receive God’s Change:
A Promise or a Threat
A Promise or a Threat
What troubles me the most in
today’s passage is the moment where God promises punishment forever on the
house of Eli. Is that the same God
whom I follow? Is that the same
God revealed in Jesus Christ? Is
that the God who Jesus promises is kind and compassionate even to the
ungrateful and the wicked (cf. Luke 6:35)?
To read the Bible literally is to
encounter all sorts of contradictions like this one. In my understanding, the Bible is God-breathed and inspired
even as it is a document of human experience and interpretation. That means that each time we read, we
must interpret it ourselves. We
must hold our stethoscopes near to the text and listen for the heartbeat of God
under the layers of human story.
Personally, I doubt that the God
of love—and love, remember, bears and endures all things—I doubt that this God
promised eternal punishment on Eli and his home. But even so, I do hear a divine heartbeat in
this part of the story. What I
hear here, is a promise. Which is
also a threat. Which is what
troubles me still.
The promise, or threat, is this:
Things must change. And they
will. Not because God will come
with holster and handcuffs, but because sin—injustice—has its own consequences.
So the promise is good for those
who are on the injured side of injustice: for those who are poor and needy,
hungry and empty. God is on their
side. Change is coming. But the same promise becomes a threat,
if you are among the privileged and powerful, complicit in injustice. A “new beginning” for some means a
“terrible ending” for others.[1] Eli, who did no wrong himself but who
did not restrain his wicked sons, would soon die along with his sons. And the nation itself would fall into
military defeat and political disorder.
Only when injustice had run its course and the nation had fallen into a
heap could the change of God begin to take shape.
Does It Make Our Hearts Tremble?
The story of the boy Samuel is
soft-hearted and personal and promising.
But it is also subversive and political and threatening. And it shows a God who is deeply concerned
and involved in a world full of political intrigue and abused power and
collective injustice.
It is a lesson from the history
of our faith, a matter ever to be interpreted anew. The change of God that whispers on the margins, that cuts to
the quick of a nation, that is both a promise and a threat—where is it today?
I wonder if the world might sometimes
be dismissing the change of God when it dismisses the cries and complaints of
others. A few weeks ago at Common
Table, we were reminded how easily the homeless are dismissed—“Oh, they could
get help if they really wanted it.”
I am reminded also of how sometimes racial tensions are
dismissed—“That’s all in the past,” say folks who are doing alright for
themselves in the present. I am
reminded also of how other minority communities, like the disability community
or the LGBTQ community, are dismissed—“How many special privileges do they
want?” ask folks who can freely walk into churches and hospitals and schools
without fear of suspicious or discriminatory response.
I wonder if these dismissals are
not sometimes dismissals of the change of God. A change that whispers on the margins, that cuts to the
quick of a nation, that is both a promise and a threat.
Where do we hear it today—the
change of God? Does it make our
ears tingle and our hearts tremble?
Prayer
God of barren mothers
And hungry tummies,
God who lifts the lowly
And lays low the powerful—
Where are you in our world?
Draw us to your side
At the margins,
In the public square,
In your terrifying and terrific change.
Open our ears
To hear your as Samuel did,
And our hearts,
To follow you
Into your holy promise and threat.
In the name of Christ,
From whose love emerges your new creation. Amen.
[1] Walter
Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel
(Interpretation; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990), 28.
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