The Second Sunday After the Epiphany  January 19, 2003

 

The Rev. Dayle Casey  

The Chapel of Our Saviour

Colorado Springs, Colorado

January 19, 2003

 

 

2 Epiphany - B

1 Samuel 3:1-20

1 Corinthians 6:11b-20

John 1:43-51

 

 
There are some weeks when sermons just don't come together the way the preacher hopes. This was one of those weeks. So instead of preaching a sermon this morning, I'm going to walk us through the steps I would take in preparing a sermon for this morning if I were going to preach one.

I'd start, as I usually do, by reading the Bible. I'd begin with the readings the lectionary assigns for today, perhaps with the Old Testament reading, with that familiar story about the call of Samuel as prophet found in the third chapter of the First Book of Samuel.

What we find there is that at the age of three Samuel had been given to the service of the Lord by his mother Hannah. He had spent all his childhood assisting Eli, the priest in the temple at Shiloh. And one night Samuel was sleeping in front of the altar of the Lord when he heard a voice calling, "Samuel, Samuel!" So Samuel got up and went into where Eli was sleeping and said, "Here I am. You called me?" And Eli said, "I didn't call you. Go back to bed."

As we just heard, this happened three times before Eli realized that it must have been the Lord who was calling Samuel. So this time Eli tells Samuel that he should go back to bed once more, and that if he should hear the voice again he should say, "Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening."

So Samuel went back to bed, and the Lord called another time. And Samuel said, "Speak Lord. Your servant is listening." And the Lord spoke to Samuel, and then the Lord sent Samuel to speak his word to Eli and to the people of Israel. And all Israel "from Dan to Beersheba" recognized Samuel as a prophet of the Lord.

And to prepare a sermon, I would, of course, consider the Gospel story as well, the story we just heard about the call of Nathanael as a disciple of Jesus. As we hear the story in the Gospel of John, Jesus has apparently just been baptized when he meets Andrew, and Andrew decides to follow Jesus. Andrew then goes and finds Peter, and Peter, too, follows Jesus. Then the next day Jesus meets Philip and says to him, "Follow me." And then Philip finds Nathanael and says, "Come! We've found the one all Israel has been waiting for so long! He is Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth." And this makes Nathanael skeptical, because no one has ever heard of anything good coming from Nazareth.

Well, after reading these two stories, I might begin to think about their similarities. Notice that in the first story we are told that in the days of Samuel "a word from the Lord was rare" and "visions were uncommon." And we are led to conclude that perhaps Samuel didn't even consider that it might be the Lord who was speaking to him during the night, because even though he had been serving right in the Lord's temple for some time, Samuel did not have any knowledge of the Lord. So when the Lord calls Samuel, Samuel just thinks that it is Eli who is calling.

And if you think about it, it was the same in the time of Nathanael, centuries later. In those days, too, a word from the Lord was rare, because, as we are told, there had been no prophet in Israel for 300 years, no one to speak the word of God to the people. So in those days all Israel was waiting expectantly for the return of prophecy, for the return of Elijah, for Messiah.

So when Philip tells Nathanael that he has found the one all Israel has been expecting for 300 years, Nathanael is naturally skeptical. It has been such a long time since a word from God has been heard. And from Nazareth? That's too much! Nah, Philip, forget it! But Nathanael does meet Jesus, and Nathanael, too, follows him.

And all this raises a question for me, and it would be the question of today's sermon, if I were to preach one today. And that question is: "If one hears a word, how does he know if it is a word from God, and not just a word from Eli or Philip? Especially in a time -- a time like Samuel's time, or like Nathanael's time, or like our time -- when hearing a word from God is rare and visions are uncommon, a time when there seems to be no prophet of God.

And while thinking about this question, a rule of thumb was suggested to me. One of the tests of whether a word is from God is this: a word from the Lord will always be a word for all, not just for some.

And that rule of thumb came to me while I was considering the context of the story of Samuel. It came when I was reading the first two chapters that precede the story of Samuel's call in chapter three, for context is important in considering what the word the Lord spoke to Samuel meant.

In chapters one and two we learn that Eli was not the only priest at the temple in Shiloh. Eli had two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who were also priests. And we are told that their servants used to "thrust a three-pronged fork into cauldron or pan, into dish or pot, and the priest claimed for his own whatever the fork brought up."

Well, what's wrong with that? We are told that it displeased the Lord and that Hophni and Phinehas had no regard for the people's sacrifices, and because of that Eli's house was under a curse. But why did this practice of Hophni and Phinehas displease the Lord?

So this question might lead us to widen our context even more. We might want to go back into the Scriptures even further, back to some of those books we Christians don't read all that often, back to Torah itself, back to Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And there we learn that Levi and his descendants had not been given a portion of the land of Canaan like the other tribes of Israel, but that in return for their service in the temple as the priests of the Lord, they were given a portion of everybody else's portion. In other words, the people of the other eleven tribes supported the priests from the tribe of Levi through those portions of their sacrifices to God which the Lord made available to them.

But not all of the sacrifices of the other tribes was available to the priests, because both the portions the Lord made available and the way they were made available were very specifically defined. For one thing, all the fat of the sacrificial animal was to be burned up as an offering to the Lord himself, and the priests were to take their portion only from some of the parts that were left over after a sacrifice was made to God. But Hophni and Phinehas were grabbing the sacrifices before they were complete, before they were burned. They were demanding the fat itself from the people. In fact, they even told the people not to bother with boiling their offerings, but just to bring them raw meat. 

Hophni and Phinehas, in other words, were skimming off the top. They had no regard for the sacrifices the people were bringing to the Lord; they were taking what was meant for God and using it for themselves. And the word the Lord brought to Samuel in the temple that night was that this would not do, and that the Lord was going to put a stop to it, and correct it.

Well, when you think about it, it wasn't so very different in the time of Jesus and Nathanael. Once again, the context of the story would help us if we were going to write a sermon on this. Jesus, the one from Nazareth, God's Word to Israel, came to Nathanael at a time when the established powers, the priests, were acting like Hophni and Phinehas. They were skimming off the top, raking off the best for themselves, serving themselves rather than serving the Lord or his people.

That's what made Jesus so angry when he saw the money changers in the Temple courtyard, because what they were doing was gouging the people and making a mockery of their religion and their faith. The money changers were there as meat inspectors on behalf of the priests. When some poor man would bring in the best he had to make his offering to God -- an old pigeon or an old lamb, perhaps -- the inspector would look at it and say, "For this sacrifice the Lord demands a perfect animal; this old goat won't do. But I can sell you this good goat for so many shekels." And of course the poor old man had no choice but to buy. It was a system for demanding from the people, and especially from the poor, what the Lord himself did not demand, a system of exploitation, which the priests controlled. And it angered Jesus, and he threw the bums out!

And the pharisees were behaving similarly. "We obey the law," they consistently tell Jesus and everyone else throughout the Gospels. But Jesus says to them, "You're a bunch of hypocrites! You obey the part of God's law you choose to obey. You tithe cumin and dill, but you ignore the weightier matters of God's Word. You ignore justice for the poor and the disadvantaged, and you ignore mercy for the outcast and the stranger. You should do the first without neglecting the second."

So also, when John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to get some verification about who Jesus was, they ask Jesus "Are you the Word from the Lord we are to expect?" And Jesus says, "Go tell John what you hear and see. The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are made whole and acceptable, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them. My word is for them. I bring good news for all, for the poor and the outcast, not just for the privileged."

And as I was thinking about this, it led me back to the reason Samuel was given by his mother to the Lord's service in the first place. It led me back to Hannah, Samuel's mother. It led me to think about how she had been barren, and about how she had prayed to the Lord, and about how she had promised God that if he would give her a son she would consecrate her son to the Lord's service for life. And that led me to think about how God did give Hannah a son, and about how Hannah then prayed that song of thanksgiving that later became a song on Mary's lips, the Magnificat, that magnificent prayer of thanksgiving about how the Lord lifts up those who are of low estate, and brings down the mighty.

And this led me to still another question. (Do you see how one thing leads to another when you're trying to prepare a sermon?) Anyway, the other question this all raised for me is, What about us? What about us today? What about those of us who don't live in biblical times, but who live now, long after Samuel and Nathanael and Jesus? That seems to be the central question for any sermon this week, the question I'd ask if I were going to preach one on the Word we have heard from God today.

And I remembered that Martin Luther once had a congregation that complained to him, "But we never hear a call from God." And in a sermon Luther replied, "Look at your tools. Look at your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel, your scales and measures. Look at them and you will find this saying written on them, for there are as many calls from God as there are transactions, commodities, tools, and other implements in your houses and in your shops. These tools and commodities and transactions all shout this word in your face every day: 'Use me toward your neighbor as you would want him to act toward you with that which is his.'"

So what about us in a later day still, in our own day? What about us in the twenty-first century? And this question made me think about the person whose holiday we celebrate tomorrow. Was Martin Luther King, Jr., a prophet, one with a word from the Lord for us in our own day?

Not long before he was killed, King received a letter from a white brother Christian from Texas. "Are you sure that you aren't in too big of a religious hurry?" the man asked King. He suggested that King should give the people more time, that he should be more patient in his quest for justice and should relax his relentless struggle for civil rights.

And from his cell in the Birmingham jail, King responded that time alone, chronological time, does not automatically make for moral progress, and that for the person of biblical faith there is such a thing as kairos time, that time which is "the fullness of time," such as the time that comes when a pregnant woman is ready to give birth, kairos time, a time that has come and that won't wait. And King said that "the fullness of time" for hearing the Word of God regarding the relationship of the races had arrived, and that justice demands that the powers of the world serve all people equally. And so, in the 1960s -- in your time and mine -- Martin Luther King, Jr., continued to press for the end of apartheid in the United States. And for speaking this word in the fullness of time -- a time like Samuel's time, and like Nathanael's and John the Baptist's time, a time like Jesus' time -- King paid the price of a prophet, dying among the garbage collectors in Memphis.

And thinking about Martin Luther King reminded me of other questions. What about Oskar Schindler? What about Schindler, who, as a Nazi, lived at a kairos time in Germany? What about Schindler, a privileged and wealthy man who lived among the powerful in Germany and who was a lover of all that power and wealth and privilege and prestige can bring? And yet, somehow, a still, small voice from somewhere spoke to Schindler. Perhaps it was a remembered word from the Scriptures, or a remembered word from his mother or father or a parish priest during his Roman Catholic childhood, or a word from deep inside his heart. And the word spoke to him and asked, "But is it good, Oskar? These children of God you are helping your nation imprison here -- these anawim as Scripture calls them, the desperately poor, the hopeless, the outcast and despised of your society -- is it good that you and your party should hold and use all this power and wealth at their expense?

And the word he hears calls Schindler to help those in his charge rather than to exploit them, and through a systematic program of resistance, and right under Hitler's nose, Schindler shelters and saves the lives of over 1,300 Jews.

And I recall that Schindler was not alone in that kairos time in Germany. There was Andre Trocme as well, and his wife Magda, and their family, and all the people of Le Chambon in southern France during the Nazi occupation there. And I recalled how one day in a sermon much like Luther's sermon before him, Pastor Trocme told his congregation that "the Christian Church should drop to its knees and beg pardon of God for its present incapacity and cowardice," and how, in response, in the kairos time of their time, the entire town of Le Chambon conspired against their Nazi occupiers to hide and protect hundreds of Jews in their basements and attics and barns. And all of them did this, as did Schindler and Martin Luther King, Jr., at great risk to themselves and their families and their children.

And the question continued to linger, What about us? What about us now? Is a word from the Lord rare in our day, in the Year of Our Lord 2003? 

And once again context presents itself when I pick up the newspaper along with the Bible. What about us in the context of our day?

What about us with all our engines of wealth and power, with all our instruments of needle and thimble and scales and measures and industries and weapons? And the Word of God cries out through the lives of Schindler and Trocme and Martin Luther King, Jr., and in the words of Luther: "Look at your tools. Look at your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel, your scales and measures, [look at your engines of wealth and power], and you will find this saying written on them, for there are as many calls from God as there are transactions, commodities, tools, and other implements in your houses and in your shops. These tools and commodities and transactions [and wealth and power] all shout this word in your face every day: 'Use me toward your neighbor as you would want him to act toward you with that which is his.'"

"But what about our freedom?" we ask with the Christians in Corinth, because today's epistle reading, too, demands to be heard in preparing a sermon for today. "Christ has made us free," we say with them. "What about our freedom?" "Yes," says St. Paul, "Christ has made us free, and all things are permissible. But not everything is good. One of the freedoms Christ has made us free for is the freedom to choose what is good."

So what about us in the context of this week's newspapers?

What about us, with the scales and measures of our engines of wealth and power? 

What about us, with the scales and measures of our lives, and the ways we use our freedom toward our children, and even toward children yet unborn?

What about us, with our suspicion of those of other races or religions?

What about us, with fear driving the world to the verge of war again?

With all this on our plate, is it really that a word from the Lord is rare in our day? Or is it just as it was with Samuel and Nathanael, and with the people in Martin Luther's congregation, and with Schindler and Trocme and Martin Luther King, Jr. -- just a problem of listening and of hearing? And a problem of responding?

Anyway, if I were going to preach a sermon on the Word of God we've heard today, these are some of the questions I'd be inclined to ask.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.