Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
1 Samuel 3:1-11
3Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. 2At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4Then the Lord called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" 5and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down.6The Lord called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." 7Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. 8The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. 9Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 10Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
11Then the Lord said to Samuel, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.
Though the world has become quite diverse and there has been an explosion of movies, music, and books; for most of human history there has been a certain shared core of songs and stories that you only have to hear the first few notes, the first few words, and it reminds you immediately of the whole.
If I say, "Four score and seven years ago....." your mind will automatically return to the Gettysburg address. If you are a child of the seventies as I am, you only have to hear the first two notes to the Star Wars theme and the image of a gigantic white Imperial cruiser is framed against the blackness of space in your mind.
For those of us who grew up in church, there are a lot of passages and stories from the Bible that affect us the same way.
I know that this generation is not as steeped in Biblical readings as were preceding generations but I have to tell you, as a preacher, I'm still there.
Most of us at least consult a very ancient cycle of readings from the Bible that assigns an Old Testament lesson, a Psalm, a Gospel lesson and a reading from the epistles for every Sunday of the year. I don't always follow the lectionary and even when I do, I usually only use one of the assigned passages here in church, but I read them all, every week.
The cycle repeats itself every three years, so, at this point in my life, I am half way through an even dozen times of preaching my way through the lectionary. After having written a dozen sermons on this text we have today about the boy Samuel, sleeping in the temple, I only have to read the first sentence to remember the words of the passage the way that you would remember the lyrics to the songs on the very first album you ever bought, the one you played over and over and over again when you were a kid.
And don't worry, I won't tell anyone that your first vinyl LP was the Partridge Family Album.
For most of the past several centuries, it wasn't just preachers, it was everyone who, when they heard the opening lines of this story: "The word of the Lord was rare in those days".... Everyone would immediately lip the next phrase, "visions were not wide spread."
When I was young, I made the mistake of reading these stories as if there were photographs in an old family album.... Little snippets of our faith history.... This is what Samuel looked like when he was young.... This was his first grade picture, and here he is at senior prom, wearing that silly suit with wide lapels and sporting a polka-dot bow tie.
I read the Bible that way back then, as if learning the history of the heroes of the faith would somehow make me a better Christian. But, of course, they were never meant to be read that way. They were always stories that were supposed to mean something new every time they were read.
When you hear a love song on the radio, do you immediately imagine the woman that the musician is singing about or do you think about the woman that you love? See, you never imagined singing that song to the artist's girlfriend, you dream about singing it to the one for whom your own heart longs.
That's how you read the Bible.... That's how the stories come to life. Sure, there is a specific setting to this little story.... A very young man has been given to the priesthood as a servant. Samuel was sort of a houseboy for Eli. He put oil in the lamps, carried the groceries, swept the floor.
And in this sort of Cinderella story, Samuel doesn't have a bedroom.... He is just sleeping in the sanctuary of the church. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the metaphor in that..... he is in the church.... Sleeping. And then, the story says, the Lord God Almighty calls out to him. I don't know what the voice of the Lord God Almighty would sound like but I want to believe that if the Lord God Almighty were calling my name that I would recognize the voice.
But in this story, repeatedly, Samuel doesn't recognize God's voice... and he just keeps going back to sleep. There is the metaphor... there is the symbolism.... People thought that the word of the Lord was rare, that visions were not wide spread... but the church was asleep.
This isn't a story about Samuel.... And it isn't a story about catching a nap during the sermon. It is about a community so dead to the word of the Lord that they are in a coma.
We know about that kind of cultural deafness, don't we? We make progress in many arenas of life.... The Supreme Court is finally going to hear a case that will allow them to make same sex marriages legal in all 50 states.... 20 years after I performed my first same sex wedding, illegally.... But no one ever accused the Supreme Court of getting things figured out very quickly.... The 9 justices can sleep comfortably through generations and so, we know what it means to say:
The word of the Lord was rare in those days.
Would you humor me a bit and repeat this verse with me? When I say, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days." Would you say, "visions were not widespread."
You may not remember many of the scripture passages you hear read here but I would really like for you to let this one sink in. I am afraid that our culture is asleep and this story is one we should remember.
Because, you know, here in Missouri, I have been writing columns and leading demonstrations against predatory lending for almost two decades. Our state is either the worst in the union or we're in second place for abusing our poor and vulnerable. Payday Loan businesses can charge nearly 2000% interest on small loans, literally taking food off of the tables of the poor, causing them to be evicted from their homes and having their cars repossessed. Every state around us has put a stop to these practices years ago but our legislature refuses to do so.
A bill is introduced in every legislative session to cap interest rates at something reasonable and that legislation has never made it to the floor for a vote.... Is no one paying attention? Is the governor asleep? Is the legislature asleep? This is a monumental problem with a very simple answer.... So simple that they have already figured it out in Kentucky, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Illinois.... This is not organic chemistry or a complicated calculus problem... this is easy. And yet there has been no progress. I'm thinking:
The word of the Lord is rare in those days.......
But money in politics has not just affected Missouri. On the national scene ever since the Citizen's United decision removed any upper limit to campaign donations, billions of dollars in corporate donations have flooded into political campaigns. The small donations of private citizens have become totally irrelevant in the face of the hundreds of millions donated by corporations.
And it is a good investment too. Recent studies show that their billions in donations are becoming trillions in government contracts.
For every dollar a corporation donates to a political campaign, they get back, on average, more than $700 in government grants, tax breaks and contracts.
What could be more obvious than that it is unethical for politicians to take donations from the very corporations that they are elected to regulate? But they don't regulate them....and the current congress only wants to deregulate farther. It seems to me:
That the word of the Lord was rare in those days......
Just over two years ago, when Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary and killed twenty children and six adults, there was finally enough shock in our nation to make sane gun control legislation inevitable.
But the NRA shamed the public for trying to make such a tragic event a political lightening rod. They told us, "now is not the time....." and of course, weeks pass, memories fade. I don't know what the number is now.... Last summer there had been more than 70 more shootings in schools since Sandy Hook... nearly 200 more children dead.... We don't talk about gun control much anymore.... Because
The word of the Lord was rare in those days......
The story in I Samuel, with real tongue in cheek humor, begins sort of mockingly.... Saying that the word of the Lord was rare but then repeatedly showing that no one recognized the voice of God. But it ends almost with a threat.
Look at the last verse of the periscope, verse, 11:
"See, I am about to do something.... That will make everyone's ears [hurt]"
Again, I'm not talking this literally as if there were going to be some disembodied voice that shouts down from heaven. What makes our ears hurt is not just when we are told something that we don't want to hear.... It is when we are told something that we know is true that we don't want to hear.
We know that poverty is violence. We know that hunger, homelessness, joblessness, the gutting of pensions and the funding of higher education is inexcusable in a wealthy nation.... We just don't want to hear it because once you acknowledge that truth, it becomes more difficult to resist change.
Newsweek published a banner headline this week reporting that the Dali Lama had stated that he is a Marxist when it comes to economics. Americans have swarmed to events where the Dali Lama was speaking for two decades but they never seem to hear what he is saying. He has been talking about economic injustice for years... he has repeatedly said that he was a Marxist... but every time it comes up, people act surprised because they were not listening the last dozen times he said it.
The Pope Francis has condemned unfettered capitalism as being the "new tyranny" of our time. Of course, the Wall Street Journal and the London Telegraph immediately bemoaned the fact that the Pope doesn't understand economics....the marketplace loves religion when it teaches the poor to be obedient, honest, hardworking, and to be willing to accept their piece of the pie only in the sky in the by and by, but when the Pope says that the system is rigged to exploit the poor and serve the rich, they can only shake their heads and say, "Isn't it sad that there are no great spiritual leaders in our day?"
I think that the word of the Lord is not rare. It is, however, true that most of the public finds it easier to sleep than it is to listen, to be informed, to network with other concerned people and to take collective action.
The minority can only oppress the majority as long as the majority is willing to fight with one another. The very wealthy want Christians to be afraid of Muslims, for Muslims to blame Jews for their poverty, for poor blacks and poor whites to arm themselves for neighborhood anarchy while both poor blacks and poor whites are in servitude to banks and corporations that place no more value on them than another piece of scrap wood to throw on the fire.
I would remind you that in Buddhist tradition, it is said that when people would ask the Buddha if he were a god, or the son of a god, he would reply simply, "I am awake."
In response to the dire issues facing the world, I hear a lot of people saying that they just stopped reading the paper... that they are turning off the news.... That they are insulating themselves from what makes them unhappy..... so falling asleep is now a spiritual path?
Bad news.... The stuff that makes your ears hurt.... That is not the goal but it is a first step... to wake up, to be aware, to refuse to believe the propaganda, to reject indifference and to stop judging the people who are on the side of solutions as if every thinking liberal in the world was just too awesome to tolerate anyone who differs from them even slightly.
The only way that the darkness can prevail is if people of good will fail to love one another and work together and that is why I refuse to give up.
