Posted by: pastor on 02/24/2009 17:34:31
Sermon from January 18
The Word of God & Noise Pollution
In the Name of Jesus:
It doesn’t help that our caller i.d. brings up “Kinney Jacob” for both of our sons. Our three children & I share a family cell phone plan for which Jake initially subscribed, and for this reason, I guess, his name appears for his brother’s number as well as his own; and so the difficulty I sometimes have distinguishing their voices is exacerbated by the double appearance of Jake’s name.
My father has the same telephone trouble with my sister and me, although I don’t think my parents have caller i.d.; and he has no qualms about asking us, bluntly, “Who’s this?” if we’ve failed to say who’s calling.
Samuel’s confusion, in the first reading for today—the story of his call—is understandable, I think. He’s a boy of perhaps twelve, living in the temple with his mentor Eli. His mother Hannah had dedicated him to God when God heard her years of praying and pleading for a child and granted her this child. His name may mean God has heard –because God heard Hannah’s prayer—or the name of God, the Name Samuel bore in his ministry.
Eli has been priest at Shiloh for some time, but lately there has been trouble. “The word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were not widespread.” Either God has not been speaking, or perhaps the people have not been listening… I suppose it matters little whether God is speaking a word if God’s word falls on deaf ears. As for Eli, the lights had not yet gone out completely, but his sight was growing dim, his days as judge and priest waning. He’s been a faithful servant, but his sons, Hophni & Phinehas, are bad news—bad eggs—sons of Beliel, which means something about as bad as it sounds, and Eli has been ineffectual in disciplining them.
The word of the Lord was rare in those days…and so as young Samuel slept, in the small hours of the night and awoke to the sound of his name, it sounded to him like Eli calling; he just did not imagine it was the Lord. Even old Eli, nearly blind but not deaf, doesn’t at first perceive what is happening, and sends Samuel back to bed.
It’s not until the Lord calls Samuel a third time that Eli, in perhaps his last ministerial act, realizes that God is speaking to Samuel & instructs him how to respond, “…say ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”
Samuel then answers God’s call in the night, and the first words entrusted to him are disturbing—words that “will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.” If Eli’s ears or those of his sons were ringing that night, it was not in a good way! The word of the Lord given to Samuel that night was troubling, burdensome, and Samuel lay there wide-eyed, tossing & turning & and unable to sleep the rest of the night.
But God had chosen the young prophet well, and he was prepared, with Eli’s urging, to speak the word of the Lord to him concerning his family. The word of the Lord is no longer rare, as Samuel becomes a faithful & trustworthy prophet. He listens to God, and God lets “none of his words [fall] to the ground.”
Is the word of the Lord rare in our day? Perhaps it is not as rare as it is hard to hear for all of the competing noise in our lives:
• Calendars so crammed it’s hard for us to think, let alone permit the Lord to get a word in edgewise;
• The blare of consumerism spurring us to buy ourselves a meaningful life;
• The din of our own selfishness, closing our ears to God’s demands on our lives. I am reminded of the TV character Frasier, the brilliant but neurotic radio psychiatrist whose trademark line is “I’m listening,” but who can rarely hear anyone because he is laughably fixated on his own needs. We laugh because we recognize something of ourselves in him.
We yearn for an authoritative word from God, a word that assures us that God is indeed God, that ..
In two days Barack Obama, not a twelve-year-old boy but a young-ish man with prominent ears and eloquent speech will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. He has vowed on the campaign trail and since his election to be a president who listens both to those who agree with him and those who differ. If he is to serve faithfully he will need to listen, to hear the truth even when, like the truth about Eli’s sons, it is painful to hear. And he will need to speak the truth, eloquently or ineloquently, even when it is difficult to articulate or to receive. The trust placed in him as to any president is enormous; at this point in our history it is hard to overstate its weightiness. Some look to his presidency with hope, some with trepidation; many with both.
The name Barack means “blessing,” and both we and this new president will be blessed if God has his ear—and his mouth, his heart, his mind, his will.
We hope that Barack Obama will be a great president; that’s what these times call for. History will make that judgment. He will, in any case, be a flawed president, a human president, who may seem to turn a deaf ear to our concerns, and some who may become tongue-tied at critical moment; and our nation is a flawed people with itching ears, unwilling at times to hear of our complicity in our problems, and the sacrifices necessary to remedy them. We, too, are called to listen—to one another, to God. But neither we nor Barack Obama has the final word.
“In many and various ways God spoke to his people of old by the prophets; but now in these last days God has spoken to us by the Son.”
God is still speaking, and has spoken the definitive Word on us, on all creation, in Jesus, the incarnate Word. God has spoken to us in Jesus’ birth, in his teaching, in his healing, in the baptism of his death & resurrection. Through Jesus, God’s final word on creation is Life.
Listen: God is calling! Through you and me, through the Body of Christ God continues to speak echoes of Christ Jesus.
Amid the noise pollution of this world, may our lives communicate challenge and comfort, correction and forgiveness, justice and mercy, hope and joy. Amen.
