Our world and our culture are
changing rapidly all around us. With new communication technology and
increasing global interaction, we face a world that will be radically different
from the one in which we have lived for so long..
Of course, some see the changes, any
changes, as threatening. And so they move into a doomsday mode and adopt a
negative view. They decry any change as a change for the worse, where some
people see only problems, others see opportunities.
If that is true in individuals, I
suspect it is also true of society. And it is true of the church. Never has
there been more interest in religion and spirituality in this country than now.
The human need to be Spiritual remains even in those societies that strive to
deny the Spiritual and believe not in God but themselves. Of course, some of
that spirituality is of the weird kind, and certainly not Christian. But that
also tells us that there are opportunities to proclaim the Gospel.
The Old Testament reading for the
second Sunday of Epiphany is the story of God’s call to the young man Samuel
and his commissioning as a prophet to Israel. In many ways, this young man
Samuel represents the turning of history for Israel.
The setting of this story is 200
years after the people of Israel leave the slavery of Egypt, travel through the
wilderness and enter the long promised land flowing with milk and honey.
They enter the land of Canaan and as
they settle and adapt to this new life, the old ways are forgotten, the old
lessons of dependency on God become lost and new ways of living seem at odds
with all that went before.
The priests continued to worship and
maintain the sanctuaries throughout the land. They tried to keep the spiritual
vitality alive. But the people could see little advantage in serving God. They
became preoccupied with their own interests and their commitment to God grew
dim.
And so gradually they began to
forget who they were as God’s chosen people and what their mission was in the
world. The new generation of children that were growing up had finally
abandoned God for pursuit of their own pleasure. The Book of Judges ends with
one of the most chilling verses in the Bible. "Everyone did as they wanted
to do."
It is against that background that
the young man Samuel enters Israel’s history
The first chapters of 1 Samuel tell
us of the miraculous birth of Samuel. God heard and answered Hannah’s prayer.
As soon as we hear of the birth of this child, we know that there is hope for
Israel. We know that there is indeed a future and possibility simply because
God has brought it about. But change does not always come easily, and we do not
yet know the shape of that future.
And so the stage is set for the text
in chapter three that we have heard this morning.
There are three characters in the
story: the old priest Eli, the young man Samuel, and God. Too often we focus on
Samuel and forget about Eli. But if we listen carefully to the story, we
realize that Eli has a significant role in the story. It will take all three of
these figures in the story for Israel to have a future.
Eli by this time was an old man,
nearly blind. He was priest at the sanctuary at Shiloh, and likely had been all
his life. In the previous chapter (2), we are told that Eli’s two sons were
worthless fellows who despised the things of God. They had violated the very
sanctuary of God
Eli represents Israel and the path
that she has taken in allowing the things of God to grow dim, like his eyesight.
Eli represents the old ways that Israel had been following now for 200 years,
paths that have led to spiritual blindness and a deafness to the voice of God.
Yet there is a glimmer of hope here.
We are also told in verse 3 that "the 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." It is no accident that this story takes place at night. The darkness
represents the same thing that Eli’s blindness represents: the lack of
spiritual vision and the failure to be God’s people.
The lamp of God and the ark both
symbolized the presence of God in the sanctuary. In this story they represent
the presence of God in the darkness into which Israel’s spiritual blindness has
led them. In the midst of the darkness of failing vision the flame of God’s
presence is still alive.
And in the darkness there is Samuel,
the miracle child! The child born to a barren woman! In the darkness lies the
future, just waiting for God’s presence to fan it into a new flame!
We must be careful here that we do
not romanticize Samuel and make him the hero here. The story is not about
Samuel. But he is the instrument of God's work.
We all know the story of God's call
to Samuel. God called to him. He heard God’s voice, but did not understand. He
was only a boy and had not yet learned to distinguish the voice of God from all
the other voices in his life.
He went and asked Eli if he had
called. Eli told him to go back to bed. Twice more this happened. Finally, the
third time Eli began to understand what was happening. He explained what Samuel
should do and how he should respond.
The fourth time Samuel responded to
God's call, and was given the prophetic message from God. It was a message
about change, about the ending of the old ways of doing things in Israel.
Although Eli can be seen as the
villain in the story the truth is that he is important and was there to guide
Samuel in the right direction. Even though the old ways were dying, they still
had a role in guiding the new generation into their calling as God’s people. Eli
enables the young Samuel to be one who will bring change so desperately need.
Eli may not be a hero, but his role
was to facilitate and enable the change that God was bringing. He was the
transition figure between the past and the future, the cutting edge over which
the old became new.
And what of Samuel? Does he become
the hero? Yes but if we look later at Samuel, even after being the prophet of
God for many years, he had sons of his own. And his sons were worthless
fellows, just like the sons of Eli. Eventually, Samuel himself came to the
position of Eli, and faced the judgment of God on his own family and his
heritage!
Samuel filled the same role as Eli,
as he presided over yet another change in Israel’s history. Samuel was
commissioned by God to appoint the iftt Kings of Israel first Saul and then
David, an act that would bring his own leadership of Israel to an end.
So what does this mean for us?
I think that perhaps we need to
realize that some things are ending. I’m not saying we have to see the church
in the metaphor of a blind old man who is ready to die. But we do have to
recognize that what has been will not be again. The stability and power of our
Faith is not in all the trappings of our religion, but in the living God in our
midst. We can easily disrupt the new work of God in the world if we try only to
hang onto what has always been. Not everything needs to change, or should. But
then, not everything can remain the same.
Certainly there is change in the
wind. Pope Francis is challenging the Roman Catholic Church to look afresh at
some of its deepest held assumptions and practices.
The Church of England is also undergoing
change with the long awaited decision to
allow women not just to be priests but Bishops as well
In our Diocese we await the news in few
months time of who will be our new bishop of Edmonton, taking over from bishop
Peter after 15 years as our Area Bishop
And there is change here too at St
Matthias and within the communities of Colindale where we see the evidence of
that change all around us.
We need to listen to God in these
times of change and for some of us to be like Eli, to ensure that the voice of
the future is heard and the Word of God is honoured. For all of us we need to
be ready to respond to God when he calls: "Speak, Lord, for your
servant is listening."
No comments:
Post a Comment