The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies
St. Martin’s Church
January 15, 2006
Epiphany 2 B
“The word of the Lord was rare in these days; visions were not widespread.”
What was true in the days of Eli and Samuel is true in our own day. The word of the Lord is rare and visions are not widespread. There is a profound sense, even among people of faith, that God is silent – that God has withdrawn from the world. The visions and visitations that make up so much of our scripture and tradition are not part of our experience. God is silent – withdrawn. We are left pretty much to our own devices – we have to make meaning for ourselves and it’s up to us to save ourselves.
And there is also, I think, a feeling abroad that really, it’s better this way. After all, when God speaks, there’s a good chance that bad things are going to happen. When God speaks, God also acts – and when God acts, people’s lives are changed.
Samuel is the first of Israel’s prophets – he is the first in the line that will stretch for a thousand years through Elijah, Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah – right down to John the Baptist. He appears in Israel at a time when both political and religious leadership are corrupt and faltering. Samuel is apprenticed to Eli, who is a priest at a holy shrine. Religious service in those days was hereditary, and Eli’s two sons are also serving as priests, but they are loutish, greedy and dishonest. They steal the offerings made to God for themselves, and they sexually abuse the women who serve in the temple.
Eli understands that God is calling Samuel – and he encourages Samuel to open himself to whatever God has to say. So God speaks in that time of divine silence, and what God tells Samuel is terrible. God speaks and promises to act in a way that will restore justice by punishing Eli’s two wicked sons.
Samuel hates to carry such a word to the man he loves and honors, but Eli is faithful and open, and is willing to bear the pain of such a word. So he encourages Samuel to tell the truth – and that establishes Samuel’s reputation as honest and trustworthy – willing to answer God’s call, to put himself at the service of God’s righteousness.
When God speaks, God acts – and that’s the hard part. When God speaks – if we hear it, we know our lives will be changed – we know that we are being called to share in God’s redemptive, saving work and that chances are, sharing in that work is going to interfere with our own plans.
In our own day, there are still people who claim to hear God speak, but most of us view them with suspicion and distrust. Folks like Pat Robertson, with his pronouncements of divine wrath, exude arrogance and hypocrisy. He may say God speaks to him, but his life doesn’t change – he just demands change in others. More terrible and terrifying are those who claim to hear God speak, and then carry out fanatical acts of violence. They are willing to change their lives, indeed to end their lives, and to destroy countless other lives in response to that divine voice only they can hear.
With all its dangers and pitfalls, as fearful a thing as it might be to hear the voice of God, I think there is still a deep longing to hear God speak. Popular culture shows us that longing – remember the show “Touched by an Angel?” It ran for years on the premise that the most ordinary people around (except they were always tall, thin and fabulously good-looking) could be angels sent from God especially to you. “Joan of Arcadia”, cancelled last year, featured an adolescent girl who spoke with God all the time. “The Book of Daniel” has just appeared; its story revolves around an Episcopal priest, Daniel – whose personal life is an absolute mess – and who gets regular visits from Jesus.
The question I am asked most frequently is “How did you get your call?” I think that question reveals a hunger to hear that God is somehow still speaking to someone. I imagine, when I am asked that question, that the asker wants me to describe something like Samuel’s experience – a voice calling in the night, or an angelic visitation – something unmistakable and clear.
Well, it was none of those things – no voices and no visits. It is not exciting, not glamorous, and it really doesn’t make much of story. My call was born somehow out of a mix of frustration with my faltering singing career, fatigue, depression and a hunger for something I didn’t understand. I needed something to change and I went to seminary because they admitted me. It all makes sense only in hindsight.
It’s easy to make fun of things like “Touched by an Angel” or “The Book of Daniel”, but I take the longing they reveal seriously. The word of the Lord is rare in these days, visions are not widespread; we are deeply distrustful of those who claim that God speaks to them – and yet we long for some word from God ourselves. Has God grown silent? Or are we somehow unable to hear.
This week and next, we hear gospel stories about Jesus calling his disciples. I like to think that if Jesus ever approached me and said, “Follow me,” I’d be like Philip, or Peter and Andrew, or Mary Magdalene and drop everything – never looking back. I like to think that I’d have full recognition and understanding and that I wouldn’t hesitate.
But I wonder how many other people Jesus called – how many others heard the words “Follow me,” but didn’t look up from what they were doing. Or how many people heard the words “Follow me” and looked up – and saw this odd group of men and women, with no assets and no security, wandering from village to village proclaiming the kingdom of God, and put their heads right back down again.
Maybe it’s not as easy as it sounds – maybe to hear God speak, we have to first be willing to let God act – to put our own lives into God’s hands and allow ourselves to be changed. And maybe to hear God speak, we don’t need to look for exotic visitations or other-worldly experiences.
It’s always hard to make much sense out of a passage from one of Paul’s letters, because those letters are so densely argued and so specific to a particular situation. In Corinth, Paul was concerned about a church that was bitterly divided between those who considered themselves to be a kind of spiritual elite, and those who didn’t have such high spiritual status. The self-identified elite thought they were so spiritually advanced that what they did with their bodies didn’t matter – they could eat meat that had been offered to idols, they could have all kinds of sexual adventures – the elite believed they had outgrown their bodies, and didn’t have to obey any kind of moral code.
Paul makes it clear that the Corinthian elite has at least two obligations: if they are so spiritually advanced, then they have a special responsibility to be mindful of their weaker brothers and sisters. And by the way, Paul says, your body isn’t your own after all. It’s God’s – it’s the temple of the Holy Spirit – and you’d better believe that what you do with your body matters.
In Paul’s letters, God doesn’t speak with a thundering voice, through a burning bush, or in an other supernatural way. In Paul, especially in 1 st Corinthians, the way to hear God speak is to conform one’s life to the pattern of the Gospel – to copy Christ’s humility, his self-discipline, his generosity. The Corinthians can’t hear God’s voice if they persist in their arrogant treatment of people they consider less worthy. They cannot hear God speak if their heads are full of their own pride and self-righteousness.
What keeps us from hearing God speak? It may be unrealistic expectations – it may be hard to hear God speak if we keep expecting Jesus to show up in the front seat of our car, like he shows up for Aidan Quinn in The Book of Daniel. And it may be that our own lives are too noisy or our cynicism too advanced. Or like the Corinthians, we may be too full of ourselves or too powerfully controlled by our appetites.
The collect for this morning reminds us that we are illumined by Word and Sacrament in order to shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory. I think we gather week by week around this altar for nothing less than to hear God speak. We seek that illumination, through Word and Sacrament, that will make us shine with Christ’s glory in such a way that others might hear God speak through our own lives.
How’s that for a sacred and solemn call? Once we leave this building, our call is to live in such a way that God might speak through us. Just that. By putting our lives at God’s disposal, and conforming our lives to Christ we offer ourselves to be living sacraments of God’s grace – signs to our broken world that God does indeed still speak, still heals, still redeems.
God is not silent - God always has a word for us – God speaks through Scripture, through the liturgy, in our music, in our common life – may we have ears to hear.
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