Sunday, January 15, 2012

Speak, Lord (Sermon preached on Jan. 15, 2012)





Sermon at St. David’s, Washington DC on January 15, 2012
1 Samuel 3:1-20

If you were paying attention to the readings last week you, as I’m certain you were, you will have noticed that the Old Testament lesson was not about Samuel; nor in fact will next week’s lesson cover more of the fascinating story of this great prophet. The Church has given us this section of Samuel’s story today because it as a story about an Epiphany: that is an appearance of the Divine, a manifestation of the Sacred. Epiphany is the season we are celebrating, a season that started on January 6 with Matthew’s story of how God manifested Godself to the wise men as Jesus, as a human child.  But let’s return to Samuel’s epiphany experience and fill in some of the blanks.
The Samuel we meet in this story is also still a boy, but we know from the first chapters that great things are planned for him. For the song his mother sang out of gratitude for his birth is a great song of praise and glory that is later echoed in the one Mary sings when she visits Elizabeth, what we call the Magnificat. But right now Samuel is not ‘great’: he is still a young apprentice in the temple at Shiloh under Eli the chief priest.
The first half of our reading is a story I think remember from my own Sunday school experience. Just imagine a Victorian style painting, a vast dark cavernous like structure, a flickering light in the distance, Samuel, on a mat under a blanket, sitting up with a curious look on his face. Where is this voice coming from?
Scene 2 has elements of comedy, three times Samuel goes and wakes Eli up, you can almost imagine both of them getting a bit annoyed at each other, why does he (stupid boy / stupid old man) keep waking me up… but then Eli suddenly remembers who he has been serving and what a temple is for and realizes that it may have been God who has been calling Samuel!  So when Samuel next hears someone calling his name he says “speak Lord, for your servant is listening” and God not only speaks to him but actually “came and stood there” with him in the temple sanctuary. And that is when the child-friendly passage ends, and our lectionary even gives us the option of stopping too.
We would be wrong not to read on because we would then miss the point of God’s appearance: whenever God appears to us it is with a message.  The burning bush told Moses to lead his people to freedom and to stand up to Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world. Jeremiah is sent to prophesy against the people and king of Judah, to tell them what awaits them if they do not repent. God in Jesus comes to offer forgiveness and a radical new way of life.
What does God have say to Samuel? Eli’s sons, the potential future rulers (Judges) of Israel, have done great wrong, they have taken what was God’s and what was to be shared with God’s people, they have neglected their duties to the people, they have paid only lip service to worship, they have cared only for themselves and not for others – the greatest sin in God’s eyes. Ironically they had even managed to profane the very means of their salvation: the sacrifice or offering to God! Eli knew this, he had heard about their sins, he had even been warned by a prophecy and he had tried to warn his sons and get them to change, but they would not listen and that is why his reaction is such a stoic one next morning when Samuel reluctantly relates God’s message. Eli knew this was coming, he accepts God’s will.
This is the start of Samuel’s ministry as prophet, priest and leader: as the last of the ‘Judges’. We are not told what his prophecies where as he grew up, but we do know that “the Lord let none of his words fall to the ground”, that is they were true and reliable and that they established him as a trustworthy prophet in all of Israel. His later commissions from God are of great importance for Israel, finding and anointing their first king, Saul, and then finding and anointing David as Israel’s second King when Saul disappoints the Lord. And guess who has to go to Saul and give him the bad news that “the Lord has torn this kingdom from you!”
And how about today, is the word of the Lord widespread, is it heard? I don’t think so, I think it is far too rare. On the one hand, and I realize that my experience is colored by living in Europe, I see a strong secularist trend to try and keep the word out of the public sphere, to make religion private and invisible! On the other I see God’s word being drowned out by other more strident and louder messages: look after yourself (like Eli’s sons did?), do what you want, you are free to make your own choices, don’t worry about others! I was heartened to read in The Washington Post that even a leading evangelical pastor was questioning whether radical individualism and a rejection of the ethic of collective responsibility is compatible with the Christian duty to love our neighbors[1]. I am not going to take sides in the current US political debate, especially as an ‘outsider’, but I too would question whether any message that does not include society’s responsibility to help the poor and needy is Christian. Eli’s sons were not condemned as individuals but as leaders of their society. Tomorrow we remember a great modern prophet, a man who was always willing to speak up about what was wrong in society and also how society had to be transformed, a man of vision, a man who spoke the Word of God: Martin Luther King. He thought about this issue too when he said: “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?” We need many more prophets like him, many more men and women who are willing and able to speak up about what is wrong in society and how society needs to change.
And where will we get all these prophets from? Well from here. You all signed up to be prophets, don’t you remember? Think back to the Baptismal covenant, perhaps not at your own Baptism, that might be too long ago, but to the one you have reaffirmed every time there has been a Baptism here at St. David’s. You were asked: Will you proclaim by word and example …? Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons…? Will you strive for justice and peace…?   And you answered “I will, with God’s help” - that makes you prophets.
If this makes you nervous, then you are in good company. It makes me nervous too and I suspect that is why most of those who are called, tend not to want to hear it first time round, or when they do hear God’s voice, when God even goes so far as to appear to them, they try and excuse themselves: Moses tried – “who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?” Jeremiah tried, “I am but a boy,” he said. And we know what lengths humanity went to silence Jesus. 
Thankfully we are not alone in this daunting task. We have this and the wider church community to support us. Most important of all we have God and God’s word to guide us on that path. Your vow was after all “I will, with God’s help”! This is the God who has appeared to us again and again, to Moses in the burning bush, to Samuel in the temple at Shiloh, to Jeremiah in Jerusalem, and finally to us in the stable in Bethlehem. This is the God who still speaks to us today, in the word we hear from Scripture on Sundays, the word we read at home or in Bible study groups, and in the word we can hear in prayer. Those are all moments when we listen to and discern what God wants to say to us and through us to the world.
So next time you pray, after you have prayed for your needs and those of others, after you have given thanks don’t then finish as you might normally do. Instead use Samuel’s words: “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening” …. and then take time to listen for God’s word to you and through you to the world.




[1] Rev. Richard Cizik, New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, Washington Post of November 11, 2011

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Go with haste (sermon preached on January 1, 2012)



Sermon preached on Sunday 1st January 2012 (The Feast of the Holy Name) at Ascension, Munich.

If today was a person, he or she would be suffering from a multiple personality disorder. It is of course New Year’s Day, the first day of 2012. It is a Sunday, a regular feast day of our Lord Jesus Christ, to quote the BCP. And it is the Feast of the Holy Name or as it used to be called, the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord, which as we heard in the gospel reading was the purpose of the ceremony.

Why did its name get changed? Was it perhaps because the men in the pews got a little uncomfortable at the mention of circumcision? A more sinister explanation might be that it was part of that denial of Jesus’ Jewishness that has had such terrible consequences, especially in the last century. For this passage is another important reminder that Jesus was Jewish. Just like Abraham’s son Isaac, Jesus’ cousin John, or the Apostle Paul he was circumcised in accordance with the law (Leviticus 12:3 or Genesis 17:12) “and formally stamped as a member of God’s chosen people”.

Perhaps though, the Church simply felt that Jesus’ naming was more significant. Luke, the only evangelist to give us this particular story, does focus more on how Jesus is named and names do play a big role in the Bible. Knowing someone’s name is often a sign of power and control. So God does not disclose God’s name to Moses, and the name YHWH is never spoken by devout Jews. God names or renames people, giving them a new identity and a new role. Abram becomes Abraham as Father of all, Jacob becomes Israel as Father of that nation …..Today too a new name stands for a new or second identity: the writer’s nom-de-plume, the monk or nun entering a monastery, a spy, a witness needing protection. Names used to really mean something. John means God has shown favor; Gabriel means God is my hero; Emmanuel means God is with us and Jesus means God saves. Here too it is not Mary or Joseph who choose their baby’s name, but God through an angel (in Luke by Gabriel to Mary or in Matthew by an unnamed angel to Joseph), and the name ‘God saves’ tells us who he is and what he will do.  

But today’s reading is not just about Jesus’ naming and circumcision, there is more to it than just verse 21: “after eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.”  The five verses that precede it must be important too.   

The shepherds had been told, by an angel and the whole heavenly host, so pretty impressively, that the one born that day was a Savior, the Messiah and the Lord. This was motivation enough for them to dash off to Bethlehem, find the baby in a manger as the angel had said, AND to tell “all who heard it” what they had seen and been told about the baby. They did not just see and speak to Mary and Joseph. We went to see the display of crèches, of nativity scenes at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum last week, and some of the scenes show whole crowds of people watching and listening to the shepherds! Not surprisingly “all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them”. After all both the way the message had been transported, by angels, was pretty exceptional, but so was the content. The baby was the Lord, in Greek Kyrios and in Hebrew Adonai, which in the Hebrew Bible is a word used for God, it is in fact the word the Jews used instead of YHWH. That it was Good News, evangelion, was equally significant as that was what really important Roman proclamations, ones about the accessions and victories of Emperors, were called.

So what happened next – did ‘all who heard it’ start proclaiming this Good News to their friends and neighbors, did they all head off to the nearest provincial capital to make known what they had heard and/or seen? No they didn’t. The shepherds returned to their fields, admittedly “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen”, the anonymous onlookers and bystanders went back to their homes, and no reaction at all is recorded of the witnesses who would have been present at the circumcision. As for Jesus’ parents, although they now had further confirmation that what they had been told about Jesus by various angels was true, and not just some strange dream, all we are told about their reaction is that Mary “treasured the words and pondered them in her heart”.

For we know, as did Luke, that when Jesus’ ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing began there was no chorus of adoring believers treasuring the memory of the marvels of his birth! He had to start from scratch. And later, after Jesus’ short earthly life and ministry, after his resurrection and ascension? In the letter to the Philippians we also heard today, Paul quotes a hymn: God highly exalted Jesus and “gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”. But they didn’t and they still don’t. In his letter to the Romans Paul writes of the great sorrow and anguish in his heart for his people, because so few were willing to accept Jesus as the Christ. We too hear the Gospel, the Good News every Sunday, and whenever we celebrate the Eucharist we experience our redemption through Christ’s life, death and resurrection. But do we all go with haste into the world to proclaim the Good News when the weekend is over?     
What we consider ‘normality’ resumes very quickly. After Jesus’ birth not a lot seemed to happen for the next 30 years. The angels did not keep on coming back. Later an Infancy Gospel was even invented to fill in this ‘gap’ with all sorts of fanciful and supernatural events from Jesus’ childhood. Then, when Jesus’ adult ministry actually started it was not what many had expected, it was not triumphant, there was no call to arms, the Romans were not overthrown, and the Messiah died.

When nothing spectacular happens we, like the shepherds, tend to return to our ‘fields’. Day to day cares and worries suddenly seem overwhelming: how can we keep this church running with only one priest? Where will we find enough volunteers for all the ministries and roles? How do we cope with the serious illness of a loved one, or worries about our jobs… Oh, why can’t God just be a bit more direct and come down and sort things out, why can’t it always be Christmas?

Because that’s not what our God is like I’m afraid, that would be a misunderstanding of God’s message of unconditional love, forgiveness and freedom. God has modeled how we can live and love through the incarnation, God has wiped our slate clean and will do so again and again when we need it. But the primary way that God acts in this world is in and through us, with God’s guidance whenever we ask for it in prayer or look for it in Scripture. God really cares, that is what Jesus’ birth, life and death tell us, but God also gave us this world to nurture and all its people to our mutual care.  

We do not have to be ashamed if we do not always get the message or if we need a lot of time to understand the significance, we are in good company. Mary did not understand the full significance and meaning straight away and she was there! The events around Jesus birth were only the beginning of her journey of faith, one that included a lot of cares and worries. Many more things happened that she had to ponder and to reflect upon, even her son’s death, before she was able to interpret everything correctly.

Today is also New Year’s Day, the start of a new calendar year, traditionally an occasion to start anew and with fresh vigor. Like the shepherds you have heard what the Lord has made known: God came to us as Savior, Messiah and Lord.  Now “go with haste and make known what you have been told about this child” so that “one day every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”.
Amen