Ordinary people with an extraordinary word
Commentary
Beginning today and continuing for the next ten Sundays the first lesson will be from the books of Samuel. It presents one with an opportunity to preach a series of sermons from a unique part of the Bible. Whether one chooses to do so or only to make reference to these texts while concentrating on other lessons, it may be well to have a bit of background.
It is believed that 1 and 2 Samuel were originally one book. Later they were divided and known as "1 and 2 Kings" with our present 1 and 2 Kings known as "3 and 4 Kings." It was not until the sixteenth century that the current arrangement took hold. When taken together Samuel and Kings cover a period from about 1080 to 586 B.C.
Though named for Samuel, he is the dominant character in only the first twelve chapters. There are five major Old Testament characters whose lives are played out in these two books: Eli, Samuel, Saul, David, and Jonathan. The purpose of these two books is to witness to the mighty acts of God in bringing this disunited and vagabond people into a kingdom where there is the beginning of order and unity. The Philistines, her archenemy at this time, control the south and the coastlands, constantly harassing Israel. Knowing the secret of iron-making (1 Samuel 13:19-22), they have the advantage. Only a decisive defeat of them can lead to a strong monarchy.
The role of the prophets of Israel begins to unfold during these times and is at the heart of today's lesson. Though Samuel is still a young lad, God is beginning to use him in the prophetic role that will characterize his entire career. The phrase "the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread" indicates how desperately Israel needed a man --a boy -- like Samuel.
We may be inclined to emphasize the charismatic nature of this text -- the unexpected call and Samuel's response. We need to remember that Samuel is well-prepared for this moment in his life. At his mother's knee first and now at the table of a faithful priest of God he has been prepared for a role that will begin before others may have judged him to be ready. We are reminded of God's call to the youthful Jeremiah and to all those young women and men of God who have begun their prophetic ministries before others thought they were fully adequate.
What is significant about Samuel is that he did not "flame out" as is often the case with those who blossom early in life. Any of us could wish for someone to write a retrospective of our lives and say that we were "a trustworthy prophet of the Lord."
2 Corinthians 4:5-12
Paul's second letter to the church at Corinth gives us our second lesson for the next six Sundays. The congregation in this secular, cosmopolitan seaport city 75 miles southwest of Athens flourished after Paul's initial missionary visit. But as we have already seen in his first letter to them, it is a congregation plagued with one problem after another. In his second letter Paul deals extensively with an issue that continues to hobble the church today: namely, failure to understand their responsibility for needy believers in other places. This letter (thought by some to consist of several letters drawn together into a single entity) also is characterized by Paul's preoccupation with his role as an apostle. Had these people, described as "proud and self-centered" by Plummer, been unusually resistant to Paul's leadership? It seems so. On each visit Paul did all he could to bring them to unity and stability, only to get word that much of it unraveled as soon as he left.
In today's lesson Paul tries to help them understand that apostolic leadership differs radically from what they had become accustomed to in the secular realm. To make his point he uses a reference that is unique to this passage in all of his writings. He calls himself and his co-workers "slaves for Jesus' sake." He wants to remove any doubt that he and others had come to set themselves over the members of the believing community. He had said it before in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23. But as with most of what we say, it needed to be reiterated.
One must be careful not to equate slavery with subservience. Paul is not suggesting for a moment that he is willing to compromise his message or his mission. He can be their slave because God, not the Corinthian congregation, is his master. He is walking in the steps of his Lord, the "Suffering Servant of the Lord," who was a servant to the world, yet a slave of no one. Even a cross and a slave's death did not make a slave of him. We are to be servants in the world, but our orders come not from the world, but from God. Luther understood all of this and put it into paradoxical language. We are to be "slave of all, subject to all; slave of none, subject to none."
Paul's description of himself as a common "clay jar" that bears a precious treasure has probably been used at more ordinations and installations of pastors than any other text in the Bible. And well it should be. We are subject to doubt (4:8), affliction (4:9), death (4:11), physical limitation (4:15), and final accountability (5:10). But, like Paul, we carry about in this scratched, cracked, scarred, pockmarked, and fragile jar the treasure of the Good News about Jesus. In that treasure we find power (4:7), friendship (4:9), life (4:10-11), and hope (5:1ff). I know from my hobby of growing flowers that some of the most lovely pots are the least useful for a plant and that some of the most ordinary are the best. An orchid isn't choosy about the looks of the pot, so long as it provides it with an adequate place to grow and bring forth its beauty.
Mark 2:23--3:6
Questions about authority lie at the core of this text. Jesus comes from outside the establishment. Though he is one of them, a fellow Jew, his audacity in taking on the authority exercised in these two encounters makes them willing to conspire with the hated Roman oppressors to have him done away with. Such is the intensity of hatred.
All this is brought about because Jesus, the commoner from Galilee, calls their bluff. They think they know the law and have the authority to enforce it. But Jesus reminds them that the law, while it should be upheld, allowed for exceptions. That in itself -- that he knew more about the law than they -- would have been enough to rile them up.
But then Jesus carries it a step further by giving them a lesson on the purpose of the sabbath. They have everything backward. They want to make women and men slaves of the day. The accent of Jesus is on the day as a gift, a time for renewal, a time to be refreshed. The intent of the law, as Pheme Perkins notes, is humanitarian. Furthermore, it need not be an emergency that permits exceptions to the law. "Any perceived human needs justifies suspension of sabbath rules." (Pheme Perkins, The New Interpreter's Bible, Nashville: Abingdon, 1995, p. 556.)
The ultimate insult, however, is in the claim Jesus makes about himself. He is Lord of the sabbath. No pedigree, no experience, no proper connections. He simply steps forward and makes the assertion. Indeed, what audacity! In spite of his sin, David had grown larger than life in the minds of the Jews. He became the litmus test for every leader that followed him. And with the passage of time, he occupied a place so lofty that it would be an insult for anyone even to begin to compare oneself to him as an equal -- to say nothing of claiming to be greater! Little wonder that we see such vehement reaction to the words of Jesus. Little wonder that each episode led inevitably to the cross. What started out as an argument about so mundane a matter as eating a few kernels of grain has escalated into a full-blown and heated debate about ultimate authority! To demonstrate that he has such authority, Jesus heals a man on the sabbath. If one needs to be set free, then it can happen on the sabbath. That is what the sabbath is for -- to heal, to forgive, to make whole.
We need to heed the warning of all those commentators who caution against making blanket judgments against all of the Pharisees on the basis of encounters like this. Stereotyping of the Pharisees can lead to unhealthy attitudes toward Jews today. At its best, the work of the Pharisees and scribes functioned to help the faithful understand the law of God and to see it as for their good. Our own contemporary struggle with writing social statements and other guides for the benefit of the faithful -- and the angry reaction it often evokes -- should remind us that this is no easy task.
Suggestions For Preaching
One possible approach to the texts for the day is to note that each of them deals with the improbability that God can use certain people. Each of the main characters -- Samuel, Paul, and Jesus -- stood outside the "regular clergy." Samuel is just a boy and not one of the sons of Eli, where we might have expected a word from God to originate. Paul is not one of the original twelve. His call to be an apostle is "extra-canonical." He has to make his claim on grounds that many would question. And Jesus has nothing on which to base his claim to authority.
The lesson is sobering. Just when we think we know how God will act we are brought up short and surprised by the unexpected. God indeed "moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform." But we can take courage from this and give courage to our hearers. God can use the inexperienced like Samuel, and the imperfect like Paul, and the outsider like Jesus to be spokespersons for his Word of hope and judgment. Lots of very ordinary folks will hear a word from an ordinary preacher about an extraordinary Christ if we allow ourselves to be the vessels to carry that Good News on this day.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Temptations to overestimate the role of either the nation or the church in the drama of salvation don't appear very alluring when they are tested against great stories like this one, the calling of Samuel. For everything about it confirms the baseline realities of human inadequacy and God's sufficiency to deal with it.
Samuel appears first. Now an acolyte permanently resident with those attending the ark of the covenant, his story begins with Hannah's barrenness and the priest Eli's suspicion that she is drunk in her prayers. Samuel's conception was miraculous enough, but like everyone else around the ark, he has grown so accustomed to the routine that he expects nothing to change, a fact the text explains by pointing to the rarity of visions at the time.
When Eli puts in his appearance, everything signifies that slackness that has taken over. His eyes have gone the way of his ambition. Like the disciples at Gethsemane, he is flat on his back, his jaw hanging, as out as the temple light that he was supposed to attend.
Apparently it wasn't the first time that Eli's good intentions failed him. He had a couple of sons, Hophni and Phineas, who had already proven more than he could handle. Convinced there was nothing in the wide world beyond themselves and the needs of the moment, they had been helping themselves to the sacred sacrifices -- stealing the offerings. Eli had probably had to acknowledge the legends of preachers' kids, shaking his head ruefully. But whether his efforts at discipline were perfunctory or pursuing, they had failed.
About all that worked was Eli's memory. Awakened by the voice, Samuel must have thought the old man wanted aspirin or some such thing. It wouldn't have been the first time his sleep was alcohol-aided. Undoubtedly, when he was disturbed, Eli rolled over and went right back to sleep. But the second time, Eli remembered where Samuel slept -- close enough to the ark so that a voice might be significant. And for all of its rarity, he remembered what a word from the Lord might be. So Eli sent Samuel back to await a third call and this time, he pressed Samuel for God's declaration, no matter what the consequence.
There is a limit to God's patience with human perfidy. Hophni and Phineas had found it, so caught up in themselves that they had put the family beyond redemption. But the good Lord doesn't have any illusions about sinners' capacities for self-transcendence, either. When things need doing, God handles them, making even boy sopranos adequate to the task.
It is believed that 1 and 2 Samuel were originally one book. Later they were divided and known as "1 and 2 Kings" with our present 1 and 2 Kings known as "3 and 4 Kings." It was not until the sixteenth century that the current arrangement took hold. When taken together Samuel and Kings cover a period from about 1080 to 586 B.C.
Though named for Samuel, he is the dominant character in only the first twelve chapters. There are five major Old Testament characters whose lives are played out in these two books: Eli, Samuel, Saul, David, and Jonathan. The purpose of these two books is to witness to the mighty acts of God in bringing this disunited and vagabond people into a kingdom where there is the beginning of order and unity. The Philistines, her archenemy at this time, control the south and the coastlands, constantly harassing Israel. Knowing the secret of iron-making (1 Samuel 13:19-22), they have the advantage. Only a decisive defeat of them can lead to a strong monarchy.
The role of the prophets of Israel begins to unfold during these times and is at the heart of today's lesson. Though Samuel is still a young lad, God is beginning to use him in the prophetic role that will characterize his entire career. The phrase "the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread" indicates how desperately Israel needed a man --a boy -- like Samuel.
We may be inclined to emphasize the charismatic nature of this text -- the unexpected call and Samuel's response. We need to remember that Samuel is well-prepared for this moment in his life. At his mother's knee first and now at the table of a faithful priest of God he has been prepared for a role that will begin before others may have judged him to be ready. We are reminded of God's call to the youthful Jeremiah and to all those young women and men of God who have begun their prophetic ministries before others thought they were fully adequate.
What is significant about Samuel is that he did not "flame out" as is often the case with those who blossom early in life. Any of us could wish for someone to write a retrospective of our lives and say that we were "a trustworthy prophet of the Lord."
2 Corinthians 4:5-12
Paul's second letter to the church at Corinth gives us our second lesson for the next six Sundays. The congregation in this secular, cosmopolitan seaport city 75 miles southwest of Athens flourished after Paul's initial missionary visit. But as we have already seen in his first letter to them, it is a congregation plagued with one problem after another. In his second letter Paul deals extensively with an issue that continues to hobble the church today: namely, failure to understand their responsibility for needy believers in other places. This letter (thought by some to consist of several letters drawn together into a single entity) also is characterized by Paul's preoccupation with his role as an apostle. Had these people, described as "proud and self-centered" by Plummer, been unusually resistant to Paul's leadership? It seems so. On each visit Paul did all he could to bring them to unity and stability, only to get word that much of it unraveled as soon as he left.
In today's lesson Paul tries to help them understand that apostolic leadership differs radically from what they had become accustomed to in the secular realm. To make his point he uses a reference that is unique to this passage in all of his writings. He calls himself and his co-workers "slaves for Jesus' sake." He wants to remove any doubt that he and others had come to set themselves over the members of the believing community. He had said it before in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23. But as with most of what we say, it needed to be reiterated.
One must be careful not to equate slavery with subservience. Paul is not suggesting for a moment that he is willing to compromise his message or his mission. He can be their slave because God, not the Corinthian congregation, is his master. He is walking in the steps of his Lord, the "Suffering Servant of the Lord," who was a servant to the world, yet a slave of no one. Even a cross and a slave's death did not make a slave of him. We are to be servants in the world, but our orders come not from the world, but from God. Luther understood all of this and put it into paradoxical language. We are to be "slave of all, subject to all; slave of none, subject to none."
Paul's description of himself as a common "clay jar" that bears a precious treasure has probably been used at more ordinations and installations of pastors than any other text in the Bible. And well it should be. We are subject to doubt (4:8), affliction (4:9), death (4:11), physical limitation (4:15), and final accountability (5:10). But, like Paul, we carry about in this scratched, cracked, scarred, pockmarked, and fragile jar the treasure of the Good News about Jesus. In that treasure we find power (4:7), friendship (4:9), life (4:10-11), and hope (5:1ff). I know from my hobby of growing flowers that some of the most lovely pots are the least useful for a plant and that some of the most ordinary are the best. An orchid isn't choosy about the looks of the pot, so long as it provides it with an adequate place to grow and bring forth its beauty.
Mark 2:23--3:6
Questions about authority lie at the core of this text. Jesus comes from outside the establishment. Though he is one of them, a fellow Jew, his audacity in taking on the authority exercised in these two encounters makes them willing to conspire with the hated Roman oppressors to have him done away with. Such is the intensity of hatred.
All this is brought about because Jesus, the commoner from Galilee, calls their bluff. They think they know the law and have the authority to enforce it. But Jesus reminds them that the law, while it should be upheld, allowed for exceptions. That in itself -- that he knew more about the law than they -- would have been enough to rile them up.
But then Jesus carries it a step further by giving them a lesson on the purpose of the sabbath. They have everything backward. They want to make women and men slaves of the day. The accent of Jesus is on the day as a gift, a time for renewal, a time to be refreshed. The intent of the law, as Pheme Perkins notes, is humanitarian. Furthermore, it need not be an emergency that permits exceptions to the law. "Any perceived human needs justifies suspension of sabbath rules." (Pheme Perkins, The New Interpreter's Bible, Nashville: Abingdon, 1995, p. 556.)
The ultimate insult, however, is in the claim Jesus makes about himself. He is Lord of the sabbath. No pedigree, no experience, no proper connections. He simply steps forward and makes the assertion. Indeed, what audacity! In spite of his sin, David had grown larger than life in the minds of the Jews. He became the litmus test for every leader that followed him. And with the passage of time, he occupied a place so lofty that it would be an insult for anyone even to begin to compare oneself to him as an equal -- to say nothing of claiming to be greater! Little wonder that we see such vehement reaction to the words of Jesus. Little wonder that each episode led inevitably to the cross. What started out as an argument about so mundane a matter as eating a few kernels of grain has escalated into a full-blown and heated debate about ultimate authority! To demonstrate that he has such authority, Jesus heals a man on the sabbath. If one needs to be set free, then it can happen on the sabbath. That is what the sabbath is for -- to heal, to forgive, to make whole.
We need to heed the warning of all those commentators who caution against making blanket judgments against all of the Pharisees on the basis of encounters like this. Stereotyping of the Pharisees can lead to unhealthy attitudes toward Jews today. At its best, the work of the Pharisees and scribes functioned to help the faithful understand the law of God and to see it as for their good. Our own contemporary struggle with writing social statements and other guides for the benefit of the faithful -- and the angry reaction it often evokes -- should remind us that this is no easy task.
Suggestions For Preaching
One possible approach to the texts for the day is to note that each of them deals with the improbability that God can use certain people. Each of the main characters -- Samuel, Paul, and Jesus -- stood outside the "regular clergy." Samuel is just a boy and not one of the sons of Eli, where we might have expected a word from God to originate. Paul is not one of the original twelve. His call to be an apostle is "extra-canonical." He has to make his claim on grounds that many would question. And Jesus has nothing on which to base his claim to authority.
The lesson is sobering. Just when we think we know how God will act we are brought up short and surprised by the unexpected. God indeed "moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform." But we can take courage from this and give courage to our hearers. God can use the inexperienced like Samuel, and the imperfect like Paul, and the outsider like Jesus to be spokespersons for his Word of hope and judgment. Lots of very ordinary folks will hear a word from an ordinary preacher about an extraordinary Christ if we allow ourselves to be the vessels to carry that Good News on this day.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Temptations to overestimate the role of either the nation or the church in the drama of salvation don't appear very alluring when they are tested against great stories like this one, the calling of Samuel. For everything about it confirms the baseline realities of human inadequacy and God's sufficiency to deal with it.
Samuel appears first. Now an acolyte permanently resident with those attending the ark of the covenant, his story begins with Hannah's barrenness and the priest Eli's suspicion that she is drunk in her prayers. Samuel's conception was miraculous enough, but like everyone else around the ark, he has grown so accustomed to the routine that he expects nothing to change, a fact the text explains by pointing to the rarity of visions at the time.
When Eli puts in his appearance, everything signifies that slackness that has taken over. His eyes have gone the way of his ambition. Like the disciples at Gethsemane, he is flat on his back, his jaw hanging, as out as the temple light that he was supposed to attend.
Apparently it wasn't the first time that Eli's good intentions failed him. He had a couple of sons, Hophni and Phineas, who had already proven more than he could handle. Convinced there was nothing in the wide world beyond themselves and the needs of the moment, they had been helping themselves to the sacred sacrifices -- stealing the offerings. Eli had probably had to acknowledge the legends of preachers' kids, shaking his head ruefully. But whether his efforts at discipline were perfunctory or pursuing, they had failed.
About all that worked was Eli's memory. Awakened by the voice, Samuel must have thought the old man wanted aspirin or some such thing. It wouldn't have been the first time his sleep was alcohol-aided. Undoubtedly, when he was disturbed, Eli rolled over and went right back to sleep. But the second time, Eli remembered where Samuel slept -- close enough to the ark so that a voice might be significant. And for all of its rarity, he remembered what a word from the Lord might be. So Eli sent Samuel back to await a third call and this time, he pressed Samuel for God's declaration, no matter what the consequence.
There is a limit to God's patience with human perfidy. Hophni and Phineas had found it, so caught up in themselves that they had put the family beyond redemption. But the good Lord doesn't have any illusions about sinners' capacities for self-transcendence, either. When things need doing, God handles them, making even boy sopranos adequate to the task.
