Any Email from God Today?
Sermon
Light in the Land of Shadows
Cycle B Sermons for Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany, First Lesson Texts
You and I live in a world of communication. Analysts tell us that most of us will spend two years of our lives on the telephone. Most likely they will not be the best two years. Future generations could spend more than five years of their lives "talking" with people around the globe as they come home from work or school, download their computers, and get out on the information highway.
Calling a college student has changed dramatically in the past decade. Over two-thirds of American college students now have answering machines with recorded messages. According to more than one Dean of Student Affairs, "A telephone answering machine is almost standard equipment for today's college student." In the future, conversation possibilities will be expanded for them by Email and internet. Even today parents in the United States "talk" two or three times a week by computer to their sons and daughters who are studying abroad.
Certainly our way of conducting business in this country has changed dramatically. Most monthly office telephone bills have over fifty long-distance calls of less than twenty seconds each to answering machines, a host of fax transactions, and time spent interfacing with colleagues half a world away.
Ah, the age of the communication. We of all people can ask, "Why doesn't God talk anymore?"
As we study background material for a series of epiphanies of Jesus as Messiah, the Old Testament story of God's call to Samuel is thrust before us. Jewish tradition says that Samuel was only twelve years old when he heard God's call to him in the night. This, of course, is the same age at which Jesus dialogued with the priests in the temple in Jerusalem. The stories of the birth, call, and childhood of Samuel could well have been in the mind of Luke as he began compiling his gospel.
Obviously this text has been selected for reading in the Season of Epiphany to illustrate the symbolic correspondence between Samuel's call and response and those of Jesus. Both are "called" as prophets to their own people to indicate the wave of God's future. Both Jesus and Samuel have terrible messages in their hands: God will overthrow the old order of reality because of the greedy and disobedient nature of the religious establishment. Samuel and Jesus are linked by their appropriate response of total obedience to God's "voice." Consequently, to only focus on 1 Samuel 3:1-10 leaves us with but a story of an innocent twelve-year-old being called into God's service. The full text (verses 11-20) is needed to portray the reversal of affairs in Israel that takes place when God's prophet is obedient to God's call.1
As you and I sit here on the eve of the twenty-first century, struggling to be obedient servants of God, the lectionary text perhaps throws a dilemma before us. Why doesn't God call us in this time of abundant and easy communication? God called Moses through a burning bush. God placed a call to Abraham through three wandering strangers. God phoned Samuel late at night. God placed a call to Jacob down a long ladder. God whispered to Elijah on Mount Horeb. It would be comparatively easy for God to place a call or give an interview to our world. The televangelists claim to reach the whole world via the airways and cable television. If Jesus came "in the fullness of time," what about now? Wouldn't everyone pause and lend an ear if God used the telephone, the internet, or a satellite just once and called earth?
In Tennessee Williams' play Sweet Bird of Youth, the heckler says to Miss Lucy, "I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of God, is a long, long and awful thing...." The late Carlyle Marney retired from Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte and went to Wolf Pen Mountain, waiting for God to say something. He confessed that he had figured if he could get some time completely free from his preaching, his church work, and his worldly obligations that God would really jabber. After five years of waiting, hiking, hoeing, splitting wood, sleeping, praying and studying, he finally reasoned that God had had ample time. But the inscrutable silence simply pushed him back on resources, memories and ideals he already had. With great certainty he said, "It's as if God had said all he intended to say."2 Are there no more direct epiphanies or do we, unlike Samuel, who had a once in a lifetime experience or call, have epiphany overload today?
A key to unraveling the dilemma of God's apparent silence in a world saturated with communication devices is to be found in linking the Old Testament story of Samuel with an assertion in the letter to the Hebrews.
The writer of Hebrews makes a claim: "When in former times God spoke to our forefathers, he spoke in fragmentary and varied fashion through the prophets. But in this, the final age, God has spoken to us in the son" (1:1-2).
The biblical writer insists that God speaks, that God does talk. It begins in the angel's visit to Mary. In plain language the angel says, "Mary, God has been using various instruments to try to communicate to the world, but they haven't been working too well. God has been speaking to all these prophets for generations. But as many times as he has tried to reveal himself, humans haven't listened too well. Sometimes people barked, 'Who's this?' Other times whole societies hung up on him. Then again, some shrewd manipulators put God on hold and proceeded to speak for God. So, Mary, you are highly favored, because God has decided to hang up the telephone, cease these fragmentary and varied little conversations, and open up and tell it all. No more phone calls. No more recorded messages. God is going to make a personal visit and God needs some transportation, a vehicle to get here, or all those humans will hang up on God or say they're out to lunch again. God's going to really jabber this time. He's coming and you are going to be the person to help God get the message across."3
A child was born. God opened up and wrote an autobiography in the life of God's son.
Consider the sequence. God had previously talked to us only in fragments and in varied fashion through these people named Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Elijah, Samuel, and all the rest. It wasn't clear enough. Too much static on the line. So God said, "I'm going to come down there and open up and bare it all." And God did. But as God revealed God's self the message led to the cross. Those people who stayed with this child of God and heard him speak went through an emotional roller coaster. They saw him confront the religious establishment, raise people from the dead, and love people as none had before. Then it all turned to despair. Bethlehem's child, the hope of the world, was crudely crucified. They fled the scene in disgust and desolation. Then when they were on the bottom with their emotions, he came back and started speaking again. Their emotions went right back to the top. They were singing and laughing and applauding. One writer said they stayed in the church singing praises to God for three days. Then Jesus talked about leaving and God's being silent again. He told them that if he were to stay and keep talking they would be limited, but if he departed they would be expanded in their gospel.
What on earth does that mean? Wouldn't we truly be better off with Jesus around talking or at least placing a few person-to-person telephone calls?
James Stuart of Edinburgh used to say that Jesus had to leave in the Great Ascent in order that our religion would be spiritualized. Apparently Jesus wanted a religion that would be a matter of experience and not of appearance or language.
Here, then, is our epiphany. We are called through the life of God in Christ. The Word became flesh. Consequently, instead of responding to a voice, you and I respond to a life. A true response to that life of Christ still leads to reversals in nations. A true response to that life of Christ still overthrows old orders of greed and disobedience. You and I have a terrible message in our hands: God's future delegitimizes the entire symbol system on which we have relied every bit as much as it deflated the entire symbol system on which Israel had relied in the days of innocent young Samuel and the venerable priest Eli.
The economics of equality so prevalent in the life of Jesus are a "voice" against the economics of affluence. The politics of justice are a "voice" against the politics of oppression. A sovereign God of tolerance and love is a "voice" against intolerance and hate. God has spoken once and for all. We who have ears to hear, need to hear. That never-ending message shivers its way from first century Israel to twentieth century America. It still seeks receptive ears and hearts to recognize it as a messianic word to a world in trouble. So be it.
____________
1. For exegetical background and additional preaching themes, see Walter Brueggeman, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Garenta, and James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV -- Year B (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), pp. 105-107, and Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, and Carl R. Holladay, Preaching the New Common Lectionary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), pp. 108-109.
2. Carlyle Marney, "Our Present Higher God," in To God Be The Glory, edited by Theodore Gill (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973), pp. 52-61. This illustration is also used for the Christmas 1 lesson, "All Dressed Up And Somewhere To Go,'' p. 39, earlier in the current book.
3. Portions of this material appear in the chapter "No Calls" in Harold C. Warlick, Jr., Living With Limits (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 1996).
Calling a college student has changed dramatically in the past decade. Over two-thirds of American college students now have answering machines with recorded messages. According to more than one Dean of Student Affairs, "A telephone answering machine is almost standard equipment for today's college student." In the future, conversation possibilities will be expanded for them by Email and internet. Even today parents in the United States "talk" two or three times a week by computer to their sons and daughters who are studying abroad.
Certainly our way of conducting business in this country has changed dramatically. Most monthly office telephone bills have over fifty long-distance calls of less than twenty seconds each to answering machines, a host of fax transactions, and time spent interfacing with colleagues half a world away.
Ah, the age of the communication. We of all people can ask, "Why doesn't God talk anymore?"
As we study background material for a series of epiphanies of Jesus as Messiah, the Old Testament story of God's call to Samuel is thrust before us. Jewish tradition says that Samuel was only twelve years old when he heard God's call to him in the night. This, of course, is the same age at which Jesus dialogued with the priests in the temple in Jerusalem. The stories of the birth, call, and childhood of Samuel could well have been in the mind of Luke as he began compiling his gospel.
Obviously this text has been selected for reading in the Season of Epiphany to illustrate the symbolic correspondence between Samuel's call and response and those of Jesus. Both are "called" as prophets to their own people to indicate the wave of God's future. Both Jesus and Samuel have terrible messages in their hands: God will overthrow the old order of reality because of the greedy and disobedient nature of the religious establishment. Samuel and Jesus are linked by their appropriate response of total obedience to God's "voice." Consequently, to only focus on 1 Samuel 3:1-10 leaves us with but a story of an innocent twelve-year-old being called into God's service. The full text (verses 11-20) is needed to portray the reversal of affairs in Israel that takes place when God's prophet is obedient to God's call.1
As you and I sit here on the eve of the twenty-first century, struggling to be obedient servants of God, the lectionary text perhaps throws a dilemma before us. Why doesn't God call us in this time of abundant and easy communication? God called Moses through a burning bush. God placed a call to Abraham through three wandering strangers. God phoned Samuel late at night. God placed a call to Jacob down a long ladder. God whispered to Elijah on Mount Horeb. It would be comparatively easy for God to place a call or give an interview to our world. The televangelists claim to reach the whole world via the airways and cable television. If Jesus came "in the fullness of time," what about now? Wouldn't everyone pause and lend an ear if God used the telephone, the internet, or a satellite just once and called earth?
In Tennessee Williams' play Sweet Bird of Youth, the heckler says to Miss Lucy, "I believe that the silence of God, the absolute speechlessness of God, is a long, long and awful thing...." The late Carlyle Marney retired from Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte and went to Wolf Pen Mountain, waiting for God to say something. He confessed that he had figured if he could get some time completely free from his preaching, his church work, and his worldly obligations that God would really jabber. After five years of waiting, hiking, hoeing, splitting wood, sleeping, praying and studying, he finally reasoned that God had had ample time. But the inscrutable silence simply pushed him back on resources, memories and ideals he already had. With great certainty he said, "It's as if God had said all he intended to say."2 Are there no more direct epiphanies or do we, unlike Samuel, who had a once in a lifetime experience or call, have epiphany overload today?
A key to unraveling the dilemma of God's apparent silence in a world saturated with communication devices is to be found in linking the Old Testament story of Samuel with an assertion in the letter to the Hebrews.
The writer of Hebrews makes a claim: "When in former times God spoke to our forefathers, he spoke in fragmentary and varied fashion through the prophets. But in this, the final age, God has spoken to us in the son" (1:1-2).
The biblical writer insists that God speaks, that God does talk. It begins in the angel's visit to Mary. In plain language the angel says, "Mary, God has been using various instruments to try to communicate to the world, but they haven't been working too well. God has been speaking to all these prophets for generations. But as many times as he has tried to reveal himself, humans haven't listened too well. Sometimes people barked, 'Who's this?' Other times whole societies hung up on him. Then again, some shrewd manipulators put God on hold and proceeded to speak for God. So, Mary, you are highly favored, because God has decided to hang up the telephone, cease these fragmentary and varied little conversations, and open up and tell it all. No more phone calls. No more recorded messages. God is going to make a personal visit and God needs some transportation, a vehicle to get here, or all those humans will hang up on God or say they're out to lunch again. God's going to really jabber this time. He's coming and you are going to be the person to help God get the message across."3
A child was born. God opened up and wrote an autobiography in the life of God's son.
Consider the sequence. God had previously talked to us only in fragments and in varied fashion through these people named Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Elijah, Samuel, and all the rest. It wasn't clear enough. Too much static on the line. So God said, "I'm going to come down there and open up and bare it all." And God did. But as God revealed God's self the message led to the cross. Those people who stayed with this child of God and heard him speak went through an emotional roller coaster. They saw him confront the religious establishment, raise people from the dead, and love people as none had before. Then it all turned to despair. Bethlehem's child, the hope of the world, was crudely crucified. They fled the scene in disgust and desolation. Then when they were on the bottom with their emotions, he came back and started speaking again. Their emotions went right back to the top. They were singing and laughing and applauding. One writer said they stayed in the church singing praises to God for three days. Then Jesus talked about leaving and God's being silent again. He told them that if he were to stay and keep talking they would be limited, but if he departed they would be expanded in their gospel.
What on earth does that mean? Wouldn't we truly be better off with Jesus around talking or at least placing a few person-to-person telephone calls?
James Stuart of Edinburgh used to say that Jesus had to leave in the Great Ascent in order that our religion would be spiritualized. Apparently Jesus wanted a religion that would be a matter of experience and not of appearance or language.
Here, then, is our epiphany. We are called through the life of God in Christ. The Word became flesh. Consequently, instead of responding to a voice, you and I respond to a life. A true response to that life of Christ still leads to reversals in nations. A true response to that life of Christ still overthrows old orders of greed and disobedience. You and I have a terrible message in our hands: God's future delegitimizes the entire symbol system on which we have relied every bit as much as it deflated the entire symbol system on which Israel had relied in the days of innocent young Samuel and the venerable priest Eli.
The economics of equality so prevalent in the life of Jesus are a "voice" against the economics of affluence. The politics of justice are a "voice" against the politics of oppression. A sovereign God of tolerance and love is a "voice" against intolerance and hate. God has spoken once and for all. We who have ears to hear, need to hear. That never-ending message shivers its way from first century Israel to twentieth century America. It still seeks receptive ears and hearts to recognize it as a messianic word to a world in trouble. So be it.
____________
1. For exegetical background and additional preaching themes, see Walter Brueggeman, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Garenta, and James D. Newsome, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV -- Year B (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), pp. 105-107, and Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, and Carl R. Holladay, Preaching the New Common Lectionary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), pp. 108-109.
2. Carlyle Marney, "Our Present Higher God," in To God Be The Glory, edited by Theodore Gill (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973), pp. 52-61. This illustration is also used for the Christmas 1 lesson, "All Dressed Up And Somewhere To Go,'' p. 39, earlier in the current book.
3. Portions of this material appear in the chapter "No Calls" in Harold C. Warlick, Jr., Living With Limits (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 1996).
