On transitions and callings . . .

     I had one of those unique moments after the early service today.  One of our beloved brothers at 8 o’clock, clearly proud of himself and his humor, told me he could not wait to hear how the ears of the graduates tingled during the second service.  I gave him one of those “yeah, ok, me either” said in part confusion.  He caught my confusion and emphasized tingling ears again.  So I just asked what the heck was going on.  Clearly pleased with himself, he asked me if I’d forgotten.  When I told him I guess I had, he gushed about the last time I had preached on the passage from 1 Samuel.  Then, I had spoken of miracles in our midst and the tingling ears in our congregation during the sermon.  He remembered enough that he did jog my memory, but we had a great conversation about how passages have different sermons embedded as we walk through different events in life.

     As you can tell, I will be preaching on 1 Samuel again today.  Given the other readings and the celebration of Advent’s graduates, only the Psalm really served as a possible alternative during my discernment this week.  Plus, it has been 64 days since I was able to preach on an Old Testament reading, not that I am counting!  You might say I was itching to get back to the OT a bit.  Samuel is all about transition, and, in our corporate life today, we celebrate the transition of our young adults.  Today, we celebrate the accomplishments, the endings, and the beginnings of 11 Advent young adults.  Some are graduating from high school and heading to college.  Others are graduating college and heading to the real world.  A few will spend more time in grad school and put off adulthood as long as possible, or at least as long as student loans permit.  All, of course, are experiencing transition.  That means there’s excitement, fear, anticipation, dread, and a host of other emotions at play powerfully in their lives right now.  And for their families, there are a lot of other powerful emotions at play, too.  Change is happening.  Like good Episcopalians, the frozen chosen of the Christian West, we abhor change.  We want things to stay the same comfortable way.  Ironic, is it not, that the only constant in our lives is change and God?

     In any event, 1 Samuel serves as the perfect backdrop for our corporate life today.  To take you back in history and to explain the application, I need to remind you of the setting.  Elkanah has married a couple women.  One is named Hannah.  Elkanah has fathered multiple children on another wife, but Hannah has remained barren.  In the ANE view of things, conception was always the fault of the woman.  For those who liked to add a religious component, God withheld children only from bad or evil women.  Much in the way that you and I like to convince ourselves that God is proud of all our behavior because of our wealth, our position, our rugged good looks or beauty, our intelligence, and whatever other characteristics of which we are proud, some faithful in the ANE correlated children with God’s favor.  Having them, and having a lot of them, meant that God favored one; barrenness, the absence of any children, meant that one was not favored by God.

     By the way, before I continue, you get an idea of family discussions in my life.  Guess who has less than seven kids in their families?  Guess who has seven?  Any idea which of us is the most righteous?  LOL

     Imagine now you are in a polyamorous relationship.  One of those things modernity misses about such relationships is the belief that God intended such relationships.  Since so many spiritual heroes in the Old Testament of the Bible have multiple wives, God must clearly bless such relationships, right?  Does He?  Or does He, instead, simply work through them?  One of the Scriptural criticisms of such relationships are the problems of egos and favoritism.  Think on human nature for a second.  Do you think that husbands loved all their wives equally?  Do you think the wives all loved one another?  Think Rachel and Leah and they were sisters!  How do you think the moms mothered the children of the other wives?  I hear the grumblings.

     Fast forward to today’s reading.  Imagine you live in a culture that accepted barrenness equaled God’s disfavor.  Now imagine the whispers in the neighborhood when you could not conceive but the other wife was spitting them out like a McVey.  Now imagine you are the other wife and have the ear of the husband.  Now you understand Hannah’s struggle a bit better.  Everyone assumes something is wrong with you.  Given the female tendency toward guilt and “not measuring up”, Hannah likely internalizes some of those whispers as true.

     It is likely for those reasons, plus the desire to give her husband children, that Hannah goes to the temple at Shiloh and makes a vow to God.  She promises God that, if He grants her a son, she will dedicate that son to Him and turn the son over to the temple.  Her vow is not just a vow for children, it’s a vow for vindication and even personal acceptance.  She wants to know that she is one of God’s daughters!

     The priest, Eli in that story, hears her vow and accuses her of being drunk.  Who makes such a vow?  Why would anyone want to?  Though he’s a priest and should understand these things, he seems a bit detached from her suffering.  When she vigorously asserts that she is stone-cold sober and will keep her vow if God blesses her, Eli responds simply that God will.  Flash forward almost a year, and a son, Samuel, is born to Hannah!  Her pregnancy provides her with such a sense of belonging to God, of restoration in her faith community, that she launches into a song that is, well, perhaps, only overshadowed by Mary’s Magnificat in all of Scripture!  Such is the overwhelming joy that her son gives her.  True to her word, after Samuel is weaned, she presents him to Eli to serve in the house of the Lord.

     Speaking of Eli, how many of us have heard sermons hammering home the idea that Eli was an evil man?  It’s ok, I never fault you for sermons you’ve heard.  Most of us have, right?  Is he?  Is he evil incarnate, or is he just a man struggling to serve as a priest and a father?  To be sure, Eli fails miserably as a father and as a supervising priest.  His sons are stealing from God.  Literally.  What they are doing is the equivalent of me grabbing the $100 and $50 bills out of the offering plate each Sunday morning when the acolytes bring it to the altar to be presented to God.  And when the people complain to Eli, what does he do?  Nothing!  So, on the one hand, Eli is failing God and the people miserably.  Of course, it is also Eli who recognizes that God is calling Samuel at night.  Remember, this is at a time when the voice of the Lord was rare.  But it is Eli who figures it out and tells Samuel how to respond.  More significantly, Eli forces Samuel to tell him what God has said.

     Think of poor Samuel that night.  God speaks a terrible doom on the family that is, for all intents and purposes, raising him.  Do you think he slept well when God finished?  Of course not.  There’s no Cinderella and the wicked stepsisters at play in this story.  Samuel just received from God this horrible judgment of the man who, for all intents and purposes, serves as his father.  Eli seems to recognize something is amiss.  Why has young Samuel not run to him after Yahweh finished speaking to tell him this great word in a time when God’s word was rare?  Clearly, he picks up on Samuel’s reticence to talk about it.  Why else the threat “May God do the same and worse to you, if you withhold anything from me”?  Then, once this judgment is rendered, does Eli penalize Samuel?  Does Eli rail against God?  Does Eli falsely justify his behavior?  No.  He recognizes the truth of God’s judgment and accepts it.  Not exactly the behavior of the wicked and evil, is it?  No, Eli is a bit more complex a character than is often described in moralistic sermons.

     Our story today ends with the recognition that Samuel is the first prophet since the days of Moses and Joshua.  Though the word of the Lord is rare at the beginning of Samuel’s life, it will be far more pronounced by the time Samuel exits the stage of life.  The role of the prophet, as the mouthpiece of God and the instructor of kings, will be well on its way to established by the time Samuel’s labors are finished.  Samuel will instruct Israel’s leaders when and how to fight their enemies.  It will be Samuel who is given the task of anointing Saul as the first king in Israel.  It will be Samuel who confirms for the people that Saul is not a king after God’s own heart.  It will be Samuel who anoints David in Saul’s place.  In short, Samuel will lead God’s people through a tremendous time of transition and turbulence.  And, as a people, particularly eleven of us Adventers and their family and friends, it is a great time to remind ourselves of God’s lessons in Samuel’s life and how they apply to us, so that we might face our transitions with confidence, certain of our standing with God.

     One lesson that I hope jumps out at all of us this morning is the fact that the story has ordinary beginnings.  Elkanah marries a woman named Hannah.  Who is Elkanah?  Who is Hannah, for that matter?  They are not significant, except for the fact that God uses their ordinary marriage to produce a prophet.  I suspect, there have been many and will be many ordinary decisions in the lives of our graduates.  Our college graduates have interviewed for jobs, hopefully, and have chosen their prospective employer.  In many ways, we’ve all been there and done that.  Such a decision was more important forty or fifty years ago, when we believed that companies were life-time decisions.  Some of us more mature in the congregation remember times when we had to choose which corporate culture, which corporate family, would be ours for the rest of our life.  Such decisions impacted our quality of life and our retirement.  Whether one worked for IBM or John Deere or Aetna or some other great company meant acceptance of a particular culture and work environment.

     Nowadays, our young adults are disabused of such notions.  Sociologists tell us that today’s graduates will have seven careers.  Careers, not jobs!  Some will chose different careers because they seek to work in areas of interest or to “work on themselves”; others will be forced into other careers because their employers fail to adapt to changing environments or a simple numbers game of too many people available for a particular job.  They know they will not be cared for in retirement by a “parent” company.  They understand their value is tied to the productivity, read profit, they bring to an employer.  Of course, though their beginning may seem innocuous to them now, such has always been the case.  Everyone dreams of making a difference or making millions, but how many really understand the decisions at the time?  Pick your favorite titan of industry, your favorite tech whiz, did they understand the significance of all their decisions?  Or was their success seemingly birthed in common, everyday decisions like a man and a woman getting married?

     For our high school graduates, their transition is even more common, as our college grads could no doubt testify to today.  How many struggled over the right school?  The right major?  The right career track?  The right roommate?  I hear laughter, so I’m guessing one or more have.  We adults, though, know that it’s a normal angst for that particular transition.  When we are 18, we are certain we know what we want to do with our lives.  We know the best way to get what we want.  If I can get into this school and into that degree program, I will be set for life as far as employment is concerned.  Plus, life plans are always easy at 18.  I’ll think about getting married at 30, after I have put in my time at the company, travelled a bit to reward myself, and so I can have my two kids by 35.  It’s ok, you can laugh.  None of those plans ever work out.  I share with the EYC youth all the time that when I was 18, I was going to be a pediatrician and would have two kids.  Part of what drives such youth nuts is our “knowing laughter.”  We have the advantage of perspective and experience, and we likely understand that many of these lessons must be learned by doing.

     The real angst should be over self-discipline.  Can I balance class, study, social, and work time to achieve the goals I have set?  As I am exposed to more of the world, am I willing to acknowledge that my plans for me might change?  What if I meet the one the first day or class?  Will my first job be enough to make payments on my student loans?  Can I really adult, or am I woefully unprepared? 

     Given the angst that surrounds transition, and our human tendency to wonder whether God really cares, it is appropriate that our readings from this day include the calling of Samuel.  In a time when God did not speak much or give His people visions, He was still in the process of working out His plan of salvation for humanity.  In human terms, Elkanah’s marriage to Hannah was no big deal.  But God used that every day, normal domestic decision, to begin to lead them to His king.  To be sure, the path was rocky.  Israel wanted a king like the other nations; not like God!  God gave them in a lesson in their foolishness, and then transitioned to the king after His own heart, a king whose failures are well documented, but a great grandfather to the King!

     And in the midst of that story, how God uses the common and normal for His special purposes, we even read a psalm that reminds us all of our relationship to God.  By virtue of our baptism into His death and life, by virtue of Christ’s redeeming and reconciling work on our behalf, by virtue of the fact that we are in Christ and He is in us, we should hear the words of Psalm 139 intimately.  Before we speak a word on our tongue, He knows it completely.  He has searched us and known each of us.  It was He who knit our inmost parts in our mother’s womb.  Because He made us, because of His attention to us, because of His image in us, we know we are wonderfully made!  To think, the God who fashioned all that there is, seen and unseen, fashioned you and me with attentive detail!  We are who we are because He molded us!  And despite us, despite our tendency to be more like David than Jesus, still He loves us!

     Brother and sister graduates, to all those among us today whose lives are in turmoil because of transition, never forget that it was God who made you!  You are fearfully and wonderfully made!  And because you are in His Son and He is in you, you have certainty that you never face the turmoil alone!

     A second lesson from our reading today touches on that relationship with God forged by our Lord Christ.  When reading this story in Bible study groups or covering it as background in sermons such as this, it invariably strikes many as weird that Hannah gives up the child she so treasures.  To some, it seems out place, more like abandonment than love.  Often, comments will state “I’m glad we don’t do stuff like that anymore.  I’m glad we know better now.”  Don’t we?  Do we not still dedicate our children to God in a way not unlike Hannah did with Samuel?

     Hannah prayed to God for vindication.  She wanted to know that she was important to God.  If she produced no heirs, from her perspective, she would be cut off from God’s covenant.  We have talked many times how possession of the Land was the Hebrew version of our Sacraments, an outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace.  To be cut off from the Land was much like excommunication from the Church!  Imagine, as good liturgical Christians, we you denied access to the sacraments of God.  How would that weigh on you?  How would that affect you?

     In our society, nobody really cares if you go to church.  It’s rather passé in the minds of most.  If I withheld the Sacraments from you, who would know if you did not tell them?  But not having a child?  Not having a child when the other wife was spitting them out?  Imagine the stigma.  Imagine the whispers.  Hannah turned to the only one who could vindicate her in the eyes of her friends and family and neighbors.  God.  She made a vow.  God vindicated her as she wished, and so, in her thankfulness to His faithfulness, she kept her vow and offered that son to God.  Hannah understood far deeply than most of us how much we can depend on God.  But, in a real sense, she realized that her greatest treasure paled compared to the loving, hearing, acting, vindicating God whom she called Lord.  And she trusted Him with her treasure.  And, though Scripture does teach us she brought Samuel clothes, I can well imagine her relationship with her son did not suffer too much.  God had answered her prayer magnificently.  The fruit of that loving response was in the Temple.  Where do you think she spent a lot of her time?  Giving thanks to God for what He had done in her life!  And like us parents who are proud of our children when they acolyte or lector, how must her faced beamed at the sight of her son in God’s holy temple!

     Parents of those in transition, why did you baptize your children?  I don’t know all the stories, but I am guessing that a priest educated you a bit about baptizing the child that we are recognizing today.  Were you not giving thanks to God for the incredible trust He was showing in giving you this wonderfully-and-fearfully-made-in-His-image-child?  Did you not take a vow before His people and Him that you would raise this child entrusted to your care to know and love God and to know him or herself, in turn, known and loved by God?  Did not the congregation take a vow to help you, as much as possible, in the carrying out of your responsibilities to God in the raising of this child?  Did you not, at some level, understand that God had made you a steward and given you the most incredible charge of your life?  Perhaps some of you, like Hannah, even had difficulty conceiving.  Perhaps some of you wondered if that was the time to have a child, if you were grown up and responsible enough to fulfill your duties to God and to the child.  Yet here we all are.  Mission accomplished, in large part because of the grace of God! 

     When you struggled to honor the wisdom of your parents and your in-laws and then found out later you did it all wrong, your graduate survived and, by their presence here today, probably thrived.  When you did not really understand life and its dangers, when you let them put themselves in harm’s way by riding bicycles without helmets or shooting bb guns at each other trusting that their idiot friends who could not tie their shoes could count to three pumps, no eyes were lost or life changing injuries suffered.  When all their friends did something stupid, and you were convinced they would jump off that bridge if their friends did first, they survived!  They were not seriously injured; they certainly were not killed!  Good.  You are laughing.  We all should be laughing for joy.  Each of us has experiences that remind us that God is attentive to our needs!  And we parents have even more than others because we know, we know we were insufficient to the responsibility placed upon us when God gave us our children.  We should be like Hannah, rejoicing at the attentive response of our Lord!

     And graduates, I think I say this as priest, but maybe I am only speaking as a father to a couple of you today—sometimes the boundaries get blurred--, if you think life is scary now, if you think adulting is hard now, just imagine adding the responsibility of caring for another human being who is as important to God as you are.  Today will not be your last transition, by any means, unless our Lord comes again fairly soon.  And these transitions, and the lessons you learn and the faith that grows in the outworking of them, will serve you well as you face even greater responsibilities and transitions.  But if the thought of such change is simply too much, make your parents worry less and put off dating until you are 30!  LOL

     Of course graduates, while I have spoken to your parents and God-parents and the congregation about the events of your baptism, let me remind you that each of you has taken a vow to serve God.  Each you has publicly confessed a desire and willingness to follow God during your confirmations.  It was such an important event that only a bishop could celebrate that event in your life.  At that time, you were reminded that God would use you in your life to draw others into His saving embrace.  Perhaps He already has.  Do not be too surprised if now, now that you are struggling with the doubts and fears and scary things of transition, He really gets serious about showing you how your cross bearing glorifies Him in the lives of your friends and others.  By virtue of your baptism and confirmation, He is always with you and you with Him.  Do not be surprised if He speaks to you, nudges you, gives you dreams or visions.  You are every bit as cherished by Him as Samuel.

     The third lesson from today’s reading that I want us all to notice relates to our outward focus.  Today we rightly celebrate the accomplishments of you graduates, and, in some manner, we pat ourselves on the back for helping getting you this far.  We are very much internally focused.  Some of you have distinguished yourself academically; some of you have distinguished yourself through athletic accomplishments; some of you have been recognized as leaders by your peers; all of you have demonstrated some measure of perseverance to get to this point.  Unlike some of your peers, though, you had lots of advantages.  Most of you had supporting families that cared about you.  All of you had a God-family, a parish, that wanted nothing but the best for you.  In some ways, you each are insiders.  Look back at our story today.  Who are the insiders?  How do they behave?  Are they worthy of emulation?  Do they glorify God?

     One of those great lessons of today is that God can use anyone to accomplish His purposes.  Were we to have written this story, most of us would expect a priest to be chosen to hear God’s word.  The Levites, by virtue of their inheritance, stand in the position of power and influence.  Yet it is they who take their inheritance for granted.  It is they, Eli’s sons, who dishonor God and become a stumbling block to others.  It is Eli, the priest in charge, who does nothing to correct his sons when he is told of their behavior.  At the beginning of this story, nothing commends Elkanah and Hannah’s potential offspring to such incredible service.  They are not Levites.  They are not significant in any way.  Yet it is their child who will call Israel back into right relationship with Yahweh, anoint and instruct kings, and who will lead Israel into this transition to a monarchy.  The outsider becomes the ultimate insider when God wills it.

     By virtue of your baptism and confirmation, you have made a promise to respect the fact that every human being you encounter, no matter how sweet or irascible their personality, is created in the image of God.  By virtue of your promise, each of you recognizes on some level that God wills that no one would be an outsider, that no one would be a stranger.  As a result, and in honor of the One who served and saved us, you and I should have a particular focus on those on the outside, the margins.  Our Lord loves the widow and orphans, and so we love those least among us.  Who knows?  Maybe the person to whom you show God’s redeeming love will be a modern Samuel, inspiring us all to walk even closer with our Lord.

     But, in the life ahead, you may find yourself in the position of outsider.  You college graduates will find yourselves low man or low woman on the totem pole in your soon-to-be places of employment.  That may prove challenging.  You high school graduates will discover in a couple months that most of your new peers will be as accomplished, if not more so, than you in academics or leadership or other skills.  The positions that you carved out for yourself in high school will mean nothing to them.  You will find yourself in a position not unlike you were in when you moved from middle school to high school.  Except, now, of course, you have the confidence that comes from experience of having carved out for yourself various roles—be it socially, academically, or leadership.

     As you begin this process of leaving the nest, I am aware that many of you will end up in places of faith outside the parish we call Advent.  As much as I or others here might wish for you to land a school or land a job locally and continue to walk in faith with us, I know that is all too well not very likely to happen.  Most of you will go to school in other communities; some of you will find jobs in other communities.  Hopefully, as part of your continued walk with God, you will find your way into communities of faith where you are being planted.  I tell you all this to remind you, and us, that you will likely be outsiders in your new faith community.  Oh, you will share a similar faith and calling, but your role will not be established as it here at Advent.  For some, this will be freeing; for others, it will be cause for anxiety.  If you find yourself in the position of outsider in another church, though, remember this story of Samuel.  Just as God used the outsider named Samuel to draw His people back to Him and His will, so may God use you to draw others of His people back to His purposes.  And, if they give you too much grief or encourage you to go away, remind them of this story.  Ask them if God is speaking to them often or giving them dreams.  Help them, like Samuel helped Israel, to be reminded of God’s plans, God’s love, and God’s redeeming power.

     I know I have been particularly long-winded at this second service.  I try not to be on days when we celebrate Morning Prayer with Eucharist.  I am attentive to the fact that those services are days when we intentionally allow the prayers of all of us to lead us in worship of God.  But I also recognize that this is a unique and significant day in the life of eleven young Adventers and their families.  I prayed at the beginning of this sermon that my words and the meditations in our hearts would glorify God.  As we move to the sending and blessing of these, our graduates, I also pray earnestly that all of us who find ourselves in the midst of life’s transitions would find our confidence in His promises, our identity in His Son our Lord Christ, is as prophetic as the ministry of Samuel, in a world that is as deaf and blind as that in which he found himself ministering, and that we, like he, might lead others to His saving, redeeming grace!

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†