Here I Am

I Samuel 3: 1-20
January 19, 1997
2nd Sunday after the Epiphany

© John Ewing Roberts, 1/19/97
INTRODUCTION

There is an inscription in a British church:

"In the year 1653
when all things sacred were
throughout the nation
either demolished or profaned
Sir Robert Shirley Baronet
founded this church
whose singular praise it is
to have done the best things
in the worst times
and
hoped them in the most calamitous."

Today's story of Samuel can help us to do the best things in our time and to hope amid events that are beyond our control.

I. CONTROL

There's so little we can control.

"Control freaks" are miserable people; there is so little they actually can master completely. They are driven to smaller worlds to manage and thereby make miserable those whose lives are within their potential domain.

There is so little we can control:
- the wars that flare up and burn on and on all over the world;
- the bigotry and racism that erupt around us and sometimes within us;
- children whom we want to protect and provide the best,
but we can't control all of what they hear and see and do, and even if we did, we would be poorly preparing them for life one day on their own;
- ourselves; as Paul said in Romans 7: 15, "I do not understand my own actions. For I do
not what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."

Samuel could not control events as his world changed. His world was going through traumatic changes. The age of the judges was ending, and the new age of monarchy was beginning.

The last verse of the book of Judges (21: 25) is an anguished sign of resignation and despair: "In those days there was no king in Israel; each man did what was right in his own eyes."

This is an elegant, biblical way of saying that with no decent structure for public life, private life degenerated into "do your own thing - if it feels good, go for it."

What's a decent person to do?

II. CURMUDGEON

Samuel didn't like the way things were -- out of control -- but he didn't like the alternative -- control by a king. Samuel was to be the last judge.

He grew old and did not have sons who "walked in his ways." Again we have an elegant, biblical way of saying something tough to hear, namely, that his children were out of control.

To make things worse, the people of Israel said, "Appoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations." (I Samuel 8: 6).

What's a decent judge to do?

He prayed.

God answered his prayer by telling him not to take it personally, that they were rejecting the Lord, not Samuel, the man. After all, for Israel to ask to be "like all the nations" when they were to be special, distinct from all the nations, was a violation of their identity, their vocation, their calling.

What's a decent judge to do?

He warned them. The king "will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots..." (I Samuel 8: 11 ff.) It will get worse, he predicted. He will make them plow his ground and reap his harvest. He'll take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks and bakers. He'll take your fields, vineyards and olive orchards to give to his people. He'll tax you and take your cattle and servants. One day, said Samuel, you'll complain about all this, and the Lord won't answer you.

"Fine," they said, "give us a king."

"Fine," said the Lord, "I'll give them just the kind of king they deserve!"

For the rest of his life it was that way for Samuel - fighting Philistines, riding the circuit trying to keep the tribes of Israel honest, a kind of combination prophet, judge and one-man band. His sons turned out no better than Eli's, and the king whom the people wanted turned out to be Saul, a good-looking manic-depressive.

What's a decent person to do when self-destructive behavior is out of control?

He can get really grumpy - he can become a curmudgeon. Six years ago when this text came up in the lectionary it struck me that curmudgeon is just the right word for Samuel.

A curmudgeon, according to the dictionary, is a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man. (What about women?!) Curmudgeon is a word of unknown origin, but splendidly descriptive of a personality type we recognize instantly. And Samuel was one. We all know at least one - some of you may think I'm one! And I have my suspicions about some of you!

III. COMMITMENT

Samuel wasn't just any old central casting curmudgeon. He was God's curmudgeon.

Let me tell you how he got to be God's curmudgeon - not just because it's a good story, but because when things near and far are out of control, it's easy to become a grumpy curmudgeon but hard to hang in there with solid commitment to do the best of things in the worst of times and to have hope in the midst of calamities.

The story begins with Samuel's mother, a woman with the singularly lovely name of Hannah. A woman in those days could measure her worth by having babies, preferably male. Hannah had no children - a circumstance beyond her control.

But she did the right thing - she went to the Lord's house at Shiloh where there was a priest named Eli, an old man whose best days were behind him. He had a bunch of rotten sons, another out of control situation.

Hannah was doing the best she could. Barren and depressed she did not withdraw from society into lonely isolation; she went to worship, singing a wonderful prayer in I Samuel 2. But she didn't get it quite right - we never do, even at our best. Hannah thought the way to solve her problem was to make a deal with the Lord - "give me a son and I'll give him to you; let me save face and I'll let you have the face saving device, the child."

Now making deals is no way to talk with God. And that's no way to plan a family - to save face, even if you put a religious spin on it.

What's a decent God to do? Well, he works with the people he has to work with, even if their theology is a bit out of whack.

I imagine God did a kind of divine shrug of the shoulders and decided to go along with Hannah, to work with her - after all, who else did he have any better? Hannah made her "deal" with God, got pregnant, bore Samuel, and took him back to Eli to raise. In her defense, she did keep her promise to bring the boy back.

But I ask you - who could bear to give up a child? And who could turn over a child to Eli of all people to raise? He was not exactly Mr. Rogers! Given his record as a parent, Eli could not get a job at our WEE school!

Nor was the setting for nurturing a child at the shrine at Shiloh up to the standards of the Woodbrook Weekday Early Education Center! Eli's record as a parent frankly was lousy.

The Bible says, "Now the sons of Eli were worthless men; they had no regard for the Lord." (I Samuel 2: 12) For one thing as soon as Dad sacrificed a bull, they swooped in with their knives and forks, drooling for some prime rib and steak, and took the best cuts of meat before they could be turned into burnt offerings.

But it gets worse - they didn't stop at gluttony; they moved on to lust, and acted on their lust. In one of those wonderful biblical understatements we find that the sons of Eli "lay with women at the entrance to the tent of the meeting." (I Samuel 3: 22). This is a delicate way of saying that they were misbehaving big time in the narthex!
     
These were out of control men, these sons raised by Eli. And for Hannah to leave Samuel to be trained by the one who reared them was a tough way to keep an improper arrangement with a remarkably patient Lord.

But here's where we find out about control and commitment, and where God fits in. He takes bad deals and bad people and out of control situations and works steadily, patiently, dramatically, powerfully.

The Bible says, "the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim, so that he could not see, was lying down in his place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down within the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, `Samuel, Samuel,' and he said, `Here am I.'"

"Here am I" is the perfect response in a less than perfect situation.
     
No, his mother wasn't perfect. Whose parents are perfect?

No, his educational setting weren't perfect. Who goes to a perfect school?

No, his religious setting weren't perfect. Who goes to a perfect church?

No, his mentor wasn't perfect. Who has perfect teachers?

No, he didn't even know who or what was addressing him. Paul said, "We see through a glass darkly" (I Corinthians 13: 12, KJV), and we hear just as poorly through the dissonance of life.

For example, who knows when the inner voice we hear is surely the voice of the Lord, and not merely our own coming back to us? We need someone with the gift of discernment (I Corinthians 2: 15, 12: 10) to tell us the difference, especially in a time when the word of the Lord is rare.

Yes, things were out of control.

But, Samuel was in God's house.

And, the light of the Lord had not gone out, surely a reference to the lamp in the sanctuary but suggestive of the reality it symbolized, the light of God in our lives.

And one person was willing to obey, to commit, to get up and say, "Here I am!" It was a little boy named Samuel.

I loved this story when I was a little boy. I could picture Samuel sleeping in the temple, wearing pajamas like mine, soft and warm, with feet in them (wish I'd had some like them last night!). I was ready to misappropriate the story as a kind of biblical excuse to get up several times during the night. But more serious issues were at stake - namely, that God can speak to the very young.

I often think of little Samuel when I walk by a WEE classroom and the children are curled up on the floor on their mats, an arrangement not unlike the child Samuel sleeping on his mat on the floor of the sanctuary. I can see a little boy dwarfed by the pillars of the temple. I can see a flickering oil lamp, soon to be in contrast to the light of God streaming over him when he says, "Here am I."

In that "Here I am" God has point of entry, the place where he could begin to accept control of one life. Here was a commitment he could work with.

And just as surely as God needs youth open to vision, he also needs old people like Eli who, in spite of his failures and weaknesses, still has the gift of discernment.

In his commentary on I Samuel, Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University (and Joel Burnett's teacher) calls Eli an "almost tragicomic figure." He points out that Eli mistook Hannah's quiet supplications for drunkenness. "The old priest presides over a holy misunderstanding...There is no wickedness in this pitiable old man, but neither is there strength to combat wickedness." (P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., I Samuel The Anchor Bible, volume 8 [New York: Doubleday] 1980, p. 100)

All of this is true of Eli, and often true of us. We are not particularly wicked, but we lack the energy to go up against wickedness. But God can still use the Eli's of this world. Whatever else we may say about Eli, whatever his losses and weaknesses, he still has the gift of discernment; he still can help a youth.

Without old Eli figuring out that the voice calling Samuel is the voice of God, without old Eli telling the boy how to respond, Samuel would not have been positioned to understand what was going on, who was speaking and what was at stake.

It finally all gets straightened out, who's calling, how to respond, how to grow, and Samuel becomes God's man, under God's control, the answer to the prayer for God to "do something."

This is not to say that everything was under complete control or that Samuel didn't grow up to be a curmudgeon. But at least he was God's curmudgeon.

IV. JESUS

Here's how the Bible speaks of Samuel's development: "Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men." (I Samuel 2: 26)

That sounds very familiar, doesn't it? "And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him." "And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man." (Luke 2: 40, 52).

We should not be surprised that what Luke says about Jesus sounds so much like what we read in Samuel. If you read what Samuel's mother prayed in I Samuel 2, you will see how much it sounds like what Jesus' mother Mary sang in Luke 1: 46-55. When we think of Hannah and Samuel, we think of Mary and Jesus.

When we read about Samuel's development, something glows inside the parent in each of us (and all of us have some parental stakes in regard to the children of our church family). We want our sons and daughters to be like Samuel and like Jesus. That's why we have Sunday School and Youth Group. That's why have the WEE program. That's why we have Family Dedication Services.

When we read about Samuel's development, we think about Jesus and Luke's description of his emergence from boyhood to manhood. We understand that God works through people who commit, who say, "yes," who say, "Here am I." God works through people who are open to being filled with wisdom and the favor of God and other men and women, as they grow ever stronger.

God works through imperfect people in imperfect settings of moral chaos and undisciplined religion. In all honesty we must confess with great sadness that the moral and religious sins of Samuel's era are like ours at times. But the same God who could work in Samuel's situation can work in our time. God can work to spread his control in answer to less than perfect prayers of people who like Hannah may at times be on the margin of despair and depression, ready to make the best possible deal with God however inappropriate it may be.

Hannah, like Mary, sang of the Lord "raising up the poor from the dust and lifting the needy from the ash heap," (I Samuel 2: 8) - a hint of resurrection faith and its social implications.

Whether God raises up a son from a barren women,
or raises up the poor from the dust,
or raises up his only begotten son from the dead,
there is a power at work through these committed ones that changes things.

And that's how God controls - through people who choose to give themselves to his power.
We need continually to say, "Here I am" to give God a chance. Walter Brueggemann puts it this way: "There is a chance for newness...rooted in Hannah's piety,...in Eli's yielding to Samuel's availability, in God's resolve to do a new thing" (Walter Brueggemann, I and II Samuel, [Louisville: John Knox Press] 1990, p. 27) which will make ears tingle. (I Samuel 3: 11)

God's curmudgeon and we grumpy people in an out of control world continually have to re-commit, to say over and over, "Here I am." Samuel needed continual renewal and recommitment. He was living through the agonizing upheaval of an out of control society as the age of judges ended and as the age of absolute control by dominant kings was beginning. He had to remain open to God's new moves and to his own renewed commitments.

Brueggemann in the introduction to his book of Samuel (Op. cit., p. 7) quotes from a novel by Gail Godwin. One character in the novel, Ursula, instructs the narrator, Justin:
There are two kinds of people...one kind you can tell just by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more surprise from it. Whereas the other kind keeps moving, changing. With these people, you can never say `X stops here,' or `Now I know all there is to know about Y.' That doesn't mean they're unstable. Ah, no, far from it. They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive. You must be constantly on your guard, Justin, against congealing.

What does that say to us today?

Are we grumpy? Sometimes! Have we congealed? Never!

Are we curmudgeons? Sure! But are we God's curmudgeons? Absolutely!

Are things sometimes out of control? Of course!

Are we willing to get up and to say, "Here I am!"? We must be!

Once when things were out of control, when there was a war, Israel versus the Philistines, and the people were frightened and they were praying, the Bible says (I Samuel 7: 12) that Samuel "took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah and called its name Ebenezer, for he said, `Hitherto the Lord has helped us.'" Long before Ebenezer was Scrooge's name, it meant "Stone of help," because "Hitherto the Lord has helped us."

Whenever you and I open ourselves to God by saying, "Here I am," there is the possibility of another stone of help being set as a sign of God's action in us and through us.

CONCLUSION

For that miracle of new action by God to take place two things must co-exist in you and me:

(1) We must be people who have a vision, even if the surroundings are dark and the light is dim;
(2) We must be people who have the will to respond, "Here I am."

God give us such a vision! God grant us such a will!

And then one day it may be said of us something like this:

"In the year 1997
when all things sacred were
throughout the nation
either demolished or profaned
the men and women, boys and girls of Woodbrook
built this church
whose singular praise it is
to have done the best things
in the worst times
and
hoped them in the most calamitous."


© John Ewing Roberts
Woodbrook Baptist Church
(Formerly Eutaw Place Baptist Church)
Baltimore, Maryland

[This sermon is for circulation within the Woodbrook congregation and may not be reproduced without permission.]