1 Samuel 3:1-20, Psalm 139, 2 Corinthians 4:5-12, Mark 2:23–3:6
The story of Samuel takes place a couple centuries after Moses. There was no king yet, no Jerusalem yet, no temple yet. The only king was God, and the only jointly recognized authority was the high priest in Shiloh, at the tabernacle, the seat of God’s presence.
The tabernacle was the large sacred tent surviving from the time of Moses. The tent was three layers thick, enclosing two windowless chambers, the innermost one containing the Ark of the Covenant. Outside the tent was a sacred open space enclosed by a fabric fence, and here the worshipers could come with their offered animals for the priests to sacrifice and cook upon the altar, which then the people ate as dinners in the house of God, Lord’s suppers, so to speak.
In this tabernacle the boy Samuel was ministering. He lived there, he was on permanent loan by his parents, Hannah and Elkanah. What all did he do? Open the curtains in the morning, draw them at night, fetch firewood for the altars, water for the basins, clean up after the worshipers, clean up after the priests? Get Eli his breakfast, run errands for Eli’s sons, even do some of the priestly duties of Eli’s sons, when they could not be bothered?
How old was he—ten, twelve, eight? Was Eli kindly to him, courteous and patient, yet giving him responsibility, making him feel grown up? Did Eli love him, this special boy, so faithful, devoted, unlike his own two sons, such disappointments, who embezzled from the offerings and slept with the worshipers. Did Samuel comfort Eli’s disappointment? How much of this did Samuel feel, only half aware of, noticing but not yet judging, not yet understanding, still quietly accepting without getting corrupted himself, yet maybe beginning to sense that something wasn’t right?
What was it like for Samuel, not to live with his mother, not to play with other kids? What was it like to sleep alone, deep inside the tabernacle, in the Holy of Holies, beside the Ark of the Covenant, at the epicenter of God’s presence? How did he sleep in such a spooky place, in such darkness? Where did he keep his teddy bear? The place was so holy that, officially, no one but Eli was allowed to go in there, and Eli only once a year, but Eli was easy-going, and indulgent, and Samuel was trustworthy, so there he slept.
Why did Eli have him sleep there? Was it Eli’s characteristically passive way of preventing his sons from using that place for their own devices and desires? Or was it said that someone had to tend the oil lamp that burned in the outer room? The darkness is deep and smothering, but in the darkness some small light has to shine, or we have lost all hope. Was Samuel that little light in Eli’s darkening life? This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Eli’s life was darkening, he was getting blind, all he could see were memories. He represented Israel. For all they worshiped God, for all they prayed, they never heard God’s voice. Was God silent, or were they all deaf, were they blind? Had they closed their minds to what God had already said? Did they even want to hear God speak, expecting not to like what God would say?
But now God has a new thing to say, and God has chosen an instrument, a vessel for the treasure of God’s word—this boy, this innocent boy, the fruit of his mother’s tough faith, the outcome of his mother’s suffering and her wrestling with God. Maybe he dreams of her when he sleeps. O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You search out my path and my lying down. Whither shall I go from your spirit, or whither shall I flee from your presence? If I say, “Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you, the night is as bright as the day; for darkness is as light to you.
In the darkness a voice sounds. From just above the Ark of the Covenant, from between the statues of the cherubim, from the Mercy Seat the Spirit speaks. God calls him by his name. In the darkness sounds the voice, “Sh’muel, Sh’muel, Samuel, Samuel.” “Here I am, hineini.” How eager is this boy to hear his name, to know that he is wanted. He gets up quickly and he runs out of the dark tent through the courtyard, under the starlight, to Eli’s tent.
A minute later he comes back, a bit confused, maybe embarrassed, back into the spooky place that he’s accepted as his place. Two more times it happens. The fourth time, having been instructed by Eli, he offers up himself, he makes himself an offering, a living sacrifice, a vessel. The Lord stands there, and speaks to him, who, still a child, suddenly becomes a prophet, suddenly intimate with God, exceptionally so, God inside him, and alone. He reminds me of the Virgin Mary here.
Into this virgin vessel the Lord pours in a bitter wine. It is a painful message that this boy must bear, a message of judgment on Eli. Why didn’t God tell Eli directly, why make it come through the boy? Of course he can’t sleep anymore. What’s in his mind as he waits for the morning? Suddenly it’s a different world. Suddenly he learns the dark night of the soul, and he wants it to be over, he wants the morning to come. But he also fears its coming, from what he’ll have to tell Eli.
Eli draws the message out of him, and Eli takes it graciously, he accepts it from the Lord, almost passively. That’s in character, for Eli is accepting and easy-going to a fault. We feel bad for him, this gentle, tragic figure, the story allows us our sympathy. But we know he failed in his responsibility, he indulged his sons and their corruption, to the injury of the people who looked up to him.
Yes, we are only clay jars; we are not angels, we are not golden spirits of light, we are fragile human bodies, with warts and cracks and weaknesses, we are but earthen vessels. This is no excuse for immorality or meanness, or selfishness or corruption, as with Eli’s sons, nor indulgence of these things or passivity in the face of them, as with Eli. Especially among God’s chosen leaders, for what they do has such effect upon the ordinary people, especially the weak ones and the needy. Fragile earthiness is one thing, but corruption is another. Yes, we are “afflicted, and perplexed, and persecuted, and struck down,” but that’s not irresponsibility, nor a license for disobedience and ungodliness.
Rather, it’s in the midst of your brokenness that you are called to prophesy, and why God permits these things is for your prophecy. I spoke of this a few months ago, that you all are called to prophecy, and though prophecy is familiar as speaking truth to power, for most of you it’s more mundane, it’s telling the truth about yourself, it’s telling the truth about yourself that you can’t know from yourself unless you learn it from God, and then to share with others that truth about your experience and even your suffering, your story that you have learned from God.
You are but a clay jar, but you hold treasure. Your breakable body bears the death and the life of Christ. Learn it. Discern God’s work within you, see God’s faithfulness inside you. Rightly interpret your own life, to do which is prophecy, that says, though I am afflicted, I am not crushed. Learning this interpretation is self-fulfilling, for when you interpret your life as within the kingdom of God, then, whenever you get perplexed, you are not driven to despair. And when you get persecuted, it’s because you are in it with Christ, so the truth is you are not forsaken. And because you are in Christ, and Christ is God, then when you are struck down, it is God who is being struck down in you, God’s power is perfected in your weakness, God’s treasure in your earthen vessel, and you will not be destroyed.
I want you to think of obedience as a kind of prophecy and prophecy as the Christian approach to obedience. We think of obedience as toeing the line, not breaking rules, chain-of-command and all that. But think of obedience as creative and future-directed, acting according to the hope that is in you.
In the gospel, in the synagogue, Jesus broke the rules, though he did not violate the Torah. He didn’t work on the Sabbath day, he didn’t lift a finger, he just spoke to the man with the withered hand. He said, “Come up here.” And the man who for the shame of his disfigurement was sitting in the back, obeyed the call and cancelled his shame by coming up front.
That he was able to do, but he was not able to do the next thing Jesus told him to do, to stretch out his hand, precisely not! But in that same obedience he did what he was not able to do, and he healed himself in his obedience. His obedience was to act upon his own long desire and broken hope. His prophetic obedience triggered the plotting for the death of Jesus, but for Jesus it was why he came, his death for life in you, himself to be the self-sacrificing love of God for broken and longing people, earthen vessels, just like us.
Copyright © 2018 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment