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January 17th, 2021
ANNOUNCEMENTS
– Please read our prayer requests on our private page online, or telephone me. I’ll gladly share.
– We’re still red, so still online. But take heart! Soon, those 80 and older will be able to get the vaccine. Soon, and ever sooner, we will get COVID-19 under control and be back in person physically, again.
CENTERING –
Let us center ourselves for worship. Centering is calming our bodies, our minds, our souls. It’s really useful when we feel anxious. There’s lot of techniques, lots ways of approaching centering. Our church mothers and fathers chanted – think, like Gregorian chants. Some of our brothers and sisters light votives, little candles. Jesus often centered his followers with food, drink, and prayers.
Today, let’s center ourselves with our senses.
Look around – look about yourself. What is something you see right now? Pick anything. What color is it? How shiny is it? How dull? Does it have a shadow? Does it have a reflection? Just look.
… …
Touch something. Touch your own hand or an object. Touch. What do you feel? Is it soft? Is it hard? What angles does it have? Is it cold or hot? How heavy is it? Just touch.
… … …
Listen around. What do you hear? Is it loud? Soft? High pitched or low? Is it the ringing in your ears or an external sound? Listen…
… … … …
Smell. What do you smell? Anything at all? A candle. Your clothes. Your skin. Smell. Sharp. Spicy. Salty. What do you smell?
… … … … …
Taste. What do you taste? A linger of coffee; or medicine? A sweet or a sour taste. What is on your tongue?
… … … … … …
And now your sixth sense. Your connection with the Holy Spirit. How is your soul? What do you feel deep inside? Where does your mind race? Let those thoughts and feelings race over you – and bless them – and let them pass into the hands of God. Anxiety – bless you for your warnings. I hand you to God. Anger – bless you for your energy. I hand you to God. Uncertainty – bless you for creativity. I hand you to God. How is your soul?
… … … … … … …
Centered, attuned to the Still Small Voice among us, we turn to worship God together.
We pray our call to worship:
Something made the hairs stand up on our necks. Was it you, O God?
Was it you that we saw blowing over the water?
Was it you that we heard in those steps?
Was it you that we felt in the beating of our own hearts?
Was it you that called our names?
Come, O God. Come to search us. Come to know us again.
We were knit in your womb. We are the works of your hands.
Come, O God, so that we can hear you calling our names.
Here and now.
Amen.
SCRIPTURE-
Samuel is the promised son of Hannah, delivered to her as a miracle. As she promised God, she brought the boy when he was weaned back to the temple of God to serve the temple. Samuel is now a child – somewhere between 3 and 11 or 12. So picture a child you know in elementary. Eli is an old man with grown sons…
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. Then the LORD called, “Samuel! Samuel!”
And he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.”
But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.”
So he went and lay down.
The LORD called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.”
But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.”
Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.”
Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!”
And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
Then the LORD said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”
Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.”
He said, “Here I am.”
Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him.”
As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.
….
In Bethany John has been baptizing people in a baptism of repentance and awaiting the coming Messiah. One day, he points to a man and proclaims, “There he is! The Lamb of God!” John testified he’d baptized this man, Jesus, and saw the Spirit of God upon Jesus. The very next day, John again declares Jesus is the Lamb of God, and this time, two of John’s disciples chase after Jesus. Jesus asks why – and they say, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”
“Come and see,” says Jesus. And they follow him – staying with Jesus to listen to his words. One of these two is Andrew. Who goes and tells his brother Simon to come and see. We pick up the very next day when Jesus travels to Galilee.
John 1:43-51
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”
Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”
Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”
Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?”
Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
SERMON – Indifference
Leading up to the story of Samuel as a child, we have heard how Eli cannot hear God. In the chapters leading up to today’s we see Eli fail again and again to understand God’s actions, end his sons’ abuses of religious power (My dad’s the high priest, and he named me a priest, so who you gonna tell?) And it is not that Eli, himself, is an actively bad guy – but rather he’s neutral. Not open to speaking harsh words against his sons; nothing prophetic to kings; nothing challenging to parishioners; and not open to seeing the miraculous in Hannah (who he called a drunk.) Neutral. Status-quo.
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel fought relentlessly against the force of indifference. It’s dangerous. It’s deadly. In his December 10, 1986, Nobel Prize acceptance speech Wiesel said:
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”
Eli doesn’t stand with the victims of his sons. He doesn’t stop his sons’ tormenting of women specifically, and parishioners in general. He lets them keep being priest, and keep abusing that power. Eli himself doesn’t torture anyone… but he doesn’t stop it, when he has the power to stop it, either.
This is Eli being complicit because his neutrality between his sons and his parishioners helps the oppressor – his sons.
In grade-school, I would ride the bus to elementary. I witnessed one boy bullied on the school bus ride every day. The school bus driver chose to ignore this, even when parents and other students brought it to the driver’s attention. By ignoring it, the driver encouraged the bullying to get worse and worse. Eventually there was an assault on the boy that put him in the hospital. He didn’t have to be that injured. There didn’t have to be expulsions, child endangerment investigations, and lawsuits. But there was because silence, and neutrality, help oppressors. The tormented are usually targeted because they are already weaker in some way – they are already different in some manner. They’re not the dominate race; the dominate sexuality or gender; the dominate culture. They’re not rich; or not powerful. Sometime marks them as “other” and that “otherness” makes them a target for tormenting, for bullying, for threatening.
Silence, turning a blind eye, not rocking the boat, or even blaming the other for being different only helps the tormentor gather more power to do more harm.
I remember that grade school kid being asked, “What are you doing to make the boys dislike you? Just be more like them.” “It’s just a phase. Ignore them and bullies will go away.” “Other kids aren’t being bullied. So you must be doing something wrong.” “If it really was an issue, an adult would step in. Since the driver witnesses it and nothing is being done, the stories must be exaggerated.”
Sadly, these same excuses for maintaining the status quo get brought into adulthood. I’ve had the same excuses for inaction told to me. You’re likely aware of the issues I’ve had and been in court with. I’ve heard many of these things told to me – it is my fault another dislikes me and chooses to bully me. On the reverse side, I am aware of my own sin. I am cmoplicit and said some of these excuses myself. “Well, what were you wearing when you were catcalled?” “What do you expect to happen if you go out drinking?” It is hard to stop the cycle of abuse; it is hard to stop enabling abuse; it is hard to stop blaming victims and put the blame where it belongs: on the person endangering another’s life, destroying another’s dignity, or erasing another’s culture.
Although Eli isn’t the one who sexually assaults the women helping in the temple… he enables it. He protects his sons who do it. He gives them the power to keep being priests. Metaphorically, 1 Samuel writes Eli’s eye sight is “faded.” He is blind to the sins of his sons. He chooses to be blind. He may not be literally blind. We’re told he cannot hear God speaking. We know Eli can literally hear – he demands Samuel to answer Eli’s questions orally. But metaphorically, he’s lost the ability to “hear.” We know literally Eli sits on a throne in the temple and, metaphorically, he and all of Israel have stopped “walking” with and following God.
Sometimes, from the mouth of babes, come truer truths than adults can face. From the mouth of Samuel come the words of God – Eli, and his sons, are sinning. Are no longer going to represent God on earth. Are no longer going to be the high priest and his family. To the open ears of Samuel, the child, come the voice of God. We read that as Samuel grew, he did not dull his senses to God. He let none of God’s words fall on the ground but spoke them, lived them, carried them, shared them.
That had to be incredibly hard. The status quo, the way things are, the flow, is so much easier to maintain. It is dangerous to speak out. It is unpopular to stand with the outsider. It is difficult to dream new ways of living with one another. And yet, that is the call we have accepted.
When we were approached by Jesus – through our parents, or grandparents, through our neighbors or pastors – Jesus, represented by someone we know and love, said, “Come and see.” And we went, and we saw, the truth of a new world available to us now. We saw, and we began to learn how to live, into this reign of God. We have a foretaste of heaven, and we committed ourselves to sharing this taste with all people.
We believed. We believe. We saw. We see. We tasted. We taste. We smelled. We smell. We touched. We touch. We heard. We hear. We felt. We feel.
These senses will go dull if we don’t attend to them. If we choose to stop seeing Jesus in others, we see less and less Christ. If we choose to stop tasting the bread of heaven, we forget the taste of communion with all of God’s people. If we choose to forget the smell of myrrh, of incense, of olive oil, of the pages of our Bible, of candles and perfumes and baking bread… these are keys to our memories. And the smells, the memories, of our life together fade. If we choose to stop touching, stop associating, stop being present; we begin to forget the touch of love, the touch of forgiveness, the touch of just being present. If we choose to stop hearing the words of God, other noises will fill the silence. Other gods. Other idols. Other business. We will not hear the cry of Jesus in our brothers and sisters in need. If we choose to stop feeling the love of God, we feel less and less love.
And belief, faith, community, hope… withers.
Jesus didn’t ask his followers to follow him with only their brains. He said come and see. Come and follow me. Come and taste. Come and hear. Come and walk. Come and be. Come with all your senses. Trust all your input. Test out a life – a new life – with me. A new way of being in the world.
That’s the new world we encourage and build up one another to live in. A new world that doesn’t dull itself to any cruelty, any evil, any oppressor. A new world that declares we are all – all of us – siblings. Children of God. All of us. And we shall not tolerate the intolerant, paradoxically. We shall be radically loving, radically embracing, radically restoring, radically living in this world as hope and light in the middle of despair and darkness. We will take a side – God’s side – and as God stands with the oppressed, so shall we too. As God demands justice and mercy, so shall we too. As God demands wholeness, love, peace based on understanding not enforced with fear, so shall we too.
Don’t dull your senses. Awaken them. Don’t check your faith in at the door of your politics, your family, your job, your life. Live it, in its richness. Don’t give a pass to oppressors in an attempt to ignore them into peace. Aim for the better peace – God’s peace – where we are equals, we are whole, we understand each other, and we love.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 