Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany
By the Rev. Alanna C. Sullivan
Associate Minister and Director of Administration
The Memorial Church of Harvard University
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Jan. 14, 2024)
Christian writer Frederick Buechner once wrote about vocation as that place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need. And that's exactly what I was looking for, and I looked for it in a lot of places. I worked as a caseworker. I organized policy forums. I helped to start a school. I built playgrounds. I was the personal assistant for an ambassador's wife. I even was a hostess at a sushi restaurant. Yet nothing quite fit. Now my search might sound naive or ill-informed nowadays. As Stephanie Paulsell shared, students are no longer asking, "What do I want to do for a living?" But, "What is worth living for?"
Yet this search for purpose and meaning gnawed at the edges of my soul. And then one day I received a call from my grandfather, who we affectionately call Pop-Up. Now Pop-Up is devoted to his grandchildren, but not one to call them without a reason. And so on a random Tuesday, he called to share a dream that he had had, a dream in which I was a pastor serving a local church. Specifically, he saw me sitting on chancel steps delivering a message to a group of young children.
He said, "Alanna, I know you've been trying to figure out what you want to do with your life, and I think you could do a lot of good in a church. Just give it some thought." I was quite surprised by his words. You see, my grandfather never attended church nor stated a belief in God. In fact, he had been hurt by some religious leaders earlier in his life, which made him quite skeptical of organized religion. So his dream was unexpected for him and for me. Some people describe their call as a nudge or a feeling or what the Prophet Eli calls a tingle. Mine was a literal phone call. I later shared this conversation with my dad and he asked, "So what do you think about what Pop-Up said?" And without skipping a beat, I said, "I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for someone to say that to me." Then fast-forward four years later, Pop-Up read that very lesson, this very lesson that we heard today, the call of Samuel, at my ordination service here at the Memorial Church.
There are various distinctive prophetic call stories in the Hebrew Bible. Ezekiel's vision of the chariot, Isaiah's vision of the throne, seraphim and coal on the lips, Moses at the burning bush. This call of Samuel is a bit more subtle, a bit more tender, I find. Our passage opens with, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were not widespread." These words echo an all too common prayer for me nowadays. "God, where are you and what kind of world would you have us build?" They are not just the setting of an ancient story but seem to describe our all-too-present reality.
And it's here that we find a priest named Eli. Gone are the days of miracles. No more pillars of fire, no more columns of smoke, no more parting of the seas. In fact, we are told that Eli does not expect to see or hear anything from God, which is surprising considering that Eli comes from a priestly family. His family has been charged with caring for the temple, presiding over worship life, maintaining adherence to the law. Earlier in the First book of Samuel, we learned that Eli's priestly sons have been abusing their power, extorting resources from others, consuming precious fat from sacrificial meats, sleeping with vulnerable women. They no longer distinguish the difference between their desires and God's desire.
So does Eli not see God because he thinks that God has abandoned them? Or is it because he has abandoned God? How can he no longer recognize God's presence in his midst? Or is it that Eli doesn't have the courage to admit that he is purposefully turning a blind eye to what God asks of him and his children? I know that when it comes to protecting my children, I'm biased. And therefore it's not too hard to imagine how Eli might deliberately be in denial about the damage that his sons have created. So whether it be from ignorance or denial, God turns to a new unexpected intermediary. As writer Demi Thomas writes, when Eli fails to restrain his sons, God turns to the boy Samuel, a child on the periphery, a child whose sight and hearing remain uncompromised by the political interests of his elders.
So it is against this backdrop that we find Samuel asleep in the temple. He awakens to hearing a voice call his name, "Samuel, Samuel." He goes to the room of his mentor, Eli, assuming that it was him, and he says, "Here I am," a classic prophetic call response. And Eli says, "I did not call you. Lie down again." So Samuel returns to his room. A second time, he hears, "Samuel," and he goes to Eli again and Eli says, "I did not call you, my son. Lie down again." If you are a parent of young children, this scene might feel familiar, being woken up by a child who swears that they heard something in their room in the middle of the night. In fact, this happened to me last night. So a third time the Lord calls Samuel, and this time when he goes to Eli, Eli recognizes that perhaps it is the Lord calling him. He instructs Samuel to say, "Speak, for your servant is listening," which is exactly what Samuel does when the Lord visits him a fourth time.
There are some humorous elements to this story of gradual divine revelation. One is how long it takes Samuel and Eli to recognize God calling. Eli has been with bestowed with the responsibility of deciphering God's voice and it takes him three times to recognize it. There's also the pun of Samuel's name, which means hearing God. Second is how surprised Eli and Samuel are to find the Lord in the temple where the Ark resides. It's as if they would expect to encounter God any other place than its divine home. At times, it can feel easier to find God off in a sunset or on a mountaintop. How often are we shocked to find God in church ourselves? And if this scene were in a movie, I can imagine Samuel emerging from his room, heading down a hallway in the temple, and mistakenly he keeps turning left to Eli's room instead of turning right to where the Ark is where the Lord resides.
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And then this passage continues. We learn that the Lord calls on Samuel to prophesy the fall of the house of Eli. There's no future for him or his family. Their sins cannot be forgiven. In other words, God is calling upon this child to question those who have supported and sustained him, to hold the powers that be accountable for their actions. How hard it is to be called upon by God to speak truth, especially when the truth hurts, especially when the future is uncertain and we don't know where the revelation of the truth will lead.
Tomorrow marks our annual celebration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the commemoration of his fight for racial and economic justice in this country. Today we often herald King as a modern day prophet. We observe his memory with campaigns for peace and equality and unity and acts of community service. Now, this is all well and good, but often during these celebrations we seem to overlook the hard truths that he shared with us, how he called for those in power to be accountable for their actions, particularly those who might consider themselves to be his supporters.
In letter from Birmingham jail, King wrote, "I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's stumbling block in the stride towards freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom. Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
And King's words still ring true today. We want to believe that we would support King and be open to his challenges, but if we're honest, these are hard truths that we might be too scared to hear then and today. How do we find ourselves clinging to power, cherishing proximity to power, seeking the approval of those in power? And what powers are we afraid to acknowledge within ourselves because we might be asked to give them up? And what are we so afraid to let go of that we might think that even God cannot catch it? When we are faced with hard truth-telling questions such as these, where do we even begin? What can possibly be the first step that God is calling us to take?
Perhaps we can take a clue from another flawed human being, Eli. When Eli hears the prophecy from Samuel that there's no future for him or his family, that their sins cannot be forgiven, he responds with, "News of the Lord is just." Eli doesn't defend his family's corrupt actions. He doesn't twist the words of the prophecy. He doesn't blame Samuel. He is receptive to hearing and receiving God's message. Eli still has a role to play in God's vision for the future despite all of his failures. In fact, Eli honors God through his acknowledgement of the truth of who he is and who his sons are and how they have fallen short. He embodies how confession and repentance are ways that we can honor God and the truth of the gospel.
Today we are so preoccupied with defining the truth and finding whose truth is true that we forget to look for and to proclaim God's truth, that we are all God's beloved and God calls us to share that love with one another no matter how far or how close they are to us. And all of us are always going to fall short of God's grace. And yet, and yet, God can work through flawed instruments, which is a good thing because flawed instruments is all that God has to work with. And that is nothing short of the good news because it means in part that God can also be at work through you and through me. Thanks be to God.