“A Rare Word”
I Samuel 3:1-20
January 15, 2012
My grandmother,
who was quite deaf by the time she died, absolutely refused to get a hearing
aid. She had a terrible time trying to
carry on a conversation because she couldn’t hear. She also used to watch television with the
volume so high I would have to leave the room before my head exploded. None of us, not her children nor her
grandchildren, could convince her to even ask her doctor about a hearing
aid. Why? Because over fifty years ago another doctor
told her not to let anyone mess around with her ears. He said there was nothing that anyone could
do to make her ears better and hear more.
That was that.
She
held onto that one bit of advice like a dog to a bone. Our arguments about how far medical
technology had come and the advances in hearing aids and other devices were to
no avail. So Gramma spent approximately
the last forty years of her life asking people to repeat themselves and turning
up the television. She couldn’t hear.
Thinking
about hearing reminds me of a woman who I sat next to at a potluck years ago in
New York state. She confessed to those
of us sitting around her that she had just been fitted for a hearing aid. She confided in us that her hearing had been
getting bad for a while but she had put off having her hearing tested because
she was afraid. Afraid of the
implications. Afraid she would have to
wear a hearing aid. She was afraid of
how that would make her feel – and look.
And she was embarrassed.
Embarrassed at not being able to hear, embarrassed at needing to wear a
hearing aid in the first place. But when
she finally went to the doctor and actually tried a hearing aid she was
astounded at the difference. Suddenly
she could hear all sorts of things. She
told us that she started wondering what she’s possibly missed over the years
because she couldn’t hear. She wondered
if people had tried to talk to her about something and she had ignored them –
not deliberately or intentionally, but because she couldn’t hear what they were
trying to say. She confessed that she
was no longer embarrassed at having to wear a hearing aid she was just
embarrassed that she had waited so long to get one. The awkwardness of wearing one was trivial
compared to being able to hear – really hear for the first time in a long time.
This
conversation with this woman was enlightening.
I wonder how sensitive and sympathetic I’ve been toward others who can’t
hear. How will I feel at the possibility
of having to wear a hearing aid? Will I be fearful and nervous and
embarrassed? Will I live in fear like my
grandmother or will I take the risk that woman took?
I
also wondered about the other kinds of hearing disabilities out there. My grandmother did have a legitimate hearing
problem, but she also had what my parents called selective hearing. Being a parent, I realize that this problem
is not only for the elderly. A lot of
times Gramma heard what she wanted to hear.
She would miss most of the everyday conversation happening right around
her, but if mom and dad were trying to talk privately about a situation or a
problem with one of us kids or with someone else in the family, she’d call out,
“What was that about Amy? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
Probably
all of us have selective hearing to a certain extent. What we want to hear comes through louder and
clearer than whatever it is we don’t want to hear. I think this is a tendency of human
nature. Our instinct may be to filter
out what doesn’t sound as good or pleasant or happy or appealing.
There’s
another aspect to hearing – listening.
Listening is a different animal and it doesn’t come as naturally to some
of us as hearing does. We hear a
barrage, a cacophony of sounds everyday.
We carry on conversations and go about our daily duties and work, but do
we always listen to the people around us?
Into
this hearing and listening comes Samuel.
As an infant Samuel was dedicated to the Lord. A few years later he was brought to the
temple to live as part of a promise made and kept by his mother Hannah. Samuel grew up in the temple. He learned from Eli and under Eli’s tutelage
he served the Lord.
At
the beginning of this story Samuel and Eli are both sleeping. Nothing unusual about that, it is
nighttime. But then Samuel hears a voice
calling his name. “Samuel. Samuel.”
Samuel
thinks Eli is calling him. Who else
could it be? So he gets up and runs to
Eli. But it wasn’t Eli. Eli tells him to go back to bed. Three times Samuel hears the voice and three
times he runs to Eli. Samuel hears the
voice, but he doesn’t recognize the owner of the voice and he doesn’t know how
to listen.
Samuel
wasn’t prepared to recognize the voice of the Lord, because it was an unlikely
voice to hear. The first verse of our
passage tells us that the word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were not widespread. It took Eli’s perception to realize that the
voice Samuel was hearing was actually the Lord’s. And it took Eli’s instruction before Samuel
knew how to listen to God’s voice and respond.
We
could have ended the story here. The
option was there in the lectionary. But
it really is just the beginning of the story.
The actual message that the Lord had for Samuel was a harsh one to be
delivered to Eli, Samuel’s spiritual mentor and teacher. As one commentator I listened to quipped, the
message Samuel had to deliver was essentially, “Tell your boss he’s
fired.” The message of the Lord to Eli
was a message of judgment. The
priesthood, which Eli and his sons were direct descendants of had become corrupt
and fat with its own sense of power and authority. Eli himself was not corrupt but his sons
were.
They
had blasphemed against the Lord in word and in deed over and over again. Eli knew what his sons were up to, yet he did
nothing to stop them. So Eli and his
family, he and his sons together, would soon be shaken up and torn down in
order to make way for a new beginning.
For the priesthood and for Israel. Eli accepts this message with resignation and
faith. He turned over any vested
interest he had for himself, his sons, his family line and he rested them in
God’s hands. His response was, “It is
the Lord, let him do what seems good to him.”
The
message delivered to Samuel was probably not what either of them wanted to
hear, but they did hear it. Samuel found
the courage to tell it. Eli found the
courage to hear it. He listened and he accepted the outcome, knowing that all
things are ultimately in God’s hands.
The
story goes on to say that as Samuel grew up, the Lord was continually with him.
From this first experience with God’s
call, all of Israel
came to know Samuel as a trustworthy prophet of the Lord. And trustworthy prophets were needed because
the times they lived in were difficult and trying for this young nation.
At
that time the Philistines were becoming more and more threatening. The priesthood was corrupt and exploitative
and there was increasing pressure to name a king to lead them. This was something that was not part of God’s
original blueprint for the chosen people.
So
in those trying times, in those difficult days when the word of the Lord was a
rare word – an unlikely voice – the unlikely ears of an unlikely candidate
picked up on the sound. A young
apprentice, too young to even recognize that it was God who called his name,
heard that rare, unlikely voice.
So
what is this story trying to tell us?
Sometimes when that unlikely voice is heard it can be tough to
discern. It is hard to distinguish
between the voice of the Lord and all of the other voices and sounds and noises
going on all around us, the general din so many of us live in and with.
We
may not hear this voice directly. It
comes to us through other human voices. It
seems to me that one point the story makes is that our ability to listen is
tied to our community. Just as Samuel
needed Eli to help him recognize and respond to God’s call, we need others of
faith to help us hear God’s word. We
need this time of worship together, as a community, to hear God’s word, to
recognize it, to act upon it. Samuel
needed help and so do we. Our community
is our hearing aid when it comes to recognizing the rare word that is God’s
call.
This
story also reminds us that that God’s word to us isn’t necessarily one we want
to hear. I think I shouldn’t be too
eager to catch that deep voice calling me in the night because sometimes the
word from God is a word of judgment. It
is a word that demands difficult choices, difficult response.
Certainly
no one understood that better than the man whose birth, life and death we
celebrate and honor tomorrow. It was
1955 and Martin Luther King Jr. was only 26 years old when he answered the call
to spearhead the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. The boycott lasted almost a full year and
essentially served as the touchstone of the Civil Rights Movement. As I understand it, King was not absent from the
Civil Rights discussion before that initial call. But I do know that he went to Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church in Montgomery hoping to serve God and God’s people and finish
his doctorate. He wasn’t seeking
fame. He wasn’t seeking
recognition. I don’t know that he
foresaw the events that would unfold.
But when that rare word came, he understood it, he listened, and he
answered in the context of a community who needed someone with the courage to
respond.
I was too young to
understand or even be aware of his assassination in Memphis in 1967. But I was an heir of the outcome of his life
and work. Thanks to him and all of the
women and men who walked beside him, I went to school with other children of
almost every race and color and didn’t know until I was much older that there
had ever been a time when that was different or forbidden.
King
heard God’s voice speaking to him, calling him and he brought those words to
our nation. But let’s be brutally honest here.
Eli accepted the word of judgment that Samuel delivered against his
family with more humility and grace than ever happened in the Civil Rights
Movement. It is far too easy to paint a
rosy picture of that time and of how beloved Dr. King was by the general
populace. He wasn’t. He was one of the most hated men in
America. I say this as one who grew up
in and loves the South -- white America, in the South and around the country,
did not go gently into the idea of civil rights for every American. And in the spirit of honesty, although that
battle has advanced tremendously, it’s still being fought today on a variety of
different fronts. But just as that rare
word was perceived and heard and acted on by Dr. King and those who followed
him, it’s still being heard and perceived in our midst as well.
That
rare word of God was heard in a community of faith. And we recognize that rare word in our communities
of faith as well. It is in community
that we learn to discern God’s word, to hear and listen for that rare, that
precious word. And it’s okay to admit
that we all need a little help hearing.
We all need the aid of others to hear and recognize and respond to God’s
word for each of us.
So
in this
community, let us remember that we are each other’s hearing aids. Let us remember that we are here to support
and console and love each other. And we
are in this community to find and give each other the courage to hear and
respond to that rare word. What are we
being called to do? How is that rare
word manifesting itself in our lives? In
Shawnee? In this sanctuary? How can we
help one another take the risk of hearing that rare word?
Let all God’s
children say, “Amen!”
No comments:
Post a Comment