2021.01.17 | Who's Calling You?
Who’s Calling You?
I Samuel 3:1-10
Rev. Pepper Swanson
Samuel is the longed-for child of Hannah’s heart. After years of heart-wrenching infertility and prayer, she gave birth to Samuel and then fulfilled her vow to God that she would dedicate Samuel to God and bring him to the Temple in Shiloh to serve the priest Eli.
To fully understand today’s passage, you need to know a little more about Eli and about Israel in this time immediately before a monarchy is established. Considered a loose confederacy of tribes created by Moses Israel is led not by a single authority, but by judges and priests, some of which are good and wise and some of which are, not so much.
Eli falls into the category of a bad priest primarily because he is a bad father, allowing his two sons - Hophni & Phinneas -- to steal from the people’s offerings of meat, taking the choicest parts for themselves, and to sleep with the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. Reports of their behavior angered Eli, who rebuked them, but they continued their practices.
Immediately prior to today’s reading, Eli received a visitor who tells him in no uncertain terms that God is angry with him for failing to stop his sons and that God plans to cut short his career and his life and the lives of his sons, who will die on the same day. Beyond early death for Eli and his family, God intends to raise up another family to serve as priests to the Israelites.
It is this information, this prophecy, that Eli, who is elderly and blind, holds in his heart when Samuel comes to him not once, not twice, but three times in the middle of the night to say: “Here I am, you called me.” Realizing that Samuel is being called by God, Eli tells Samuel to return to his bed and to say: Speak, for your servant is listening.
In verses 11-21, God speaks to Samuel and re-iterates the message that Eli has already received. God is about to carry out his terrible judgement on Eli and his sons for their behavior and for Eli’s inability to restrain them. Later, Samuel shares the message with Eli, who says: “He is the Lord, let him do what is good in his eyes.”
As the story continues in 1 Samuel, Samuel becomes a respected prophet, replacing Eli as the authority in Shiloh, and becomes one known far and wide as hearing and heard by God. Eli and Eli’s sons, however, suffer the fate predicted for them.
So the story is much more complicated than it initially appears and is far more morally nuanced than how it is often taught in Sunday School and in Children’s Bibles where the emphasis is often on two basic ideas: God has something to say to you (!) and You should be listening for what God has to say to you (!).
I put exclamation points after both those ideas because in our current political environment we seem to have a dangerous number of people who have taken those Church School teachings and quite literally run them up the American flag pole.
For example, the Washington Post reported this week that a significant portion of the attackers at the Capitol on Jan 6 were neo-charismatic Christians motivated by modern day prophets and prophetesses who claim that God has told them that Trump was and is divinely selected to serve as President of the United States. 1
Both before and after the attacks, these so-called prophets have continued to maintain that God has selected Trump to protect Christian values under attack in America. Those who study religion report that individuals who believe that these prophets actually know what God wants are changing the face of religion by emphasizing 1) the supernatural over scientific truth, 2) individual faith experience over institutional religion, and 3) the establishment of Christian faith-based nation over a secular society with freedom of religion and civil liberties.
Neo-charismatic Christians have grown in such numbers and at such speed since 1970 that one scholar estimates that about 66 million Americans have come into close contact with its teachings, through books or conferences or music. As a point of comparison, the estimated number of Christians associated with mainline Protestant churches like our own is less than 20 million and falling.
In another article, the New York Times reported that many of the attackers were motivated by personal religious experiences that made them feel that they were personally called to come to D.C. in order to fulfill a divine mission. For example, a 40-year old Texan cited a “burning bush” sign from God that she should go to DC to fight against the evil embodied in what her pastor had characterized as “the steal.” Without any evidence other than the word of her pastor and fellow religionists, the woman declared that she would rise up like another Biblical leader, Queen Esther, who spoke up to save her people from death.2
The claim to have private communication with God extends beyond the attack’s Christian foot soldiers to some of its elected leaders. In tracing the roots of Senator Josh Hawley’s unfathomable proposal to challenge the Electoral College results, the New York Times3 cited an article Hawley penned for the magazine Christianity Today in which he said, sounding like a prophet of old: “The call of God comes to every person and the power of God is poured out on all who believe.”4 Hawley’s personal interpretation is that the power God is pouring out on him and other neo-Charismatic Christians is the power to transform the civic nation with personal freedom to a Christian religious state demanding conformance to Christian values.
As a pastor, I know Christian talk about what God thinks, says, and does is both a duty and an occupational hazard. Every time I write a sermon or participate in Bible Study, I caution myself from speaking too specifically about God or what God thinks, because like MOST if not ALL pastors I have not received any private communication from God, at least not any as clear as the conversation Samuel or even Eli had with the LORD. And thankfully, I am not among the prophets God is currently using to promote the unconstitutional retention of President Trump. But, how then, you might ask, do I know what to say about God and what God desires in the current political situation or in any situation?
For the most part, I rely on a method I learned in seminary that was originally called the “three legged stool” of Anglicanism and what later became “the Methodist quadrilateral,” when experience was added to the stool’s legs of scripture, tradition, and reason.
The quadrilateral process is recommended for Bible Study, sermon writing, personal decisions, or for anytime you need to discern God’s call. The process involves consulting Scripture, reviewing Christian Traditions, applying Reason and Logical problem solving to the interpretation or problem, and last, bringing one’s own personal Experience to bear on the situation.
For example, Scripture tells us that God is very concerned with the poor and marginalized and is opposed to the tyranny of bad priests like Eli’s sons and bad kings of which Israel had many before Christ, including Herod who slaughter the innocents in his search for the infant king Jesus. Tradition teaches us that Christians are called to focus their lives on serving others, loving their neighbors, and following Jesus in lives of compassionate healing.
To Scripture and Tradition, we add Reason which acknowledges:
the factual realities and long-lasting benefits of our electoral system compared to other systems,
the limitations of but also the benefits that our system of government has for evaluating and providing for the needs of all citizens and for protecting religious practice.
the essential reality that our system draws boundaries, enforced by law, on our public behavior, especially when it threatens to injure or kill others.
Reason also reminds us that force is rarely successful at changing minds or hearts and should be our choice of last resort.
Lastly, experience is when we apply what we know because we have seen it in our own lives — for example, each of us has our own history of making mistakes, getting caught up in the crowd, or how silence or judgment or prejudice or violence can shut down conversation and end relationships, sometimes permanently.
Using this method, the attack on the Capitol on Jan 6 as well as other attacks and demonstrations, are hardly a call from God. They are merely a call from other humans, some of whom the FBI and other law enforcement agencies tell us are mentally ill or have long histories of criminal activity. If not ill or criminal, they have been radicalized or converted to terrorism as a result of being submerged into the alternate realities presented by the media, neo-Charismatic church pastors and prophets, and the internet as well as political leaders like Hawley who use God as a cover for their own political agenda.
The call of Samuel re-enforces two concepts that I want to close with. First, Samuel, like many of the Capitol attackers, didn’t really know who was calling him. To his credit, he didn’t immediately assume it was God. He went and checked with Eli, who, despite his other failings, was able to instruct Samuel in what to do, which was to indicate willingness to listen. We often forget that prayer is not always about our asking, but about our listening (even when all we hear is the pounding of our own hearts).
Second, there is no shame in questioning your call and changing your direction. Imagine how different the history of Israel might have been if Eli and his sons had heeded God’s direction.
As a young woman I too went out to protest what my government was doing and got swept into a crowd where things got out of control. I chose to step back in the moment and later to stay home because that way was not my way. Even Christ, on the eve of being put to death, stopped his disciples from injuring those who came to arrest him. It wasn’t his way either. Scripture, tradition, reason and experience all say that violence is not the Christian way and we give thanks this weekend to Martin Luther King, Jr. for showing us that sweeping change can come through nonviolent action.
My friends, God may or may not be calling you. Like Samuel, take a moment or a month or a year to discern who is calling you by putting down the internet and studying your Bible and our faith traditions, using both your reason and your experience. May you find your way. May our friends and family members find their way home. May we all find a way to be faithful to Christ and to God without destroying all the blessings we have been given as American Christians. Amen.
Endnotes
1. Washington Post, For some Christians, the Capitol riot doesn’t change the prophecy: Trump will be president, accessed Jan 15, 2021 at thttps://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/01/14/prophets-apostles-christian-prophesy-trump-won-biden-capitol/
2. New York Times, How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism, accessed Jan 15, 2021 at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/how-white-evangelical-christians-fused-with-trump-extremism.html?referringSource=articleShare
3. New York Times, The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage, accessed Jan 15, 2021 at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/opinion/josh-hawley-religion-democracy.html?auth=login-email&login=email&referringSource=articleShare
4. Christianity Today, The Age of Pelagius, accessed Jan 15, 2021 at https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/june-web-only/age-of-pelagius-joshua-hawley.html