EPIPHANY 2B - 1 Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51 - A sermon given by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

Generations - Prejudices and Gifts

INTRODUCTION - Hannah, Samuel, and Eli

Samuel’s mother, Hannah, had been barren, and prayed mightily to the Lord year after year, that she might bear a child. One year she prayed for a son, and promised that, if the Lord granted her prayer, she would dedicate him to the Lord. The Lord granted her prayer, and after Samuel was weaned, Hannah made good on her promise, and brought Samuel to the priest in Shiloh, Eli. There, Samuel grew up in and around the temple, serving Eli.

Samuel is still a boy in the story that we just heard. We don’t know how old exactly - perhaps a pre-teen. Samuel evidently sleeps in the nave of the temple, near the inner sanctuary where the ark of God was. The ark held the scrolls of the Torah, and was the most sacred object in Hebrew worship, for it marked the presence of the Lord. Eli evidently slept farther away in his own room, perhaps just outside the temple’s nave. And, as you heard, late at night, someone called out to the boy, Samuel.

I am thinking there was a generational thing going on here. It is late. Samuel is not yet tired. Eli, so old that he is beginning to go blind, has gone to bed, and is already asleep. It reminds me of a certain dynamic in the Munson household, especially on weekends.

Samuel hears his name called out. “Samuel! Samuel!” Not knowing who it is, he gets up, runs of the nave, and goes to Eli’s room. He is an eager, faithful child. He is into his duties of serving Eli as best as he can. “Here I am, for you called me.”

“Huh, what?” Eli wakes up, rubs his eyes, and says, in effect, “What are you talking about? I didn’t call you. You’re imagining things. And why did you wake me up? I was already asleep! Go back to bed!” So Samuel did.

And Samuel heard his name called out again. And he ran to Eli again. Perhaps this time, Eli had not had time to fall back to sleep. “Here I am, for you called me.” “I didn’t call you, Samuel. What’s going on? You’re hearing things. Go back to bed!”

The voice called Samuel a third time. He got up and went to Eli. Did you notice that he is not running, the second and third time that God calls?. I’m thinking that by the third time, Samuel is going slowly to Eli’s room. Probably he paused at Eli’s door, did a u-turn, came back, paused again, and thought, “What do I do? Someone called my name, and Eli is the only one around. And yet he keeps telling me that it wasn’t him.” He enters Eli’s bedroom oh so tentatively, and sort of whispers, “Here I am, for you called me.”

Now Eli had been the priest at Shiloh for some time. His life was coming to an end, and to make matters worse, his sons had been treating the offerings that people brought to the temple with contempt, seeing them as their own special opportunities to grab for the choicest meats. His sons were also sleeping around with various women who worked at the entrance to the temple. And Eli had been warned, in a recent vision, that judgment was about to come crashing down on his family.

But by the time Samuel came into his room for the third time, Eli was wise enough, and experienced enough in the ways of God, to figure out that something was going on. “Okay, okay, I’m fully awake now. The Lord must be trying to deliver a message to the boy. He hasn’t just run in here and woken me up for no reason. The Lord must be calling him.” And so the third time, he said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

And the Lord did call again, and Samuel did as Eli said, and for the first time ever, Samuel heard a direct message from God. It was not exactly a pleasant message. In it, the Lord reiterated that Eli’s house would be punished forever. In the morning, Samuel didn’t want to reveal the message to Eli. Perhaps the old man wouldn’t be able to hear the truth, and he might fall over dead right then and there, if he told him the message. But Eli insisted. And Samuel told him. And Eli - wise old Eli - said, “Yup. It’s the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”

From this moment on, Samuel began to rise in stature as the prophet of Israel. And the days of Eli, and the days of his sons, were numbered.

GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES

There is a lot going on in this little story. Major changes are in the air. Eli is coming to the end of his life, and going blind, and to add insult to injury, his calling and his family are all about to disappear. Samuel is the rising star, about to emerge as prophet for all of Israel. He will end up anointing Saul and then David as the first two kings of Israel.

When we listened to this passage together as a group last Sunday in lectio divina, we talked about the generational differences. Samuel had all the energy of youth. It is seen in his staying up late and in his running to Eli when he thinks Eli is calling him. Eli, though old and going blind, is the one with the wisdom. He is the one who has had all the life experiences with the Lord, who realizes what is happening, and tells Samuel how to respond to the Lord’s call. He is also the one with enough wisdom to get out of the way, to move himself out of the potential “caught in the middle” position between God and Samuel. And though he might seem old and frail, he is strong enough in his faith to bear the news that Samuel tells him, this bad news that originates in God.

We have a tendency sometimes - you and I - to write off the generation that we are not a part of. We bring our biases and our prejudices, and they are often just that, and they aren’t particularly helpful.

If we are in the younger generation, we are often guilty of thinking that the older generation doesn’t have anything to offer. They are “has-beens”, washed up, not working anymore, and therefore non-productive, so what do they have to offer us? The importance of history is often lost on youth. When a song that came out three years ago is considered old, what use is there in studying the Vietnam War, or God forbid, something that happened centuries and centuries ago?

In a culture that is as youth-based and youth-biased as ours is, we often forget how important it is to honor our elders, and we ignore the wisdom that has been gained by our elders at our own peril. We talk about a 72-year-old running for President as if he has one foot in the grave, when the truth is that most Americans who are alive at 72 are going to make it way into their 80's.

Of course, those of us in the older generation have our biases, too. We act surprised sometimes when we meet high school and college students who have so much going for them. “I thought all you guys did was stay up and party, and that you weren’t serious about anything!” We can find ourselves looking down our noses at the naivete and idealism of young people, when in fact, we desperately need that idealism. We act as if all that young people have going for them is energy and sexual vitality - they have no common sense, no helpful experience to work from, no ability to discern and make good judgments.

If we’re not careful, we simply write off the other generation as irrelevant. If teenagers roll their eyes at their parents, at least they are connected to them. Sometimes they have no connection at all to older people. When they hear someone say, “I have no idea how to text” or find out that they don’t own a cell phone, well, what could they possibly find to talk about? And when the older folks talk about The Great Depression or rationing or D-Day or the Cold War, and realize that the youngster at the table has no idea what they are talking about, they may want to write off the younger generation, too.

GOOD NEWS

Despite these generation gaps that at times can seem insurmountable, there is good news. And like most good news, it originates in God. For God sees the value and the dignity of each person, and invites us to see in the same way. Godly vision, we might call it. As Paul reminded the Christians in Rome and Corinth, when we confess faith in Christ, we are all part of the one body, and each member of the body is vitally important. Talk about naive. If any of us say, “You are young, you are not really part of the body” or “You are too old to be part of the body” or “Because of your age, you are not important” - the person who says or even thinks such a thing is the definition of naive.

The young bring us their energy and they see the need for the church to change, if it is to remain relevant and effective in bringing the gospel to the culture. The old help keep us connected to our roots and remind us of key foundational principles that can never be thrown out the window - things like keeping the faith during difficult times, being good stewards, making sacrifices and being part of something bigger than yourself, and remembering to pray and serve.

This little story about Eli and Samuel is quite helpful. Eli might have been on his way out. He was definitely going down the other side of the hill. His glory days were certainly over.

And yet... and yet... Eli was desperately important to Samuel. Samuel needed Eli to teach him the traditions of the faith - the key stories about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and the Exodus. He needed him to teach him about the importance of the temple, and to explain to him why all these people kept coming to offer sacrifices, and the deeper meanings of what that meant, and what those practices did for the people who observed them. And, of course, when God was ready to place a call upon Samuel’s life, Eli was needed to help him learn how to hear and respond to the voice of God. For as we heard, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” The contrast is obvious. Eli did know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had been revealed to him - many times. And so Samuel needed Eli. And - God bless him - Samuel recognized that. And that is part of the reason why Samuel ran to Eli, in his confusion.

On the other hand, Samuel was desperately important to Eli. Older folks need to see young folks running around, cooking up ideas, starting community gardens and flying off to Liberia or Paraguay or New York City or California or Jamaica or Germany - wherever their dreams take them. Older folks need to be reminded that God continues to energize and inspire, that the younger generation wants the world to be a good - even a better place - too, and that although change is a constant, what remains the same is the loving presence of God, actively working through his people for the good of our world.

Especially at the end of his life, and especially when he found out that the sins of his sons was going to bring his world crashing down around him, Eli needed to see that - in Samuel - God was doing a good and new thing, and that the future of Israel was ultimately in good hands, because he could see it right there in that boy who was eager and faithful, obedient and respectful. When he saw a boy who didn’t want to reveal the content of the message from God, because he was afraid of what it might do to Eli - when he saw a boy already demonstrating that amount of compassion and sensitivity, Eli knew that, whatever God did to him and his family, things were going to be okay.

CONCLUSION

I don’t care if you are 4 or 8 or 15 or 25 or 35 or 45 or 55 or 65 or 75 or 85, or older than 85, you are important to God. You are the apple of God’s eye. You may not always do the will of God - all of us fall short of who God calls us to be and what God calls us to do - but nevertheless, you are the apple of God’s eye, and an indispensable member of Christ’s body. You bring your unique voice and opinions, your unique experience of God, your unique gifts and talents, your unique way of worshiping God, and your unique way of loving and serving others in God’s name, and you are absolutely indispensable to this community, and to the kingdom that God is working to establish on this earth.

And when you look at your neighbor here, you can no more say to that person, “I have no need of you - you are too young/old/middle-aged”, anymore than your heart can say to your lungs, “I have no need of you.”

As we heard in the Psalm today, each of us is marvelously made (Psalm 139:13). As we heard in the Gospel, even when we stumble all over ourselves and insult God - “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” - God still comes alongside of us and says, “It’s cool. I love your honesty, Nathanael. I can use you, too.” (John 1:45-51)

We have prejudices and biases and preconceptions, you and I, and some of them seem to be related to what age group we find ourselves in. The Lord says to us, “Toss those aside. Let them go, so that you can fully embrace your brothers and sisters, and receive the gifts that they have to offer you.” This is part of what it means to follow Jesus, who found himself loving the young, the old, and the middle-aged, and serving the respected and the disgraced. May God help us to put all of our prejudices aside, so that we can learn how to walk in our Lord’s footsteps.