Blind Seers and Silent Prophets (Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost; 1 Samuel 3:1-21; October 15, 2017)

Blind Seers and Silent Prophets

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 3:1-21
October 15, 2017

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

The book of Judges ends with the words that serve as the caption for the whole time between Joshua the successor of Moses and King Saul: "In those days there was no king in Israel; each person did what they thought to be right." This suggests that this was a time of anarchy, but that wasn't quite true. There was no rule of kings and lords, but people were accountable to each other, Each person was part of a family, and each family part of a tribe. Disputes were settled by village elders. The families in a tribe protected each other and, unless the dispute was between tribes, tribes looked out for each other, too.

When trouble threatened the tribes of Israel, leaders would emerge, people recognized as having a special gift of Yahweh's spirit. They were called judges, but for the duration of a crisis these judges not only did "judgy" stuff; they served as military leaders of Israel's army. When the crisis was over, the tribes went back to looking out for themselves until the next crisis.

This may not seem like much of a system, but it worked well enough as long as there were no large populations on the move or ambitious empires looking to grow.

But, as our story begins, that system was beginning to break down. Masses of new people were beginning to arrive in the coastal plains by the Mediterranean. They had tools and weapons made of iron and the bronze weapons of the Canaanites and Israelites were no match. People were being displaced up into the hills where the tribes of Israel made their homes. Cities were rising along the Mediterranean, ruled over by kings--or perhaps more accurately, by warlords--who were jealous to extend their power as far as they could.

The old way of responding to a threat was too slow. By the time a judge arose and called out the troops, the invasion would be over. Adding this to the problem of fighting iron with bronze and the tribes were losing. Plus, any tribe could always decide not to help. Why would the tribe of Benjamin on the east side of the Jordan send its young men to fight a threat far to the west ?

In theory, at least, their common covenant with Yahweh could have provided the unity that they needed. In practice it probably did to some extent. But even with that there was a problem. According to the tradition that has come down to us, there was a central shrine to Yahweh at Shiloh. The tent of meeting was there and so was the holy box of the covenant. There were priests who tended the shrine, offered the sacrifices that people brought, and gave advice.

Eli who was the priest during the time of our story had performed satisfactorily during his lifetime, but he was old and blind and his sons who were doing most of the work were "despicable men who didn't know the Lord." [1 Sam 2:12] They kept the best of the sacrifices that men brought for themselves and they abused the women. Harvey Weinstein did not invent this sort of misuse of power. Eli knew what his sons were up to but, like too many people who are aware of misconduct but are afraid to rock the boat, he did nothing about it.

It was to Eli in Shiloh that the woman Hannah had brought her son Samuel. He was her only son, born to her late in her life. The birth of Samuel had taken away the shame that she felt on account of her childlessness. She was so grateful to Yahweh that she gave Samuel into Yahweh's service. Samuel was about four years old at the time, the usual age for weaning.

And so our story begins, but not without noting that the story takes place during a drought. It wasn't the kind of drought caused by a lack of rain or melted snow. It was a drought of another sort. There was no word from Yahweh. There were no visions. Prophets had fallen silent. The seers of visions had gone blind. There was no shortage of opinions, no lack of voices to urge this or that course of action, but none of the voices were God's voice.

But one evening, while the lamps were still burning and Eli had nodded off, Samuel was keeping vigil in the sanctuary. Samuel heard a voice calling him by name, so he, assuming that it must be Eli calling, ran to the old priest and asked him what he wanted. Eli replied, "I didn't call, my son. Go and lie down." A second time the voice came. A second time Samuel rushed to Eli. And a second time, Eli said, "I didn't call, my son. Go and lie down." And a third time came the voice and third time Samuel hurried to Eli.

By this time Eli was awake enough to recognize what was going on and he gave Samuel instructions on how to respond if Yahweh called again. Sure enough, the voice came a fourth time, and Samuel did as he was told, "Speak. Your servant is listening."

And Yahweh spoke.

If it had been me, I would have started Samuel off with something a little easier, perhaps something uplifting, something with lots of promises of good things. Why put such a burden on the boy?

But, apparently, God doesn't think like I do. Instead of some comfortable message, God gave Samuel a message that something so bad was going to happen in Israel that it would throw everyone who heard it into such a state of shock that the sound in their ears would seem so far away that it could only be heard as a buzzing noise. The priesthood of Eli and his two sons would come to a horrible end.

I can imagine how hard it would have been for little Samuel to pass this message along to Eli, his foster father, let alone to his older and thoroughly corrupt foster brothers. He tried pretending he had nothing to say. But Eli was insistent that Samuel tell all of what he had heard. This is what a prophet must do. A prophet must listen and a prophet must speak; either one without the other is a failure of the office of prophet. Even as young as he was, Samuel was not too young to learn this central reality that comes with burden of hearing God's voice.

So Samuel's long career began. He saw the end of the old tribal alliances and an end to Eli's priesthood, He chose Saul as king. He replaced Saul with David. Samuel was the hinge on which the history of Israel turned.

One last time before the old ways yielded to the new, God had brought forward a person upon whom the Spirit of Yahweh rested, a person who would lead the tribes through a time of crisis, a judge who brought the role of the judge to an end. One more time God was faithful to Israel in a time of deep danger, giving the tribes one more chance to live into the covenant that had and would set them apart for the privilege and burden of living out God's dream in the real world.

I observe that there are some resemblances between then and now, between the crisis into which Samuel was placed and the crisis in which we find ourselves: Our world, too, finds itself with choices to make. Our time, too, demands that we leave older, more comfortable ways of living and embrace new ways that we can hardly imagine.

One of the most important things happening in our world is the collapse of binary thinking. For example, for as long as anyone can remember, as far back as there are records, we humans have defined ourselves by identifying and rejecting who we are not. Greeks defined themselves against the barbarians, those who went "bar bar" like sheep instead of speaking a civilized language like Greek. Romans built walls around its empire to keep out those whom it deemed too savage, those who could not be turned into Romans. (Incidentally, their walls were expensive and they never worked.) Spaniards and Portuguese defined themselves as Christians against the heretics of the northern islands and the barely human inhabitants of the New World. White Americans defined themselves against the savage Red Indians who didn't deserve the land that they lived on and the Black Africans who for their own sake needed to be enslaved.

Men have defined themselves against women at least since the beginning of history. Greek men saw themselves as hot and dry and well-contained as over against women who were cold and wet and leaky. Roman men saw themselves as defined by virtue. Virility and virtue both come from the same Latin root, vir, that means simply, "man." Women were by definition not virtuous. Examples of virtuous women, rather than causing Romans to rethink their categories and definitions, instead caused them to grant honorary manhood to the exceptional women. In our own day we have the Harvey Weinsteins whose toxic masculinity leads them to define themselves as the predators and exploiters of women who are the prey and the exploited. If we believe the testimony of women—and I do—he’s not at all alone.

Straight folks defined themselves in North America and northern Europe by inventing a homosexual Other in the eighteen hundreds, a category that had never existed before. Republican and Democrats are "othering" each other, defining themselves as patriotic and good against others who are unpatriotic and wicked.

This is the binary thinking, this business of defining the world and ourselves with either/or’s. A new reality is emerging which is not either/or, not binary. Once we think we are done sorting everyone into male and female boxes, we find that there are remainders, people who are both or neither. Once we have sorted everyone into gay and straight, once again there are those who remain.

Sooner or later we will have to recognize that male and female; straight and gay; white, black, red, brown, and yellow; the blessed and cursed; and, the chosen and the unchosen are all boxes that are built by someone for our their own convenience and comfort at the cost of great suffering and oppression that have been laid on others. In our day the real world is hammering at the walls built to shield us from reality, demanding recognition that God's creation is composed of bewildering variety. Just because most of us have two hands, two feet, two eyes, ears and nostrils, does not mean that the world is binary.

Right now we live in a time when the newly visible fuzziness of our categories causes deep anxiety, and fear, that leads to hatred. (And hatred, as we all know by now, leads to the dark side of the Force.) A newly invigorated sexism, racism, and homophobia have been let loose and have spawned a new culture of cruelty that delights in violence and the figurative if not literal death of all Others.

In a way of course all these Others are really stand-ins for the really big binary division between humans and nature. Nature was invented by the Greeks in order to define culture. This nature/culture division has allowed us to so damage our own home that our very existence over the next century is up for grabs. But a binary division between culture and nature is only a line drawn to ease our anxiety. The reality is that humans beings are just another part of nature and everything that we have produced--from skyscrapers to GPS satellites to flu vaccines--is no less natural than a beaver dam or a beehive. Pretending otherwise we have pushed this planet as far as we can. It has begun to push back and will do so with a vengeance in the coming decades.

An old world of simple categories and clear alternatives is coming to an end. It never worked for the people that it oppressed and the things that it exploited. But we are beginning to see that, really, it doesn’t work for anyone.

A new reality is coming into being. In our story Samuel was there to nudge the new reality in the direction of God's dream instead of standing by as it slid into a new and more terrifying nightmare. In our day, who will do the nudging? Who will speak on behalf of God's dream? Who will say, "Speak. Lord, your servant is listening"? You and I will. You and I will bring an end to the long drought. You and will declare God's vision of wondrous variety and balance. You and I will speak forth God's dream of solidarity and hope.

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