I Samuel 3:1-4:1a
'Life is to be understood backwards, but it is lived forwards'.[1] That’s one of the more famous quotations from theologian Soren Keirkegaard, and if you think about it for very long you’ll begin to understand that it shares the hallmark of all great insights. It’s short and to the point. It seems obvious once you think about it. And, it is deceptively simple while hiding deep complexities.
When Keirkegaard used this phrase, he meant many things. First, you cannot live in the past. The past is over and done … dead if you
will. The future, though, is open. It is alive with possibilities and
uncertainty. It is the home of hope, and
that is where we must live.
Second, the past may be over and done, but it forms the
background and context of our lives. It
shows the path that our lives have taken, and in doing so, it point toward our
future. So, we need to understand it. Only a fool ignores the past, thinking that
it is of no consequence.
Though the quotation itself does not show this, the third
implication for Keirkegaard was that we must rely on God as we move
forward.
If we listen to the guidance of God, we shape our lives and the world
according to a greater perspective – a plan, if you will – that leads us all
into a future bright with promise. If we
listen to God’s whispers, we all become prophets (whom Keirkegaard called
“historians of the future”) in that we get glimpses of the future however
poorly we understand them.
Our text today tells the story of the birth of one such
historian of the future, and of all the texts that you will hear during our
series on first and second Samuel, this is surely the most familiar. The baby Samuel had been dedicated to the
service of God as a Nasserite in the temple at Shiloh. There he had spent several years as an
assistant to the high priest Eli – the same Eli who accused Hannah of being
drunk as she prayed in the temple – and he did his job faithfully day in and
day out.
Then one night, he heard a voice: “Samuel! Samuel!”
And as any young boy might think in this position, he assumed that it was
his mentor calling. So, he went and woke
Eli to ask what he wanted only to find that it wasn’t Eli who had called him. It happened again and a third time before the
sleepy old man realized what was going on.
He told Samuel to stay put the next time and to answer: “Speak, Lord,
for your servant is listening.” And thus
the boy Samuel became the leader of the nation and the greatest prophet of the
time.
And that’s where we end the story … most of the time. It does make for a nice example of the call
narrative. Faithfully serve. Listen and recognize the voice of God. Offer yourself freely in response. But, taking it like that leaves out both the
background and context of God’s actions and
the future they shape.
It hadn’t been all that long since the chosen people had
entered the Promised Land and established their own country. Since then the Israelites had resisted
several invasions thanks to inspired leadership and divine assistance. It had been an era when the people knew who
they were and whose they were, and they had witnessed the fulfillment of God’s
promise to protect and guide them often.
But that sense of God’s presence had faded, and the people were despairing. Eli had been, by all indications, a good and righteous leader except that he had done nothing about his sons. They had not followed in his footsteps. They had forsaken their duty to protect the poor and helpless in favor of becoming the rich and powerful themselves. To that end, they had begun to take the best parts of the offerings for themselves instead of burning them on the altar, and they were enriching themselves by taking money from the temples coffers.
So, the religious leaders had become corrupt. The spiritual life of the people had grown anemic. More and more people were suffering because fewer and fewer people were following the law. And the country was on the verge of being conquered by the Philistines.
Where was the Voice demanding justice and mercy? Where was the God who had promised never to leave the people?
It was into this despairing situation that God spoke,
choosing Samuel to carry words of hope and judgment. Samuel didn’t know the Lord until this point,
and as a child, he didn’t know enough to understand the words for what they
were. But Eli was more than up to the
task. He had been serving for decades
and had seen the decline of the nation and the suffering of the people. So, he recognized that what we often think of
as the calling of Samuel was actually a full-blown theophany – an appearance of
God meant for the nation of Israel rather than for one individual. And he understood that when God appears, big
things are about to happen. God was
about to do something new … something that would “make the ears of anyone who
[heard] of it tingle.”
What strikes me as amazing is the way that Eli takes the
news of what is coming. The new thing
that God is doing will be the end of his family. Worse actually … the descendants of Eli will
not be wiped out. Instead they will
suffer the wrath of God for all time.
Not even the sacrifices that he has been carrying out on behalf of
others will have the power to save him or his children.
It’s enough to make anyone blanch, but Eli didn’t react in
fear. He didn’t try to run from the
judgment. He didn’t try to kill Samuel
or hide his prophesy from the people. He
didn’t even fall down and beg for mercy.
Instead, he accepted the condemnation and moved on into the future,
presumably standing at Samuel’s side as long as he could, helping him grow into
the prophet-leader that Israel needed so desperately.
To me the “hero” of this story (if there is one) isn’t
Samuel. He didn’t understand what was
going on. He wasn’t much more than a
mouthpiece – a tool to deliver the message of God. No, I think that the hero of this story is
Eli. He really got it. He looked back at the history of Israel and
saw that things weren’t going in a good direction. He listened to the voice of God’s guidance
and saw that it would bring a different future – one with hope and
promise. And even though it meant
suffering for him and his family, he embraced that future and stepped forward
into it. He understood deeply that
although life can only be understood backward, it must be lived forward.
I wonder … do we?
At one point, our conversation turned to the topic of
optimists and pessimists, light-heartedly labeling ourselves and each other as
friends often do, and Heidi made the claim that she wasn’t an optimist or a
pessimist. She was a realist. And that touched a nerve with Tim.
Tim, as it happens, is both an optimist and an idealist who
heads up the environmental studies department at a small college in
Virginia. Though he has been there for
seven or eight years now, he’s still one of the newer faculty members, and he
keeps butting heads with “realists” who meet any new proposal with, “Well we’ve
always done it like this…” or “We tried something like that once, and it didn’t
work” or “We have to be realistic about this.”
“That’s what really makes me angry,” he said. “When people pass off their fear of failure
or change by hiding behind what’s ‘realistic.’
Things change. Growth is
change. If we keep living in the past
and only do things ‘the way we’ve always done them,’ then we can’t grow. And if we aren’t growing, we’re dying.”
(You’ll have to forgive the exaggeration of that last
statement. Tim tends to get overly
dramatic when he’s upset. But, I think
you get the point.)
As I listened to Tim that night, I found myself a little
reluctant to agree with him … which was strange. I have often complained of the same thing
myself when I have felt frustrated with people who live too much in the past,
and yet I am often one of those people myself.
Little things … little changes don’t bother me much. In fact, I love to try new ways of doing
things in the hopes that they will show different results, and one of my
favorite pithy sayings is “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing
over and over and expecting different results.”
But when it comes to big things … to really significant changes, I am
more than a little reluctant. I get
scared that it might not work out at all, that I (or the group I’m part of)
might fail, might fall apart, might … die, and I take refuge in the past which
has at least gotten me … gotten us this far.
And once I’m there, I get stuck … living in the past … resisting change
… resisting the future.
Is that where we are?
Are we stuck in the past? We have
spent a lot of our time over the past year looking back. Carrie and I often talk about our Anabaptist
heritage in sermons. Our Sunday School
has watched The Martyrs and studied the teachings and example of our spiritual
ancestors. We base many of our decisions
about what we should do as a congregation on the things that we have been doing
for years. And that’s not all bad.
Looking back is important.
It helps us understand where we are and where we have been going. It gives us a sense of our identity and
reminds us of what we have claimed as important to us. It can hold inspiration for our living. But … but it is not the place of life and
hope. It is not the place we are now,
and if we are honest with ourselves, it is probably not the place we really
want to be.
Someone once told me that the life of discipleship is an
uncertain life. We try to follow where
God leads without really knowing where that will take us. It’s like we are walking across deep water in
the fog, and we can’t see where we are going.
We just pick up one foot at a time and step forward hoping and trusting
that God will guide our foot to the next stepping stone … or create a new stone
under our feet if we don’t quite get it right.
That can be a scary experience. Especially since we have learned so deeply that
we need to figure things out ourselves.
And yet, if we only walk the ways that we know or can see for ourselves,
we close off all the surprising paths God might choose for us. If we say, "Here I am, refuse to step out into the unknown
when we are called to, then we deny our faith in God’s love and care for us.
We need to learn from Eli and his willingness to trust God
and to live forward. We need to hear,
really hear the deeper truth of Kierkegaard’s insight … to hold the past
lightly, to look to God for guidance, and to step forward in faith … into God’s
future … no matter what that might be.
[1] Soren Kirkegaard in “From the Papers of One still Living” as found in Kierkegaard's
Writings, Vol. 1, Howard V. Hong, General Editor (Princeton:
Princeton University Press) 1978. 78.
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