Calling in the Night

Welcome to the Knox Talks blog. Here you can find recent and past sermons relating scripture to a wide variety of topics. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.

Calling in the Night

Some Context: I shared this sermon a short time after I announced my plans to leave Knox this coming summer. My family and I will be moving to New Brunswick. Whether I will be in a congregation once there is still unknown.

Scriptures: 1 Samuel 3:1-10, John 1:43-51

Our two scripture lessons today are about being called. The call by Jesus is pretty straightforward: it’s a verbal invitation to Nathaniel, shared by Philip. Many sermons focus on how we can all potentially serve as the person who invites someone else to Jesus.

Nathaniel is skeptical at first and is persuaded by Jesus’ vision of him under the tree. That’s all stuff we can imagine: we know lots of skeptical people; maybe we are skeptical ourselves; and we have learned, even in a small way, that we stick with our faith because we see it work, maybe not with miracles or visions of angels, but with things that come together in ways we cannot fully explain.

When I was a child, it was normal to think of God in traditional terms: ”the big beard in the sky,” as some have said. As an adult trained in the sciences, taking biblical imagery and turning it into something literal doesn’t work for me, but neither does the idea of a mindless universe in a meaningless cycle of Big Bang and Big Crunch.

Some modern Christians have abandoned the idea of “God” for something much more nebulous, possibly a cosmic force that is completely impersonal, while others are prepared to consider the question of whether the great guiding force of reality has a personality and if so, what is it like? Does it make any sense that anything that powerful and complex, whether you call it God or not, would have any personal interest in me, a single human on a small planet orbiting a small yellow sun in an outer arm of a slightly smaller-than-average spiral galaxy?

I don’t think it’s a question of capacity. We can imagine an intelligence great enough to encompass an entire universe in functional detail. The question is really one of intent, or interest: if I were so great, so involved in ordering the orbitals of electrons and supervising the blinding power of supernovae, would I care? Would I bother with someone so insignificant?

And that’s a theological question to which our answers tend to be limited by our own attitudes and inclinations. The ways we imagine power are often the ways we imagine God, so we end up thinking that God is very human and not necessarily a very nice human, either.

Remember, the teachings of Jesus were all about overturning that tendency: correcting our thoughts about God to include the meek inheriting the earth, which makes us consider that something, someone so powerful and all encompassing has enough self-restraint not to snuff us out whenever we are annoying.

Actually, the story of Noah’s ark taught us that centuries before Jesus, as a kind of “been there, done that, bought the t-shirt” story. Jesus focused that understanding into something to hold up as a contrast to the Roman Empire, with its distant, powerful, uncaring, even murderous ruler, to suggest that God works in ways that are subtle, quiet, under the radar and often personal.

After all, it was Jesus who referred to God as Abba: “Daddy”, a very personal term that wasn’t a claim of divinity for himself. That was an example of the type of personal closeness that Jesus expected every person to seek with our creator.

This is where we come back to the call of Samuel, a child, certainly under the age of 12, hearing a voice in the night and not recognizing it as the call of God. He is advised by a corrupt old priest – Eli – who, despite all his faults and failings, was still able to recognize God at work and give Samuel enough guidance to actually listen for God’s call.

This story can serve as a template for us despite the fact that very few people can ever legitimately claim to hear God speaking in clear and discernible words. That mysterious, quiet urging we hear might be our creator trying to work through us or even just lead us in a particular direction.

But it’s usually not as obvious as a quiet call in the night and we may need advice about it, even advice from someone imperfect. I’m always impressed with the way the Bible shows God working through very flawed people, like Eli.

It is normal to feel unprepared, uncertain. This is God calling a little kid to become a prophet! It feels like an impossible task, profoundly dangerous too, because his first job was to denounce Eli and his sons who were abusing their priestly authority to enrich themselves and to force women who brought sacrifices to God to have sex with them. (Corruption and abuse of position are not modern inventions).

Think of it from Samuel’s perspective: Eli is his boss; he provides Samuel’s room and board. What’s to stop Eli or his sons from simply killing the child to silence this critical prophesy? That’s a big fear, and Samuel was called to step out in faith to do what he was called to do even though he faced terrible personal risk.

God’s calling to us may not be quite that dramatic but it often pushes us out of our comfort zones. It can call for courage; it can call us to trust that God will show us a way forward even though we can’t see it yet.

A modern comparison to Samuel would be whistle-blowers; people who speak out about abuses of power even though they are risking their jobs and maybe even their safety and freedom. We’re impressed by those people and we see how their lives change, sometimes dramatically and generally in ways that make them less comfortable.

Samuel had his life change as he moved from being a servant of the high priest to an itinerant prophet. His life wasn’t as comfortable or full of status but it was much more interesting.

I announced earlier that I would be leaving Knox. This feels to me like a step of faith, like my family and I are following God’s lead. Things are going to change and there are enough uncertain bits that parts of it are quite scary, but we are trusting God to provide us with a way forward.

Knox has been talking about its future for over a year now and this congregation has been going through a process in which we are trying to discern the voice of God calling this community of faith into the future.

It is inevitable that we feel overwhelmed at times like the child Samuel did and that we see potential dangers and risks. Those might be the biggest images in our minds, looming up like an iceberg in front of the Titanic! Okay, that sounds a bit dramatic, but fear and panic can do that to our perceptions.

What we need to look for here is that seed of faith that allows us to step forward, without knowing every detail of what is ahead, that allows us to believe that God will guide us into this uncertain future and provide a way forward that we can survive, maybe in a new form, like Samuel: a servant in a comfortable household, transformed into a prophet who is not always welcome.

I believe that God, who is beyond our imagining in scope and power, cares enough about the details of this creation to call us to be personally involved. I believe that we are called to be engaged in creating this world where vulnerability replaces power, where mystery is even more welcome than certainty, and where we are part of God’s unfolding work.

The end and outcome of God’s plan are beyond what we can see, but I believe it is worth listening, and following our call. Amen.