6/3/18
In our church calendar we are now in a season that doesn’t have a name of its own. We call it “the Season After Pentecost”, and it lasts through All Saints Day, by far the biggest chunk of the church year (this year it’s over six months.) In churchspeak we refer to this season as “ordinary time.” The weeks are numbered without reference to a particular season and the term “ordinary” is from the Latin “ordinalis”, which describes numbers in a series. But it also feels right to call it ordinary because this season has no particular character: in this time there’s no specific direction of the spirit that the church calls us to look toward, as it does in Advent and Christmas and so on.
Most of us think of “ordinary” as something that’s usual, normal, unremarkable, even bland: same old. And that description seems to apply to this season as well, because there’s nothing specific our church asks us to give our attention to right now. And we’ve just finished the great arc of the spirit around the story of Easter that really begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Pentecost. That’s about three months. So it feels natural that we should step back and take a breather. It happens that, in our culture, this is reinforced by the fact that it coincides with the onset of summertime, when things slow down: school’s out, work schedules relax a bit (we’re about to go to one service on Sundays), people get outside and take vacations.
But today, at the beginning of ordinary time, let us calmly, and unremarkably, and ordinarily, behold an ordinary truth: that God is present, and active, in our lives all the time; and most often in ways that seem quite ordinary: so much so that we don’t readily identify them as having anything at all to do with God. It’s hard for us to believe that God’s presence is not always announced by a thunderclap. God is always here, always at work in the world around us; and most of the time in ways that look small – look ordinary. But - God being God - when we respond to God’s presence, those small things can turn out to be big; extraordinary. One of the things we do here in church is learn to recognize, and respond to, those small ways, these ordinary ways. I think this is what St. Paul is pointing to in his letter to the Philippians when he says, “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things.” And you can look at it from the other side: wherever there is untruth, injustice, anger, and so on, God is looking to step in and fix it.
Learning to recognize and respond to God’s presence is at the heart of today’s Old Testament reading: the story of the boy Samuel in the temple. It’s one of the all-time greats because it’s so beautifully told, and one of the best examples (out of many in the Bible) of how God works through the powerless and the ordinary to change the world. In this case it’s a young boy (Jewish tradition is that he’s twelve years old) who’s an acolyte, your average kid, in the temple. But change the world he does: Samuel grows from that acolyte into the prophet who eventually anoints the first king of Israel, Saul; and when Saul doesn’t quite work out, Samuel finds the boy David, powerless and thought to be ordinary by his family, to replace him, and go on to become the greatest king in the history of Israel. From little acorns great oaks do grow.
In today’s story there are two verses in particular that bear on what I’m talking about; but there’s some background you need to know. Before today’s story, Samuel’s mother, Hannah, who is childless, prays to God for a son and promises dedicate that son’s life to God’s service. That’s how the boy Samuel comes to be living and serving in the temple.
You also need to know that at the time of the story there’s trouble in the nation of Israel. Eli is the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem, which is the center of the life of the people of Israel. Eli comes from a long line of priests, going all the way back to the time of Moses, and he’s the high priest for forty years. But he has two sons, who are also priests, working under him in the temple, who are very bad actors: the Bible tells us that there’s sexual misconduct by them occurring regularly in the temple, and that they’re taking for their own consumption meat that has been slaughtered and prepared in ritual dedication to God. And Eli, who is aware of all this, has done nothing about it. This all strikes at the heart of the relationship between God and God’s people. So just before today’s story in 1 Samuel, God sends a messenger to Eli who tells him that God’s justice will soon be done: his sons are both going to die on the same day and his family will be priests no more.
This all may very well be responsible for what we learn in the first of the two verses I’m talking about, which is the first verse of today’s reading: “The word of the Lord was rare in those days, and visions were not widespread.” These two things – the word of the Lord, and visions – mean pretty much the same thing: they are ways in which God communicates: in which God makes God’s presence, God’s will, known. This doesn’t seem to be happening much in these days, which shouldn’t surprise us. The corruption in the temple is just one indication that people aren’t looking toward God: they’re looking in any other direction. So the new life God is always creating is ignored, and the times seem unremarkable, same-old, ordinary.
So that’s one of the aspects of this story that has to do with “ordinary time.” The other is this. God calls Samuel, and he doesn’t recognize that it’s God – thinks it must be his boss Eli - and runs to him. Eli says it wasn’t me, go back to sleep. This process is repeated; and after this second time, the Bible tells us, “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” This describes a lot of people – maybe most people – and it can apply to any of us, at least some of the time. “Samuel did not yet know the Lord.” It was just a voice he heard – ordinary – couldn’t be God. God is not real to Samuel yet, is not really part of his life, is just a hazy idea which people talked about and had built this big temple for and did a lot of odd things in it, all of which people said was important. But Samuel has no real connection to God, because “the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” He doesn’t understand how God communicates: he doesn’t know where to look.
Well, he’s about to learn. When it happens a third time it’s Eli – who does know where to look – Eli who realizes that it’s God at work, tells Samuel this, and tells him what to say next time (“Speak, Lord, for you servant hears.”) He’s teaching Samuel how to open himself to God’s presence.
But this doesn’t happen all at once, it’s a process. When God tells Samuel all the bad things that are going to happen to Eli and his family, Samuel’s scared to tell Eli. But it’s Eli – Eli who is a tragic figure here, you get the distinct sense that he knows what’s coming – Eli who insists that Samuel speak the truth: that Samuel trust God.
This story is about learning to see that God is present in what we think of as ordinary. And it’s ironic that we hear it on the last day of church school; because, of course, “church school” never ends. We’re in church school, all our lives. We’re always learning to trust God. We’re always learning to see God in the ordinary. In truth, we’re always learning that, to God, nothing is “ordinary”. Thanks be to God
In our church calendar we are now in a season that doesn’t have a name of its own. We call it “the Season After Pentecost”, and it lasts through All Saints Day, by far the biggest chunk of the church year (this year it’s over six months.) In churchspeak we refer to this season as “ordinary time.” The weeks are numbered without reference to a particular season and the term “ordinary” is from the Latin “ordinalis”, which describes numbers in a series. But it also feels right to call it ordinary because this season has no particular character: in this time there’s no specific direction of the spirit that the church calls us to look toward, as it does in Advent and Christmas and so on.
Most of us think of “ordinary” as something that’s usual, normal, unremarkable, even bland: same old. And that description seems to apply to this season as well, because there’s nothing specific our church asks us to give our attention to right now. And we’ve just finished the great arc of the spirit around the story of Easter that really begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Pentecost. That’s about three months. So it feels natural that we should step back and take a breather. It happens that, in our culture, this is reinforced by the fact that it coincides with the onset of summertime, when things slow down: school’s out, work schedules relax a bit (we’re about to go to one service on Sundays), people get outside and take vacations.
But today, at the beginning of ordinary time, let us calmly, and unremarkably, and ordinarily, behold an ordinary truth: that God is present, and active, in our lives all the time; and most often in ways that seem quite ordinary: so much so that we don’t readily identify them as having anything at all to do with God. It’s hard for us to believe that God’s presence is not always announced by a thunderclap. God is always here, always at work in the world around us; and most of the time in ways that look small – look ordinary. But - God being God - when we respond to God’s presence, those small things can turn out to be big; extraordinary. One of the things we do here in church is learn to recognize, and respond to, those small ways, these ordinary ways. I think this is what St. Paul is pointing to in his letter to the Philippians when he says, “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things.” And you can look at it from the other side: wherever there is untruth, injustice, anger, and so on, God is looking to step in and fix it.
Learning to recognize and respond to God’s presence is at the heart of today’s Old Testament reading: the story of the boy Samuel in the temple. It’s one of the all-time greats because it’s so beautifully told, and one of the best examples (out of many in the Bible) of how God works through the powerless and the ordinary to change the world. In this case it’s a young boy (Jewish tradition is that he’s twelve years old) who’s an acolyte, your average kid, in the temple. But change the world he does: Samuel grows from that acolyte into the prophet who eventually anoints the first king of Israel, Saul; and when Saul doesn’t quite work out, Samuel finds the boy David, powerless and thought to be ordinary by his family, to replace him, and go on to become the greatest king in the history of Israel. From little acorns great oaks do grow.
In today’s story there are two verses in particular that bear on what I’m talking about; but there’s some background you need to know. Before today’s story, Samuel’s mother, Hannah, who is childless, prays to God for a son and promises dedicate that son’s life to God’s service. That’s how the boy Samuel comes to be living and serving in the temple.
You also need to know that at the time of the story there’s trouble in the nation of Israel. Eli is the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem, which is the center of the life of the people of Israel. Eli comes from a long line of priests, going all the way back to the time of Moses, and he’s the high priest for forty years. But he has two sons, who are also priests, working under him in the temple, who are very bad actors: the Bible tells us that there’s sexual misconduct by them occurring regularly in the temple, and that they’re taking for their own consumption meat that has been slaughtered and prepared in ritual dedication to God. And Eli, who is aware of all this, has done nothing about it. This all strikes at the heart of the relationship between God and God’s people. So just before today’s story in 1 Samuel, God sends a messenger to Eli who tells him that God’s justice will soon be done: his sons are both going to die on the same day and his family will be priests no more.
This all may very well be responsible for what we learn in the first of the two verses I’m talking about, which is the first verse of today’s reading: “The word of the Lord was rare in those days, and visions were not widespread.” These two things – the word of the Lord, and visions – mean pretty much the same thing: they are ways in which God communicates: in which God makes God’s presence, God’s will, known. This doesn’t seem to be happening much in these days, which shouldn’t surprise us. The corruption in the temple is just one indication that people aren’t looking toward God: they’re looking in any other direction. So the new life God is always creating is ignored, and the times seem unremarkable, same-old, ordinary.
So that’s one of the aspects of this story that has to do with “ordinary time.” The other is this. God calls Samuel, and he doesn’t recognize that it’s God – thinks it must be his boss Eli - and runs to him. Eli says it wasn’t me, go back to sleep. This process is repeated; and after this second time, the Bible tells us, “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” This describes a lot of people – maybe most people – and it can apply to any of us, at least some of the time. “Samuel did not yet know the Lord.” It was just a voice he heard – ordinary – couldn’t be God. God is not real to Samuel yet, is not really part of his life, is just a hazy idea which people talked about and had built this big temple for and did a lot of odd things in it, all of which people said was important. But Samuel has no real connection to God, because “the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” He doesn’t understand how God communicates: he doesn’t know where to look.
Well, he’s about to learn. When it happens a third time it’s Eli – who does know where to look – Eli who realizes that it’s God at work, tells Samuel this, and tells him what to say next time (“Speak, Lord, for you servant hears.”) He’s teaching Samuel how to open himself to God’s presence.
But this doesn’t happen all at once, it’s a process. When God tells Samuel all the bad things that are going to happen to Eli and his family, Samuel’s scared to tell Eli. But it’s Eli – Eli who is a tragic figure here, you get the distinct sense that he knows what’s coming – Eli who insists that Samuel speak the truth: that Samuel trust God.
This story is about learning to see that God is present in what we think of as ordinary. And it’s ironic that we hear it on the last day of church school; because, of course, “church school” never ends. We’re in church school, all our lives. We’re always learning to trust God. We’re always learning to see God in the ordinary. In truth, we’re always learning that, to God, nothing is “ordinary”. Thanks be to God
