"The Left Hand of God"

S E R M O N CNR1062

EPIPHANY 2b North Ryde Community Church, 15 Jan 2012, 9.30am

1 Sam 3:1-10 (11-20); Ps 139:1-6,13-18; Jn 1:43-51; 1 Cor 6:12-20

“THE LEFT HAND OF GOD”

1 Samuel 3:1b

1 THE BOY SAMUEL

1.1 Woken up in the night

One thing I can be sure of here and that is none of us enjoy

being woken up in the middle of the night.

It was bad enough when my children used to wake up

with the early morning light

and my son used to come into our bedroom

and start bouncing up and down on our bed.

He was our bouncing baby boy but we weren’t appreciating this

when dawn was still tentatively breaking.

Mind you, he grew out of this bad habit with the onset of teenage

where it required all but a front-end loader

to remove him from his bed in the mornings.

1.2 Eli not too thrilled

I can’t imagine Eli was too thrilled with the young enthusiastic Samuel

running in to report for duty in the middle of the night.

I can imagine Eli was even less thrilled

when he wheedled out of young Samuel what God had told him.

Mind you, the story is more straightforward than it first looks.

Young Samuel had adopted by his mother Hannah to be brought up by Eli, the priest-in-charge at the Temple of Shiloh,

and to serve the Lord God in gratitude for his miracle birth.

1.3 Little Pitchers have big ears

Eli would have been his teacher and mentor,

as I imagine all priests were in those days,

and as Eli grew older Samuel would have been running all sorts of errands around the place.

But as the adults in my young life used to say among themselves

when I was hanging around while they were talking,

“Little pitchers have big ears.”

And they would invariably change the subject.

Doubtless, Samuel heard a lot more what was going on

than he was supposed to

and what old Eli’s two worthless sons, Hophni and Phinehas,

who were now responsible for the day to day running of the Temple at Shiloh, were getting up to.

1.4 What you see is what you get

I’ll let you read about it for yourselves in the previous chapter,

but young Samuel would have been awake to the fact that things were wrong as we were when we heard the words at the beginning of the chapter,

“And the word of the Lord was rare in those days;

there was no frequent vision.”

What young Samuel had to tell old Eli much along the lines

that his sons were as crooked as a dog’s hind leg

and that they couldn’t even lie straight in bed.

Eli was the first to realise that in the midst of all this dark corruption

Samuel was a ray of light.

He was honest, without guile,

as Nathanael is later described in our Gospel reading – WYSIWYG.

This integrity would be the hope of Israel for years to come.

2 THE KING-MAKER

2.1 Samuel chooses Saul

It’s tempting to run through the story of Samuel in detail

like my Sunday School teacher used to, Sunday by Sunday,

but I’ll let you read it for yourselves, suffice to say,

that after listening to much haggling Samuel was later entrusted

to choose a king for Israel.

He found his man, Saul the Benjamite,

who was head and shoulders above the crowd.

He hadn’t intended to apply for the job - kings never do.

All he was focussed on was looking for his father’s lost donkeys.

2.2 Samuel chooses David

However, physique wasn’t enough, and eventually Samuel sacked him

but that’s another story.

Samuel found a different replacement,

a young shepherd lad who played music and was handy with a slingshot.

You may have heard of him.

His name was David, born in Bethlehem.

3 THE LISTENING SAMUEL

3.1 Was Samuel really special?

Samuel had received a very important call from God in the middle of the night.

It was very timely as we gather from those words,

“And the word of the Lord was rare in those days;

there was no frequent vision.”

I was brought up to believe that Samuel was special

and that he was singled out for his call.

I checked my lexicon to see what his name really means

to give me some clue

and it seems to mean “the left hand of God”.

From this I understand that the priests were normally seen

as the right hand of God

but if the right hand won’t do the job then the left hand would have to do.

3.2 Not everybody is listening

I am more inclined now to believe that God calls everybody.

It’s just that not everybody is listening.

While Eli was priest of the Temple of Shiloh,

only a small boy was paying attention,

so the call meant for the adults came through.

There was no ICAC in those days,

so when people had complained to Eli about his corrupt sons,

he would just sigh and say, “But they’re still my boys.”

3.3 The middle of integrity

With corruption around him, Samuel had integrity.

Those who have done maths will know

that the word for a whole number is “integer”,

so integrity means wholeness the equivalent of our old word “holiness”.

Contained in the word “integrity” is the word “grit”.

As Samuel learned, if we want to see integrity around us,

it will not happen unless we are ourselves prepared to put in some of the grit.

4 WITHOUT GUILE

4.1 Nathanael (Jn 1:26)

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus has started work and is calling people to come and share the road with him.

One of them is Nathanael who is mainly famous for sitting under fig-trees

and grumbling, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:26)

He’s another WYSIWYG person like Samuel,

neither of them good at playing poker, or doing other things on the sly,

a man without guile.

What you see is what you get.

Jesus needs people like that, people with integrity

who are prepared to put a bit of grit into a world

where self-interest runs rampant as usual.

4.2 Switch on the antennae

Again, God calls everyone but not everyone listens.

2012 is the year where we are called to switch on our antennae

so the signal can come through.

There are many stories of calls coming through right through our Scriptures and through our experiences or the experiences of others,

stories of lives and careers changing because of a divine nudge

whether it’s noticed or not.

As disciples of Jesus,

we are subject to these calls even out of our comfort zone.

We all have our stories of challenging journeys.

Perhaps some of these journeys are still to come.

In God’s world let’s put the grit back to get integrity.

AMEN

The Drowner

S E R M O N CNR1061

BAPTISM OF JESUS b North Ryde Community Church 8 Jan 2012, 9.30am

Gen 1:1-5; Ps 29; Mk 1:4-11; Ac 19:1-11

(Amended readings: Gen 1:1-13; Mk 1:1-11)

1 THE WILD MAN IN THE JORDAN

1.1 Locusts and wild honey

All the Christmas decorations are put away for another year.

The cards are collected and read once more.

Funny, there weren’t any with John the Baptist on them.

Mark’s Gospel was the first written nearly a generation before the others

and in this Gospel we hear nothing about

angels, shepherds, wise men, stars or mangers.

The first person on the scene is this wild looking hairy man

with his peculiar diet of locusts and wild honey, and possibly bad breath,

not some one you’d ever find on your Christmas cards.

Back in my Sunday School days, our class turned up their noses with disgust and we asked our teacher why anyone in their right mind

would eat locusts and wild honey.

One smart girl piped up that the honey was used

to stop his lunch from flying away.

Somehow we find Christmas pudding a lot tastier.

1.2 John and the Jewish Spring

Who was this peculiar man who is the first person to appear in a Gospel

and what is he doing here?

From Luke we read that he is the son of a priest so he grew up

with the routines and rituals of what priests do

with the expectation that he would follow in his father’s footsteps.

But you know what children are like.

They have minds of their own, particularly when life around them changes.

Young John grew up conscious of the way these Roman governors

and soldiers ran things around the place

and they weren’t always polite about it.

There were always uprisings looking for a Jewish Spring, so to speak,

where the Jews could overthrow these bossy Romans.

Young John could see this wasn’t working

and that some day it would take the promised Messiah, the anointed one,

to pull this off with his baptism of fire.

1.3 Prepare the Way of the Lord

John had read from the Prophets of his Hebrew Scriptures,

particularly the scrolls of Isaiah and Malachi,

that a prophet would come forward to herald the Messiah’s coming.

“Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” (Mk 1:3)

John turned his back upon the formal religion of the day

because everyone was just going through the motions

and nothing was changing.

So, he put on the same garb as Elijah the prophet from centuries before,

went bush and lived off the land like he did, except for the extra protein.

Like Elijah’s successor, Elisha, he focussed on the river Jordan

and the place where cleansing by washing could take place,

just like Elisha recommended for Namaan the Syrian general

who was a leper.

It was this cleansing by washing

for which we have come to know this wild man called John the Baptist.

2 THE GREAT WATERS

2.1 Ritual Washings

The priests would conduct ritual washings in the Temple

before sacrifices could be offered.

Centuries later, Catholics would imitate the process

with Confession before taking Communion.

But nothing was changing and the purpose for these ritual washings

were forgotten as soon as one’s skin was dry.

John would ensure his cleansing by washing

would be something those undergoing it, and undergoing was the word,

would never forget.

2.2 Waters under the firmament (Gen 1:7)

You may have worked out by now that the Jewish people of the day

were not enthused about water in large quantities.

You would have noticed that in the 1st Creation story read today,

there were waters left under the firmament (Gen 1:7).

These were the days when the earth was believed to be flat,

sorry to disillusion anybody, and these waters were kept underneath

lest they emerge to drown you.

2.3 The Many Waters

In Psalm 29, the Psalm of Seven Thunders,

the voice of the Lord God is upon the waters, many waters,

as the only power above them (Ps 29:3).

I think you get the picture.

Water in large quantities is just too awesome for comfort.

Just in case you wish to check this out for yourselves at home

when you are bored with TV,

add to your readings the stories of the Great Flood.

Read about the crossing of the Reed Sea

where Moses and the children of Israel look back

to see even Pharaoh’s mighty, terrible army

overwhelmed by this enormous torrent of water surging through them

sweeping them mercilessly away into oblivion forever.

There’s the story of Jonah tossed out of a boat during a raging storm,

not to mention Gospel accounts of the frightened disciples of Jesus

cowering in a boat on the Sea of Galilee

begging their Master to do something.

Even when you come to the end of the Book of Revelation

where a new heaven and a new earth is described

with the old heaven and the old earth passing away,

there is no more sea (Rev 21:1).

I think there are people in Queensland and in Japan who would understand.

2.4 Life after Drowning

So, with this in mind, what does John go and do?

First, and this appears in Matthew and Luke’s later accounts,

he sears the ears of the people with visions of a baptism of fire

unless they first undergo his baptism by water.

No ritual washing here.

With his none too tender hands pressed upon their heads,

John plunges them downward into the murky waters of the Jordan

so that they experience these waters under the firmament.

The Greek word, “baptizo”, means to plunge, even to drown.

The people have to experience what it is like to be about to die

before they can live again.

Today we would call this shock therapy.

Maginnis Magee would be staying in his log.

3 I WILL BAPTISE YOU WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT

3.1 Mark’s Emphases

In Mark’s Gospel, the punch line from John the Baptist are his words,

“I have baptised you with water

but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.” (Mk 1:8)

Mark’s Gospel is definite about this.

John’s Gospel relates later that,

true, although Jesus underwent the baptism of John,

he never himself baptised with water, and,

true, he did breathe upon his disciples with the words,

“Receive the Holy Spirit.”

3.2 No shock therapy

There have been many disputes about water baptism throughout the history of the church and there are various positions of conscience.

There are a number of solid emphases Mark gives to baptism

and of some I have spoken here before,

but at this time, I am moved to focus here upon

the different ways from John the Baptist

Jesus used to herald the Kingdom of God.

There is no shock therapy from Jesus except for himself

when he later underwent the baptism of fire John was talking about

that we call the cross.

Ah yes, Maginnis Magee, there is pain in baptism but it’s not yours.

3.3 Live in the baptism of spirit

The baptism of spirit means that through Jesus Christ

God binds us together in him

so that we may live the life

that saves the world from imploding the way it continues to do.

It is this baptism of spirit that can hold off the baptism of fire.

So let us live in the baptism of spirit forever.