"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