Risky Questions
THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
1 Samuel 3:1-20 • Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 • 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 • John 1:43-51
“It’s cold outside.” It’s a simple statement, a matter of fact. Statements are often made to describe the reality we are in, the reality we share. Depending on the company or the audience, what we state about our shared experience may be different. “It’s cold outside,” a simple comment about the weather, is a different statement than “The Chiefs and the Dolphins played one of the coldest games in the history of American football,” or “The unsheltered are suffering in the cold.” Stating things as they are leaves them in place. Statements, in a sense, observe the status quo and leave them where they are until a question is asked. Some of the most powerful books, plays, and movies begin with things as they are, but then there’s a moment when the leading character asks a question or when more is asked of them, an invitation to a deeper examination of who they are, who we are.
In Greta Gerwig’s movie Barbie, everything and every day is perfect until in the midst of an epic party, Barbie poses the existential question: “Do you guys ever think about dying?” A record screeches the music to a halt, everyone stops mid-choreography for a moment until she pushes the question aside and resumes the best day ever, as if it were any other day. But things do become different, something has happened, and life will not be the same. Who Barbie is, what the world is, is going to change and be more fully known.
In our Holy Scripture, Eli and Samuel, though both in a sense employed in “ministering to the LORD,” live in a time when “the word of the LORD was rare” and “visions were not widespread.” Eli’s eyesight “had begun to grow dim so that he could not see,” and Samuel “did not yet know the LORD.” Unlike Barbie’s initially perfect world, we’re given to understand that Eli and Samuel’s world is fraught, far from perfect. From the statements, we get a sense that their work is hard, maintaining connection with and faith in a God who feels distant. Is Eli’s failing eyesight not just physical but also spiritual? It’s easy for us to ask the question. That’s what we do as people of faith. We ask questions. So what if we give Samuel credit for perhaps asking a question? We know that the Hebrew scrolls didn’t have punctuation. What if, after we’re reminded that the LORD hadn’t yet been revealed to Samuel, on that third time, he went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me?” Samuel’s question, without being insubordinate, could have given Eli pause, alerted him to something else at work, namely the divine presence. Things are not as they were before.
Eli gives his apprentice instructions that are directive: “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” In this statement on what Samuel is instructed to do, he is also given instruction for how to be. He will be as he was, at rest, vulnerable, and he is to respond to what has not previously been known to him. He is to respond to the LORD with open ears. In this statement, there is no question of whether or not the LORD is present and whether or not Samuel will obey. “Speak, for your servant is listening,” is a statement of recognition of being spoken to, of being called, and identifying himself as being willing to listen and, as we find out, being willing to serve faithfully and live into being a “trustworthy prophet of the LORD.”
What is our record-screeching, music-halting, is-it-you-Lord question? We are living our lives day to day, and we are faithful to show up even on frigid mornings for service. Here we are, ready to be called, maybe even yearning to be called. Aren’t we? God knows us better than we know ourselves.
God, who “discerns (our) thoughts from afar,” is well “acquainted with all (our) ways.” And while God is behind and before us, God’s very hand upon us, do we live our lives so fully known, loved, embraced, and called by God? Do we accept the responsibility that comes from being such beloved children of God? Because to live into such a life is to live into being part of the very Body of Christ with our whole heart, mind, body, and soul. In the books and movies, I feel my heart racing when the characters are faced with the existential moment, the one that defines who they are and what they are capable of doing, choosing life, love, and liberation over the easy thing, the familiar thing, the way things have always been. Do we choose God?
A young Black boy born in 1929 was raised in a faithful Christian home. The little boy’s best friend was White, the child of the shop owner whose store was across the street. At three years old, the children played together as best friends, but when they entered schools–separate schools–things changed. They were six years old when the White child told his friend that they couldn’t play together anymore, that his father forbade it. The six year-old Black child asked the question, asked his own parents why such a statement would be made, and his parents revealed to him the “race problem.” It was then that the child became “determined to hate every white person.”[1] The determination to hate continued for years, even though the instruction from his parents and his faith told him it was his Christian duty to love.
Continuing in his education and spiritual formation included wrestling not only with his own personal questions but also examining the world around him, seeing that the racial injustices were partnered with the economic injustice, not only for Black folks but also for all those trapped in poverty. The clarity for being able to see injustice came in part because he could not see himself as separate from, let alone inferior to others. His family had raised him in a household of love grounded in love of God. He worked alongside poor White folks in the summer to earn money for college. He experienced mobility and freedom in the Northeast on travels that came to a screeching halt when he had to move from where he had been sitting on the train to a Jim Crow car as the train entered the South. Things as they were were not as they should be, not what God had in store for him or for anyone else. As a father and pastor, he would pray with his children as with all others about remembering the least of these. “For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be,” he preached in a sermon January 7th, 1968. [2]
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s identity with others overcame hate of others because of his identity as a child of God, and he didn’t see himself or you or me as separate from one another nor separate from God. Such a vision for radical unity and economic equality got him killed, but his words linger, his dream a reminder for us all that we are called to something different from a life filled with injustices, where things just are the way they are.
Being able to recognize who we are called to be depends upon knowing who we are and, as we often say in the Christian church, whose we are. We are the psalmist who proclaims being fully known by God, outwardly and inwardly. Created by God, known by God, exceeded by God in every way, our “genuine selfhood includes trusting dependence on God and grateful responsibility to God,” as stated by Timothy A. Beach-Verhey in his commentary on Psalm 139; he also hearkens to Richard Nieburh in stating that “the unity of the self depends upon an ultimate unity behind all things.” [3] Such a statement leads the faithful to see the world around them not as separate but united, not static but ever in motion, ever evolving, ever involved with one another in God, not created for suffering but for liberation in our unity.
We can be conditioned to believe that perfection looks like individual families in individual homes with predictable routines, blind to what is happening beyond our own backyard. But such individualism is an illusion, an unenlightened view of Creation. If we have the ability to examine the world around us and find oppression, destruction, and suffering, then, as Nikole Hannah-Jones asked us last night at the Annual Martin Luther King, Jr., Recommitment Celebration, “What are we doing about it?” This season after Epiphany, may we ask more questions, risk diving deeper into relation with one another, our true selves, and with God through Christ, who will always show us the way if we truly want to come and see what God dreams for us all.
[1] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/publications/autobiography-martin-luther-king-jr/chapter-1-early-years
[2] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/publications/autobiography-martin-luther-king-jr/chapter-31-poor-peoples-campaign
[3] Timothy A. Beach-Verhey, “Psalm 193:1-6, 13-18,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4: Advent Through Transfiguration. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY. 2008, p. 252.
© 2024 The Rev. Sara Milford
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas