Samuel! Samuel!

 1 Samuel 3:1-10

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

Here we are in Epiphany… the season of light.  “Arise, shine, for your light has come,” shouts the prophet Isaiah.  But with this pandemic claiming 3000 to 4000 lives each day, an insurrection at our nation’s Capital this last week, and who knows what happening today or what will happen next week with the inauguration… Honestly, it feels a lot LESS like a season of light and a lot MORE like a season of real darkness!

And yet, the first lesson for today shows us how relentlessly God continues to call us out of darkness.  Samuel was called by God out of the darkness of the Temple.  The Temple was dark, not just because Eli, the chief priest, was blind, or even because it was night.  The Temple was mostly dark because of the terrible corruption and abuse happening there.  Out of that darkness, God called Samuel.  At first, and at second, and at third, Samuel thought the call was coming from Eli.  Each time Eli said, “It wasn’t me, go back to sleep.”  Over and over this happened.  They were horribly stuck.  Over and over they did the same thing.  Over and over they got the same result.  Then finally… FINALLY… they tried something different!  “Here I am!” Samuel said to God, and suddenly Samuel was unstuck.  If you keep reading you’ll see the way out from being stuck was NOT at all an easy path to follow for Samuel, but it was finally a path toward the light.  

Our country, I think, is a lot like Samuel.  We are eager to hear and proclaim the light of “liberty and justice for all” but in the four hundred years we have heard the call to walk fully and genuinely toward the light of that ideal, we have not yet been able to walk the different path needed to get us there.  Instead we’ve boldly championed the light of “liberty and justice for all” while all the while being stuck in our history of trampling on black and brown people, demonizing immigrants and taking advantage of the weak to benefit the powerful.  

Our country, in spite of being called like Samuel, over and over and over again, by God, and by our founders… by leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and by movements like the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter movements to walk the genuine path toward light and life… we have, over and over and over again woken up like Samuel, only to rush back down that well worn path to where we’ve always gone before… to do what we’ve always done before… to get what we’ve always got before.

Now today, like Samuel lying asleep on the Temple floor after being called countless times before, God is calling us as a nation once again in these most recent and darkest of days.  Calling us to really hear for the first time, the path God has been calling us to walk all along!  God is calling us as a nation to WAKE UP from our sleep and THIS time, NOT just run mindlessly back over the same worn path of cheap grace… a path we've tried before... a path without genuine confession and repentance, racing headlong instead into forgiveness and unity... our same old path which will certainly stick us all again in the same place we’ve always been stuck!

It all seems overwhelming, doesn't it?  Just us, you and me, watching on TV from far away!  Is there anything that you and I can do about this darkness?  Can anything country-changingly-good come out of Sheffield?  The answer to that question, “Can anything good come out of Sheffield” is, like in the Gospel lesson, neither a “yes” nor a “no”.  The answer Jesus gives us instead… is “Follow Me.”  The answer Phillip gives us instead… is “Come and See.”  The answer Samuel suggests for us to say is…  “Here I am Lord.”  

Our job is not to be the light or even to shine it.  Jesus is the light and God is in charge of all the shining!  Our job… Your job… My job in the midst of this overwhelming darkness is to say, “Here I am Lord.”  Our job is to “Come and See.” Our job is to do it, when Jesus says, “Follow Me.”  Even without any idea at all about where that "following" will go!  Even without any idea about what the darkness will look in the week to come.  All we CAN do… All we are being CALLED to do, in this week ahead (and throughout our lives ahead) is to each day, take the single, one next step when Jesus says, "Follow me".  To Come and See the gifts that God has poured on us even in the darkness.  To say “Here I am Lord” and take the next tangible step in Jesus' footsteps... the next thing, big or tiny, that will love your neighbor as you wake up in the darkness.

It is likely that your next loving step to care for your neighbor in this week to come will not undo 400 years of National stuck-ness.  I mean, if you CAN change 400 years of stuckness then PLEASE, by all means do that!  But what is MORE likely this next week is that your small step following in Jesus' footsteps and loving your neighbor will give both you and your neighbor, a much needed glimpse of the light.  The light that will be seen in that act of love will be the light of Christ.  It is THAT light which has the power to shine farther than we could ever imagine and through the darkness this past week has wrought and through whatever darkness this next week might bring.  Because the light that is seen in that smallest of acts, following in Jesus' footsteps, and done in love for the other is a light that NO darkness… NO DARKNESS... NO DARKNESS!!! can ever overcome.  Amen.