NLPent18 2017
October 15, 2017
1 Samuel 3:1-21
John 20:21-23
Grace
to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
We have come a long way from the manna in
the wilderness. So we begin today’s
sacred story with a brief video introduction to bring us all up to speed. [1Samuel 0:00 to 3:37]
Some of the videos we watch in worship have
handouts that go along with them. You
may want to take them home to review the events of the Sacred Story as they
unfold. The poster-sized handouts are on
a small table in the narthex. [The Bible Project Print 1 Sam Poster]
A couple of weeks ago, we heard the Sacred
Story of Moses’ call. Today we hear
Eli’s. Between times, the whole people
have heard God’s call on them to live in God’s way. In the wilderness God created a covenant with
the people, that included the ten commandments and more, about how the people
would have Life. This is God’s intention
– to give the people Life! As God calls
the whole people of Israel to live in his ways, he calls us too. And so today, we are going to think about
what it means to be called people of God.
What does it mean to be people who have
received God’s way of life, and to follow God’s call to live it?
God’s way of life is often referred to as
the Torah or the Law. And in these Old Testament
stories that we are reading, the Law is much more than just a list of rules,
but I hope you already know that. The
Law is the code for a life of freedom for all – a life regulated by God’s
perfect justice, rather than human flailing for fairness. We know that God’s perfect justice is both
difficult to follow, and an enormous gift as we are able to live it. Because we are Lutherans, it is always
present for us that we are unable to live the law as God intends[i]. In fact, we know that we are bound to break
God’s law. We are bound by sin to speak
poorly of our neighbor, or to stretch the truth, or to constantly want more
stuff, or to neglect the needs of others.
And we believe that the law is a gift to us, not just because if we
follow it we know we are living with a fullness of life – though that is most
certainly true (as Luther would say).
That is the first use of the law[ii],
to give us good order as a society and to know when our behavior is out of
bounds. The second use of the law is
equally important to our spiritual health.
The second use is that when we are confronted with the law, we realize
that we cannot keep it in its entirety.
In fact, there are times that we have utterly failed to live in the
justice God intends. To live rightly in
the world for the sake of our neighbors as well as ourselves.
The law is powerful. It is expected of us, just like it was
expected of Eli’s sons who failed so miserably.
And of Eli himself, who was unable to keep his sons in community, to
keep them from stealing from the offering plate for their own gain. This powerful law condemns us. And we hate that. We don’t come to church to hear condemnation,
we come to hear hope and comfort. Hey,
me too. But the Lutheran process for
hearing hope and comfort always starts with being confronted by the law. That is why we confess our sins at the
beginning of worship. We take that
opportunity to remember that the law has demanded of us so much more than we
are capable of doing. That God’s justice
is far more perfect than is possible for us. And we confess to God that we have
not lived within it.
Then, in this confession, we are open to
begin to hear that God has already done everything necessary for us. Even though it is true that we have not lived
as God asks. God has come to earth to
vanquish sin and death – God’s love is the point of God’s law.
This is the pattern we have begun to see in
the Sacred Story, and will continue to see repeated over and over again.
God invites the people to a full life. And instead, we choose to break God’s way of
life and instead have power over one another.
God welcomes the people back, amazingly.
No matter how many times the ultimate being of the universe gets snubbed
by humanity… God offers another call to another broken human being. Urging, cajoling, the created goodness within
us to breathe again. Inviting the
justice that is within us, the Imago Dei that God breathed into us at creation,
to live again.
Each time we break God’s law, we break our
relationship with God. And we break
ourselves as we break this connection.
We are created to be creatures.
Beings connected to their creator – not autonomous divine beings. That is for God alone, as we say in the
Shema.
What is at stake here? Your relationship with God, of course. But also God’s relationship with the world.
All that I have been talking about is
described in a pithy fashion on the handout in your bulletin. You will see that one side has a page from
The Lutheran Handbook II, “The top three uses of the Law” and “How to tell if
your will is in bondage to sin and what to do about it.” That is our starting point. On the other side of the page you will see two
pages from the Lutheran Handbook I: “How to tell the difference between Law and
Gospel” and on the other side is “How to Reform the Church when it strays from
the gospel.”
What does it mean to be people who have
received God’s way of life, and to follow God’s call to live it? It means that God is calling us to be right
relationship with him. To connect with
the divine in our proper place, as non-divine beings. And to hear the gospel àGod,
your creator loves you! So much, he came and died as a human and overcame death
for you.
This past week, someone asked me an
excellent question. It is part of my
calling to invite good questions. I was
thrilled. They asked why we continue to
repeat the same bible stories over and over again in church. There is so much to the bible, why do we pick
just a few stories to read repeatedly?
And I LOVE this question. It is
Such a Good Question.
My answer was this. We choose a selection of stories because as
Christians we understand that God revealed Godself through these stories. And some stories are easier to see the grace
of God than others. We do not always
read only the easy ones, by any means, but we do read stories that help us
teach central tenants of the faith. That
help us to see what God was up to in Jesus and how that impacts our daily
life. When we use the Narrative Lectionary we are adding a few
stories, but mostly just telling them in a more consecutive order to help you
get the gist of how they fit together.
The good news about having a select few in the lectionary is that you
have 313 days of the year to read all the rest of it!
The trouble with my answer was that I
forgot a piece of it… We also read the stories that reveal who WE are. We read about the repeated patterns of the
people in scripture because they are us.
We are them. Over and over again
throughout the Hebrew Bible (OT) and throughout the gospels, and even beyond
Jesus resurrection in the early church, all the way to the revealing of the end
times in Revelation – the time before which we still live. In all the ages of scripture we see who we
are. We are creatures made in connection
to a divine creator who loves us and does everything to bring us back into
alignment with him. To bring us into
relationship – and not some sentimental relationship like touched by an angel,
and it’s not like a human to human relationship – this relationship is about us
being in the right place in the created order and in orientation to our limited
selves, and in orientation to our amazing capacities, both of which deeply
impact the rest of creation which God has made.
For when we are in right relationship with our God and our neighbor and
all of creation, the world has LIFE. And
the sacred story tells us that God is inviting us to have something to do with God’s
making that happen. It’s awesome.
What does it mean to be people who have
received God’s way of life, and to follow God’s call to live it? It means that God is calling us to be in
right relationship with him. To connect
with the divine in our proper place, as non-divine beings. When we live in that
right-relationship, when the law works on us, and the gospel is a gift, we have
freedom to live/for Life!
For only when we are awake and aware of
God’s presence around us and the awesomeness of all the world, and our place in
it, will we be able to use the significant powers that we have to impact it for
God’s purposes. God’s will. God’s justice.
It is 500 years after Luther nailed those
95 theses on the Wittenberg church door, seeking the reformation of the
church. The church, and the world, still
need reforming today.
God is calling you. Calling you to know these stories so deeply
that you remember your orientation. God
is calling you to know your neighbor well enough to know what he or she needs,
whether your neighbor is your child, or a Muslim from half-way across the
world. God is calling you, like Samuel,
to listen to God’s voice calling in the darkness of night when no one around
has bothered listening for a long time.
God is calling you. How will you respond?
Amen.
