Year B
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

In today’s passage from 1 Samuel…  the boy Samuel mistakes God’s voice…  for Eli’s voice…  mistakes the One divine voice…  for one human voice…  God calls Samuel three times…  and finally…  Eli instructs him about how to respond to God’s voice… Speak Lord…  for your servant is listening…  in today’s Psalm…  we are called to discern God’s presence…  and God’s knowledge about us…  and God’s thoughts…  in today’s Epistle…  we are called to right awareness…  and right behavior…   and to union with God…  and in today’s Gospel…  Jesus begins to call his disciples…

In today’s passage from 1 Samuel…  God reveals to Samuel…  who reveals to Eli…  that God is about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle…  and it will not be Good News for Eli…  his sons have disgraced the priestly line… The Word of the Lord was rare in those days…  visions were not widespread…

Lawrence Wood has written…  after this there are no pillars of fire…  no columns of smoke…  no parting of seas or rivers…  most of what follows is a worldly history of successes…  defeats…  and palace intrigue…  in fact…  Samuel’s role in anointing human kings will reduce human dependence on God…  and a shiver may come upon us at realizing that we are on our own…

And as the story unfolds…  even Samuel’s sons didn’t follow in his ways…  and the people clamored for Samuel to give them a king…  God told Samuel to accept their request…  but added…  you shall solemnly warn them…  and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them…  you can read the all of the warnings in 1Samuel 8:11-18… but they end with…   And in that day you will cry out because of your king…  whom you have chosen for yourselves…  but the LORD will not answer you…

In today’s passage from 1 Corinthians…  Paul exhorts us to have a healthy relationship with our body…  and with other bodies…  and to seek God through them…  and in today’s Gospel…  Jesus transcends the limits of the body…  of the five senses…  when he says he saw Nathanael sitting under the fig tree before Philip came to get him…  however this statement is interpreted…  and scholars have proposed several options…  it reinforces Jesus’ mysterious…  and likely boundless way of perception…

On Wednesday, January 6…  Rear Admiral Margaret Kibben…  the chaplain to the U.S. House of Representatives…  made her way through the echoing halls of the U.S. Capitol…  she perceived a charge of anticipation in the air…  it was an auspicious day…  lawmakers were meeting in joint session to formally approve President-elect Joe Biden’s victory…   and because of the outgoing president’s refusal to concede…  an atypically contentious one…  but Kibben had her own reason for feeling an unaccustomed excitement…  it was her third day on the job…  and she was the first female chaplain ever…  to serve the House…

About an hour after being seated…  she observed a “flurry of activity” around House leadership as House members debated the election results…  but within seconds…   Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others on the dais were whisked away…  clearly…  something was wrong… Kibben prayed… God is our refuge and strength…  a very present help in trouble…   therefore we will not fear…  though the earth should change…  though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea…  

As the night waned on…  and after those who sheltered in place returned and completed their work…  Kibben said…  God is very much present…  and has come alongside each and every one of us as we labor in the vineyard…  our daily lives are not separate from God’s involvement in them…

Martin Luther King, Jr…  whose life we honor tomorrow…  wrote something similar in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail…  he wrote…  in a real sense…  all life is inter-related…  all men [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality…  tied…  in a single garment of destiny…  whatever affects one directly…  affects all indirectly…  I can never be what I ought to be…  until you are what you ought to be…  and you can never be what you ought to be…  until I am what I ought to be… this is the inter-related structure of reality… and on the same day that Rear Admiral Kibben prayed…  Kevin Seefried of Delaware carried a large Confederate flag throughout the Capitol building…  

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann…  says that the prophetic tasks of the church are to tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion…  to grieve in a society that practices denial…  and to express hope in a society that lives in despair…  

In Pope Benedict XVI’s  March 2011 book…  Jesus of Nazareth Part II…  he stated publicly what so many had known for decades…  he stated once and for all…  that there is no basis in scripture…   to support the argument…  that the Jewish people were responsible for the death of Jesus…  and in doing so…  he told the truth…   and undid and began to heal centuries-old blame and hatred… which had led to pogroms and other atrocities against Jewish people…

In the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa…  to which I referred last Sunday…  there was comparable truth-telling about the sin of apartheid…  which had led to unspeakable acts of violence against Africans who were not of European descent…

But in the United States…  there has never been a comparable…   public…  official acknowledgement about our corporate sin of slavery…  we have avoided the most painful conversations…  and contemporary political scientists have exposed the thread…  a single garment if you will…  that ties together the lie that the election was stolen…  to the cities where lawsuits were filed…  to the demographics of those cites…  which are predominantly African-American…  and to the 2013 decision by the SCOTUS that the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional…  and to the rise of White Supremacy…  and the chilling conclusion…  that the Civil War is far from over…  and the prophetic truth that the church must now speak…  is that white supremacists have sought to disenfranchise the black vote…  so they can hold onto their illusion about how things are…  or how they think they ought to be…   and we saw evidence of that fact on January 6…  and the sentiments which undergird these actions…  are wholly antithetical to our baptismal covenant…

In their book Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy…  Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy and co-author Chris Johnstone talk about the Three Stories of Our Time…  in the first of these stories…  Business as Usual…  the defining assumption is that there is little need to change the way we live…  economic growth is regarded as essential for prosperity…  and the central plot is about getting ahead…  ] the second story…  The Great Unraveling…  draws attention to the disasters that Business as Usual  is taking us toward…  as well as those it has already brought about…  this second story is an account…  backed by evidence…  of the collapse of ecological and social systems…  the disturbance of climate…  the depletion of resources…  and the mass extinction of species…  the third story…  The Great Turning…  is held and embodied by those who know that the first story is leading us to catastrophe…  but who refuse to let the second story have the last word…  and it involves the emergence of new and creative human responses…  it is about the epochal transition from an industrial society committed to economic growth…  to a life-sustaining society committed to the healing and recovery of our world… 

At the end of today’s Gospel… Jesus tells Nathanael…  in whom there was no deceit… no guile…  no pretense…  that he would see heaven opened…  perhaps torn open…   as it was at Jesus’ baptism…  and he would see God’s angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man…  this of course…  is reminiscent of Jacobs Ladder in Genesis 28:12…  through which God reaches out to us…  and we reach out to God…  it is how God bestows honor and sacred worth on humanity…  it speaks to an interpenetration between heaven and earth…  it speaks of thin places between God and humanity…  and so when we pray the Collect for Purity…  Almighty God…  to you all hearts are open…  all desires known…  and from you no secrets are hid…  do we really believe these words…  do we believe that Jesus can see into our hearts and know us…  the way God knew Samuel…  and Jesus knew Nathanael…  or do we just say it…  and what does that mean about who we say that Jesus is…  and how does that inform what we do… and who we believe…

We can have healing and unity…  it is all that God wants for us…  and is paramount in God’s plan…  but we cannot have it without truth and accountability…  we cannot have community without accountability…  and therein lies the hope for a society which lives in despair…  and we can each begin that journey…  by saying…  Speak Lord…  for your servant is listening… and being still…  and listening for what God says…  and not for what kings say…