Our planned worship service of Lessons and Carols for Epiphany 2, January 14, 2024, was canceled due to winter storms. Our pastor/rector has offered for us this sermon which he would have preached at Holy Trinity Episcopal later in the morning, based on the day’s Lectionary readings, which can be found at: https://tinyurl.com/5n9ah446

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…  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… because the Word of the Lord was rare in those days…  and visions were not widespread…

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

And as the story unfolds…  even Samuel’s sons don’t follow in his ways…  but the people clamored for Samuel to give them a king…  and God told Samuel to accept their request…  but added…  you shall solemnly warn them…  and show them the ways that a king will rule over them…  you can read the all of the warnings in 1Samuel 8:11-18…

but they include things like taking their sons and using them for his chariots and cavalry…  making them plough his fields and gather his harvest and make his weapons of war…  and take the best of their fields…  vineyards…   and olive groves…  and give them to his officials…  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…

To whose voice then…  do we listen…  and how do we respond…  I grew up with the saying…  sticks and stones can break my bones… but words can never hurt me… I grew up with this urban myth that some parents instill in their kids to toughen them up… to keep them from running home any time someone on the playground throws even just a mean look their way… or utters an unkind word… but there were words that hurt me… anti-Semitic words… and homophobic words…

Hate speech is defined as…  speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against someone based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability… 

And then we have today’s passage from 1 Corinthians… Paul writes… All things are lawful for me… but not all things are beneficial… we might update it… I can say anything I want… but not everything I can say is beneficial… or loving… or uplifting… or compassionate… or reconciling…  and Paul exhorts us to have healthy relationships with ourselves…  and with others…  and to seek God through them…  and in today’s Gospel…  Jesus transcends even 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 ways of perception…

Martin Luther King, Jr…  whose life we honor tomorrow…  wrote in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail…  that in a real sense…  all life is inter-related…  that all of us 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…

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…  and there is a great need for truth telling…  because without it…  we cannot be in right relationship…  in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa…  there was comparable truth-telling about the sin of apartheid…  which 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 and tied this thread…  woven into a single garment if you will…  to the 2013 decision by the SCOTUS that the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional…  and to the rise of White Supremacy…  and the almost chilling implication 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 any evidence…  that these conclusions are incorrect…   is completely antithetical to our baptismal covenant…

In their book Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy…  authors Joanna Macy and 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…  names the disasters that Business as Usual has already brought about…  and those it is taking us toward…  this second story is an account…  backed by evidence…  of the collapse of ecological and social systems…  the disturbance of the 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 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 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 refers to those 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…  the way Jesus knew Nathanael…  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 community without truth and accountability…  and that’s where our hope lies…  and we can each begin that journey…  by saying…  Speak Lord…  for your servant is listening… and being still…  and listening not for what kings say…  but for what God says…