A Rare Thump 1
Samuel 3:1-10; 2 Cor 4:5-12; John 1:43-51

Isn't it popular today to put down the world of the Bible as utterly foreign to ours, a pre-scientific world of miraculous events and beings, which simply does not recognize or answer the same questions as we ask at the dawn of the 21st century?

Friedrich Schliermacher, a liberal German theologian spoke in 1799 of the 'cultured despisers of religion,' such as those who appear on TV panels and declare that Christianity and religion has been replaced by philosophy or some other better ideas. But then a stray sentence frays their pompous assumptions. "And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread," preceded in the narrative by the very last verse of the Book of Judges (21:25): "In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes."

Is the Bible so out of touch? No one hears God much any more, those who claim they do are scoffed at or treated as dangerous power-mongers. As a consequence, without an audible God, people are bereft of any foundation for ethical living, so each person does appear to do what is right - or wrong - in his/her eyes. Does anyone still hear God anymore?

Three millennia ago, in the lonely darkness of the temple of the Lord at Shiloh where the ark of the covenant was guarded, a young boy Samuel was in apprenticeship to the high priest Eli. Samuel was too young to know anything about the word of the Lord and he had not been taught anything either. No different than today in that respect.

But there was a voice, a gnawing whisper, calling his name. His master, he assumed, but it was not. Three times the voice, but after the third time Eli knew who had to be calling and told Samuel what to do and say the next time. That was the beginning for Samuel who became one of the great prophets of Israel, a person who spoke on behalf of God. Not too many of that type around any more either. Certainly not God's prophet.

Our assumption is that God speaks only to ministers, or priests, or to professional religious types of people. The word of the Lord is too rarefied for the average ordinary lay person to comprehend or even to be able to be tune in to the proper radio-wave frequency. If such is the case - and many do believe it is - we are all in trouble.

An ordinary person like the young, unknowing and uneducated Samuel is the one who is ordained in order to carry out a God-given ministry. Philip and Nathanael are not identified by what they have done. They have no qualifications that we are aware of, and they definitely were not priests. I sincerely doubt they would have passed through the discernment process of the United Church of Canada. We would have rejected them as unworthy to be ministers - no education, probably no people skills, insensitive to women and minorities we can assume, and certainly politically incorrect. What is even more maddening is that the wise and aged Eli has worked hard to hear God's voice, but he has been passed over by a young kid who barely knows that there is a God and shows a talent at absolutely nothing. And then the old man Eli has to use his wisdom to get Samuel started. Samuel, who will speak for God, has to be told that God is speaking to him.

Samuel does not begin to be a prophet, God does not begin speaking intelligibly to him, until he begins listening as a servant. "Speak, for your servant is listening." I look around and I am awed at how many people in this congregation have lived their lives as servants for the church in ministry to others in need. Paul's image of the Body of Christ being like the physical body has revealed itself in living color. There have been hands, eyes, arms, legs, minds, torsos, fingers and voices which without frenzied fluttering have melded together into a body that does not work against itself. Above all, you must have had good ears.

Paul encourages the Samuels and the Nathanaels, "Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart." An eternal problem with ministry, usually that of the clergy, is that we believe we have this ministry, that it is by our power that we are able to accomplish God's work.

But this ministry we have by the grace of God, nothing we have earned or developed. Everything does not depend upon ourselves, which is good news since most of us recognize our limitations all too well. And so, when things do not go well, as they do in most churches from time to time, if not most of the time, 'we do not lose heart' for it is by God's sustaining grace that we can continue. You and I are ordained for specific tasks, but also as a state of being. You are a person called by God to be his child in this trouble world. So you organize and run meetings, visit the sick and shut-in, lead worship and educate our children in the faith, manage the finances, sell and buy and repair the properties, promote and fulfill the missions. Through every major and minor task Paul's admonition is still all too valid for our souls today, "For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake."

I have carried out with me a short poem by an older minister we knew in Massachusetts - Arnold Kenseth - who served the South Congregational Church of Amherst, Massachusetts, for 39 years, almost unheard of in this day and age. I'm not much of a fan of poetry, but what I like I cling to fervently. The poem is simply entitled "Ordination" and while it is centered on the clergy it speaks to us all.

I was anointed.
A fire. Yes, I tell you,
An a dazzle.
His rare thump numbed me,
awed Me down to size and up to Him.
Prayed, pawed By the laying on of hands,
myself anew. And aloft;
I became lion to roar Him,
Eagle to lift Him,
donkey to bear Him.
I,In that sunburst, languaged with seraphim,
Promised myself to be (Ha!) His emissary.
I did not, friends, manage much. True,
I found Fluency but not roar.
I have been sparrow;
And though jackass as most,
I could not be least Even for Him.
He was scarlet and vast
And radiant and restful.
He sang such sound I heard
the earth unloose itself from sorrow.

I don't believe as I live in the bosom of the Church that the word of the Lord is rare anymore. A rare thump has thumped us more often than we have admitted, but we keep trying to go back to sleep. I suspect that somewhere in those Jewish midrashim, retellings and expansions of the Biblical stories, there is one that relates how Samuel was not just whispered to in the middle of the night. He was thumped.

We may have dreams of eloquently roaring God's word to convert the nations, of being the bearer of Christ throughout the market places, but when we sigh and realize that ordination, our calling in this place to be God's people, has led to a gasping whisper; instead of soaring with the eagles we run around with the turkeys; and despite our inability to humble ourselves truly for the humblest of all, remember that what we are able to do in God's name is not by our own clever skills and talents, but by the simple and all-powerful grace of God.

God is no respecter of place. The worst place on earth can be holy ground, whether it be Pile of Bones, Hell's Kitchen in New York City, today's choice, Grosny in Chechnya or Nazareth. What makes a place holy is the power of the Spirit God has placed into a person there. God is no respecter of persons, either. God is not interested in how busy you are at some career or at raising your family. God could choose you and in many cases already has. But have you been listening?

Your calling into God's ministry is not essentially through intellectual attainment or prowess, as much as we would like to pretend in churches such as ours. Instead, we are summoned to listen as servants for our orders; and then simply to "come and see!" Then there will something good to come out of Regina.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan
January 16, 2000