“The word of the Holy One was rare in those days.”

 I love that phrase.  Rare words.

 It reminds me of my paternal grandparents, the ones who lived deep in the piney woods of East Texas (near what is called the Big Thicket.)

East Texans tend to be reserved, and those paternal grandparents were not exceptions. They rarely spoke. 

I can remember visiting with them for two weeks, once, and in that whole time, my grandfather said only two sentences to me: “I’m so glad to see you,” And “Do you have to leave so soon?”

From them, I learned nonverbal communication, how to cherish the quiet, and the joy of sitting side-by-side in a porch swing, where a gentle pat on my head, or a squeeze of the knee, or a wink and a smile could express volumes.  I also learned that when they did speak, there was something important to hear.

 Silence attunes us to words.

The quiet of the piney woods always seems like a haven to me because we live in a world where we are bombarded by words and images and sounds. I have two cell phones, both with call waiting and call forwarding, so I can have more than one conversation at a time, the church phone has several lines, a ‘land line’ at home, two email accounts, instant messaging, televisions, radios, cd, video and DVD players. Not to mention the written words . . . one would think words are very important to us . . .

            But If it is silence that attunes us to words . . . what do all these words do to our ability to really listen. . ?

            “The word of the Holy One was rare in those days.”  However, it was not necessarily words that were in short supply.

            But the word of the Holy One . . . that was a different matter.

            I have a hard time believing that God was not communicating, not giving guidance, not leading God’s people. I don’t think the word of God was rare in those days because God was not speaking. I think the problem may have been that the people were not listening. Perhaps they, too, were surrounded by words. Not by technology, of course, but Samuel was not born in peaceful times. Our text gives hint of the lack of leadership.  In times of fear and tension and lack of leadership, human beings tend to get noisy. The biblical language is “the people murmured.” We bicker, criticize, complain, share our conflict, and turmoil with one another. We may think it lets off steam, but it doesn’t. It is anxiety born, and anxiety is contagious. It spreads. The longer conflict goes on, the worse it gets. Anxiety is toxic and robs a system of joy. So, in those times of turmoil, perhaps the people couldn’t hear God because they couldn’t turn out the cacophony. Or perhaps they didn’t have their hearts and ears turned to God in prayer.

            I know what that’s like. Ed Friedman once said that you can tell what we really worship, what our real gods are by where we go for guidance, where we turn in times of need. Presbyterians, I have noted, go to the bookstore.

            Ed encouraged people of faith to take our scripture into a quiet place and look for guidance in silence. He encouraged us to attune our ears to the Holy One.

            There needs to be a warning along with that statement. A caution about prayer. Be careful! Don’t pray if you are not ready for movement in your life. Don’t pray with the idea that you can keep on doing what you are doing. Prayer is much like stepping into a sailboat.  Don’t unfurl those sails unless you are willing to go where the wind of the spirit wants to take you. Don’t open the ears of your heart if you can’t handle change . . . 

            Don’t pray unless you are willing to be part of the answer to that prayer . . .

Pay attention to these stories . . . for the Spirit is no domestic caged bird . . . but wild and free and one never knows where she will lead . . .

            At night, within the temple of God, without electricity to extend the busy-ness of days, silence would have fallen like a soft blanket along with the darkness.

            For some, the night might have been just as restless because in times of turmoil the brain has a hard time shutting off . . . the words from bitter conversations circle over and over in our heads like a tape on a loop or – and I age myself—like a phonograph record with a scratch, repeating those words . . .repeating those words . . . repeating those words. .   Stressful: – full of stress – full of tension. Full. No space for dreams, for silence, for visions, for anything else, anything new . . .

            Samuel was a boy. He would have been sleeping as children do. Untroubled. Emptied.

In that silence, God called Samuel. God may have simply been calling . . . and Samuel was the only one who could hear . . .who was able to listen . . . . . but God called Samuel.  So in that moment God spoke the name of a Shiloh temple altar boy. .  a no one! All pretty unlikely, but there it is. The name and the summons are the Word at the moment. Imagine your own name uttered as the Word of God. Therein likes your calling.

            Bill Wylie-Kellerman once wrote:

            “There is something wonderfully palpable about words in the Hebraic view. God speaks a new thing, at which “the two ears of everyone that hears it will tingle.” (I Samuel 3:11)  The Word itself is something almost physical. In ancient Semitic culture, people would actually duck to avoid the path of a curse being uttered.  Further on in this text (3:19), to indicate the authenticity of Samuel’s vocation, it is said that never were God’s words allowed to fall to the ground! (They went, presumably, straight to their mark.) Little danger of that in our culture. Words are so eviscerated of substance and meaning they float away into thin air like so much pollution.

            The Word is heard by Samuel and acknowledged by his mentor Eli. It effects a transition of authority from one to the other, setting in motion a whole new period in Israel’s life.”

God was doing a new thing.

Our gospel lesson is also about a transition: from John the Baptist (a mentor of sorts himself) to Jesus. God keeps doing new things.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth? This may have been similar to rivalries between certain areas. I haven’t been in Cincinnati long enough to know those rivalries. In Houston, we might ask it about Dallas. Perhaps the question here would be: Can anything good come out of Cleveland?

But it also reflects how close-minded we are . . . how prejudiced we can be. How willing and often anxious we are to limit God’s ability to call whom God will call.

God, however, calls whom God calls. And God keeps on doing new things.

On this weekend when we celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday, we remember how powerful it is when God calls someone others are not expecting. We remember what it is like when dreamers are awakened as they hear God calling. . . .

Because more than just the dreamer comes awake. Things like truth, and justice, and awareness, and integrity begin to stir as well  . . . .

In our gospel, John’s disciples take the clue and make the move. But talk about your palpable, bodily words: here the very Word incarnate!

Likewise, in 1 Corinthians, a momentous shift is implied in the phrase, “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

That is a plural you, by the way. One of the best things about attending seminary at Columbia, which is near Atlanta, was that both our Greek and Hebrew professors were also from the south and they shared a common joy in the southern ‘ya’ll’ – which comes in very handy when distinguishing between a singular and a plural ‘you.’ So, let me translate this passage from the Greek: “Ya’ll’s body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

The congregation. The family. The group’s body. Not our individual bodies. But the gathering of believers . . . who we are together is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

The community has supplanted the temple-system in a whole new era. The body is the temple. The people are the temple. And ethics, as Paul suggests, are become literally incarnational.

Who we are together, and how we live together, and what we do together. . . this is where the spirit resides. In our relationships with one another. In how we function as a people. A system. Hopefully, as a healthy system.

Mt. Auburn has been through some very rough times. I don’t want to diminish in any way the pain and anguish, and what must have seemed like the very fires of hell at times. . . but Mt. Auburn survived. Ya’ll are still here. Together. You are one heck of a strong body. You are more than just survivors. You are thrivers. What would have done many churches in. . did not destroy you. Look around you. You are one tough group! The Spirit resides in this temple . . .

Those fires helped refine you. You redefined yourself. You have been baptized by fire. You are tempered now, made stronger, made more sure to serve.

You have already opened your sails to the spirit knowing what that means and you are ready . . . more ready than any church I’ve ever known . . . to hear God’s call, to heed God’s call . . . to go where God will send you next . . . knowing you can take the heat. You can do the work. Together.

Today at the installation, we bind ourselves together. We know one another a little better than we did when I said ‘yes’ to the Pastor Nominating Committee, and when you said ‘yes’ at the congregational vote.  We both know this means change for this system. Every new person that enters a system brings change. Brings reformation, in a very real sense. Things will not be as they were before.

Except for this: we will continue to look to God for guidance, strength, sustenance and nurture. We will continue to listen for God to speak to us.

Can anything good come out of Mt. Auburn?

Well, I’d say yesterday is a little taste of what kind of good can come out of Mt. Auburn. All over the country people are taking note and celebrating the passing of an overture that simply seeks to remove some very mean and hurtful language about GLBT people. 

We have stories to tell. And our stories have power. God calls us to tell those stories even in places where they may not yet be heard.  We have dreams, don’t we? Dreams of the way the church could be. We have hope.

Here is what I have learned from this story about Samuel:  When people tell me they wish they could find a church that x, y, z . . . I say: pay attention to your longing for the church. Listen to your dreams for the church.  God may be calling you to reform the church into one that matches your dream. If you are dreaming of a church that works for justice, confronts prejudice, celebrates diversity, reaches out to others, stands up for those who have been marginalized, takes seriously what it means to be a steward of all the earth, a church that is willing to challenge one another to confront our addictions to the culture, and speak truth to power, and refuses to be comfortable with the status quo . . . then that just may be God dreaming in you, calling you, for God’s sake.

We are dreaming God’s dreams here.

It is my belief that God called me to be among you because we share those dreams of God, and God is longing for us to incarnate those dreams even more fully here.

There is more good news: God will provide all that we need to achieve those dreams.

God has already provided for us abundantly. I challenge you to begin by counting the ways in which God has blessed this congregation. Look at this sanctuary space, the educational wing, look around you at the rich resources in this room: the talents, the brilliance!  The joy!! The energy. We don’t need to worry about having enough time or money or talent or abilities. God has already given us everything we need – all the resources necessary to live into God’s dream here and now. Anything we may lack, God will provide.

Can anything good come out of Mt. Auburn?

Yes, God says to us. Yes, O, Yes.

The Word ought seldom be rare if so palpably present.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Thanks be to God.