2 Epiphany B January 14, 2018
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
1 Samuel 3: 1-20 + Psalm 139: 1-6, 13-18 + 1 Cor. 6: 12-20
John 1: 43-51
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
When I was on internship, like Vicar Laura is now, my internship supervisor was a former high school hockey player. He had a habit of using hockey metaphors and phrases and images for everything. His sermons were full of them. It drove me crazy and I told him so. Not everyone can relate to ice hockey imagery.
So I know that I’m taking a risk this morning, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take, because I think it works. If I did sermon titles, which I don’t, I would call this one “How being a disciple of Jesus is like being a member of a national championship football team.”
Actually, there’s something here worth thinking about because our reading from 2 Samuel and our reading from John’s Gospel today are both about what it really means to follow Jesus. And following Jesus isn’t the same thing as following a sports team of any kind, but there are some things we can take away from it, so that’s where we’re going to begin this morning. This may be the one and only time I use sports metaphors in a sermon and if you’d like, you can call Pastor Roger Quay and tell him I did so. (Small world: When Pastor Quay did his internship, at a large congregation in Nebraska, the very young, brand new associate pastor there was the newly ordained Pastor Paul Hoffman.)
Lesson #1: Know when the coach is calling your number.
In the reading from 2 Samuel today, Samuel is in the temple where he’s being trained in service to YHWH by the priest, Eli. And he hears his name being called. Samuel. Samuel. Thinking that his mentor, Eli is calling him he runs to him each time. And finally, Eli…who’s been called on himself, recognizes and realizes who it is that is calling Samuel and knows the correct response. “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.”
God calls to us through a number of ways. Through other people, in Scripture, music, and maybe even calling our name in the night.
Lesson #2: Give credit to whom credit is due
There’s a new name in Tuscaloosa and on the lips of every Alabama fan this week….Tua Tagovailoa. The true Freshman quarterback Nick Saban put into the game, where Alabama was being shut out, in the second half. He threw and ran and scrambled and faked and basically bowled everyone over with his performance and then said, correctly and humbly, that Jalen Hurts, the quarterback he had replaced, the player who’d started all year for the Tide, is who got them where they were. Without him, Tua noted, they wouldn’t have been in the position they were, playing for a national championship.
So let’s talk about who got Samuel where he was. Of course there was Eli, but there was someone else.
Samuel’s story begins with his mother, Hannah. Hannah was barren, which is just about the worst thing you can be in antiquity. Hannah prayed fervently, day and night, in the temple for a child and when she found out that she would have one, she sang a song filled with revolution. Hannah was also a prophet, just as much as Samuel was, because she knew that her son was to be handed over to the temple for the sake of the nation. So she gave birth, nursed, loved, and sang and changed and rocked and walked and then, when he was weaned, she gave him to God…literally.
None of us are the people we are today without the people whose care and love surrounded us. And none of us are who we are today without those who have come before us, paving the way.
Which brings me to…
Lesson #3: Know your teammates
Here’s something that is true throughout Scripture. Following Jesus is never an individual activity. It’s a team sport. From the disciples who followed Jesus to the women who were with them to the crowds that followed him, the Body of Christ is known most fully in community. Alone, we have no one to join with us in our hopes, no one to work with us in mission, no one to whom we are accountable. When we are despairing, there is no one to uplift us and remind us that we are beloved children of God. When we are joyous, there is no one to share in our joy. This is why it is so important to live out our faith in community. The mission statement of this congregation bears this out: Actively Sharing Christ’s Love in Community. Know your teammates.
Lesson #4: Everyone is your teammate
God’s love is wide. Wider than our capacity to imagine. Throughout Scripture, God uses the most unlikely people to accomplish God’s purposes. God doesn’t use the priests or the scholars or the rulers of nations, unless they are the ones working outside of God’s plan. God uses and chooses those cast aside…the oppressed, the foreigner, the refugee, the one that the others hate. The one from Nazareth. In the Gospel reading today, Philip tells Nathanael that they have found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth and Nathanael asks “Nazareth! Can anything good come out of that….that….”
Nazareth. Haiti. Mexico. The African countries. Can anything good come out of those places?
Those places….those places are where God has chosen to reveal Gods self. They are the places where Jesus was born and formed.
Beloved community, on this weekend when we remember the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. we do well to recall that all people are beloved and valued in God’s sight. And when we are faced with a choice between silence or speaking out in the face of vile, racist, speech or behavior….our response must be Come and See. Come and see what Jesus has to say. Come and see how Jesus says to live. Come and see Jesus.
Lesson #5: Don’t be afraid to take a chance
When Tua came into the game, the whole game plan changed. Suddenly Alabama was throwing the ball. To freshmen. They needed a new game plan to break out of a pattern that simply wasn’t working for them.
The same is true of us. We get very attached to “the way we’ve always done it” when what we need, what will share that love of Christ, feels risky and scary and like “something we’ve never done before.”
I’m going to raise up two examples: The first is the very place we are gathered. We took a page from a new playbook as we determined that our worship life together would be richer with a flexible worship space. We will certainly run into challenges living into this. We may set up in ways that don’t work. But we are already discovering, as you have told me, how our worship can be deepened by trying this new thing.
And of course, the second example is what’s taking place right outside. There is a crisis in our city. Beloved children of God do not have access to enough affordable, permanent, supportive housing. There are many plays we could have run at this. We could support agencies who do this work. We could pray. We could help provide vouchers. And all of those are good responses. But you….you chose the hail Mary pass to the end zone to win the game. You chose to build homes.
Lesson #6: The other team is not your enemy
It is vitally important to remember that Scripture tells us that all people are created in the image of God. So, fear of the other….our Muslim neighbor or the Jewish co-worker or the Sikh we meet at the store….they are, in sports metaphor world, a different “team” but they aren’t really. All people are created and loved equally by God. All people. Period.
Lesson #7: The glory belongs to God
Come to think of it, I have talked about football in a sermon before because I’m certain I’ve said this: God doesn’t care about football games. So, when players give the glory to God, it doesn’t mean God wanted Alabama to win the national championship as a reward for not electing a pedophile to the Senate. It means, in all things, the glory belongs to God. Soli Deo Gloria. To God alone be the glory.
This is a good place to land at the end of the day or the end of a game. To God Alone be the glory. Soli Deo Gloria.
Only this is not the end of the game, or the day. The work is still ahead of us. And we are gathered….as the Body of Christ….to hear the word, to gather at the table and to be sent out into the world, bearing the love of Christ for all people. Thanks be to God. Amen.