January 18, 2009 + God has called. Are you listening? + Frank Alton

MP3 File

God is Calling. Are you Listening?
I Samuel 3:1-10

Sometimes at Immanuel we’re accused of trying to connect too many things going on in the world at once and not doing well enough at any of them. Sometimes we’re guilty as charged, though I prefer that problem to the one others have of not connecting worship to world events. This morning it is difficult to select among the many themes that are forcing them upon us.
In two days the 44th President of the United States will place his left hand on the Bible and raise his right hand to take the oath of office. Tomorrow we celebrate the 89th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Today we ordain and install deacons and elders to serve this community at an unprecedented time of change in the world. In the coming days, some of us will serve our community as part of the call from Barack Obama to restore the purpose of the Martin Luther King holiday. And all of this occurs as the world undergoes a tectonic shift at many levels. Our great grandchildren will compare this moment to the shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance 500 years ago.
What is God’s “call” at such a time? What is the message that those who will help move the world forward have to hear and respond to? And, more importantly, what are the qualities evident in those who answer the call effectively? The question isn’t only for leaders. It is for everyone who trusts in a God who says, “Behold, I am doing a new thing.” There are always those who resist the new thing and those who embrace it. But more significant than knowing what the new thing is are the qualities that allow people to keep acting on what they do know.
The story of Samuel’s is a dramatic case of call in a time of great change. The world into which Samuel had been born was facing unprecedented changes. Just as 500 years ago, at a political level, the Renaissance represented a shift from feudalism to democracy, so Israel was moving from a decentralized government consisting of local tribes loosely connected by a judge to a centralized monarchy – two very different ways of ordering human society. Samuel would ordain the first two kings of Israel. His story may hold some clues about what qualities accompany a genuine sense of call at a big moment in history.
I want to focus on three qualities that characterized Samuel in his day and ML King in his. We have reason to hope they will be evident in Barack Obama’s presidency. The three qualities are imagination, differentiation and responsibility. They are qualities that any of us can nurture in ourselves and in others
First, we see a sense of imagination combined with a spirit of adventure. The first part of Samuel’s story reminds me of that commercial for one of the sleep aids that shows the husband tossing and turning, and finally flicking on the light and saying, "Honey? Are you awake?" And his wife replies, "I am now!" Young Samuel kept tossing and turning all night, until he woke up in a cold sweat amidst this ancient nocturnal bar mitzvah and ran to Eli thinking Eli had called. "Are you awake?" And all Eli can say is, "I am now! Go back to sleep, kid, you're hearing things!" –pretty much what the world always says to dreamers. "Go back to sleep Moses, you're dreaming. Go back to sleep Gandhi, you're dreaming. Go back to sleep, Martin Luther King, Jr., you're dreaming. Go back to sleep, Mother Teresa, you're hearing things!"
Isaac Merritt Singer is the man who invented the Singer sewing machine. One day his creditors gave him a two weeks to complete his invention or they would pull their financial support. That night he went to sleep with great anxiety. He dreamed of being out in a jungle surrounded by cannibals. The boiling pot was ready. His hands were tied. As they came toward him with the faces of his creditors they held up their spears ready to finish him off. For many of us, that is the moment to awaken from the dream screaming in terror. But in Singer’s case he stayed with the dream and saw holes in the points of the spears. He awakened with the answer of how to complete the Singer sewing machine!
In the 1880's, a seven year old boy cried himself to sleep every night terrified of the fact that if he died he might go to hell. His solicitous mother, out of patience that the fearful teachings of the age brought such apparitions to his mind, was trying in vain to comfort him. 50 years later that little boy named Harry Emerson Fosdick, now grown up, stood as the innovative preacher before the congregation of Riverside Church in New York City.
A new age requires imagination because there are no agreed-upon road maps. People who think that the existing maps will serve future generations become part of the problem rather than part of the solution. The creative leaders of change are usually dreamers – a label that usually means unrealistic. Dreamers are those who don’t take into account the harsh realities and agreed upon certainties so they’re considered at best irrelevant and at worst dangerous. King laid out a broad vision; but it didn’t fall to him to work out the difficult policy decisions required to implement it. What he did contribute was the example of allowing the spirit of adventure to triumph over the concern for safety and certainty. King’s spirit of adventure led to his death; but because of it, the dream didn’t die with him. It is that emotional choice that helped us get as far as we have, such that we are inaugurating this nation’s first African American President.
It is no accident that Martin Luther King’s best known speech is “I have a dream.” His dream inspired, but it did not convince. If it had, we would be farther along. Tomorrow we celebrate his 89th birthday. The other morning some of us joined Hayward at the YMCA MLK breakfast. The speaker, Robert Ross of the California Endowment, gave a challenging speech, including an imagined visit by Dr. King who appeared in the middle of the banquet hall. Mr. Ross described King’s joy when he heard that the first black President had been elected. But his joy was quickly dashed after he asked about progress on other fronts that he had sought to change. As the apparition of Dr. King heard the litany of unfulfilled promises about everything from poverty to the environment, he fell silent and then challenged the gathered body to complete the dream. Dr. Ross confessed that his generation – those of us between 45 and 65 – has dropped the ball. He called us to pick it up again & complete it by King’s centennial in 2020. While each of us has a unique call within that, King’s challenge must continue to inform everyone’s call.
The second quality evident in people who respond well to being called during big moments of change is differentiation. One definition of differentiation is the capacity to chart one’s own way by means of one’s own internal guidance system, rather than perpetually eyeing the “scope” to see where others are. It was only when Samuel realized that God could speak to him that he changed his assumption that Eli – another human being – had called him. When he listened to that voice, it forced him to stop depending on the accepted authority structure. The voice said that the house of Eli would not survive. Samuel had to decide if he was going to accept the consequences of that message.
Rabbi Ed Friedman has shown how differentiation is a basic element of the survival of life by connecting the differentiation of cells to the health of organisms. A healthy body is able to determine at any given time in its development which cells have the capacity to produce other kinds of organisms in order to be complete, & which ones turn off that capacity in order to cease producing competing organisms. He points out why cancer cells, which represent competing organisms such as tumors, are dangerous precisely because they do not differentiate.
Differentiation and togetherness must be balanced bodies to be healthy, whether those bodies are biological or political. The irony is that in political bodies, “Despite the fact that the preservation of self has proved vital to the preservation of life both biologically & politically, the force for individuality is suspect when it comes to human institutions. That is why it’s always important to be reminded on a day that celebrates Dr. King’s legacy that in his day he was branded a communist, a playboy, an opportunist, and any other label that would keep people from paying attention to him. King refused to heed the voice even of his colleagues when he believed that he had to broaden his agenda to include stopping the Vietnam War when they were saying he had to stay focused on racism.
Barack Obama faces a tremendous challenge as he has created a cabinet of very diverse voices. He has set up a situation in which he has to differentiate. He can’t heed every voice around him or he will never make a decision. He has to listen to that inner voice. Each of us needs to develop that same skill, and give President Obama the space to exercise it as well.
That brings us to the final quality evident in people who respond well to big changes; namely, responsibility. If we think Samuel tossed and turned before he heard God’s voice, imagine his sleeplessness afterwards. We are told that, “Samuel lay there until morning… he was afraid to tell the vision to Eli.” Damn right he was afraid! A twelve-year-old boy was challenging the established authority figure of his day. That ran the risk not only of infuriating Eli but also of drawing down the wrath of the population that found security in an established order, even if that order wasn’t working for them.
It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to see how this characterized the situation faced by Dr. King. King was a charismatic leader, an inspirational leader, and a committed leader. He was also a prophet, able to discern the voice of God in the midst of turmoil and suffering, and (here is the point) willing to deliver it to all who would listen, black and white alike.
From a Birmingham jail cell, he urged his fellow ministers to come and join him in the struggle for justice, but few of the white clergy would do so. They led worship every Sunday and prayed for God to give them direction, yet they were unaware that they had a prophet in their midst, so they missed the voice of God. How about us? Are we like Eli, basically good but blinded to injustice in certain areas of life? Are we like the pastors to whom Martin Luther King addressed his letter, wishing for peace but unwilling to struggle for justice, or even to allow others to struggle for justice with our blessing? Or are we like the Christians of that day who attended segregated churches and advocated segregated schools and neighborhoods, believing the lie that "separate" could ever be "equal?"
Do we see all the aspects of racism that continue to affect our society, and perhaps even our own perceptions? When we saw tens of thousands of mostly African-Americans on rooftops or in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, did it strike us as proof that our country is not really color-blind at all, and that injustice and poverty affect minorities in great disproportion to their numbers? Until we are willing to take responsibility for answering God’s call effectively. I invite you to ask yourselves if you are willing to face the fears that keep you from answering the summons. Let us ask the following questions as we sing John Bell’s powerful hymn, The Summons.