DUKE UNIVERSITY CHAPEL

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1 DUKE UNIVERSITY CHAPEL William H. Willimon, Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry I "The Dangers of Going to Church." January 19, 1997 Second Sunday after the Epiphany 1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-2Q). In one of her books Annie Dillard notes the curious way in which we come to church on Sundays. Here we are, with padded pews and carpeted sanctuaries. Everything orderly, neat, tied down, and respectable. Yet, says Dillard, if you know much about the Bible and what it says about what it's like to meet God, then the ushers ought to be handing out crash helmets rather than hymnals! Now if you look at the weekly bulletin of one of our full program, successful churches, I think you might conclude that church is not risky at all. Church looks like a great place to hang out. Ceramics classes, yoga classes, trips to Florida in winter, New England in the spring. Church is a wholesome place to kill time. Recently, in an airport waiting room, a number of us watched in horror as an enterprising four year old demolished a wing of a large metropolitan airport, turning over trashcans, stepping on an ice cream cone, tracking it all over the seats. His helpless, terrified parents sat watching him in befuddlement. As our flight was finally called and we were saved from annihilation just in the nic-k of time, I heard him say to her, "Dear, perhaps we ought to consider taking Thomas to Sunday School; maybe that would help." _ Yes, maybe we could tame the little pagan in our Sunday School! After all, isn't that what church is good for? Taming? Subduing? Civilizing? Yet not in today's story from First Samuel. As a boy, the adopted son of a priest, young Samuel spent a great deal of time ha~ging around church. He was what Luther might have called a "sacristy rat," someone who hangs around the church. Samuel helped old Eli. The old priest's eyes were growing dim and he used the boy to fetch things for him. And the temple is a wholesome place for a young boy. The writer comments, "the word of the Lord was rare in those days." Safe from any disruptive, challenging words of God, people could show up at the temple now and then, go through a few prescribed rituals, put a fiver in the plate, and feel better about themselves. That was all. And old Eli tottered about the temple, going through the motions, keeping the altar fires lit dvring a time when "the word of God was rare." And into this situation of settled, silent religion, one night little Samuel hears his nam.ed called. He doesn't understand the voice 1

at first. He assumes it is the voice of old Eli, calling him to fetch the bed pan. But no, the voice is not that of Eli. Three times the voice calls, "Samuel! Samuel!

2 at first. He assumes it is the voice of old Eli, calling him to fetch the bed pan. But no, the voice is not that of Eli. Three times the voice calls, "Samuel! Samuel!" and three times the boy goes to old Eli asking, "You called?" After all, the word of God was rare. Eli told the boy, if you hear the voice again, say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant hears." After that, the story does not say that Samuel went back to a peaceful sleep. Little wonder, now with these voices! Next morning, Eli wants to know what Samuel heard in the voice of God. Reluctantly at first, but then with Eli's urging, the boy tells what he heard. There will be bad times for Eli's house. Eli will fall; young Samuel will rise. It reminds you of other Bible stories, doesn't it? Stories about people whose lives are moving along in accustomed, conventional, predictable paths, only to be disrupted by an intrusive word, only to hear their named called, and to have their world rocked. Today's gospel from John tells about how a couple of ordinary people had their lives disrupted, changed forever by hearing their names called by someone named Jesus. Today's story from 1 Samuel is a promise and a warning. The promise is that though in times like ours the "word of God is rare," God is not forever silent. One night, when we are minding our own business, or one Sunday when we're in church just going through the motions, there is a voice, we hear our named called, and like little Samuel, our world changes. If you don't want to risk such disruption, that you hadl5etter avoid hanging around the temple. Some of you have heard my theory of church design: I think the reason why we pad our pews, and bolt the furniture down to the floor, print up the service in a bulletin, carefully, deliberately plod through the prescribed acts of worship out of an innelfear. We tie everything down, we make church so predictable, so settled and fixed because, in our collective memories, we remember stories like this one. We know Bible stories of ordinary people who have heard their named called. We know that the temple,- or this church can be a risky, dangerous plac~, what with the living God roaming about. This year I begin my thirteenth year as chaplain on a university campus. In all those years I've only had two or three calls from worried parents saying, "Help, my son is sexually promiscuous," or "My daughter is addicted to alcohol," though many are. Yet I have received at least-a dozen calls from parents, many of them quite angry, which said, "Help, I sent my child to Duke to go to law school (or grad, or med school, you fill in the blanks) and she became a religious fanatic." "Religious fanatic" meaning someone who is going ~ith the Catholics to Haiti after graduation. 2

All they wanted was a little church! Just a little Jesus to help them have a more positive self-image! Martin Luther King loved to tell his story. He didn't want to be a national civil rights leader.

3 All they wanted was a little church! Just a little Jesus to help them have a more positive self-image! Martin Luther King loved to tell his story. He didn't want to be a national civil rights leader. He had gone into the ministry mostly because his father was a pastor and he always did what Daddy King wanted him to do. Martin wanted a quite life as a professor, possibly President of Morehous College someday. Through an odd turn of events, as a young pastor he was thrust into the forefront of the Montgomery bus boycott. He came home late one night, tired, frightened. The phone rang. An angry voice on the other end said, "We're gonna get you Nigger!" Martin Luther King stood in his kitchen, frozen in fear. He wanted to call Daddy King for reassurance and advice. But Daddy King wasn't there. Then he said it was like a voice. "Martin, you do what's right. You stand up for justice. You be my drum major for righteousness. I'll be with you." He had heard his name called. He knew what God wanted for him. His life was forever changed and through his life, used so well by God, was the world changed. That happened in church. Could happen to you. Be careful. Last week I entered a church and, moving through the hallway into the sanctuary, I noticed a sign on the door leading into the sanctuary. The sign said, "SILENCE PLEASE. PEOPLE AT PRAYER." Thinking about today's story of Samuel, I thought: that sign ought to read, "WARNING: GOD AT WORK." Notes: Hannah sings of the power of God to change things in her life and to give her a child (1 Sam. 2). Her song becomes a preview of I and II Samuel. The lectionary text, vv separates into four parts: vv. 1-3 provide an introduction, vv. 4-9 are an introduction to the call of- Samuel, vv are the account of God's revelation, and vv is the conclusion. The story begins (vv. 1-3) and ends (vv ) with Eli and Samuel. The centrar focus for the lesson is God's gracious, disruptive, life-giving intrusion into human affairs. - This theme is congruent with John 1:43-51, and it is the reason for the lectionary divergence from Mark on this Sunday. Through this story we find that although God has been shoved aside by human events ("the word of the Lord was rare in those days"), God is not-completely impotent, because of Eli (Eli's eyesight is dim but "the lamp of God had not yet gone out."). This image prepares us for the rise of Samuel and the fall of Eli. God intrudes into the story, addr~ssing young Samuel three times (vv. 4-9) before the boy understands and responds. And 3

when God intrudes, the young Samuel rises while the older Eli declines. The intrusions of God disrupt, provoke change, yet by these disruptions, the story of God's dealings with humanity continues.

4 when God intrudes, the young Samuel rises while the older Eli declines. The intrusions of God disrupt, provoke change, yet by these disruptions, the story of God's dealings with humanity continues. Today's sermon will reflect upon the disruptive, intrusive, life-giving work of God among us. Here's what Barbara Brown Taylor, a popular guest preacher at this Chapel, says about the intrusive word of God: "The word of God may not be chained, but you would be hard pressed to believe it on most Sunday mornings. We read scripture out loud as though we are reading income tax instructions to each other. Children draw on offering envelopes during the sermon; adults balance their checkbooks. If someone breaks the rules and gets excited by the word, there are plenty of other people- including the preacher--who can be counted on to calm that person down. "We are old friends with the word by now. There is nothing to get excited about. You can buy dish towels with the Beatitudes printed on them. You can give Bibles to your children without worrying that what they read there will upset their lives. "What has happened? Have we hobbled the word because we fear the harm it can do? "In the small north Georgia town where I live, local evangelists gather Saturday mornings on the town square. Dressed in their plaid shirts and overalls, they wave their pocketsized New Testaments in the air as they berate passing motorists, guessing at their sins and promising them damnation. "Just down the road at the supermarket in Gainesville, it is possible to push your cart down the pasta/ beans/rice aisle and look up to see a Ku Klux Klansman in full regalia with a cart just like your own-- just out for a stroll, just reminding the citizenry that the purists are on patrol in this_part of the world. Fo~low him out to his_ car (if you dare) and you will find Jast Sunday's church program on the front seat, alongside a Bible with an embossed leather cover. "But these are not the only people who have tried to capture the word. There are lassos flying all over the place, each of us hoping to harness a little horsepower for our own causes, whatever they are. Insisting that the word of God is a literal word, or a liberal w9rd, or a masculine word, or a feminine word--or a word only for the poor, or only for the rich, or only for those who speak our own language. "But God's language is not limited like that. God's word is not chained. We cannot capture it in church, in time, in culture. We cannot even capture it between the covers of the Bible, because if it is God's true and lively word, then it is inventing new words all the time--inventing new worlds--and inventing new human beings to live in them, percolating with the same creative energy that made heaven and earth. "Let there be... " God said, and it was so. 4

5 "In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard marvels at the nonchalance of most Christians. "On the whole," she writes, "I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely evoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense... "' "Maybe that is the problem. It is not that we do not know the power of the word; it is that we do. We know the sorts of things God is capable of saying: "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love... " "Arise, go to Ninevah, that great city, and cry against it... " "You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor... " "Shhhh. If the word is sleeping, let it sleep. No sense biting off more than we can chew. No sense stirring up something that might break our hearts, wreck our plans, change our lives. Shhhh. Everything is under control here. There is nothing to get excited about. Keep your voices down. Walk on tiptoe. "Or don't. Clap your hands. Yell out loud. Run a stick along the along the bars of your cell and discover who has really been asleep all this time. Decide to wake up, and everyone else.with you. Decide to make noise. Roar and hear the word roar back. Wail and find your wail matched. Put on your crash helmet." 5

IT S NOT ABOUT US A CALL TO PASSIONATE WORSHIP Text: Psalm 22: March 8, 2009 (Second Sunday in Lent) Faith J. Conklin

IT S NOT ABOUT US A CALL TO PASSIONATE WORSHIP Text: Psalm 22: 23-31 March 8, 2009 (Second Sunday in Lent) Faith J. Conklin Annie Dillard in her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk, writes On the whole, I do