We can’t
know how old Samuel was at the time. I’d guess Samuel was about the same age as
Walter when he left home to go to live with the Priest Eli who was by then
quite elderly. We know that Samuel’s birth had been an answer to his mother’s
prayers. She made a bargain with God. “Give me a child,” she said and promised
that, “as soon as he is weaned I will dedicate him to the service of the Lord.”
She promised, “I will offer him up as a nazirite for all time.”
In the 6th
chapter of the book of Numbers God had ordained what it meant to be offered up
as a nazirite.
The Lord spoke
to Moses, saying: When either men or women make the vow of a nazirite,
they shall separate themselves from wine and strong drink. All their days as
nazirites they shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even
the seeds or the skins. All the days of their nazirite vow no razor shall
come upon the head. They shall not go near a corpse, even if their father or
mother, brother or sister, should die. All their days as nazirites they are
holy to the Lord.
It was no small thing to have your life determined for you even before
you were conceived. Barbara Brown
Taylor
describes what the boy prophet's life in the temple might have looked
like:
"We can only
guess what it was like for Samuel as the faithful brought their
burnt-offerings, their sin-offerings, and their guilt-offerings to the temple.
They were burdened, ashen-faced people, most of them, hauling their stubborn
animals up to the altar to be sacrificed. At night, he lay down by the ark of
God, the legendary throne of the invisible king Yahweh that Israel carried into
battle at the head of her armies. Sleeping next to it had to be like sleeping
in a graveyard, or under a volcano."
On that particular night
the volcano erupted. God had seen enough. God decided Samuel was old enough to
handle the voice of the Lord. Young Samuel heard a voice though scripture says
that in those days the word of the Lord was rare.
After all, 1st Samuel begins where the book of the Judges ended by
announcing: “In those days there was no king of Israel and all the people did
what was right in their own eyes.”
The priest likely
told his young protégé of God’s unhappiness with the people and so the boy
would not have expected the voice to be that of God but, rather, of the old man
in the next room. Eli told him he hadn’t called. He should go back to sleep.
Again, came the voice and again Eli said, Not me. Go back to bed young man.”
And the Lord called
Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli and said, “Here I am,
for you called me.” This time Eli got it… Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore, Eli
said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say,
‘Speak, Lord, for your
servant hears.’” So, Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the Lord came and stood, calling as at
other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant
hears.” Samuel is ready for the word of the Lord.
Then the Lord opened up. God said to Samuel,
“Behold, I am about to do a thing in
Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. I
will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from
beginning to end. And I declare to him that I am about to punish
his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew…Eli’s sin was that he knew the injustices being perpetrated on God’s
people and watched silently, doing nothing to stop them…and God had come to say
there is a price to be paid for ignoring injustice.
Those are the
words. “Behold, I am about to do a thing
in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle.”
Samuel is in. Eli
is out. Ears will tingle. It falls on young Samuel’s shoulders to explain that
to his mentor. Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. And Eli
said, “It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to
him.”
What seemed
good to the Lord was to punish those like the old priest who saw evil and
failed to call it out. The Bible
makes clear that God is deeply troubled by those who see wrongs and turn away,
those who see injustice and suddenly go blind, those who walk away from the
pain of others.
Isiah was emphatic; God has had enough of empty, meaningless,
religious practices. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they
have become a burden to me. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct
oppression.
Eli was faithful in his prayer life, observed all the holidays, brought
ample sacrifices to the temple altar. But Eli ignored the injustices around
him. He watched as his own sons took food that belonged to the poor and
sexually assaulted the young women who came to the temple. He watched but did
nothing.
God tells the young boy-soon-to-be prophet Samuel that what he is
about to do, the punishment he is about to bring upon Eli and his sons should
cause every ear to tingle. Are your ears
tingling?
There are many things going on this very day that ought to make our
ears tingle. Let me tell you about one. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement
agency, ICE, is planning to contract with a private for-profit prison company
to build a prison for people like Juan in Evanston. It will house as many as
600 immigrants while they wait for their cases to be processed through a system
that has a backlog of thousands.
This will not be the first such for-profit immigrant prison in
America but the trail of abuses left by others give us reason to be concerned
about how our brothers and sisters will be treated there.
Even the agency that oversees ICE, the Department of Homeland
Security, has found major human rights abuses in these for-profit immigration
prisons. Lack of due process, lack of sanitary conditions and inadequate
medical care, unlawful strip searches and more. The company that will build the
Evanston prison operated one in Raymondville, Texas where authorities found the
human suffering to be prevalent, people so miserably bad that the Department of
Homeland Security eventually cancelled the contract.
The people of Raymondville, like many in Evanston, were willing to
ignore the injustices in exchange for the promise of what they call “economic
development.” The jobs went away. The shame never will.
Have we forgotten the shameful lessons of Heart Mountain? Have we
forgotten the word of the Lord from Exodus 22:21-22 "You
shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land. God
said, “You shall not afflict any widow or orphan.”
Are your ears tingling. Mine are. This Sunday we honor the memory
of one of history’s great ear-tinglers. Martin Luther King’s ears tingled and
he caused the ears of others to tingle by teaching that if injustice doesn’t
cause your ears to tingle in these times, you have tuned out the word of God.
A least once a year, Christians should go back and read MLK’s
Letter from a Birmingham Jail to remind themselves of how easy it is for
Christians to meld into an unjust society and to cover their ears so they
cannot hear the tingling.
Dr.
King was speaking to the Christian community that had watched injustices and
did nothing. He told them it was an especially grave sin for those who had
spiritual responsibilities…to do nothing.
“The
judgment of God is upon the church as never before,” King’s letter read. “If
today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church,
it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be
dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning. Every day I meet young
people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
Perhaps,” Dr. King concluded, “I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized
religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the
world?”
Dr.
King echoed what God told Samuel. “Those
who passively accept evil are as much involved in it as those who help to
perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really
cooperating with it.”
Isaiah 10:1-3 spoke to those who
see and ignore injustice. Woe to those who enact evil
statutes and to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive
the needy of justice and rob the poor of my people of their rights, so that
widows may be their spoil and that they may plunder the orphans. Now what will you
do in the day of punishment, and in the devastation which will come from afar?
To whom will you flee for help?
12 years after Dietrich
Bonhoeffer became the first voice to raise fears about the Nazis, he was
executed by them. In spite of the threats to his life, when he could no longer
ignore the injustices, Bonhoeffer wrote that the church has the responsibility
to ask whether the state is fulfilling its duty to preserve justice and order, that
the church has the right and responsibility to aid victims of the state.”
Now, I am
not one to believe that God reaches down and smites anyone but I do believe
there is a price to be paid for ignoring evil; it is personal, intellectual,
psychological and it is a high spiritual price.
I have no
doubt that those responsible for the WWII imprisonment of Japanese-Americans at
Heart Mountain, those who turned dogs and fire hoses on civil rights workers, those
who watched as others bombed churches and lynched human beings, those who
reject refugees as they flee violence with babes in their arms…and those who
perpetrate or ignore all other sorts of injustice go to their graves with
tingling ears, shameful regrets, and heavy hearts.
Nor do I
have any doubt that if the immigrant prison is built in Evanston …it will, one
day, bring shame upon all of us. We will hear the voice of Isaiah ask, “Now what will you do in the day of
punishment, and in the devastation which will come from afar? To whom will you
flee for help?”
And there
will be another prophet like Samuel sent by God to deliver the message of our
judgment and we will be left with no defense but to say, “It is
the Lord. Let him do what
seems good to him.” AMEN
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