The Rev. Patricia A. Gillespie
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Psalm 63
1 Corinthians 6:11b-20
John 1:43-51
It's dangerous to sleep in church. Little Samuels's asleep in the temple and gets interrupted by God. And in those days, it seems, God was not in the habit of visiting people.. Today, God only knows what might happen if you fall asleep during the sermon. God might even start shouting out your name right in the middle of worship!
God forbid that our beautiful liturgy should be disrupted.
Liturgy means "the work of the people" and we do work hard on it. It takes time to select hymns, to prepare the altar, and to write sermons. All these beautiful words from our prayer book. This lovely building. All the people to pray for. All this church work to be done.
Can't you just see God, amused and affectionate, leaning back and wondering, "So where's there room for Me?"
We are so preoccupied with proper worship, with sermons, meetings, and budgets, and church growth, that probably the only time God can get a word in edgewise is when we nod off.
And even when God does happen to show up, we often, like little Samuel, think it's someone else. God is really good at this kind of surprise attack, at sneaking into people's lives at unguarded moments.
Really now, how often in the Bible do we see God showing up during a formal worship service? But then Father, Son, and Spirit all seem to show up in the messy places – in rivers and deserts, in pharisee's homes and smelly fishing boats, in barns and prisons. And even Nazareth. "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
Forget the big cities, Jesus is from outstate. And his chosen group to gather for prayer seems to be about a dozen. I'd bet he'd be more at home here than at the cathedral.
God seems to prefer the small and insignificant to the large institutions. Can anything good come out of those tiny Total Ministry Churches? Perhaps we should be saying to those city folks, "Come and see."
They'd see ordinary folks – like the kind they used to have in Nazareth. We'd look small and seemingly insignificant – just how the boy Samuel looked beside Eli the priest. They'd see people whose regular sort of lives have been interrupted by God's call, and who have responded, like Samuel, "Here I am."
But just what are we here for? What would make it worth their coming and seeing?
What do people see when we come into this church? A social club? A captivating worship service? This week, as we remember the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, I recall his comments about the church:
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You see, the church is not a social club,
although some people think it is. (Make it plain)
They get caught up in their exclusivism,
and they feel that it's a kind of social club with a thin veneer of religiosity,
but the church is not a social club.(Make it plain) The church is not an entertainment center, although some people think it is. You can tell in many churches how they act in church, which demonstrates that they think it's an entertainment center. The church is not an entertainment center. Monkeys are to entertain, not preachers. But in the final analysis the church has a purpose. The church is dealing with man's ultimate concern.
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"Ultimate concern," King says. Do we come for a social club, or for entertainment, or for all that other church stuff? Or do we come here looking for God?
How rare in most of our lives are those joyous moments when we can say with the psalmist: "O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek yo u; my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water."
That's where God finds us: in our longing thirstiness, in the barren deserts of our lives, in empty and unexpected places. Even in that most unexpected place of all: our own bodies, God finds us. "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?"
It is from that temple and from our longing desire for God that we can truly say to others about our church and worship, "Come and see."
Don't be fooled by the world out there. Everyone, however unreligious they may pretend to be, some time or other shares that fierce longing for God. And most of us are clueless about what that aching emptiness is ... until the moment we recognize God in the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
When we come with our defenses down, like a sleepy child. When we enter into the empty silence. Or when we are least expecting it, in those places where we want to say, "Can any good come from here?" – Those are just the places where God is liable to show up. Those are the places where epiphany happens, where God becomes manifest in our lives.
Okay. You can go to sleep now.