Eli
is not a particularly well-known biblical character, and I’m not going to say
he should be. But Samuel is. He has two books of the Bible named after him (1
and 2 Samuel). These are books that tell the story of David, but they are not
named after David; they tell the stories of Saul and Hannah and Bathsheba and
others, but they are not named after them either. They are named after Samuel.
Samuel is a big deal. So, today’s reading introduces us to Samuel by way of
Eli, so we’re going to talk about both.
Samuel
is a child—a young boy—and he is ministering to the Lord under Eli. A bit of
needed context here: Samuel’s mother, Hannah, dedicates him to God from the
time he is born because she had been unable to have a child and Samuel is her reward,
whom she returns to the Lord by sending him into ministry. Samuel has spent his
entire life next to Eli. Yet, when the voice of God comes to Samuel we have this
odd report in verse 7 that “Samuel did not know the Lord.” It is not until Eli
realizes what is going on and tells Samuel to listen that perhaps God is
calling to him that Samuel learns what is going on. Then there is the message.
This is where things get uncomfortable as a parent, a pastor—really anybody who
oversees children. The message God gives to Samuel is that Eli is about to be
punished. He’s about to lose his priesthood, his legacy, and his life.
If
you’re Eli, what do you do with that? What do you do when the thing you trusted
in—this Lord you’ve served your whole life—turns around and speaks through the
mouth of a boy to say you are finished. Sure, Eli wasn’t a perfect father. Sure,
his own sons were terrible in their own right, but Eli disavowed them, Eli
tried to do right. I’m sure, on some level, Samuel was the son he never had, the
son who actually had a chance of being the good priest; the good and faithful
servant that Eli wished his own sons could have been. So, if you’re Eli and you
hear this message what do you do?
I
don’t know, because this is exactly the message I’m afraid of. And sure, I’m
the pastor, so this might hit a little closer to home for me than for you, but
for any of you who are parents isn’t this exactly what you fear—that your
children come back to you one day with a message that since you have not served
faithfully in your office, the office of parent, who is, by the way, the
spiritual leader of the family (Martin Luther called parents the “bishops” of
their households, after all), that because of your failures God is going to
take it all from you? There’s nothing I fear more than failing in the spiritual
and ethical upbringing of my child. I can imagine that parents of children who
do terrible things must feel an immense guilt, because people do judge them;
they judge parents all the time; and much more than that we judge ourselves.
And maybe there’s some truth in it—that’s what we think—maybe these kids who
grow up to kill, or to steal, or to deal drugs were brought up in a poor
household. It’s probably the parents
fault, we imagine.
Eli…
he does sow the seed of his own demise. He is selfish; he skims something off
the top for his sons. He favors them; he’s the lawn mower parent of his day,
clearing the way for his children to have all the advantages, and his sons turn
around and make a mockery of the priesthood—getting into sex and drugs and
whatever else people did in those days.
Eli…
Here’s
the thing about Eli—it’s really the thing about all of us, actually—we are not
as simple as all that. The world is not separated into bad parents and good
parents; it’s not separated into bad priests and good priests. Of course, if
you’re an abuser, if you’re a murderer or a rapist or if you use your power to
take advantage of people, then whatever good qualities you have are forever
blotted by the bad. But for most of us who live in the grey—who are not abusers
of our children but who honestly only want the best for them—for us, the story
of Eli is heartbreaking because it’s exactly where we fear we may end up. Not
because we are terrible parents but because we are not perfect. Like Eli, we cannot
force our children to be what we want them to be. We, like Eli, make mistakes precisely
because we care about our kids so much. But, again like Eli, we also know that
our children may ruin us and that is what makes us so vulnerable.
We
are mostly not good parents or bad parents. We are mostly not good bishops of our
house or poor ones. We are some of both and we struggle to find the balance
between discipline and freedom, between our innate preference for our children
and the reality that our child—though a child of God—is no different from our
children. We live in that tension, and it threatens to destroy us.
Honestly,
I think Eli is actually an exceptional priest, because when it comes down to
it—when he has nothing left to lose because he’s already lost his sons, his
legacy, and his life—he turns around and says, “It is the Lord; let him do what
seems good to him.”
We
don’t know how that sentence was said. It could have been downtrodden… it might
have been angry, vengeful even. But I like to think that it is a testament to what
Eli is serving: Not his own ends, not his own legacy, but God, even the God who
promises nothing in return in this life. If so, if this is Eli’s confession of
faith, then it is a heckuva good one. It is one thing to say, “Let God do what
God will” when the matter is up for debate, when you’re not sure what God is
going to do. When you say it in that way it might feel like a test of God—like
we’re saying, “I know what a good God
would do. Are you a good God up there?”
That
is not a sign of faith; that’s a sign of not knowing your place. We live to
serve God and not the other way around. And if Eli’s confession is a humble
proclamation that God’s will is more important than his, then this is a
remarkable thing for a man who is in the process of losing everything to say.
Eli’s fate is not what we would aspire to. We want good
things for our families and for ourselves. There’s nothing bad in wanting our
children to live a better life. But that is not the thing we’re trusting in.
That’s not the test of God’s goodness. Our children are just as faulty as we
are. They, too, may have children as broken as us. We don’t trust in any of
that. We trust in God. Because whether we live or whether we die, whether it
turns out right or turns out wrong, whether it seems to us good or bad, that’s
the only thing worthy of our trust.
Amen.
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