SERMON 481
SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPHIPHANY – JANUARY 14, 15 2006
1 SAMUEL 3:1-20, I CORINTHIANS 6:12-20, PSALM JOHN 1:43-51
BECOMING ACCOUNTABLE
Beloved in the Lord, grace
and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ, and from the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.
Jawanza Konjufu, in his book,
“Restoring the Village,” writes:
‘When I was a fourteen year
old high school student freshman, school was dismissed early for a teacher’s
meeting. I conveniently neglected to tell my parents about the change and
arranged to bring my girlfriend over to my house. We weren’t planning to study.
As we were going up the
steps, my neighbor, Mrs. Nolan, poked her head out of a window and said,
“You’re home awfully early, Jerome.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said,
improvising a lame story about how we planned to review algebra problems.
“Does your mother know you’re
home this early,” Mrs. Nolan persisted, “and do you want me to call her?”
I gave up, “No, Ma’am, I’ll
go inside and call her while Kathy sits on the porch.”
Mrs. Nolan saved our careers
that day. If Kathy had gotten pregnant, she might not have become the doctor
that she is today. And my father had warned me that if I made a baby, the
mutual fund he had set up for me to go to college or start a business would
have gone to the child. I’m glad Mrs. Nolan was at her window, looking out for
me.’
Is it not wonderful to know
that God is looking out the window at us all the time and providing people and
circumstances to help us on our journey of life in BECOMING ACCOUNTABLE! That,
by the way, is our theme for this meditation, BECOMING ACCOUNTABLE!
The lessons for this Sunday
are quite beautiful and instructive. In the Old Testament lesson we find the
boy Samuel ministering to the Lord under the supervision of Eli. Samuel, as you
remember, was not there by accident. His mother Hanna had promised the Lord
that she would give her child to minister to the Lord, if the Lord would only
give her a child. Samuel was a servant of the Lord before he had even been
conceived and begun his life in the womb of his mother.
Is it not strange that the
same thing could almost be said of us? Our mothers may not have promised to
give us over to minister to the Lord. But the Lord God was there when we were
conceived, as the Psalmist tells us. The Lord God was there when we were being
formed in the womb. Our parents did not see us until after our delivery, our
birth. The Lord had us in view from the moment of our conception. Nothing about
us was hidden from the living God. No matter how we may look at it, we do
belong to God, our very bodies, minds, and soul and spirit are God’s very own creation
through his co-creators, our mothers and fathers.
That is one reason why we
have been instructed to honor our fathers and our mothers, for they are
co-creators with God, and are to be honored as such, just as we are to honor
the God who made us through them.
When we read the lesson from
Paul to the Corinthians we heard more about this body which the Lord has given
us. We were created by the Lord in the first place. Our bodies, our beings,
were the purchased again for God with an enormous price, the life and death of
God’s own Son. Having been purchased again by God, we are now united with
Christ in his life and resurrection, our bodies being members of the Body of
Christ. Indeed God himself has come to dwell in our hearts by faith, our bodies
now being the temple of the Holy Spirit. When we were baptized into Christ our
bodies were not at all our own, they belong to God. We are united with God, as
Paul tells us, and have become one spirit with God.
BECOMING ACCOUNTABLE! We see
a picture of accountability in the lesson from Samuel. When God spoke, Samuel
learned at an early age to say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.”
And so it was with Samuel all of his life! We are told that Samuel was a
trustworthy prophet of the Lord. Samuel listened carefully to what God said and
Samuel did what God commanded. Samuel also spoke the word of the Lord even when
it was terribly uncomfortable to do so. He did not withhold that word on any
occasion. Even when He was told the terrible judgment that was to fall on Eli’s
sons, he spoke the truth to Eli.
Eli’s sons on the other hand
were blasphemers. They were priests and they spoke the word that profited them
whether it had any truth to it or not. They were not trustworthy by any
standard, and they led people astray.
As children of the heavenly
father, one in whom the spirit came to dwell in our baptism, we are accountable
before God for the words that we listen to or the words that we fail to heed
from God. We are accountable for the words that we speak; every last one of
them.
So in examining ourselves
with regard to the words we listen to and the words we speak we do need to
become quite discerning. Are we prone to listen to the words that come from the
flesh; words of anger, jealousy, envy, lust, pride, or do we honestly seek the
word of the Lord who calls us listen only to God? Are we prone in our speaking
to speak those words that put ourselves always in the best light possible,
those words that would give us control and put our own agenda in the forefront?
Or do we honestly seek to speak the truth in love to one another as our Lord
has commanded us, and cling to the truth in love casting aside our need for
approval and our need for control. In our listening and in our speaking do we
humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and let God lift us up in due
season? Are we accountable in our listening and in our speaking?
BECOMING ACCOUNTABLE! We now
move from words to sex. The words about sex and its use in our lesson from Paul
are quite striking. Those who press for premarital, extra marital and same sex
activities would regard Paul as an antiquated, judgmental, fundamentalist
prude, or at the very best, an outdated prude. Those in our society, even in
our church, who actually promote such extra sexual activities would regard Paul
in such a manner.
But we know that Paul was a
prophet and an Apostle of the Lord Jesus, so we do well to listen to his words
attentively. Fornication, which is sexual activity beyond the boundary of
husband and wife, actually leads a person to be united with that person,
prostitute or not, and Paul calls it a sin against the body of Christ, a sin
against God, to whom our body belongs. Engaging in such activity is terribly
offensive to the very Spirit to which we are united in one body in Christ.
The promotion of unbridled
sex in our society is actually the promotion of idolatry. The promotion of
idolatry will eventually lead to the disintegration and destruction of society
itself. We do well to look out for our children and our teenagers as did Mrs.
Nolan. In so doing we do them an incredible favor.
BECOMING ACCOUNTABLE! In the
story from the Gospel of John we find Jesus early in his ministry, just after
his baptism and the testimony of God from heaven and the descending of the Holy
Spirit upon him.
On his way to Galilee Jesus
found Phillip and said to him in words that had no qualifications whatsoever,
“Follow me.” Phillip, we are told, immediately found a friend of his, both
presumably being from
Nathaniel was a little
skeptical when he heard tell that Jesus of Nazareth was the long promised
Messiah. Nothing of any consequence had ever come out that city. But Nathaniel
too was persuaded, after hearing Jesus tell him what his own inner thoughts had
been under a fig tree several hours previously.
Nathaniel and Phillip were
not the only ones to whom Jesus came and said, “Follow me.” Albert Schweitzer
expressed to us in a poem what we know in our hearts has happened to us as
well.
“He comes to us as one
unknown without a name
as of old, by the lakeside he
came to those men who knew him not.
He speaks to us the same
word;
‘Follow thou me,’
and sets us to the tasks
which He has to fulfill for our time.
He commands,
And to those who obey him
Whether they be wise or
simple
He will reveal himself in the
toils, the conflicts, the sufferings
Which they shall pass
through,
And, as an ineffable mystery
They shall learn in their own
experience
Who he is.”
BECOMING ACCOUNTABLE! It is
the very same Lord Jesus who spoke of old to Nathaniel and to Phillip who calls
out and speaks to us as well. His words are clear. “Follow thou me.” The
commandments that he left us are clear. “Love one another as I have loved you.”
“Whatsoever you ask in my name, that I will do!”
There is, as we proclaimed
last week, only one road to God. But following Jesus will lead each one of us
on a path quite different from anyone else in the toils, the conflicts, and the
sufferings that we will be asked to pass through.
What is common to each and
every one of us as we follow him is the call to be accountable in our listening
to the words that he speaks, in our speaking the truth in love for the benefit
of others and his kingdom, and in the honoring of him whose temple we are by
using our bodies to serve him alone, and not our own desires.
“Follow me,” he tells us
still. Let us do that, as did the disciples of old, with joy and excitement
still. Our Lord Jesus has many things to do through us before he comes again.
Let us continue to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God so that he can
lift us up in due time to accomplish what he has set before us. We are to cast
all our cares on him for we are in his charge.
AMEN!