“Sometimes We Need To Get Out of the Way” 

        I am addressing the story of Samuel today, or should I say the story of Eli. Eli was the head priest in the Temple to whom Hannah brought her son Samuel when she committed his life to God. You may remember that Hannah was the barren woman who gave birth miraculously to Samuel. She made a speech much like Mary did when she learned she was to have a son. Eli had three sons of his own and they were priests, but they were very corrupt and indeed the whole religious establishment of Samuel’s time was in bad shape. Samuel would eventually reform it. Anyway, Eli was Samuel’s teacher and was sleeping outside the sanctuary the night Samuel received the word of God. As Erika read to us, Samuel is sleeping and is called three times by God. Each time he thinks it is Eli calling but is sent back to bed. Finally, Eli realizes that it is the Lord calling Samuel and sends him back with instructions on what to say, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” Samuel is the star of this story and goes on to be prophet and condemn the corrupt Temple practices of his teachers and is the prophet who eventually recognizes David to be the King and moves Israel toward the monarchy. But the one I want to think about today is Eli. I guess I am drawn to Eli since if I were to find myself somewhere in this story it would be in this priest. What Eli does is quite noteworthy. He is able to recognize that Samuel is being called by God and then has the sense to get out of the way and allow Samuel to hear.

        Eli could have tried to horn in on Samuel’s message, or could have put up barriers of some kind for Samuel, but he doesn’t. The religious establishment, Christian included, has a long history of putting up barriers so that certain people won’t be able to get near the altar, let alone hear the call from God. I think of the Christian missionaries who did and still today demand that converts learn Christianity on their own terms. The Congregationalist Missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands who put the native women in silly Muumuu dresses and did away with their traditional practices and tried to fit them into cookie cutter copies of New England society. My friend Tim in Seminary at Duke who came out as a gay man only to be tossed unceremoniously out of the Methodist ministry and even the seminary. For as long as there have been Christian churches certain people have been prevented from preaching or being called or even coming to the altar for communion because they were the wrong sex, the wrong race, the wrong sexual orientation, the wrong theology; too young, too old, too liberal or too conservative. I’m sure this is true of other religions as well, but I am most familiar with Christianity. We’ve been keeping women and gays, people of color and people who disagree with our theology away from the altar for generations.

        We would do well to learn from Eli. There are times when we need to get out of the way. We have been in the business of putting up barriers for people too long. Sometimes God is doing something in the life of a person, and my job is to direct them toward the altar and get out of the way. There have definitely been times when it was in the life of the person I last expected in which God was acting. In my first summer appointment in Warrenton, North Carolina, I found myself in a white church in a county that was 90% black. The white and black populations had been living together a long time in what seemed to me to be a hopelessly racist system. I had a lot to learn. Mr. Connell came from a family that seemed to be among the worst. But I was to learn that although he had accommodated himself to the segregated society of Warrenton, within that society he was a person of incredible faith and dedication to the Bible and to doing good. Those people loved me despite my being a bleeding heart liberal and a Yankee at to boot, and I still hear from some of those folks. I arrived for my second summer appointment in Miller’s Creek, North Carolina and was assigned two work with two Methodist pastors, each with two mountain parishes they served. One pastor, whose name I can’t recall I afraid, seemed pretty normal. He was graduate of Duke who was just biding his time until he could escape to a real parish down in the lowlands. The other was an old man, Ralph Surratt, who had lived all his life in the mountains. I couldn’t believe I was going to have to work with him and at first focused on the other pastor and his two charges. But Ralph was one of those people in whom I didn’t expect to find the word of God and was surprised. Ralph was one of the worst preachers I have ever heard. He didn’t prepare until Sunday morning and then stood up and rambled around. He was uneducated past High School and had a certificate to preach earned by going Duke summer sessions. He called it his BD degree (been to Duke). Be had an old white pick up and with me praying for my life he would take off on those mountain roads and visit virtually everyone in the parish every week. Not long calls, but he was there. I learned much of what I know from Ralph. Everyone would take me aside and say, “you know Ralph isn’t much of a preacher, be we love him”.

        The word of the Lord appears where we don’t expect and we need to get out of the way. Tex Sample told of his son, who was an alcoholic until he was 29. Everything he tried failed, everything Tex tried failed. What finally got through to him was a motorcycle gang. It was an AA motorcycle gang and they took Tex’s son in hand and saved his life.         We make the mistake often of thinking in Christianity that there is just one narrow way to follow God. It is this path we are on, and people who look differently, or believe differently, or are educated differently, or are strangers for all sorts of reasons don’t seem to us to be on the path. It’s like the Santa Fe trail. You go looking for that trail expecting to find a narrow path of wheel ruts stretching across the plains, and in some places that is what you’ll find. But some places that trail is six miles wide. There’s plenty of room on that trail for plenty of wagons. That’ the way with the word of God. There’s room for everyone, and we make a big mistake when we start trying to keep people away from the altar. There’s room for liberal Christians, conservative and fundamentalist Christians, Buddhists, Agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Janists, Sikhs, humanists, even Atheists. There is not a person alive who isn’t an instrument for God to use in some way.

        What’s the final test to see if they are on the right path. There are probably lots of tests, but one I’m sure of is compassion. Where we find charity and love, where we find compassion, there we will find God; no matter strange those people may seem to be. So Eli is our model today. Like Eli we may not be perfect ourselves, and we may not remember the last time the word of the lord spoke to us, but we can be alert to where God is moving and have the sense to get out of the way.