Discipleship in a 4D World session 1: 1st Samuel 3:1-21

Discipleship in a 4D World session 1: 1st Samuel 3:1-21

              The story of Samuel is a story of transitions, the story of a person born into one world and buried in one totally changed.

 

Backstory:

              Samuel’s mother Hannah was a barren woman, spurned by her household on account of that condition. She called out to God and bargained: I’ll give you my son if I can get pregnant. And she does get pregnant.

              Eli was the head Priest at the temple in Shiloh at the time, who took in little Samuel and cares for him as a son. Eli’s biological sons are awful priests; they are steal the offering and abuse women. Yet the working assumption is that they’ll take over the Temple and care for the Ark of the Covenant. Eli has been told by a wandering holy man that his sons will not succeed him.

 

3:1-7—A Sleepless Night

1-Visions and Words are rare—Throughout the book of Samuel there is an ongoing sense that there was a vibrant religious and political world in the past, but it had petered out and is on its last legs. Imagine, there next to the Ark itself, no words or signs from God!

2-A dim sighted priest—Eli’s vision acts as a metaphor for his turning a blind eye on his son’s evil deeds, and the dimness of his generation.

3-Low light, the Ark, where God resides—Again, the dazzling light of God, the heavy presence of God, has almost gone out, has almost entirely left the temple. Whatever God had done in the past with these people, seems almost over. The place where God is bodily present is burning itself out.

4-“Hinanni”—"Here I am,” is a frequent mortal response to God/heaven/angels throughout scripture.

6-Eli doesn’t get it yet—This is a classic rule of three situation (3 Bears, Billy Goats Gruff, etc) establishing a pattern, in order to break it. Samuel and Eli don’t know it is God yet, but it will dawn on them! We get to watch as the tension rises and the plot thickens!

7-Raised in temple, sleeps next to the ark… doesn’t yet know the LORD—Again, this is pointing out how bankrupt and broken the relationship between God and God’s people is in Eli’s generation. It also reminds me of a saying, by Scottish poet and Macdonald, “Nothing is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things.”

 

3:8-14—Oh, it’s a Message from God!

8-The rule of threes—And here we are, third times the charm, it dawns on Eli that Samuel isn’t being a bratty boy, but God, instead, is up to something.

11-Ear tingling, new thing!—And that new thing will be overwhelming to hear! An escape from the present predicament, folk shall again know the LORD!

13-Both the sin and failing to stop the sin—Eli’s house had committed not only sins of commission but also sins of omission. Eli should have stopped his sons from sinning, but did not, and in failing to act, doomed his family.

14-The end of the house of Eli—There is no way out. This is an end. Those who cared for God’s dwelling place, shall no longer do so. That family shall fall.

 

3:15-21—The New Judge/Priest, Samuel

15-If you thought it was a sleepless night before!—What a message for poor Samuel. If he was having a tough time sleeping, with God whispering in his ear, how much more, the anxiety of anticipation.

16-“My son” what pathos!—If little Samuel wasn’t already feeling the weight of the message God gave to him, guilt for being the bearer of bad news, he’s feeling it now. Eli states plainly their relationship,” you are like a son to me!”

18-Eli is resigned to this fall

20-A trustworthy prophet—Samuel, not the offspring of Eli, acts rightly and faithfully. He does not abuse or steal, instead he does what is right.

 

A Few Details of Note:

Visions were rare, even the religious do not know God

As I said before, here is a drumbeat of debased religion in this book. Eli’s sons are untrustworthy abusers. Eli doesn’t understand Hannah’s prayers; he can’t tell the difference between prayers and drunk utterances. Little Samuel, literally in the temple, does not know God. And one way to talk about such a situation is that they live in a secular frame. Because they don’t pay attention to God, God isn’t a reality in their life. If you don’t have a habit of listening to God, God speaking to you will be a terrifying proposition.

“To see what’s in front of your nose is a constant struggle.”—George Orwell

              There is a repeated insistence that it is hard to see, it is dark, the senses grow dim, and that is all punctured by a promising new thing—ears tingling. In the midst of massive societal changes, it is very hard to see what the heck is going on and nearly impossible to guess what things will look like on the other side. Israel’s reality before and after Samuel are so different from each other. Before Samuel 12 tribes worshipped at local shrines, and were cared for by bands of prophets and, only, when necessary, charismatic judges who would temporarily unite the tribes. After Samuel there was one kingdom, everything centered in Jerusalem—Temple, Court prophets, and King.

              As the above Orwell quote suggests, seeing the present aright, let alone having insights into the future and what comes next, is a great challenge. A King Saul, let alone a Davidic Dynasty, Jerusalem of all places the center of it all, the dissolution of local shrines… all the fixed realities of the previous generation are in flux.

 

1^st Samuel 3 and the 4Ds

              Back in 2015, I was the Counselor of the Raritan Cluster, and that meant I saw a slightly wider church than just my congregation, and it became clear to me that we are in one of those generational transition moments, like Samuel. At one point, I gathered the folk from my cluster together, we read these verses from 1^st Samuel, and I asked the group what aspects of ministry were, like the life of Israel in Samuel’s days, making both their ears tingle?  How is God uniquely at work today? How do we see the world as it is, not as we would imagine it to be? What are the challenges of ministry for us now?

By the end of the conversation, we’d come up with 3 things in front of our nose that we were pretty sure we saw: A greater cleaving of Church and Society, all aspects of life becoming more decentralized, and the demographics of our neighborhoods changing swiftly. Quite recently I added a 4^th dynamic to that list from a decade ago, most of our habits are secular, not sacred—we’ve become disenchanted as a people.

So, for these five Bible Studies, we’ll be looking at the 4Ds, Disestablishment, Decentralization, Demographic Shift, and Disenchantment. We’ll look and hopefully see what’s in front of our noses, we’ll listen and hear what makes our ears tingle.

 

Broad overview:

Disestablishment: Church and Society aren’t mutually reinforcing.

The thinker I focus on most to think through this reality is Douglas John Hall and his book: The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity.

The piece of scripture we’ll look at to consider this aspect of discipleship is the book of Daniel, where God’s people are in a culture that in no ways supports their faith. The big question is: How are we faithful when it is hard and we are out of synch with the surrounding society?

              If the Church is to survive and thrive in a Disestablished society, it must learn how to partner with people and organizations that have missions that are similar to ours, we will have to become creative in forming alliances and doing the work God has called us to with and among unexpected peoples.

 

Decentralization: The Distribution of functions and power.

              The book that most helped me think about this dynamic in our society was The Spider and the Starfish by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom.

              The piece of scripture we’ll be reading to think about God working among a decentralized people will be the book of Judges. This book of the Bible follows a tribal model of being God’s people.

              If the Church is to be faithful in a decentralized world, we ought to embrace the good parts of being small, namely being nimble. We need to be able to act and react in a way that fits a wide variety of contexts.

 

Demographic Shift: A significant change in a population’s structure over time.

              The two books that I’ve read that influence how I think about shifting demographics are and William Strauss, Neil Howe’s Generations as well as Kenneth Gronbach’s Upside.

              The piece of scripture we’ll be looking at to think about God at work in the midst of a diversity of people is the Pentecost, as found in Acts 2. This is the beginning of the Holy Spirit widening what it means to be Church again and again—the whole of the book of Acts can be summed up as: the disciples figure they’ve expanded the church as far as it can go, they decide to take a breather, and then the Holy Spirit does something new just beyond the limits of their imagination, so they go and catch up.

              The Church needs to navigate the many demographic shifts in our world—racial and ethnic, financial and generational—and do so in a way that is not lip service, but instead an embrace of authentic diversity.

 

Disenchantment: To lose the habit of paying attention to the Holy.

The book that has most influenced my thought on disenchantment is Chasing Magic Eels by Richard Beck.

The book of Esther is one of only two books in the Bible that never mention God. As such, it is an excellent scripture to read to consider how the people of God can be faithful while navigating the world with secular lenses.

I believe Disenchantment is the greatest challenge of the Church. In order for faith to survive, as something more than a social curiosity or something that is one step removed from our actual experiences, we need to find way to notice God at work in the world and embrace and renew habits of enchantment.

 

Conclusion:

              So that’s what these remaining 4 bible studies will look like. We’ll start off in scripture, wrap our minds around one of the 4Ds, notice the challenges they bring to being followers of Jesus Christ, and then conclude with opportunities for renewal hiding in plain sight. In short, this Bible Study is a call for the Church to see the world as it is and change to meet those challenges. It is a call for us to become a Partnering, Nimble, Authentically Diverse, and Enchanted Church!

A Defense of Lutheran Social Ministries

                 Did you ever wonder why, in the movie Gran Torino, Walt Kowalski blames the Lutherans for settling the Hmong in Michigan? Isn’t it curious that one of the subplots of the book Silence of the Lambs is that Clarice Starling was raised in a Lutheran orphanage in Montana? Why would these works of fiction both single out Lutherans as do-gooders in American society? Because it was good writing, it, even in such small details, points to realities about America. In America when refugees need to be resettled, the Lutherans will be there; when orphans need to be cared for, the Lutherans will be there.

                You see, there are nearly 300 Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations scattered throughout the United States doing good. 1 out of every 50 Americas are helped by these organizations. Think of it, it is as if the entire state of Missouri or Indiana have been assisted by Lutherans.

One of the neat things about Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations is that they are one of the few places where the conservative LC-MS and the liberal ELCA still work together. We may disagree about: Bishops, women in ministry, gay marriage, ecumenical relationships, and a bunch of other things, but we sure as hell are going to help the least, last, and lost, even when it means working together.

                The previous congregation I served partnered with Lutheran Social Ministries New Jersey (LSM-NJ) to create affordable housing for seniors. At my current congregation we have a long history of collecting school supplies for poor children through LSM-NJ. I have friends who have adopted their children through Lutheran adoption agencies, I once knew a security guard who had been a “lost boy” in Somalia and was transformed into a productive tax paying American citizen, thanks to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (now Global Refugee).

                I bring all this up, because the good and faithful work of Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations are currently under attack.

                Now, I am not surprised that Musk, an heir to a South African emerald mine, and Flynn, a registered agent of Turkey and Russia who has an eight-figure bank account, don’t regularly rub shoulders with people who have had their lives made whole by Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations.

                I’m also not surprised that they are trying to make good on their promise of cutting two trillion dollars from the US budget through the process of creative destruction. They’re essentially borrowing a playbook from Richard Gere’s character at the start of Pretty Woman. The only difference is, instead of grabbing US businesses and throwing them against the wall until money falls out, they’re smashing US institutions to see if they’re piggy banks.

                What I am surprised about, is how lazy they are. It is obvious to anyone with eyes that some intern was reading through a spreadsheet, noticed a payment to Lutherans and didn’t understand it. Then someone pressed Ctrl+F and found that there were other payments to Lutheran Organizations. From there they went directly onto social media at 2am and picked a fight. They scare quoted these good and faithful organizations as “Lutheran” and “religious”, they falsely accused Lutherans of money laundering, and declared the payments the federal government makes to these organizations to be illegal.

                All they needed to do was google the organizations. Every one of them publicly publishes their budgets and tax information (they are all required to post their 990s). The payments are for grants the organizations have applied for and received, the payments are for services rendered, the payments are for contracts state and federal governments have entered into with these organizations.

                Or you know what, Musk is rather well off, I bet he has a plane; he could get out of his smelly DOGE office and go and see what these organizations do. He could go to New Orleans, step beyond the tourist areas, and talk to folk about Katrina—Lutheran Disaster Relief was the last organization out. Or go to communities along the Red River and ask them who had their back; he could go to Red Bank, NJ and they’ll tell him a thing or two—might even be less polite than the Midwesterners about it. Go to a food bank, after care or elder care—they know the score.

                Here is the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA’s response:

                And I would ask for a secondary response from all of my readers. Call your Representative and Senators. Tell them this libelous and knee jerk attack shows that Elon Musk does not have the wherewithal to be involved in DOGE, or any other aspect of the US government. Ask them to defend these vital organizations and stand with the 2% of their constituents who are most in need. Lutheran Social Ministry Organizations are part of the fabric of America, tearing them out at a whim will damage our country.