It's a blog!

I was looking at the Scriptures coming up for the next few months, and decided we could go Old Testament or we could go New Testament.... OR we could do one during Sunday services, and one in some other form. Like, for instance, a blog. So I'll be posting some thoughts here about our Old Testament passages over the next few months.

A pastor friend of mine is calling this "The Summer of Samuel" because the passages come from the books of Samuel (there are two). Most of them will be about David (yes, the book is called Samuel, and it's mostly about David - it's weird). Today, though, we get to meet Samuel himself.

The first reading is 1 Samuel 3:1-18, which you can read here. A little history here: Samuel's mother Hannah prayed for a long, long time to have a child. She promised God to send the child to grow up in the temple. So when she finally did have a child - Samuel - she kept her promise, and Samuel grew up in the temple. Eli was the head priest, and he was good, but his sons were not so good.

And then this story happens. It's a very memorable story - Samuel is asleep and then the voice of God wakes him up. He thinks it's Eli and goes to see what he wants, but Eli doesn't know what he's talking about. This happens again. Finally on the third time, Eli catches on - God is calling Samuel. So he tells Samuel how to respond: "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."

So far, a very nice story. And we can think about how we hear God's voice but don't really notice that it's God, and we can think about how God speaks to each one of us and calls us to live God's message of love for the world. Definitely. Great.

But this isn't where the story ends. God tells Samuel that the house of Eli is going to be cut off from God completely. Very bad news for Eli. And of course, it falls to Samuel to tell Eli this very bad news. This is like Luke Skywalker telling Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Hey, thanks for the training and everything, but I found out last night that you're being cut off from Jedi-ness forever. Sorry, dude."

Even beyond the awkwardness of being the bearer of bad news, let's look at what the message actually is: the house of Eli is to be punished forever, and can never get back on God's good side. This is not how we usually think of God! We talk about God's forgiveness, that there's nothing that can separate us from the love of God (see Romans 8), so what is going on here?

I don't have a perfect answer for that question. It's hard for me to imagine a God who would say something like this. In fact, I'm not so sure I would want a relationship with a God who would say something like this. That's not what love looks like. And overwhelmingly in the Bible, in Christian tradition, in my own experiences of God and in the experiences that other people have of God, God is love.

Maybe our conception of love has changed so much over the past 3000 years that this is how people understood love at one time. Maybe the story that we have doesn't have God's words quite right. Maybe this truly is a part of God that I simply don't understand, and Jesus has changed the game to protect humanity from that part of God.

It's interesting that the sons of Eli were in trouble for taking what was supposed to be God's (see 1 Samuel 2). They would take the sacrifices for themselves instead of distributing them according to what God wanted. In this passage that I don't understand, maybe one thing to learn is to not try to take what is God's for myself. It's okay to not understand God (or even the Bible) perfectly: perfect understanding belongs to God. I can question, I can search, I can ask God to help me understand. But if I believe that I understand completely, then I'm putting myself in God's place. So today, I pray for patience, faith, and hope, even when I don't get it. Lord, hear my prayer.