What Makes You Think You’re Safe?
This is going to be one of those classic three-point sermons. If you get the three points, you get to go home! Point number one: We are all called. Point number two: God knows whom God is dealing with. Point number three: The only appropriate response is “Hineni.” Now, the logical thing would be to tackle these points in order… and we will… but in reverse order. So, we begin with “Hineni,” the only appropriate response.
Three years ago, I talked to the children in this sanctuary about the word “Hineni.” On that particular Sunday, I preached on the gospel text, which told the story of Jesus calling of the first disciples. Today, we are focused on the Old Testament text… the story of Samuel… and, once again, that word pops up. Three times in the story of Samuel, God calls… and each time, Samuel responds, “Hineni… here I am.” Three simple syllables… in English… or in Hebrew… “Hineni… here I am.” It is the classic response of the ordinary people in the Bible whom God calls to serve him. Abraham said “Hineni” to God when God asked for total obedience. Mary, the mother of Jesus, said “Hineni” to the Angel Gabriel when he told her that she was chosen to be the mother of God. In our text today, Samuel says “Hineni” when he is called to be a prophet. None of these ordinary people knew what God was asking of them when God called them. They did not know what would be demanded of them in the weeks… months… and years ahead. They put their lives… and their future… in God’s hands with this simple response… “Hineni”… and amazing things happened. Here is my first question: You have heard God calling to you… for John Calvin himself said that we would not be in church on a Sunday morning if we did not hear the voice of God calling us. You have heard God calling to you. What has your response been?
Point number two: God knows whom God is dealing with. In the first six verses of Psalm 139, that Sylma Smith read to us this morning, the psalmist stands in wonder that the God who knows his every thought… word… and deed remains with him and does not reject him. The wonder of the psalmist is real… for a powerful fear of ours is that if people really knew who we were, they would not like us. We conceal our less desirable thoughts and behaviors under the cover of polite and acceptable behavior. We are afraid to admit to ourselves… much less to anyone else… who we truly are… for we fear abandonment by those we love and respect. Yet Psalm 139 breaths a spirit that is different from that.
Psalm 139 exudes overwhelming confidence and trust in God. The psalmist is overwhelmed with gratitude and satisfaction because God knows him and claims him. Fully known and yet fully loved, the psalmist exults in the intimacy of being known and cared for. This is a foretaste of heaven… where we will know as we have been known. Psalm 139 breathes the air of confident intimacy… like that of a couple who has been married for a long, long time. Nothing is hidden from this omniscient God… and yet this God’s love knows no bounds.
God knows whom God is dealing with and, perhaps, we’ve lost sight of this. We show up on Sunday… having brushed our teeth and combed our hair… and we somehow imagine that God doesn’t see… doesn’t know… the rumpled fragment of humanity that pulled itself out of bed this morning. In fact, the idea of the church as a place of refuge for the disinherited… or the disenfranchised… is an image that has faded into the murky gloom of nostalgia. The new, contemporary… and sanitized… image is that of a homogeneous group of successful people looking to make business or social contacts while projecting a respectable picture of propriety and morality. This myth that we perpetuate insures the continuance of a way of doing church that is often detached from the pain of real life. Our reality is dealt with by denial and cover-up. Our truth is sacrificed upon the twin altars of dishonesty and secrets… secrets we dare not tell.
In his book, Telling Secrets, Frederick Buechner models… with painful honesty… the power of story and the liberty that truth brings. In telling us that "by and large, the human family all has the same secrets..." Buechner exposes an excuse we have all used to avoid disclosure; namely, and I quote: "my secrets are so dark and so myriad that people would disown me if they knew the truth." Ironically, the opposite is true. Those individuals who are willing to risk self-disclosure are actually woven into the thread of depravity common to the entire human family. True solidarity with humanity comes not from a common image of who we wish we were but from who we really are. Yet our fears keep our secrets hidden… and keep us isolated.
The followers of Christ want the church to be a place where they can satisfy the need to be a part of… and inside of… a group. The desire for us to belong… to flock together… is innate...at least until we become hurt. Unfortunately, as Buechner points out, "The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a dysfunctional family." This leads in turn to a terrible irony: we are at once united by… and repelled by… our common depravity. In Buechner's words: "what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition… that what we hunger for… perhaps more than anything else… is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else." To break away from this fear requires a step into the unknown.
Do you know any Christian who does not measure up to what you believe a Christian should be? Do you measure up? The amazing thing about God is not that God calls us… but that God knows us… and still calls us. God knew that Jeremiah had a short temper and no people skills when God called him to be a prophet. God knew that Moses was a poor public speaker… that he stuttered… and that he had killed a man when God called him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. God knew that Noah had a drinking problem when God called him to build an ark. Jesus knew that Peter was thoughtless, impulsive and opinionated when he called him to be a disciple. God knew that Saul… who later became the Apostle Paul… had a big ego and was very judgmental when God called him to be a missionary to the Gentiles. And God knows whatever secrets you think you are keeping from others… and, in calling you, God is saying that he loves despite your faults… and that God agrees to work with you to prepare you for whatever it is that God is calling you to do. I have often shared the quote that “God does not call the equipped… God equips those who are called.”
That brings us to point number one: we are all called. What makes you think that you’re safe? It certainly can’t be your age! Samuel was just a boy when he was called by God to be a prophet. Abraham was eighty years old when he was called to set out on a journey to a new land. David was just a boy when he was anointed king of Israel... and when he killed Goliath. Noah was 400 years old when he built the ark. Most of you know that I was past the age of forty before God called me. I learned that older people can still live in dormitories and survive… can still take tests and pass… can still begin a new career. And I certainly wasn’t the oldest. One of my seminary classmates was eighty-five years old… almost twice my age! Are you using your age as an excuse? God knows how old you are.
It certainly can’t be birth order either! Yes, Samuel was the oldest… the first child of his barren mother, Hannah. But David was the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons and Joseph was the eleventh of Jacob’s twelve sons. Are you expecting someone else in your family to answer God’s call? I was. Most of you know that my older brother, Ken, is a preacher and pastor of a church in Illinois. That gave God one out of four of the children… or twenty-five percent of our clan. He was the oldest and it was appropriate for him to follow in Dad’s footsteps. I thought that the Bryant family had given way more than a ten-percent tithe to God… and that let me off the hook. But that’s not how God saw it.
The important thing to remember… going back to point number three… is that “Hineni” is the only appropriate response. Any other response might get you time… time in the belly of a fish, such as Jonah experienced when he ran in the opposite direction from where God wanted him to go… or time baking in the hot sun, such as Jonah had when he got angry with God for God’s decision to spare the city of Nineveh from destruction… time alone in the desert with no food, such as Elijah experienced when he ran from Queen Jezebel.
What’s your excuse? What makes you think that you’re safe? Whatever it is, it is an illusion… for we are all called… and God knows whom God is dealing with… and “Hineni” is the only appropriate response. Have you said it to God? “Hineni… here I am.” Whisper it. Scream it. Sing it. It doesn’t matter. Say it today. Say it now… and see what amazing things God can do with your life. Suddenly, the impossible will be possible… and the improbable a certainty.
I can tell you that the Sharon Bryant who stands before you today is not the Sharon Bryant who said “Hineni” to God. That Sharon Bryant told God… even as she said “Hineni”… that God would have to take her as she was… that she was never, ever going to seminary… and that, if she did, that she would never, ever serve as pastor of a church... and that, if she did, she would never, ever preach every Sunday morning. But she did say “Hineni”… and then she watched God do all the rest.
I don’t know what God is calling you to do at this time in your life. But I do know that God is calling you… that God knows whom God is dealing with… and that the only appropriate response is “Hineni.” Say it. Think it. Pray it. And God will do the rest. Amen.
1 Samuel 3:1-10; Psalm 139