Psalm: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Old Testament: 1 Samuel 3:1-10, 11-20
Gospel: John 1:43-51
Epistle: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
I was thinking today about what to talk about and what
themes this week emerge from these four Scriptures and I came around to the fact
that we are celebrating tomorrow the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. Two
of our texts, 1 Samuel 3 and John 1 are about people being called by the Lord for
his work. We are probably familiar with the two accounts.
In 1 Samuel 3, Samuel is a young boy, maybe 12, who is serving with Eli in the Tabernacle. He hears someone calling out his name at night three times and each time he runs to Eli to ask what is wrong. Eli was an older man and we might assume that he had physical needs for which Samuel stayed close to help him. Finally, Eli realizes that it is the Lord who is calling Samuel and tells him that if he hears the call again then he should say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” The call comes again and the Lord reveals to Samuel a message of judgment upon Eli and his sons. Eli’s sons were desecrating the sacrifices to the Lord and sleeping with the women who served in religious ceremonies. They were taking advantage of their position in the religious and political hierarchy and Eli failed to take the appropriate steps to stop them and punish them. Eli had already been told that the Lord was going to judge his family and remove them their office, and now the same message came to a 12 year old boy who was just a lowly temple helper. Samuel had the choice whether to tell his mentor, father-figure, and boss that he would be judged and cursed by God. We know that Samuel was faithful to deliver the message, but it couldn’t have been an easy choice. This early message prepared Samuel for later in life when he had to tell Saul that the kingship would be taken from him and given to David. Samuel was not afraid to deliver the hard messages that the Lord asked him to deliver.
In the Gospel of John, these few verses tell of the
calling of Philip and Nathanael while the passage right before this, Jesus called
Andrew and his brother Simon Peter. I don’t know if the Apostles knew what
they were getting themselves into when they accepted Jesus’ call to “follow Me.”
I suspect that they had no idea, but we do see some trepidation in Nathanael’s
words, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” The disciples started
following Jesus early in his ministry when he wasn’t well-known, he came from a
backwater town, was the son of carpenter, and most likely wasn’t formally trained
by a recognized rabbi. Following Jesus was a risk in the beginning and it never
got easier for them. We know that later many were killed by the civil authorities, for example, John the Baptist early in Jesus’
ministry.
What does all of this have to do with Martin Luther King
Jr? For starters, we know that MLK was a preacher and a pastor of a local
church before he was a national figure and civil rights leader. Martin Luther
King Jr. was shaped and called by Christ to do the work set before him. This is
not celebrated or mentioned in our elementary schools and civic parades when we
commemorate his life. His Christianity is mostly ignored or brushed aside.
Martin Luther King Jr. falls in a long line of Saints and Martyrs including from the
very beginning when God first had a relationship with Adam, and then Noah,
Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and Esther into the New Testament where Jesus called
men and women to leave their former lives and their family to follow him. Even now, in the Age of the Church, God called people such as Augustine, St.
Benedict, Martin Luther, Jan Hus, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the countless
unnamed and unknown individuals who daily stand-up for their faith and have
been persecuted or killed for it.
When God calls it is not always easy or fun. In fact, it is
often just the opposite. Yet, it is full of God’s provisions, grace, and the
peace that passes all understanding. I want to leave us with a quote from
Martin Luther King Jr. as a way to illustrate this point. I purposefully extended
the passage because it matches the reading from 1 Cor. 6 about the
importance of the human body as the temple of the Holy Spirit so well. We didn’t have a
chance to discuss that passage, but check it out if you desire. So, enjoy
these words from MLK which come not from his well-known “I Have a Dream” speech,
but from a sermon in front of a church in Chicago.
But before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don’t plan to run for any political office. I don’t plan to do anything but remain a preacher.
And what I’m doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man. Not merely his soul, but his body. It’s all right to talk about heaven. I talk about it because I believe firmly in immortality. But you’ve got to talk about the earth. It’s all right to talk about long white robes over yonder, but I want a suit and some shoes to wear down here. It’s all right to talk about the streets flowing with milk and honey in heaven, but I want some food to eat down here. It’s even all right to talk about the new Jerusalem. But one day we must begin to talk about the new Chicago, the new Atlanta, the new New York, the new America.[i]
Grace and Peace.
[i] I
found this quote on Wikipedia, but found the full text here: http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/why_jesus_called_a_man_a_fool/
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