Jana Childers - "With Both Ears Tingling" (December 13, 1998)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | I have only been in North Carolina | 0:21 |
a scant 13 or 14 hours and let me say that already | 0:22 | |
I have been fussed and puttered and clucked over | 0:27 | |
by Ken Nelson and his very helpful staff | 0:31 | |
here at the Duke University Chapel | 0:34 | |
and I've begun to remember what it is, | 0:36 | |
what is meant by that famous phrase, | 0:39 | |
Southern hospitality. | 0:41 | |
I appreciate it. | 0:43 | |
I am grateful for the way that you have lavished it | 0:44 | |
upon a Californian. | 0:46 | |
"As an example of suffering and patience beloved, | 0:53 | |
"take the prophets," the epistle of James says, | 0:57 | |
and we are taking his advice this morning. | 1:01 | |
We are taking a page from the story | 1:04 | |
of the prophet Samuel and his mentor Eli, | 1:06 | |
people who knew something about waiting out | 1:10 | |
God's long, long silences. | 1:14 | |
People who knew something about preparing | 1:18 | |
to receive the Word. | 1:20 | |
Let us pray. | 1:24 | |
Lord, be in our words and in our understanding. | 1:30 | |
Be in our hearts, and in the loves we bring. | 1:35 | |
Be in our lives, and set us to praise | 1:39 | |
for we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. | 1:43 | |
Like a guy in a pornographic t-shirt carrying a boombox | 1:50 | |
through a crowded street. | 1:54 | |
Like a young woman in what used to be called polite society | 1:59 | |
using language that used to be called shocking. | 2:02 | |
Like the king of trash talk radio | 2:08 | |
emitting bodily functions sounds into his microphone | 2:11 | |
and broadcasting them at 50,000 watts, | 2:14 | |
I guess it would make your ears tingle. | 2:17 | |
I guess it would make your ears tingle | 2:22 | |
if the Word of the Lord came to you and said, | 2:24 | |
"I'm firing good old what's his name," | 2:27 | |
Mr. Dithers, Professor Whitehead, | 2:30 | |
Reverend Trueblood, President Smith. | 2:33 | |
(laughing) | 2:36 | |
"I'm firing good old what's his name, | 2:41 | |
"he's weak and he's fat and he can't keep | 2:43 | |
"his own kid's hands out of the offering plates, | 2:45 | |
"this is it for him, out with him, in with you." | 2:47 | |
I guess it would make your ears tingle. | 2:54 | |
If the Word of the Lord, having been scant and scarce, | 2:57 | |
having been searched out and strained for in vain | 3:00 | |
for all of the advents that you knew anything about | 3:03 | |
suddenly spoke up. | 3:06 | |
If the Lord God, Jehovah Godself | 3:09 | |
suddenly stood up and said, | 3:11 | |
"I need someone to speak for me here, | 3:15 | |
"now after all these years of silence, | 3:19 | |
"all the waiting, | 3:22 | |
"I need someone during this leaderless time, | 3:23 | |
"I need someone, and you're it." | 3:27 | |
I guess it would make your ears tingle | 3:33 | |
and your toes twitch. | 3:35 | |
I guess it would make me do more than tingle and twitch. | 3:38 | |
I don't know about you but I guess I'd be at the library | 3:40 | |
fortifying myself with textual commentaries. | 3:44 | |
I'd be hunkering down in that small pool of light | 3:48 | |
in the middle of my desk, | 3:51 | |
searching out the jots and tittles, | 3:52 | |
reading between the lines and behind the text, | 3:55 | |
looking for something to clear my ears | 3:59 | |
and calm my feet, | 4:03 | |
looking in short for an out. | 4:06 | |
Not that there aren't worse things | 4:13 | |
than receiving a word from the Lord | 4:15 | |
in the wee small hours of the morning. | 4:17 | |
Not that there aren't worse things | 4:19 | |
than what happened to the young boy Samuel in this story. | 4:22 | |
Actually, I've come to recently realize | 4:29 | |
that someone who has officially crossed | 4:33 | |
that ugly black line in the sand called 40, | 4:35 | |
can't go on just indefinitely reading this text | 4:40 | |
and identifying with a 12-year-old fledging prophet. | 4:44 | |
In fact, interestingly enough, | 4:49 | |
I noticed this year out of what is certainly many years | 4:51 | |
that I have consulted the same commentary, | 4:55 | |
that 40 is the dividing line for those of us | 4:58 | |
who are reading this text | 5:01 | |
and identifying with its characters. | 5:02 | |
You see, the word na'ar used to describe Samuel here | 5:05 | |
is the Hebrew word for a male of any age | 5:10 | |
between infancy and 40. | 5:14 | |
So, even though we don't know that Samuel | 5:19 | |
was 12 years old that morning | 5:21 | |
when the voice of Yahweh woke him up before dawn, | 5:23 | |
that's Josephus' idea. | 5:26 | |
We don't know that he was 12 years old, | 5:28 | |
we do know that he was younger than I am, | 5:30 | |
younger than we, well some of us are. | 5:33 | |
We do know that he was the student in this story | 5:37 | |
and that Eli was the homiletics professor. | 5:39 | |
Actually, you know once you get used to the idea, | 5:46 | |
you have to admit that the role of Eli | 5:48 | |
is an easier fit for a lot of us. | 5:51 | |
Regardless of our role in our particular church community, | 5:56 | |
it is just easier for us to identify with Eli | 6:02 | |
than it was ever for us to identify with Samuel. | 6:06 | |
It's just not the case for most of us, | 6:10 | |
as it was for the young prophet Samuel, | 6:12 | |
that, as First Samuel says a little further on, | 6:15 | |
quote, "God has never let one of his words fall | 6:18 | |
"to the ground." | 6:23 | |
I know a lot of preachers who would like | 6:27 | |
to be able to say that about their preaching, | 6:28 | |
but identifying with Samuel is just not easy for most of us. | 6:31 | |
We're more like the poor old well-intentioned Eli. | 6:35 | |
Eli, whose worst fault was not being able to control | 6:39 | |
what the text calls his greedy-eyed children. | 6:43 | |
Eli, who cared about the temple and the ark, | 6:49 | |
who died grieving for the captured ark, | 6:53 | |
who wanted to defend it, | 6:56 | |
but who was prevented from doing so | 7:01 | |
by the fact that he was too overweight, | 7:03 | |
as the NSRV comes right out and says. | 7:07 | |
Well, it's probably the case that | 7:15 | |
both Elis and Samuels | 7:19 | |
occur in every congregation. | 7:21 | |
Maybe both, even in the breast of most seminarians | 7:25 | |
or Div School students, I don't know, | 7:29 | |
but I'm interested in what we can learn | 7:31 | |
from the original models whose story is told | 7:34 | |
in today's text, | 7:37 | |
what we can learn that might help | 7:38 | |
the next generation of the church, | 7:41 | |
that might help our children and our grandchildren | 7:45 | |
avoid living out this old, old story | 7:48 | |
of spiritual drought. | 7:52 | |
You have to hope, don't you, | 8:00 | |
that the next nameless generation, | 8:01 | |
you know, the one that follows the Boomers | 8:04 | |
and the Busters, the Challengers and the Calculators, | 8:06 | |
Generation X and what's now being called Generation Z, | 8:08 | |
what's just starting to be called the Millennials, | 8:12 | |
people born after 1982, the Millennials, | 8:14 | |
you have to hope that this next generation, | 8:18 | |
whatever you call them, | 8:21 | |
might indeed actually be a Samuel generation, | 8:22 | |
a speak-Lord-for-thy-servant-heareth generation, | 8:29 | |
a be-it-unto-me-according-to-thy-Word generation, | 8:31 | |
a Lord-speak-to-me-that-I-may-speak generation, | 8:36 | |
that has the ability to hear | 8:43 | |
and pronounce God's Word of wholeness | 8:44 | |
to the fragmented world that we are leaving them | 8:49 | |
in our wills. | 8:51 | |
Lord knows we could hardly have done a better job | 8:54 | |
setting the stage, | 8:57 | |
the Word of the Lord was rare | 8:58 | |
at the close of the 20th century, | 9:00 | |
there was no frequent vision. | 9:02 | |
I have heard it said that the two millennia, | 9:09 | |
which followed Abraham, belonged to God. | 9:12 | |
The two millennia which followed Christ, | 9:16 | |
belonged to him, | 9:19 | |
and that the next two millennia, | 9:20 | |
the two millennia on which we have our toes, | 9:21 | |
might very well be the era of the Holy Spirit, | 9:25 | |
the era of the one who speaks God's Word | 9:31 | |
and spreads abroad God's visions, | 9:34 | |
maybe it could be. | 9:37 | |
The next generation could indeed | 9:40 | |
be a generation tuned to the voice | 9:42 | |
of the Holy Spirit. | 9:44 | |
A generation of Samuels. | 9:47 | |
You have to hope so if there's anything in you | 9:49 | |
of the fond old indulgent heart of the teacher Eli, | 9:51 | |
you have to hope so. | 9:57 | |
Of course, it's not necessarily easy to picture. | 10:02 | |
There's a trend building in the media | 10:06 | |
these last couple of years. | 10:08 | |
It's as if a number of essayists and pundits | 10:09 | |
have conspired to tag this generation of American life | 10:14 | |
with the less than flattering nickname | 10:18 | |
of the Whatever Generation. | 10:21 | |
Some speak of the 90's even as the Whatever Decade. | 10:26 | |
It's not hard to imagine how the powers that be | 10:32 | |
have arrived at such a nickname. | 10:35 | |
Whatever. | 10:37 | |
You hear it on radio talk shows, | 10:39 | |
sports shows, and college class streams, | 10:41 | |
and on Saturday Night Live, | 10:43 | |
complex, conceptual thought, | 10:45 | |
whole philosophies and passionately held positions | 10:48 | |
laid out in detail to be dismissed by three syllables, | 10:52 | |
whatever. | 10:57 | |
Time Magazine's Richard Rosenblatt calls it | 11:02 | |
the word of the decade. | 11:04 | |
James Morris of the Woodrow Wilson Center | 11:07 | |
and columnist George F. Will are also interested | 11:09 | |
in the subject. | 11:12 | |
"We," they say, "who live out of a dread of hypocrisy | 11:14 | |
"and a love of self-expression, | 11:18 | |
"we are becoming slaves to the tyranny of nonchalance." | 11:22 | |
Whatever. | 11:28 | |
Morris warns, "The word draws you in like a plumped pillow | 11:32 | |
"and folds around your brain, | 11:35 | |
"it's all capitulation." | 11:37 | |
No one wants to make a judgment, | 11:39 | |
to impose a standard, to call conduct unacceptable. | 11:41 | |
Dennis Rodman's America, some have called it. | 11:47 | |
"We have become a nation," as one commentator said, | 11:53 | |
"chatting away on cellular phones in public, | 11:56 | |
"unconcerned for privacy or dignity, | 11:59 | |
"where the future stares blankly at us | 12:02 | |
"through the eyes of fragile young men/women | 12:04 | |
"in Calvin Klein ads." | 12:08 | |
Whatever. | 12:12 | |
What would it take, I ask you, | 12:19 | |
what do you suppose it would take | 12:22 | |
for the Whatever Era to become a | 12:24 | |
speak-Lord-for-thy-servant-heareth era? | 12:28 | |
To turn the generation known for their shoulder shrugs, | 12:32 | |
all flinging out and pushing away, | 12:35 | |
to a generation known for bowing their heads? | 12:38 | |
To turn those known for their vituperative language | 12:43 | |
for what's called, in my husband's college classroom, | 12:46 | |
running the numbers, | 12:49 | |
to preaching the Word? | 12:53 | |
What would it take to turn the generation | 12:56 | |
that is staying away from organized religion in droves | 12:57 | |
to a generation that would get behind you in line? | 13:02 | |
Whatever does help people to hear the Word of God | 13:11 | |
and pass it on, | 13:15 | |
what helped Samuel? | 13:18 | |
What helped Samuel? | 13:22 | |
Well, the fact is that when the Word of God came | 13:24 | |
to the next generation in today's text, | 13:27 | |
when the Word of God came to the na'ar | 13:30 | |
it's interesting to note that it did not go straight | 13:35 | |
into Samuel's ear, enlighten his mind, purify his heart, | 13:37 | |
and come out his mouth. | 13:41 | |
It did not send him straight to seminary. | 13:43 | |
It did not set him praying. | 13:46 | |
It did not start him preaching. | 13:47 | |
It sent him back to sleep. | 13:49 | |
Maybe there's an encouraging word here | 13:54 | |
for those of us who are concerned about this particular | 13:56 | |
peculiar era in the church's life. | 14:00 | |
When the Word of God came to Samuel, | 14:02 | |
it had to come repeatedly. | 14:05 | |
When the Word of God came to Samuel, | 14:08 | |
it had to come repeatedly, | 14:10 | |
and it had to be interpreted by a weak and fat old teacher. | 14:13 | |
I asked a very close friend of mine | 14:24 | |
who teaches public speaking to 19 and 20 year olds | 14:26 | |
for a living and who happens not to be weak or fat, | 14:29 | |
what he thought was peculiar and particular | 14:34 | |
about this generation, | 14:37 | |
about what they seem to need? | 14:38 | |
This man, who has given the last 20 years of his life, | 14:42 | |
including more than half of its weekends | 14:45 | |
to coaching the young to find their voices | 14:47 | |
and their feet, paused. | 14:49 | |
"The problem with the kids I teach," he said, | 14:54 | |
"is that they've been beaten down, | 14:56 | |
"instead of lifted up." | 14:57 | |
But what they need is not so much praise, | 15:01 | |
not so much what we call | 15:03 | |
in the California public school system, | 15:04 | |
"self-esteem building." | 15:06 | |
What they need is someone to sit down with them and say, | 15:10 | |
"This is what I see in you. | 15:13 | |
"This is what I see in you and here's a place to start. | 15:17 | |
"This is what I see in you and here's a place to stand. | 15:21 | |
"This is what I see in you, | 15:26 | |
"it's essential, unique, precious. | 15:27 | |
"This is what I see in you, | 15:33 | |
"and it is not a whatever thing." | 15:37 | |
Maybe the thing that this flailing generation needs | 15:44 | |
is an Eli to say the very thing that was said to Samuel | 15:50 | |
every day of his life from the day he was born, | 15:54 | |
"This is what I see in you." | 15:57 | |
This is what I see in you, Tom, | 16:01 | |
you have a sharp mind and a quick intuition, | 16:03 | |
a gift for storytelling. | 16:07 | |
This is what I see in you, Linda, | 16:10 | |
you have a deep heart, the gift of empathy, | 16:12 | |
an ability to draw people to you. | 16:16 | |
This is what I see in you, Steve, | 16:19 | |
you have the gift of comforting, | 16:21 | |
leading, making your own fun. | 16:23 | |
This is what I see in you, Sam. | 16:27 | |
Barbara Brown Taylor, a preacher that I know | 16:36 | |
that this congregation is familiar with, | 16:38 | |
tells in her own story of coming to faith | 16:41 | |
that she was not a child raised in the church. | 16:45 | |
"At 12," Barbara says, "I took to organized religion | 16:50 | |
"like a pig to mud, | 16:53 | |
"which makes me wonder if puberty does not unlock | 16:56 | |
"some doors of the soul along with the doors of the body." | 16:58 | |
She gives most of the credit for her epiphany | 17:04 | |
to a single, young pastor who, as she says, | 17:06 | |
"became a regular guest at our dinner table. | 17:12 | |
"He was vital and funny and could catch an airborn fly | 17:14 | |
"with one hand. | 17:17 | |
"He listened to me when I talked | 17:20 | |
"and let me lead him on tours of my projects | 17:22 | |
"around the house. | 17:24 | |
"He seemed able, when he looked at me, | 17:25 | |
"to see a person and not only a child | 17:29 | |
"and I loved him for it." | 17:31 | |
This is what I see in you, Barbara. | 17:37 | |
I knew a college professor once, | 17:42 | |
who every June would sit in a circle | 17:43 | |
with his graduating seniors, | 17:45 | |
the ones that he had mentored. | 17:48 | |
There were rituals, remarks, and goodbyes, | 17:51 | |
and the circle ended with the old Eli | 17:55 | |
looking briefly into the eyes of each student | 17:57 | |
and leaving them with one word. | 18:01 | |
This is what I see in you, Debra, | 18:04 | |
you are ebullient. | 18:07 | |
This is what I see in you, Mark, | 18:09 | |
you are courageous. | 18:11 | |
This is what I see in you, Jenna. | 18:13 | |
We may not, of course, always like what our Elis tell us. | 18:20 | |
The Word of God is not always easy on the ears | 18:25 | |
or the ego, but we need it. | 18:27 | |
So many of us need it. | 18:30 | |
Most everybody needs it. | 18:32 | |
We need somebody to say to us, | 18:33 | |
"This is what I see in you." | 18:37 | |
Maybe when the family gathers for Christmas this year | 18:42 | |
and you see those teenagers that you only see once a year, | 18:45 | |
maybe when the youth group comes caroling | 18:50 | |
or the paperboy is lingering on your doorstep | 18:52 | |
for that extra moment to get his annual bonus, | 18:55 | |
maybe then, maybe you, like Eli, | 18:58 | |
could move this old world | 19:01 | |
an inch farther through its long advent. | 19:03 | |
An inch closer to the day when God's Word explodes | 19:11 | |
across the screen of a new generation. | 19:17 | |
In his new book, the eminent psychologist James Hillman | 19:25 | |
makes the case for what he calls | 19:28 | |
the Acorn Theory of Human Development. | 19:29 | |
"Each one of us," he says, "embodies something essential, | 19:33 | |
"some seed, some acorn, from which our lives will grow. | 19:38 | |
"At a single moment something calls us to a particular path, | 19:45 | |
"something like an enunciation takes place | 19:50 | |
"and we begin to put together the pieces of our lives | 19:53 | |
"into a basic coherent plot." | 19:56 | |
The idea is not original to Hillman, of course. | 20:03 | |
Plato's version has each soul | 20:05 | |
choosing its lot in life from heaven | 20:08 | |
and then passing through the Plain of Lethe, | 20:11 | |
the Plain of Oblivion or forgetfulness, | 20:14 | |
so that the destinies they had chosen for themselves | 20:17 | |
would be forgotten by the time they arrive on Earth. | 20:20 | |
Luckily, in Plato's version, each soul | 20:26 | |
is accompanied to Earth by a demon | 20:28 | |
whose job it is to remember and goad that soul | 20:31 | |
towards its appointed path. | 20:34 | |
Maybe you don't particularly care to think of yourselves | 20:39 | |
as a demon in the lives of the young people | 20:42 | |
of your community of faith. | 20:45 | |
There is another version of the myth, | 20:51 | |
one that's a bit easier on the ears, | 20:53 | |
one that's more congenial with First Samuel sensibilities. | 20:55 | |
It's a Jewish legend that claims that the evidence | 21:01 | |
for the soul's prenatal forgetting | 21:04 | |
is pressed right onto your upper lip. | 21:06 | |
According to this version of the story, | 21:13 | |
the crevice below your nose | 21:14 | |
is where the angel pressed its forefinger | 21:17 | |
to seal your lips. | 21:20 | |
That little indentation is the only thing left, | 21:25 | |
according to the story, | 21:27 | |
to remind you of your pre-existent life | 21:29 | |
and your own unique mission. | 21:32 | |
So it is, the legend claims, that when we conjure up | 21:36 | |
insight or are lost in thought, | 21:39 | |
our fingers go up to that significant dent. | 21:44 | |
Children are not born knowing, the legends tell us. | 21:53 | |
They need to be told. | 21:58 | |
The next generation of God's people stands before us, | 22:03 | |
ears ringing, shoulders shrugging, | 22:07 | |
fingering their upper lip. | 22:11 | |
Let us not leave them wondering. | 22:14 | |
Let us tell them every chance we get | 22:16 | |
what we know is true about their soul's predestination, | 22:19 | |
that they are made by God, for God, | 22:22 | |
and that they should expect to be awakened | 22:26 | |
at any hour of the night by that God's voice. | 22:28 | |
Let us tell them that they can expect a call | 22:33 | |
that will put a vision of the future in their minds, | 22:37 | |
a word in their mouth, and set both ears tingling. | 22:40 | |
My brothers and sisters, let us remember | 22:48 | |
that we believe it ourselves. | 22:51 |