Thursday After the Baptism of Our Lord (Year A) RCL

1 Samuel 2:21-25, Matthew 25:1-13

The picture given to us in this text of 1 Samuel is a reflection on the coexistence of the Old and New man within us as Christians in the form of two sons. The first son mentioned here is of a barren woman. She prayed and prayed that God would give her a son, and indeed she received one. But upon receiving the son she donated Him, her promised son so long desired to the Lord and so sent him to the temple to be raised there and devoted to the work of the Lord. Thus, Samuel grew up under Eli the priest and his sons. His wicked sons mind you. These two kinds of sons are contrasted here. The sons of Eli were sleeping with the women who served in the temple, desecrating the holiest places that they could find. We have two such kinds of men within us. We have our natural person, our “self.” This self is the kind of self that defiles the women serving at the temple. It’s the kind of self that that grumbles over what it’s been served for dinner, commits genocidal holocausts and everything in-between. This is the Old Man, the fallen nature that we were born with when we were born in sin and conceived in iniquity. This self rages against God and Man alike, making an enemy of all things good, primarily because its existence is outside of all things good, which is not so much an existence as it is an absence or a lack of existence. But all who have been baptized have put on Christ – the New Man. No it is not we who live but Christ who lives in us. And this new man living inside of us is one of promise, one of barrenness and impossibility. It is the seed of promise. This new man lives a life of new obedience and grows in the presence of the Lord, listening to His Word and doing it. Walking in love to one another and giving thanks and praise to God at all times and in all circumstances. Both of these are our lives reality and experience. We are simultaneously just and sinner. Eli speaking to his sons, the unregenerate old Adam, and says look what you’ve done you’ve not only sinned against other people but against God in the profaning of His holy temple. If you had sinned against men God could have interceded for you, but who will intercede for you if you sin against God. But the sons wouldn’t listen to the their father – God had already determined to put them to death. It’s just so with our own sinful desires. The old man within us doesn’t want to bow, he doesn’t want to listen to the Father. But indeed, there’s good news yet – God has determined to put the old man in you to death. He hasn’t planned to reform you, you’re a lost cause. The wages of sin is death and you my friend, have a strong work ethic. God has determined to put you to death and in Christ He did just that. In baptism we have died with Christ and been buried with Him, and now that new man, that promised seed rises in us to live before God in all righteousness and purity forever. Our error is in our rebellion against the death sentence of the Law. We so often attempt to put our hands to the plow to cultivate a righteousness of our own, to outweigh the bad with the good so that we can keep our “ego” intact, and make ourselves into the new man – increasingly daily in the good we do and decreasing in our evil. It’s easy to understand why this is hard to swallow. That old man IS you. It hurts to hear that THAT self, isn’t forgiven. He’s killed. Maybe you say, I just want to distance myself from that person, from defiling those women at the temple, from the hate in my heart, from my violent past, etc., whatever you’re dealing with it is the same for us all. There is no way out, there is only an end to it. An end in death.