Sermon Tone Analysis

What a curious way to begin a story.

“The word of the Lord was rare in those days.”

It’s obvious foreshadowing that what’s about to happen in this passage is someone’s going to hear from God, but it’s something more than that.

It’s a damning critique of Eli’s ministry.

Almost every story where a high priest is featured has that high priest hearing a message from God.

But Eli is high priest at a time when hearing from God is a rare occurrence.

In other words, he is a failure.

And nowhere is his failure more evident than in the behavior of his two sons, who are meant to carry on his priestly line.

The use their power as sons of the high priest to gain riches, seduce women, and otherwise look out for themselves by taking advantage of God’s people.

Sure enough, when the word of God comes to Samuel, it is about those very sons.

God declares them no longer fit to be priests, and promises that Eli’s priestly lineage will end with Eli: a new high priest from another line will be appointed in his stead.

To his credit, Eli accepts this fate, and invests himself in training and equipping Samuel - the odds on favorite for the job.

This year, on October 31st, we will mark the 500th anniversary of a similar story.

A story which is one of the major reasons we’re gathered in this building this morning, instead of in the nearest Catholic Church.

It’s the story of the day Martin Luther, a lowly German priest, shared what he had heard from God.

Martin began as a monk, and spent long hours focused on his own sin and lowliness, until another monk in his order suggested it would be better for him if instead he were to meditate on the grace of Christ, which saved him from sin and raised him up.

Eventually, he felt he had to leave monastery life, and he instead served as a teacher in a school of theology, as well as vicar of a local parish.

In this position, he bore witness as a man came from Rome, telling people they could purchase forgiveness of their sins, and that the money they used to do so would build a great church in Rome - that church being what we now know as St. Peter’s Basilica.

These sales were called indulgences

Deeply disturbed by the idea that people were trying to sell salvation when Jesus had already paid salvation’s price, Luther wrote a letter to his bishop and pope Leo X, listing 95 objections to and questions about indulgences.

Perhaps the most critical of these questions is #86, which asks “Why, when the pope is wealthier than even the richest among us, does he build the Basilica with the money of poor believers rather than his own?”

On October 31, 1517, Martin sent this letter to his bishop.

By many accounts, he also posted a copy of it on his church’s door, which was the equivalent of the town bulletin board.

There are some differences in these stories, of course.

Luther did not want to break from Rome.

He had no desire to cut off the Pope’s priestly line.

Nor am I suggesting that this was a period when “Word from God was rare.”

But Luther’s criticism of the pope is ultimately the same as Samuel’s criticism of the sons of Eli - though they were called to serve God and others, they instead chose to abuse the power of their position for personal gain.

It is said that upon his election, Pope Leo remarked “since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it,” and he made no effort to mask the fact that his chief goals as pope were to make himself and the Vatican even more wealthy than they already were.

The Pope responded first by trying to get Luther to recant, and then by excommunicating him from the Catholic Church.

But the damage had been done.

Whether Luther meant it to or not, his letter gave voice to people who had too long suffered the abuses of Leo X and other popes like him.

So it was that Luther found himself the father of a new Christian tradition, which would become known in Germany as the Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchen.

Luther’s Evangelical Church.

Out of this tradition would come the Evangelical Synod of North America, one of the four founding groups of the United Church of Christ.

And it started because Luther, like Samuel before him, saw people being abused by the Church in the name of God, and sought to restore God’s reputation.

Samuel’s reformation was not the first, and Luther’s definitely was not the last.

One of the mottoes adopted by those who would follow in Luther’s footsteps is the title of our sermon series that you’ve seen on the posters around church: Ecclesia Semper Reformanda est: It’s Latin for “The Church Must Always Be Reforming.”

And it’s a reminder to each of us, that like Samuel, and like Luther, we too must be vigilant when it comes to the behavior of church leaders.

We cannot sit by and watch abuses happen, telling ourselves that those who run the church know better.

Rather, we have a duty to speak up when God is being misrepresented.

To refuse to endorse church-sanctioned bigotry, prejudice, abuse, or oppression.

To ask the hard questions of the people in power, even when doing so is risky or scary.

Because it’s not my church, or your church, or the church of whichever celebrity preacher is getting the most air time.

It is God’s church, and we have to make sure God’s church is doing God’s will.