PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

I Samuel 3:1-11; John 1:43-51                                                                                      VISION

Sermon January 18, 2009:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

          The word "vision" has a lot of meanings.  A sixth grade teacher notices that one of her good students' grades are getting worse and tries to find out why.  She talks to her parents and learns that there's no problem at home, but their daughter has been sitting closer to the television lately.  The teacher suggests that they take their daughter to an ophthalmologist and have her vision tested, meanwhile she moves her to a desk at the front of the room where she can see the board better.  That's one meaning of the word "vision."  Here's another.  Our military personnel on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan have  equipment so they can see at night, see what is supposed to be hidden, and so protect themselves:  night "vision" equipment. 

          When Ronald Reagan came to the Presidency he came with a new "vision" of what America should be:  he said, "It's morning in America."  That felt pretty good after the losses and the pain our country had gone through in Vietnam and in the streets.  America is hoping Barack Obama can bring the best of his "vision" to the Presidency, in spite of the current economic crisis and in spite of the long-term failure of economic policy that has made America the greatest debtor nation in the world—we need a "vision."

          So the word "vision" has a lot of meanings.  I want to talk this morning about a spiritual meaning of the word.  Did you know that the earliest Hebrew prophets were called "seers"—people who can "see" when everybody else sees nothing?  To "see" is to discover your own deeper connection to God. 

 

          This Lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures about the call of Samuel the "seer" is about discovering his own deeper connection to God, and what God wanted to do with that.  He was just a boy.  His mother had dedicated him at birth for the service of God, and so he lived with the high priest Eli in Shiloh where the Hebrew tribes had set up the tent of meeting—they didn't have a temple yet.  The beginning of the story is a little obscure—we don't know why the boy was sleeping in the sacred tent; but it says that the oil in the holy lamp had not yet burned out:  he was sleeping nearby in the dimness, at a time in Hebrew history when "seers" were few—spiritual light was dim, too.  The boy thought Eli was calling him, so he kept running to Eli and waking the old man up.  Eli was almost blind:  his eyes were blind, and he was also blind about his sons, who were engaging in all kinds of clergy misconduct.  See how dismal it all was—nobody could "see."  But Eli realized that it was God who was calling Samuel and could "see" well enough to give him instructions.  God's first word to Samuel is a word that can be translated "see," or "look here," or "behold," or "pay attention."  This was the moment when the boy Samuel was called to be a "seer," a "prophet" in Israel.  And by "seeing" he discovered his own deeper connection to God and what God was going to do with it.  

          In the Gospel Lesson we read about the call of Nathaniel.  It was actually his friend Philip who spoke the words.  "We have found!"  And when Nathaniel expressed doubt about anybody from Nazareth being worth paying attention to, Philip said, "Come and see"—there's that word "see" again.  When he came with Philip to meet Jesus, Jesus' first word was "Behold"—which means "see."  He said, "Here is a true descendant of our ancestor Israel; and he isn't deceitful."  That sounds a lot like the boy Samuel, doesn't it!  Innocent of deceit, on holy ground but not yet aware.  Jesus said, "I saw you under the fig tree."  The young man seeking to "see" was himself "seen" by Jesus, and Nathaniel immediately accepts Jesus as the Messiah.  Jesus thinks that's almost funny:

VISION!  Really "seeing."  To "see" is to discover your own deeper connection to God.  This is what both these stories point to.

 

          You yourself have "seen" some things like this.  How many times have you said, "I didn't realize…."?  What you meant was, before now it was here but I couldn't see it, but now that something has changed in me I can see it, and I'm surprised.  For the past ten years a lot of Americans haven't seen any problem with buying a house they couldn't afford and taking out a mortgage that would balloon in five years; but when the monthly payment jumped from $500 to $1500, then they "saw" what they had gotten into.  "I didn't realize!"  The bank policy makers were not "seeing" either:  they made loans to people without analyzing whether they could afford the loans, then bundled these quick loans and sold them to investment companies who didn't see and didn't care—until the foreclosures started multiplying.  "I didn't realize!"  "Nathaniel, do you believe in me because I saw you under the fig tree?  You're going to see a lot more than that before this is over with."  To "see" is to discover your own deeper connection to God and maybe even catch a glimpse of what God's going to do with you. 

 

          If you were to take a week out of your life, make arrangements for everything at home to be taken care of, and go into the mountains by yourself for a silent retreat of self-awareness and renewal—or if you were just to take a good look at what's going on in your deepest self, what might you "see"?  If you were to accept this kind of "vision," what might you discover about yourself and about God? 

          Several of us have recently wrestled with cancer:  is there anything to "see" there?  Divorce has all kinds of implications—personal, sexual, financial, familial, psychological, medical:  might divorce also carry some implications about "vision"—about discovering your own deeper connection to God and catching a glimpse of what God is doing with you and in you?  In the present economy a lot of people are having to face the trauma of losing their job:  but down underneath the anxiety, the anger, the confusion and the embarrassment, is there anything to "see" there?  Does God have a "vision" for you?  Most of us began adulthood with some kind of life goal, some deep desire of the heart; and we spend decades striving to attain that desire; but what happens if that desire of your deepest heart fails utterly?  Is there anything to "see" in this life reversal?  Can it be for you as it was for Jesus?  On the cross he cried out a prayer from Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  But he also prayed:  "Into your hands I commit my spirit."  There is a kind of "vision" that discovers your deep connection to God and places God's comma in your life instead of the period you thought was coming. 

          Now, of course, "vision" requires discernment:  not every bright idea I have is from God.  I think one of the most obvious examples of false vision is something that happened to the great American philosopher William James.  Before 1900 academics were researching the nature and uses of cocaine, and William James became involved in some experiments.  One evening, alone in his study, he used some cocaine without supervision.  It didn't take long for him to begin feeling energized, feeling smarter than he had ever felt as a teacher or writer, wiser, deeper.  He had a flash of great inspiration, and he stumbled across the room to his desk to write down every word.  Later, when the cocaine had worn off, he returned to his desk to read this great wisdom, and this is what he had written:

Higgamus hoggamus, woman's monogamous.

Hoggamus higgamus, man is polygamous.

William James gave up on cocaine after that.  He learned that "vision" requires discernment. 

          We've all seen people join a church all on their own and throw themselves into church work, show up at all the meetings, maybe give a lot of money, all in the first year; and then one day they're gone, and you never see them again.  There are several reasons people do this, but one reason is called "self-medication."  Some people, when they go through a bad patch in life and come to feel that everything is against them, decide to take the medicine of "religion"; and they sort of get drunk on it.  They don’t seek out a teacher to guide them, they just invest more and more of themselves in what they think they "ought" to do.  But it doesn't work:  it wasn't God's act, it was their own; and so the self-medication doesn't work, and eventually they give up on it.  True "vision" requires discernment, and you don't do that all by yourself.  So Jesus gave us each other:  a community of faith within which we learn to "see," each one catch a "vision" of God's open door for me, and accept both encouragement and warning.  Nevertheless, the basic truth still stands:  To "see" is to discover your own deeper connection to God. 

 

          Here is the boy Samuel, living in an age of dim insight into God's will, but accepting the guidance of his mentor Eli to answer, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."  There is Nathaniel, innocent of any deceit, who is seen and led to see, and to become one of Jesus' twelve apostles.  And here are you, living here, now, in these circumstances, part of this spiritual community.  You, too, can see.  To "see" is to discover your own deeper connection to God, and be ready to find out what God's going to do with you.  There is such a thing as spiritual "vision"—even in our own time; but we come to it as little children come to their parents, waiting, open, ready to receive.  Ready to "see."

AMEN