The story of Samuel is one of the great stories of the Bible, and in our Old Testament reading we got just a small taste of it, so if you’ll bear with me I’d like to give you some background on the passage we just heard.

The society into which Samuel was born was a society that was deeply out of balance. 

Read the book of Judges, which describes that period in history.  If you think the Bible is all these dainty stories about cherubic angels and sugar plum fairies, the book of Judges will disillusion you of that belief. It reads like a Bronze Age version of the Sopranos: full of debauchery and violence; gang wars between all the tribes of Israel; women being treated brutally; might equal to right. 

Even the priests were abusing their positions of authority.  The high priest was a man named Eli, whom we read about this morning.  He had two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who could easily pass for the Brothers Corleone.  They were running a racket out of the temple.  In those days, instead of passing the offering plate, you would slaughter a cow or a sheep and divide it up: the fat you would burn as an offering to God; the thigh you would give to the priest for his efforts; and then you would cook all the rest of the meat so that you and your friends could have a big feast.  Hophni and Phinehas would sneak around to all the pots of boiling meat and steal an extra filet or porterhouse for themselves.  If someone complained, Hophni and Phinehas would send their thugs to rough that person up.  To make matters worse, they would try to seduce the women who came to the temple to pray.  Eli reprimanded his sons, but did little to stop them.  So, the religious leaders were stealing from and sexually abusing their parishioners.  Does this sound familiar to anyone?  The world was out of balance and the religious institutions were part of the problem. 

God – the One who had liberated the Israelites when they were slaves in Egypt – decided that it was once again time to act.  In the northern hill country of this gangland nation, far from the center of power, lived a woman named Hannah.  Since God couldn’t depend upon the religious leaders to work for justice, God chose Hannah to be the vehicle for transforming the world.

Hannah’s story is fascinating in and of itself and I wish I had time to share all of it with you, but let’s just say she had her run ins with Eli.  Once when she was in the temple praying, bearing her soul to God, Eli saw her and assumed she was drunk, so he told her to leave. 

In fact, Hannah had been begging God for a son.  She had no children, which in those days pretty much guaranteed that a woman would spend her final decades in poverty. 

God answered Hannah’s prayer and she gave birth to Samuel, the boy we read about.  After Samuel was born, Hannah was so filled with joy she sang a song that became the inspiration for the Magnificat, Mary’s song.  “God breaks the bow of the mighty,” she sang, “but girds the feeble with strength.  God raises up the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the garbage heap.”  Hannah praised God as the one who restores balance to the world. 

Out of gratitude, Hannah dedicated Samuel to God.  When he was still quite young, she brought him to the temple so that he could serve God there.  And that brings us to the story we read this morning, which in my Bible is titled, The Call of Samuel.  I think a better title might be, “God Chooses an Unlikely Person to Restore Balance in Israel.”  Eli and his sons were too corrupt to perceive God’s will and do it, so God chose this little boy, Samuel, to help bring about justice.

This was not altogether unlike the situation in this morning’s gospel reading.  The world of Jesus’ time was also a world out of balance, a world in which the religious authorities could not be relied upon to speak for God.  Roman armies, stationed throughout the western world, used torture and violence to keep a lid on terrorism.  Just to survive, the religious leaders of Jerusalem had learned to preach a gospel that would not threaten the status quo.  So if the religious leaders had been co-opted by Rome, who could speak for God?

Perhaps that question was on Nathanael’s mind when Philip came to him and said, “We have found the messiah, Jesus the son of Joseph from Nazareth.”  You can’t blame Nathanael for being skeptical.  Nazareth was like Altoona, a backwater town far from the center of power.

When faced with such a far-fetched proposition, Nathanael did what many of us do.  He did a little profiling.  “Nazareth? Nothing good can come from that blue collar town.  And Joseph, the father of this supposed Messiah? Never heard of him.”  Nathanael profiled Jesus and quickly determined that he could not be the messiah, just like Samuel didn’t fit the profile for a prophet. 

But what Nathanael didn’t realize is that in a world that’s out of balance, profiling isn’t likely to work.  Why would it?  If God is seeking to restore the balance, it’s more likely that God will choose someone who doesn’t have the pedigree, who’s not an authority, who’s not in power, to set things right.  As a matter of fact, the people in power may be inclined to view the one who speaks for God as the enemy.  God’s messenger will be a threat to those who have been using their power for their own personal gain.

Let’s move forward 2000 years to another society out of balance.  Birmingham, Alabama.  1963: a society of Jim Crow Laws, segregation, and the lynching of those who threatened the status quo.  Unfortunately, this was another one of those times when the majority of the religious leaders failed to take a stand against injustice.  Martin Luther King had come to the city to participate in non-violent demonstrations against Bull Connor’s campaign of segregation, against the police attack dogs and firehoses that had been unleashed on peaceful demonstrators.  Rather than join him, eight of Alabama’s most prominent bishops and rabbis wrote a statement condemning him as a rabble-rouser. 

King had been arrested for leading an unauthorized demonstration, so from his prison cell in Birmingham he wrote his famous letter to those religious leaders.  The letter not only became one of the most inspiring documents of the civil rights movement, its reflections on non-violent resistance, on the inter-relatedness of all humanity, and on the gospel of Jesus Christ have continued to inspire and enlighten people in all walks of life.

When the world is out of balance, God will work imperturbably to restore justice and righteousness, even if God has to circumvent the religious establishment to do so.  Our history shows us that surprising people – a boy from the hill country of Israel, a carpenter from Nazareth, a black preacher from Montgomery – can speak for God.  Let us, like Samuel, continue to listen for God’s voice so that we can be a part of God’s work.