Luther Rice Memorial Baptist Church, Silver Spring, MD, June 5, 2005
It is said that the Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo could sense that in a rough block of marble there was an angel struggling to get out. He said that his job was to free that angel. Isn’t that remarkable?! To know that in a rough exterior there is something beautiful, something available for shaping. Personally, I cannot fathom how anybody can shape a sculpture. How can anyone take a hammer and a chisel and remove unwanted stone to create a likeness out of marble? It takes a special genius, a Michelangelo, to do that.
But then how much more remarkable it is to know that inside your rough exterior and mine there is a life available for shaping! How much more wonderful than one of Michelangelo’s stone angels is a life made beautiful by someone shaping it! It can happen, if you and I are available for life-shaping. What will it take to be ready for sculpting?
The boy Samuel was born in a troubled time. The Bible describes it as one in which the word of the Lord was rare and visions were not widespread. It was a difficult time. But Samuel, if you remember, was born as the result of his mother’s prayer. Hannah had cried out to the Lord to give her a child, and God had heard that prayer. Samuel’s grateful parents dedicated him to the service of God. They sent him to the temple at Shiloh to be trained as an aide to the priest Eli. Samuel, there in the temple with Eli, became, like Michelangelo’s angel, available for life-shaping. How did it happen?
There are four simple truths I want you to see in this story. Let me share them first and then we’ll develop each one. How can we be available for life-shaping? We can be ready for sculpting and shaping if first we downplay disappointment; second, if we pick perceptive people; third, if we consider the consequences; and, finally, if we accept affirmation.
I am going to repeat those. We can be available for life-shaping – we can free our angels from their rough exteriors – if we downplay disappointment; if we pick perceptive people; if we consider consequences; and if we accept affirmation. Let’s work on these together.
I
First, to be available for life-shaping means: downplay disappointment. If you want to become something worthwhile, discount those times when you feel as though you are heading down a dead-end street. The fact is that it takes time to shape a life, and we may start some things that won’t pay off for a while. But we have to stick with our life vision and downplay disappointment, or else we will not be shaped.
Young Samuel heard a voice calling, and he said, “Here I am”. He reported to Eli, who told Samuel that it was not he who called. A little later he heard it again, and once again went to Eli, who once more told Samuel that, no, he had not called. And then a third time, the same thing.
But look! Young Samuel kept on going back and kept on saying, “Here I am”, despite the disappointment of finding out that he was mistaken. Samuel didn’t give up. He didn’t surrender to his disappointment. He knew that he was in the right place, he knew that he was with the right person, and most of all, he knew his own mind, and stayed by the stuff. It would have been easy on that third time to have said, “I must be hearing things. I’ll ignore this call. I’ll just give up on this thing.” But Samuel didn’t give up. Samuel downplayed his disappointment, and thus became available for life-shaping.
I’m afraid the landscape is littered with people whose lives don’t count for much because they let something get in the way of their doing what they really felt led to do. They let disappointments stop them. My father used to talk about how, when he was about eighteen, he felt called to preach, but his father stopped that with a snarl, “We aren’t having any preachers in this house.” And then after he and my mother married, my musically gifted dad got an offer to move to Cincinnati and sing for a radio station – but this time it was not his father, but my mother’s father, who stomped that out, declaring that nobody was going to take his little girl way out there to Cincinnati. And so, throughout much of his life, my dad nursed a deepening disappointment. He had not followed his own heart, he had not downplayed his disappointment, and it held him back.
I can assure you of one thing: if you live long enough, you will be disappointed. Things will not always go your way. You will get bent out of shape by somebody. But the glory of the Gospel is that “even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. Jesus Christ stays with us even when we disappoint Him. And so we need to trust ourselves, we need to keep on keeping on, as Samuel did, and downplay disappointment. Stay with what you hear in your heart of hearts; know your own mind. Then you will be available for life-shaping.
II
But if you downplay your disappointment and keep on answering “Here I am” when you hear a call, next you’ll find that you will need to pick perceptive people to help you interpret what is happening in your life. You will need to trust somebody with what is going on in your heart, and you will do well to pick a perceptive person, who senses the mind of Christ and is not afraid to tell you the truth. If you are to be truly available for life-shaping, it will not come because you just listen to yourself. Nor will it come because you listen to your fan club. It will come if you listen to perceptive, sensitive, candid, honest people.
When Samuel heard that persistent call for the third time, and went in to tell Eli, the Bible says that “Eli perceived” – there’s a key word – “Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.” And so Eli instructed Samuel what to do.
Pick perceptive people to give you feedback. I do not mean just people who are well-educated, although that’s good. I do not mean people who are just kind-hearted, although that’s fine. But picking a perceptive person means finding somebody who will speak the truth in love; it means listening to somebody who can sense what is going on with you, and who is not afraid to say so. It means finding someone who is so comfortable in his own skin that he has long since gotten over the need to be liked by everybody, and can just tell you the truth in love.
When I was a seminary student, I signed up for a Psychology of Religion course, taught by one Samuel Southard. Sam Southard was the toughest bird you’ve ever tried to chew. When I sat down in his class on the Psychology of Religion, expecting to learn a load of psychological theory and to be given a bag of pastoral tricks, instead what I got from Sam Southard was a scathing, probing, pressing interrogation about my personality, my motives, and my fears. I was so scared of Sam Southard that I dropped his class and took the course later from another professor. But the stuff that he exposed in my heart in just three or four weeks in his classroom was enough to shatter my illusions about who I was and then start me on the road to who I might become. I had picked a perceptive person. No, I didn’t stay with him – sad to say, I didn’t downplay my disappointment – but his perception mattered, just the same.
Out here, in this congregation, there is somebody who knows you better than you know yourself. Out here there is somebody who understands you better than you will admit. That’s what it means to be brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s what it means to be the church. Pick such a person and tell him or her your heart. You will have a painful but rich experience. And it will make you available for life-shaping. Downplay disappointment, and then pick a perceptive person.
III
But now at this point in your journey, if you have downplayed disappointment and stayed by the stuff to let God shape you; and if you have picked a perceptive person to interpret for you what is going on in your life, you will be tempted to stop. You will be tempted to say, “That’s enough. I know all I need to know now. I can quit studying. I can stop growing. I don’t want any more change, Lord.” You will be tempted to level off your spiritual growth. That’s when you need to consider the consequences. That’s when you need to think about what will happen if your spiritual life stagnates and your relationship with God freezes up. Consider the consequences.
Samuel acknowledged the Lord in his life. And when he did, the Lord warned him about what was going to happen with Eli and with Eli’s sons. Eli’s sons had played fast and loose. They had lived dissolute lives. And – here is a significant point – it says that Eli “did not restrain them.” There was no discipline. So Eli’s sons, God said, would be discarded; they were useless.
The Lord told Samuel all of that to get this young man to consider the consequences. To consider carefully what it is to begin a walk on a spiritual journey and then to falter. To consider forthrightly what it means to start a pilgrimage and then lose faith. The Lord gave Samuel these negative examples, so that he could learn from them, and consider the consequences of stopping short.
The sorriest people I know are those who are so cocksure of themselves that they absolutely defy you to change them. The saddest folks I know are those who, having learned a little, have decided that that is enough, and they will not be changed. Their theme song is, “We shall, we shall not be moved.” Somebody said to me once, “Pastor, I don’t care what you teach from that pulpit, I am going to believe what I already believe anyway.” Some folks absolutely dare you to give them a new idea or an original thought!
But consider the consequences! Consider the consequences if you decide that you’ve had all the life-shaping you want, Consider God’s warning about Eli’s sons, who had gone on their own paths, which Eli did nothing to restrain. Destructive, deadly, and damaging! Consider the consequences.
When I retired from my pastorate, I imagined that for the most part I would just hang up my shoes and chill out for the rest of my life. Oh, a little preaching here and there, maybe some teaching, but certainly nothing new to learn. Well, was I wrong about that! First, I was asked to teach a seminary course at Wesley, something I had never even come close to doing in my life. One session with the students and I realized that I needed to get busy crafting my material, or else they would eat me alive! And then I was asked to be Foundation Executive; what do I know about investment management and planned giving contracts? I can barely balance my own checkbook! But the Lord said, “Learn”. And here I am, at the age of 67, learning new skills. I shudder to think what it would be like if I had said “No” to these opportunities because I didn’t want to grow. Consider the consequences.
If you would be truly available for life-shaping, downplay your disappointment, pick a perceptive person, and consider the consequences if you stop too soon and do not follow through what you have begun with the Lord.
IV
But, finally, if you want to be available for life-shaping, accept affirmation. Accept affirmation. Let it encourage you when someone loves you enough to lift you up.
Some of us have just as much trouble accepting affirmation as others do in dealing with disappointment or considering the consequences of misbehavior. Some of us are so insecure that we can’t handle it when somebody encourages us. Someone will say, “You really did a good job with that”, and what do we say? Aw, it was nothing. I should have done better. We don’t know what to do with affirmation. When I was growing up, whenever we would eat a meal at my grandmother’s home, it was always delicious, and we would say so. But she would invariably say, “Well, it’s not as good as the last one I did.” She said that every single time, and so we began to wish we had eaten Grandma’s first meal, because they had all been downhill since then! Some of us just cannot accept affirmation. But the capstone of being available for life-shaping is to take the encouragement others give us and build it into our spiritual strength.
When Samuel finished his talk with the Lord, Eli asked that he speak about what was on his mind. But Samuel, like so many of us, “was afraid to tell the vision”. Thank God, Eli persisted, Eli dug it out of him, and then Eli said, “Samuel, it is the Lord.” Samuel, what you are hearing and doing is of the Lord. It is right, it is for you. Get on with it. Accept my affirmation, polish your life with it. You are available for life-shaping, if you will accept affirmation.
What rough exteriors we are! Like blocks of hard marble! But in us, what potential there is, what angels waiting to be set free! It can happen if you and I accept the ultimate affirmation, from Christ Himself, who believed in us enough to give His life for us. The heart of the good news is that we accept the affirmation of Christ, who loved us to the end. Of Christ, who so loved the world – you and me – that He gave, so that no one of us would ever have to perish, but might have everlasting life.
Brothers and sisters, a greater than Michelangelo is here; the sculptor shaped marble, but Jesus shapes lives. The world shapes our hearts into crude things, but Jesus makes them new again. Our insecurity gives us fear, but Jesus gives us hope. Accept the affirmation that Jesus gives, for the Bible says that He is God’s great “Yes” for us.
For He made Himself of no reputation, but took on Himself, shaped Himself, in the form of a servant; and being sculpted in the likeness of man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Wherefor God has exalted Him and given Him the name above all other names. He is Lord; He is ours; we are His; and we shall be shaped into His likeness.
Downplay the disappointments; the cross was bitter disappointment, but He turned it into victory.
Pick perceptive people; noone is more perceptive than Jesus Christ Himself.
Consider the consequences; to those who believe, He gives power, but for those who do not trust Him, there is bitterness.
And accept His affirmation. Here at this table, what wondrous love is this, shaping you. Are you available for life-shaping?
