Montgomery Hills Baptist Church, Silver Spring, MD June 25, 2006
It is said that the 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 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 even 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 for us to be ready to be shaped and sculpted into something beautiful?
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 that happen? Are there clues for us?
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; if, second, we pick perceptive people; third, if we consider the consequences; and, finally, if we accept affirmation.
I am going to repeat those four points and ask you to recite them with me. 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 the consequences; and if we accept affirmation. Let’s work on these together.
I
First, to be available for life-shaping means that we need to downplay disappointment. If you want to become something worthwhile, do not be distracted when you 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 don’t pay off. But we must stick with our life vision and downplay our disappointments, or else we will not be well 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 his own mind. 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 trusted what was in his heart. Samuel downplayed his disappointment, and started to become available for life-shaping.
I’m afraid the landscape is littered with those whose lives don’t count for much because they let something get in the way of doing what they really feel led to do. They let disappointments stop them. My own father used to talk about how, when he was about eighteen, he felt called to preach, but his father, my grandfather, stopped that with a snarl, “We aren’t having any preachers in this house.” And then, a number of years later, 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, my other grandfather, 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. In many ways, it poisoned his spirit.
I can assure you of one thing: if you live long enough, you will have disappointments. 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 alive our life vision, as Samuel did, and downplay the disappointments. 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, someone 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 listen only to yourself. Nor will it come because you listen to your fan club. It will come only if you listen to perceptive, sensitive, candid, honest people who can speak the truth in love.
When Samuel heard that persistent call for the third time, and went in to tell Eli, the Bible says that “Eli perceived” – there’s the key word – “Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy.” And so Eli taught Samuel how to respond to God’s call.
Is there someone in your life who can sense what is going on with you, can dig out the painful truths, and is not afraid to tell you what you need to hear? Have you found someone who is so comfortable in his own skin that he has long since gotten over the need to be liked, and can just tell you the truth in love? I’ve just finished reading a book about a prominent political family, which I won’t name; but the author points out that one of the leading men in that family has such a profound need to be liked that either he will surround himself only with those who agree with him, or he will change his own stance so that he agrees with them. His great fault is that he will not pick perceptive, truth-telling people to advise him.
Politicians do that; but so do Christians. We are touchy about hearing the truth. When I was a seminary student, I signed up for a Psychology of Religion course, taught by Dr. 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, I expected to learn a load of psychological theory and to be given a bag of pastoral tools. 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. He took me apart and put me back together, because he was a perceptive person. Sad to say, I didn’t stay with him, but even in a short time his perception made a difference.
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 experience, but a rich one. 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. No 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 of stopping your growth.
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 God said that Eli’s sons 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 could consider the consequences of stopping short his spiritual growth.
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 a little is enough, and they will not be changed. Their theme hymn is, “We shall not be moved.” Somebody at the church I served 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.” Sad. 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. Consider the consequences, destructive, deadly, and damaging!
Two years ago, when I retired from my pastorate, I imagined that I would just hang up my Bible and chill out for the duration. 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 before. 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 did I know about investment management and planned giving contracts? I can barely balance my own checkbook! But the Lord said, “Learn”. And so here I am, at the age of 68, learning new skills. I shudder to think about the boredom and the waste if I had said “No” because I didn’t want to grow and change. And let us say nothing of my trying to resurrect flabby fingers and fumbling feet to play this organ after forty years of neglect!
Consider the consequences of stopping your growth. If you would be truly available for life-shaping, downplay your disappointment, pick a perceptive person, and consider the consequences of stopping too soon not following 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 a great deal of trouble accepting affirmation. Some of us are so insecure that we can’t handle it when somebody encourages us. Someone says, “You really did a good job with that”, and what do we say? We burst out with false humility, “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 is of the Lord. It is right 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 that comes 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. We accept the affirmation of the Christ who so loved the world 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 Christ 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.
Downplay the disappointments; the cross was bitter disappointment, but Christ knew it was His life’s purpose, and He turned it into victory.
Pick perceptive people; noone is more perceptive than the one who looked down from the cross and knew whom to forgive, whom to bless, whom to invite. He know us completely.
Consider the consequences; to those who believe, He gives power to become the children of God, but for those who do not trust Him, there is only bitterness.
And accept His affirmation. Receive His wondrous love. He wants to give you life and life more abundant. Are you today available for life-shaping?
