Eli: Imperfect Faith

I Samuel 4:10-18

In every scene of I Samuel in which Eli is mentioned, he seems dominated by someone else in the story. The first mention of him is with Hannah who is praying a prayer from her heart and Eli accuses her of being drunk. It is the faith of Hannah that stands out in this encounter.

When she comes back with her husband and son and a generous sacrifice in gratitude for God granting her the son she had asked for, she comes to Eli but it is her sacrifice that once again dominates.

In a couple weeks we will come to the scene where Samuel hears God speak to him in the temple while Eli sleeps nearby. Once again, the focus is on Samuel, not Eli.

Eli confronts his sons with their sin but it is their arrogance that wins and Eli is revealed as an impotent old man.

At the end of his life, he is blind, overweight and sitting on a chair when he hears the news of the death of his sons and the capture of the ark of the covenant.

It is not a very noble or stirring life-story.

In Eli’s defense, he is already an old man when he enters the stories of the Bible. We don’t know what he was like when he was a young man or in the prime of his life. Perhaps he was a better man when he was younger. But the inference is that as his sons controlled him now, so had they controlled him earlier.

What should Eli have done? As high priest he was responsible for the temple and he should have removed his sons from the priesthood. We don’t like the blood and violence of the Old Testament, but if necessary, he should have ordered that his sons be killed for their defiance. It was not just their defiance of him, which under the law of Moses was a capital offence, but it was their defiance of God and their abuse of the temple that justified Eli taking strong action against them.

Eli let things happen and shrugged his shoulders and muttered that life was too complicated and who can control their sons anyway. Rather than Eli being filled with the Spirit of God and leading the righteous who remained to cleanse the temple and destroy those who were polluting the temple, Eli became a silent conspirator with those who were defiling the temple.

This is why, when the man of God came to Eli and delivered God’s judgment against Eli and his sons and the rest of his family, Eli was included. Eli might have said, “But I did not do any of this! I am not the one stealing the sacrifices from God! I even went to my sons and told them they were doing wrong!” But God expected more from Eli than Eli was able to give – or perhaps more than Eli was willing to give. He failed as a father and he failed as a high priest.

But despite Eli’s weakness, he had a few shining moments.

When Samuel came to him and as he watched Samuel grow from a three year old boy to an adolescent, perhaps 10-13 years of age, he saw the favor of God on Samuel which stood in strong contrast to the wilful sinfulness of his sons.

When you read through these opening chapters of I Samuel, it is a bit like Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina, in which the lives of two women intersect. As the book begins, Anna is on top of Russian society and Kitty is the unknown newcomer. But as the book moves to its conclusion, Kitty becomes the woman to be admired and Anna ends up killing herself.

In I Samuel, Hophni and Phinehas are running the show, but it is clear that Samuel is rising to take their place and that Hophni and Phinehas are heading to a disastrous end. Hear just a few of the contrasts that abound in this story:

Eli’s sons were wicked men; they had no regard for the LORD.
But Samuel was ministering before the LORD—a boy wearing a linen ephod.

Meanwhile, the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the LORD.
[Eli’s] sons, however, did not listen to their father’s rebuke, for it was the LORD’s will to put them to death.

The growing good of Samuel is over and over again contrasted with the increasing wickedness of the sons of Eli. The man of God came to Eli and confronted him with the sin of his sons and with Eli’s own complicate sin because he did not take action against his sons. In this judgment the man of God told Eli:
And what happens to your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, will be a sign to you—they will both die on the same day.  35 I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who will do according to what is in my heart and mind. I will firmly establish his house, and he will minister before my anointed one always.  36 Then everyone left in your family line will come and bow down before him for a piece of silver and a crust of bread and plead, “Appoint me to some priestly office so I can have food to eat.”

Eli did not have to be very imaginative to know who was the faithful priest God was raising up. The man of God left and Eli looked up and saw young Samuel walking by. Eli saw the innocence of Samuel’s heart and the hardened sin in the behavior of his sons. Before his fading eyes, he saw the coming destruction of his family and the elevation of young Samuel.

What would most fathers do? Most fathers would side with their sons, but not Eli. Eli continued to encourage Samuel. Despite the fact that Eli had heard the prophecy of judgment against his family, he continued to nurture and teach Samuel who would be the one taking over from his family.

One night when Eli and Samuel were sleeping in the temple keeping watch over the lights, early in the morning, Samuel received a word from God. We will come back to this in a couple weeks, but what I want to point out is that although the word God gave to Samuel was a repetition of the judgment delivered by the man of God who had come to Eli, Eli once again received this word from Samuel. The first judgment had come from someone Eli probably did not know well. This second judgment came through a young boy who Eli knew to be innocent, incapable of making something like this up. This was, for Eli, a more direct word from God.

Although Samuel was uncomfortable telling Eli what God had told him, Eli insisted and after Samuel told him everything, confirming the judgment the man of God had delivered, the destruction of his sons and the removal of his family from priestly office, Eli responded with an incredible statement of submission to God.
He is the LORD; let him do what is good in his eyes.

God reaffirmed through Samuel his judgment against Eli and his family and Eli submitted to God
He is the LORD; let him do what is good in his eyes.

This stands out to me on a par with the great submission of Mary when Gabriel told her she would bear a son who would be the Son of God.
I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.

As Hannah stands with Abraham in her willingness to sacrifice her long-awaited son, so does Eli stand with Mary in his willingness to submit to what would not be easy for him.

Eli may have been a weak man in many ways, but in this way he showed great strength.

Eli was a man of imperfect faith, but he held on to God to the end.

On the day of his death, he was not sitting by the door of the temple as was his custom. He was sitting by the side of the road. Why? At the age of 98, blind and unable to walk, he could not go with the ark of the covenant when his sons took it from the temple into battle and he wanted to be as close to it as he could. He was anxious. He was nervous. He knew God had not been consulted about taking the ark of the covenant out into battle. He knew trouble was coming and so he sat by the road, straining to hear news of what had happened.

As he sat, he listened as best he could for approaching news and then a Benjamite came running down the road.
When he arrived, there was Eli sitting on his chair by the side of the road, watching, because his heart feared for the ark of God. When the man entered the town and told what had happened, the whole town sent up a cry.
14 Eli heard the outcry and asked, “What is the meaning of this uproar?”
The man hurried over to Eli,  15 who was ninety-eight years old and whose eyes were set so that he could not see.  16 He told Eli, “I have just come from the battle line; I fled from it this very day.”
Eli asked, “What happened, my son?”
17 The man who brought the news replied, “Israel fled before the Philistines, and the army has suffered heavy losses. Also your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured.”

When Eli heard this news he had a bodily reaction. His body lurched and drove him backward. He fell off his chair and broke his neck and died. What was it that made him react so strongly? Was it news of the death of his sons? No.
When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backward off his chair by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died, for he was an old man and heavy. He had led Israel forty years.

Eli may have been a man of imperfect faith; he may have failed as a parent; he may have failed as high priest, but to the end, he held on to his faith in God. He died upholding what Jesus called the greatest commandment: (Deuteronomy 6:5)
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Eli is not alone as a man of imperfect faith.

When people in our generation have listed great men or women of faith, it seems that Billy Graham and Mother Teresa are two who are most often mentioned. This is true, at least, in the US. These are two people of great faith.

Recently the letters of Mother Teresa who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, were published and have caused a stir. They have caused a stir because they reveal that this great woman of faith who lived such a sacrificial life and did so much to help others, struggled in her own spiritual life.

Listen to this quote from 1948.
“It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'” she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world “that radiating joy is real” because Christ is everywhere — “Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.”

This is the Mother Teresa the world knew. But three months before she spoke such a positive word to the world, she confided to her spiritual advisor, Rev. Van der Peet:
“Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand.”

This was not an isolated moment of doubt in her life. The many letters she wrote in her life reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever –  or, as the book’s compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, “neither in her heart or in the eucharist.”

Although it was her desire that her letters be burned when she died, the church overruled her and they have been published. This is to the credit of the Catholic Church which is teaching through the letters of Mother Teresa that doubt is not contrary to Christian experience.

In C. S. Lewis’ book, Screwtape Letters, where the devil presents his point of view, the life experience of Mother Teresa is viewed as a great threat.
Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Mother Teresa struggled in her faith but it is to her great credit that she clung to Jesus despite the lack of emotional Christian experience.

Henri Nouwen was a Dutch priest whose writings are highly regarded by both Catholics and Protestants. He taught in top US universities and left the prestige of this to care for a handicapped man named Adam. He was and is much respected by Christians today.

When he died in 1997 it was discovered that he had struggled most of his life as a celibate homosexual. He was a very needy person. Phil Yancy wrote about him as one of the great influences in his life in a book titled, Soul Survivor. In the chapter about Nouwen, revealingly titled, The Wounded Healer, he wrote
He would give inspiring addresses about the spiritual life, then collapse into an irritable funk. He would speak of the strength he gained from living in community, then drive to a friend’s house, wake him up at two in the morning and, sobbing, ask to be held. His phone bills usually exceeded his rent as he called around the world, disregarding time zones, in desperate need for companionship. If a friend failed to compliment him, waited too long to respond to a letter or neglected to invite him out for coffee after a lecture, he would sulk for days, nearly immobilized by rejection. In short, he felt called to present a message of inner peace and acceptance that he himself never realized.

Billy Graham devoted himself to his ministry at the expense of his children who struggled and resisted the Christian faith that took their father away from them. In his last years he has spoken of regrets in his life. He became too caught up in the power and fame of being a spiritual advisor to presidents. He spent too much time away from his children.

We lionize Paul as a great saint and apostle, but Paul, in his younger years, was brash, arrogant and alienated people because of how forcefully he presented himself.

James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the church in Jerusalem, struggled with the thought that the Gospel of Jesus could be taken out into the Gentile world. If the Gospel was to be taken to the Gentiles, then first make them Jews so they can become Christians. This provoked the wrath of Paul and Galatians was written to combat this theology.

When you study church history we read about the anti-semitism of Martin Luther and the burning of witches by the Puritans of New England.

My church history professor, Richard Lovelace, used to say that the big lesson in church history is that God puts up with a lot of baloney (nonsense) and that some of it is ours.

Church history is a study of men and women with imperfect faith whom God used to build his church. This is true when we read of the early church in the New Testament and it is true all through the history of the church up to the present day. There is no indication that the church will be any better in the future than it has been in the past.

I am an imperfect pastor. A friend of mine in this congregation delights in telling me and anyone who will listen that I am the most imperfect pastor this church has ever had – but he means it as a compliment – I think. I have such strong desires for this church and am frustrated that we are not able to do more of what it is I think we should be doing. I am frustrated that I am not able to lead this church more effectively.

We had a meeting this week with some who are involved in AMEP, the association of churches here in Morocco to which we belong. As we met we talked about the many things needing to be done and when we prayed at the end, we all confessed our regrets that we have not been able to expend more time and energy to building this association. We have all wanted to do more but have been unable to do so.

This church could be stronger if I was a more perfect pastor. AMEP could be more effective if the leadership was more perfect. But we are imperfect  men and women of imperfect faith.

You too are imperfect. It may be that in your work or ministry you are overwhelmed and don’t know how you will be able to keep up with the load of work and the wide-spread responsibilities you have. Like me you may find yourself saying: If only I was a bit smarter. If only I was more organized. If only I had more energy. If only I could live on just five hours of sleep a night and have more time to do what needs to be done. If only I had the gift of healing. If only I had the gift of preaching. If only I had the gift of prophecy. If only I was a better leader.

But we are men and women of imperfect faith. This is not a recent crisis on earth. It is not as if heaven is all astir and wondering what to do now since there are so many imperfect Christians running amok on earth. Angels are not floating through heaven wringing their hands and saying, “Alas, alas. What shall we do now?” From the beginning God has had to deal with imperfect men and women of imperfect faith and look at what has been accomplished.

At the time of Jesus there was one Christian for every 250,000 people in the world. Today there is one Christian for every eight people in the world. The church of Jesus has spread to every continent. There are still people groups who do not have access to the gospel from a church in their community, but the number of these groups is rapidly declining.

It is true that the church in the world is quite dysfunctional, but then dysfunction is just a fancy word for sin and the church has always been full of sinners – and despite our dysfunction, the church has grown.

Anyone can take a high-powered, finely-tuned sports car and race it down the road at 200 kph but we celebrate a God who can take my 1981 Renault 4 and race it down the road at 200 kph.

From our perspective we may see ourselves as only a Renault 4 that with momentum, a slight downhill and a breeze behind it can get up to 100 kph. But God is able to take what we do and turn our efforts into a 200 kph sports car.

Never forget that it is God who does any spiritual work that is significant. We are like a five year old who helps his father carry a heavy box into the house. The five year old can say, “I carried the box into the house,” but we know who really did the heavy work. God does the work and allows us, because he loves us, to help in what he is doing.

When you look around at others in the Christian community, you may see them as nicely polished, finely-tuned cars. You may have looked around and seen so many strong Christians living such wonderful Christian lives, but you see only the outside. You do not see the struggles of the heart. You do not see the demons being resisted and fought. You do not see the psychological damage inflicted when they were children that they have to live with.

We are all more like Eli than we think. Even the ones who are successful as parents and who handle their God-given responsibilities well, have weaknesses we do not always see.

So be encouraged. Despite how frustrated you are or how badly you feel about yourself, all that God requires of you is that you work hard, using the gifts he has given you, and that you put your trust in him. Regardless of how little talent you think you have, God will take what you offer and make it into a marvelous work for his kingdom.

On the other hand, if you are all puffed up about how wonderful you are, don’t be fooled. Despite how much you think of yourself, you are far more like my 1981 Renault 4 than you are a high-powered sports car. Even if you are far more powerfully built and gifted than many others around you, to do the significant work God wants to see done for his kingdom, it requires that he do the work. So you may be a powerful five year old helping your father carry a heavy box into the house, but you are still only a five year old helping your father.

At the end of time we will look back and see not what we were able to accomplish, but the awe and wonder will be what God was able to accomplish through us. Fight to have this perspective now. This week when you work for God, be encouraged by the thought that God is taking what you do and making it a truly marvelous work for his kingdom.

We pray this when we take up the offering on Sundays, that God will take our lives and money we offer to him and magnify that offering into a powerful and effective gift to his kingdom. We need to carry this perspective with us through the week. God is taking what you do and making it into a truly marvelous work for his kingdom.

We are a fleet of Renault 4s put-putting down the highway but with God’s help we are racing along at 200 kph.