Scripture: 1Samuel 3:1-10
In case you don’t recognize where the title of the sermon for this morning comes from—“God Is Still Speaking”—it is a phrase that is much in use in United Church of Christ Circles these days. I mentioned last week that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the United Church of Christ, which means that as religious denominations go, we are pretty young, which also means that we don’t have a lot of name recognition. The United Church of Christ? What’s that? We are often having to explain ourselves and where we came from and more importantly, who we are. And it seems that our name is confusing to quite a few people who think that we must be the same thing as the Church of Christ or even the Church of God in Christ, though we are in fact pretty different from either of those groups.
Well a few years ago, the UCC decided it needed to do something to present itself to the public a little more effectively. An advertising campaign was developed that portrayed the UCC as an inclusive, welcoming church and we came out with some slogans where the hope was that people would begin to associate the United Church of Christ with these slogans, the main one being, “God is still speaking.” That phrase has come to stand for all the recent and ongoing efforts of the UCC to identify and interpret itself better, partly for the benefit of those who don’t know much about us, but also partly, I think, for our own benefit, to find a succinct way to identify for ourselves who we think we are, a sort of community building effort among ourselves.
It has been successful, I guess, because “God is still speaking” has come to refer not just to the public relations activities that have been going on but has come to be used as a sort of a tagline or a motto for the denomination in general. The United Church of Christ is the “God is still speaking” church, some people say. And when you go to a United Church of Christ gathering these days, like the General Synod I spoke of last week, you will see and hear that phrase pretty much everywhere. I have heard it and seen it so often over the last months and years, including this summer at General Synod, that I decided I needed to say something about it, reflect out loud with you about whether it really does describe what the United Church of Christ stands for as I see it, and whether it represents who I am as a member of the United Church of Christ.
I should begin by saying I don’t like slogans. I understand why some people think they’re useful, perhaps even necessary, but I don’t like them. I especially don’t like slogans in relation to the church or to the life of the spirit. Theology, our thinking about God, our relationship to God, these are not matters for the kind of quick, sound byte approach that slogans are by their very nature. I think that’s why I feel a need to preach about “God is still speaking”, so that we don’t just sloganeer with it, bandy it about as though we know what it means, except maybe not really, so that instead of producing thoughtfulness it becomes a substitute for thoughtfulness. I really don’t care for slogans, but this one isn’t going to go away, so let’s at least stop and reflect on it a little bit.
Actually, even though I don’t like slogans, I can find some positive things to say about this one, more positive at least than just that it’s not going to go away. As slogans go, this is not such a bad one in my book, and it does at least suggest some important things about us as a denomination and how we understand ourselves and position ourselves. It comes from a sermon given in 1620 by John Robinson, a minister among our Pilgrim foremothers and forefathers, as they were about to set sail in the Mayflower from Holland to the New World. Robinson was staying behind and among the words of encouragement he offered to those who were departing on what must have seemed to be a very uncertain voyage, to say the least, among Robinson’s words in that sermon were these: “The Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word.” The hymn we just sang is based on that line, as is the phrase “God is still speaking” which is meant to be a kind of paraphrase of what Robinson said almost 400 years ago. Since a significant portion of the United Church of Christ traces its ancestry back to the Mayflower Pilgrims, the phrase “God is still speaking” echoes this part of our history and may remind us of it, and gives an opportunity sometimes to explain that part of our history. So that’s one good thing about it.
As to what exactly Robinson meant to say, I’m guessing that it had to do with the uncertainty of their journey. I’m guessing that he was encouraging them to remain open to the word and the spirit of God and to trust that they would receive whatever light, truth, understanding, guidance they might need as they moved into this unknown future. Knowing something about the Pilgrims and Puritans, I also think that he was probably saying to them: you are the more light and truth that God has to reveal; you are to be that light and truth, so be aware that this is not an adventure you are setting out on but a calling. In any case, their faith was to look to the future not the past, and their relationship to God was to be seen as an unfolding one. Don’t give up hope; God is your companion on this journey. God is the reason for your journey. That’s the kind of thing I imagine Robinson was wanting to say. It’s not so different—I’m not so sure Sojourners would have gotten along too well with our Pilgrim ancestors—but what Robinson said is not so different from what the founders of Sojourners wrote early in our history, that “Sojourners connotes movement, fluidity, pilgrimage, inclusion of those who do not want set answers or rigid systems, but who instead want to be in a moving changing relationship to God.
And I think that general attitude is what the United Church of Christ wants to communicate by the phrase “God is still speaking”, that as a general approach we see the Christian faith as a journey, not as adherence to certain once and for all answers to the most basic and profound questions of our lives. In our current religious context, it means to me several more specific things as well. “God is still speaking” means to me that so far as what God has to say to us, it is not all contained in the Bible, that when the last pages of the Bible were written, or when the writings were canonized and the Bible became the Bible, that this did not mark the end of what God has to say to human beings. In fact we need to be in ongoing conversation with God even to read our own scriptures in a faithful way. And God speaks to us in ways other than through scriptures. “God is still speaking” says to me that as people of faith we are not afraid of the findings of science or of any other form of human inquiry. God doesn’t speak just in the Bible. God may speak in the revelations of science, in the insights of psychology, in the expressiveness of literature and the arts, in the writings and practices and worldviews of other religions. God’s word is not all locked up, not in the Bible or anywhere else. “We limit not the truth of God.”
“God is still speaking” says all these things to me and more. It is a slogan that for me manages to say true things about the United Church of Christ, or at least things that I want to be true about my denomination. This is very much in keeping with who we are and aspire to be. The Bible is a source of truth, not the only source of truth. It is to be taken seriously, but not literally. There is no necessary conflict between science and religion. We may hear God speak in the voice of the poet, the novelist, or the person sitting next to us. The word of God is not something that is fixed and static but as scripture itself says is living and active. Faith is a journey in which we are in constant dialogue with God. I don’t know. I may be reading too much into that short sentence, “God is still speaking”, but to me it says all those things if we reflect on it, and it’s all to the good. At the same time…there are some other kinds of things that need to be said.
At General Synod this summer a number of people said something to the effect that it may be that “God is still speaking” but the question is are you, United Church of Christ, are we listening. Now that question can be taken a couple of ways. It could mean, “Are we paying attention?” Are we listening to what God is saying in the sense of taking it to heart? Does what God says when God speaks make a difference to us? Does it take hold of us? Does it lead us to action? Does it produce fruits of some kind?
I suppose those are legitimate questions to ask. In some situations they may be important questions to ask. Are we going to act on what we believe God to be saying? Are we going to gamble our lives on what we believe God to be saying when God still speaks? Sometimes those may be the most important questions we need to ask ourselves. But I also have to say that from where I stand, from where I find my spirit these days, they are also troubling questions.
I am troubled because the phrase “God is still speaking” is a very confidant sounding statement, and I can’t help but have this feeling, this suspicion that there is an unspoken part of this statement, that what people may often be saying when they say “God is still speaking” is: God is still speaking and I (we) know what it is that God is saying. Progressive Christians can fall into that way of thinking just as much as our more conservative sisters and brothers. The trouble with asking whether we are listening to the God who is still speaking and meaning by that whether we are paying attention, whether we are going to follow or follow up on what God is saying, is that it implicitly assumes that we know, that we are pretty darn clear about what God is saying. There can, in my hearing of it, be an air of certainty, an air of assurance, an air of arrogance in the statement “God is still speaking” and in the question of whether we are paying attention to what we know God to be saying.
In a world which seems rather full these days of people who think they know what God has said or is saying, I am inclined to think that we would be better off with a little less of that. In a world in which there seem to be a whole lot of people who think they know what God is saying, I am inclined to read the first verses of our scripture for this morning, which said, “Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread”—I am inclined to read that and say to myself, “Wow, those were the good old days.” In a world where too many people claim to know exactly what God has to say, I would be tempted, if I could, to place a moratorium on all religious experiences where anyone claims to have heard God clearly…I probably don’t mean that, not completely, but somewhat…but if I could wave a magic wand, I would decree that all people of faith would be enough unsure of themselves that they would know that they had a lot more listening to God to do. Then the question “are we listening” would mean not so much “are we willing to carry out what God is saying” and much more “are we in a mode of discernment?”, “are we in a mode of learning”, “are we in a mode of being receptive”, “are we in a mode of humility” with regard to anything God may have to say to us.
I must confess that I ended the scripture reading we heard today in the middle of the story. You may recall that Samuel was visited in his sleep by God on several occasions, but he doesn’t know what to make of it or who it is that’s visiting him, because after all the “word of the Lord was rare in those days” and “visions were not numerous” and “Samuel did not yet know the Lord”. So Samuel went to Eli several times in the middle of the night, thinking that it must be Eli who is calling him. Eli says, no, it wasn’t me and then finally realizes that it must be none other than God who’s disturbing Samuel’s sleep, and he tells him that the next time this happens Samuel should say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Which Samuel does, and then the Lord goes on to speak to Samuel, and he says…well, I don’t want to go into that this morning. I don’t want to go into what the Lord says to Samuel because for today the point is not what the Lord said to Samuel or what we may think God has said or is saying to us. For today, for these days, at this time on God’s troubled planet earth, it may be that we need much less to jump ahead to hear what God is saying and much more to stop and linger with the words of Samuel: “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” For today, for these days in our common life, let these be the last words we hear. May we keep them in our spirits. May they trouble all our certainties. Amen.
Jim Bundy
August 19, 2007