The sermon text is below the sermon video…

St. Stephen’s Episcopal, Goldsboro NC; Sunday June 13 2021
The Reverend Alan Neale; “Moving On”

Search committees for church leaders have been established since, almost, time immemorial. I think of a search committee led by a gifted, powerful and prophetic spiritual leader; a person hesitant to accept the role but who eventually acceded to the will of the Lord.

This search committee chair doubtless set out on the journey with a group of friends, eager to pray “only for a knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry it out.”

Ah, “the power to carry it out”! The search committee chair of whom I speak, had become a timid and hesitant person despite years to the contrary; all this person could see was blockage and threat, instead of openings and promise.

And… when actually faced with potential candidates, consistently chose the wrong one. Wrong not because the candidate was unacceptable but simply because the candidate was not called by the Lord.

And when about to surrender to despair, our search committee chair has a stroke of brilliance and asks, “Is there anyone else here?”.

And here, of course, the game is up and you realize (as if you had not realized before) it is of Samuel whom I speak. Who would have thought that the qualifications for the successful candidate would be a ruddiness of complexion, a brightness of eyes and a startling handsomeness (is there such a word?) of person… oh, and one other qualification… this one was called by the Lord. A few weeks ago I interviewed for an Interim Position in upstate New York. The search committee were friendly, open, quick-witted and sharp. And towards the end of our conversation, one member asked me, “And why, Alan, should we choose you as our Interim Minister?”. I responded (probably too quick as ever), “There’s only one reason… you feel the Lord is calling me.”

Why is it, do you think, that Samuel found this task (to find a new king) so onerous, so unwelcome, so challenging? Why? I think the answer is found in I Samuel 16:1. “The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul?’” Or, to quote my favorite Message Translation, “God addressed Samuel: “So, how long are you going to mope over Saul? You know I’ve rejected him as king over Israel. Fill your flask with anointing oil and get going.”

Now, we know that the Lord grieved over Saul, we read it there in chapter 15, verse 35. But that was good grief, Samuel was suffering (maybe even indulging in) bad grief. And the time had come, decided the great Divine Therapist of our Souls, the time had come for Samuel to stop grieving, accept reality and move on… “fill your flask with anointing oil and get going.”

As long as Samuel stayed rooted in his grief over Saul; and this grief was complicated (as it is always) – it was grief that Saul had died, it was grief that Samuel had allowed the people to choose Saul, and it was grief that Samuel had veered from the purpose of the Lord… that’s a lot of grief. And that massive mass of grief caused Samuel to become almost paralyzed, unable to move forward; that massive mass of grief caused Samuel to see molehills become mountains and that massive mass of grief clouded Samuel’s eyes to preclude him from identifying the chosen… not Eliab, not Abinadab, not Shammah, nor the other four sons though they were all of fine appearance and grand stature.

That’s what “bad grief” does to us, as it did to Samuel: we feel paralyzed, we feel afraid and we feel unable to trust our judgment.

What then do we do? We surrender to the love of Christ… we surrender to the joy of knowing that Christ loves us, we surrender to the privilege of knowing we are called to love Christ.

2 Corinthians 13:15 “The love of Christ urges us on”; Message Translation: “Christ’s love has moved me to such extremes. His love has the first and last word in everything we do.”

And with the love of Christ, not only do we feel urged, compelled to move on but we are able to see people, places and things no longer from a human point of view, but everything is a new creation from Christ’s point of view.

Samuel, overwhelmed by bad grief, could not see what was before his eyes… the one who would become great King David! Moving out of grief, he was given new sight, new insight, new perspective. 2 Corinthians 5:16 “no longer… we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it!”

Churches throughout the world, enduring and surviving the Covid pandemic, have been forced to re-evaluate their identity, their mission. With your new Rector, you will (I pray) set out on a brave, courageous and open-ended journey; to discover with God the anointed and blessed new ways of ministry and welcome and mission as well as affirming the old and still valuable ways of church life.
I want for you all, I pray for you all a sense of “the love of Christ urging you on, as you both love Him and revel in His love for you.”.

Samuel was asked by the Lord, “How long will you grieve over Saul?” – he never gave voice to an answer but by his readiness to get up and move, by his readiness to deal with obstacles and succeed, by his readiness to accept the new and surprising… I believe he gave answer to the Lord, “I am ready, Lord”. O Lord, help us to want to be ready, to let go… and let you be King. AMEN