Scripture: 1 Samuel 4: 3-11; 19-22
Sermon: Where is the Glory?
Topics: glory, tabernacle, Ichabod, winners, losers, Raskolnikov
Preached: July 4, 2021
Rev. Mike Abma
1 Samuel 4: 3-11
3When the troops came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, ‘Why has the Lord put us to rout today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, so that he may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.’ 4So the people sent to Shiloh, and brought from there the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, who is enthroned on the cherubim. The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God.
5 When the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel gave a mighty shout, so that the earth resounded. 6When the Philistines heard the noise of the shouting, they said, ‘What does this great shouting in the camp of the Hebrews mean?’ When they learned that the ark of the Lord had come to the camp, 7the Philistines were afraid; for they said, ‘Gods have come into the camp.’ They also said, ‘Woe to us! For nothing like this has happened before. 8Woe to us! Who can deliver us from the power of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with every sort of plague in the wilderness. 9Take courage, and be men, O Philistines, in order not to become slaves to the Hebrews as they have been to you; be men and fight.’
10 So the Philistines fought; Israel was defeated, and they fled, everyone to his home. There was a very great slaughter, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot-soldiers. 11The ark of God was captured; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died.
19 Now his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant, about to give birth. When she heard the news that the ark of God was captured, and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she bowed and gave birth; for her labour pains overwhelmed her. 20As she was about to die, the women attending her said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, for you have borne a son.’ But she did not answer or give heed. 21She named the child Ichabod, meaning, ‘The glory has departed from Israel’, because the ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband. 22She said, ‘The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.’
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION — The Delusion
I admit, this is an odd text, a tough text, even a shocking text.
Perhaps you may have forgotten that such a dark day of defeat was even in the beginning of 1 Samuel.
I am preaching on this tough text because last week we were introduced to the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas.
In many ways, this is part 2 of last week’s sermon.
Last week we saw these sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas,
as young men who were used to getting their way.
Last week we saw that, from all appearances,
they would have looked like winners in their world:
* they had positions of respect in the Tabernacle;
* they used those positions to become very wealthy;
* and nothing seemed to be off limits for them.
As people used to getting their way,
perhaps it is not a total surprise that Hophni and Phinehas
happily escorted the ark of the covenant
from the Tabernacle in Shiloh to the battlefield at Ebenezer.
They were winners, were they not?
And God was on their side, was he not?
As they marched into battle, Hophni and Phinehas assumed
that the Philistines were their biggest threat.
What they failed to see was that
their own sin
their own pride
their own presumption
was in fact their biggest threat.
THE DEFEAT
In ways, things could not have gone worse that day.
The Israelite army lost scores of soldiers.
Hophni and Phinehas also died in the battle.
Their father, Eli, died after hearing the terrible outcome of the battle.
And perhaps most devastating of all, the ark of the covenant was captured —
this hard reality is repeated 5 different times in this chapter.
The one person in this chapter who seemed most aware of the significance of this
loss is the wife of Phinehas.
Where Phinehas, her husband, was clearly a thug,
his wife reveals here that she was actually the theologian.[1]
Even after the agony of the day’s devastating news,
and even in the middle of her labor pains,
her focus was not on her nation’s defeat;
nor was it on the death of her husband;
nor was it on the loss of her father-in-law.
Her focus wasn’t even so much on her new-born son.
No, her focus was on God.
Her worry was, what did this all mean for God?
Her deep question was, “Where is the glory?
Where is the glory of God?”
That is such a pressing question for her
that it becomes the name of her new child —
I chabod — in Hebrew meaning “Where is the glory?”
WHERE IS THE GLORY?
I think it is fair to say that we live in a culture that loves winners.
We live in a society that glorifies success.
We look at those with
great income
great status
great fame
great power
and we assume they are worthy of great glory.
The late Rev. John Timmer,
former pastor here at Woodlawn,
reminded us in his book God of Weakness
that God has a distinct dislike for human power and human glory.[2]
God, in fact, goes in the opposite direction.
God has a penchant for the losers, the lost, the least, the lonely.
God choses the foolish of the world to shame the wise.
God choses the weak of the world to shame the strong.
He choses a cross, an instrument of utter defeat,
to show his glory.
RASKOLNIKOV
Recently I reread the classic Fyodor Dostoevsky novel Crime and Punishment.
The main character of this book is a proud young man named Raskolnikov.
Raskolnikov tends to see the world as divided between
winners and losers;
those who are superior, and those who are inferior;
those with something to contribute to society and those with nothing to
contribute – people he sees as just parasites.
Raskolnikov ends up killing someone – a person he considers a parasite, a
worthless person.
Then something happens.
Raskolnikov meets another seemingly worthless person.
He meets a young woman named Sonia.
Sonia was forced to become a prostitute
in order to keep her parents and her younger siblings alive.
By all appearances, Sonia is nothing but a big loser:
She is deeply aware of her shame;
She has lost her dignity, lost her honor, lost her self-respect.
And yet…..and yet ….for all her losses,
Raskolnikov sees in her something remarkable….
something deep, something true, something…..glorious.
The novel is basically the slow and steady process of Raskolnikov dying —
Not dying physically, but dying spiritually:
dying to his pride;
dying to his self-righteousness;
dying to his self-justifying ways.
Only after hundreds of pages of this slow dying to his old self,
and only after he is ultimately in prison and in exile,
does Raskolnikov’s spiritual resurrection begin.
DYING AND RISING
Of all people,
we Christians,
we the people connected to Christ
and united with him
should know about this type of dying and rising.
It starts with our baptism.
As we said when Leif was baptized earlier this service,
the sacrament of baptism is all about
being united in the dying and rising of Christ.
But it continues throughout our lifetime,
As we die to our hubris, and rise to Christ’s humility;
As we die to insisting on control,
and rise to trusting in God;
As we die to our dependence on our own power,
and rise to depending on God’s power;
As we die to our demand to be first
and rise to a willingness to be last.
Read the Bible from beginning to end
and we realize
we can only truly glimpse the Promised Land
from the wilderness of our own weakness;
and we can only truly see our Risen Lord
through the veil of our tears.
CONCLUSION
So where is the Glory?
Where is the glory
when the ark of the covenant is captured?
Where is the glory
when the Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed?
Where is the glory
when the Son of Man is hanging on the cross?
Where is the glory
when we, ourselves, face one setback after another?
Where is the glory?
We take bread in our hands,
we take the cup to our mouths
confessing that weeping may last for the night,
but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5)
We take the bread and the cup
knowing that we may be forced to wait in the dark,
but the Morningstar nevertheless will rise in our hearts (2 Peter 1:19).
We take the bread and the cup
knowing that there will come a day when we are planted
as seeds of weakness in the earth,
but that God, and God alone,
has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ
so that all of us sown in weakness,
will be raised in strength;
all of us sown in humility
will be raised….raised in glory.
Amen
PRAYER
Dear Lord,
We come to you
Not with our strength but with our weakness;
Not with our merits, but with our sorrows.
Receive us we pray,
Graft us deeply into your life-giving Son
In whose name we pray
Amen
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