Who Me?
How do you see yourself? Maybe on different days, we see ourselves in different ways, but probably deep down you have a core sense of who you are. Emily Dickinson was a great American poet who, like several of her contemporaries Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Brontë, and Browning, were forging modes of expression beyond convention. It might have been literary critics that prompted her two stanza poem:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! They’d Advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Whimsical, but cutting too in a strong protective way, Dickinson hits back. She ironically lets the hearers or readers know that she knows: she is somebody. She tells anyone and everyone with ears to hear, they really are somebody, even if they have worried, they are not, because of the jabs of others. People may need to listen within rather than to external noise to learn this.
I also recall in the midst of the civil rights movement The Rev. Jessie Jackson had a teaching and oratory device for his audience. He spoke to people who regularly felt the sting of those dismissing their value. This encouraging device was a whole litany of reminders such as: “I may be poor, but I am somebody. My clothes may look different, but I am somebody. I may be small, but I am somebody.” We may all have our own particular way to begin that thought and claim, what fits as a reminder for us. The point is, you are somebody: God knows it and you need to know it too.
This week we reflect upon the young person, Samuel, attending the old and fading Eli, a priest at Shiloh. The shrine there was very special, housing the Ark of the Covenant. This is a story of transition, where the priestly authority is giving way to prophetic authority in the faith story of Israel. Eli’s family had fallen apart with his sons’ destruction by their presumption and greed. Picture this: The lamp of the inner chamber was lit and burning through the night in accordance with the Torah. The flame of the lamp dimly lit the chamber where the ark was placed, the seat of the presence of the Lord. The priest slept in the outer room, and his young attendant or acolyte, Samuel, slept at the door of the inner chamber. The Lord calls to Samuel and waking, he thinks it is his master, Eli. “No,” says the priest, I did not call, lie down again to sleep. It happens again just like that. Then a third time it happens. The boy who sleeps near to the presence of the Lord turns the wrong direction again assuming it is his earthly master, Eli. This time the old man deduces what is happening and tells him, “Go, lie down; and if you hear the call, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
Samuel is somebody, and he is more than he thinks. He is going from Samuel the young servant of Eli, to Samuel the servant of Elohim, that is, of God. Samuel becomes a prophet of God and the last of the line of Judges over Israel. His mother, Hannah, feared she would never have a son, but by the blessing and prayer of Eli, she was granted her son Samuel. Now Samuel is given the task to announce the dire future in store for Eli and to usher in a new dynamic of relation between God and Israel. He will in the end be the reluctant transition figure from the age of Judges to the line of Kings, Saul, David, and beyond.
Do you know? You are somebody. God will use you because you are you; God has a plan for you if you will choose to listen and follow the divine direction provided. As you waken, sit up attentively. Dare to speak the words, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”