COLLEGE CHAPLAIN

PreachersnSneakers is a popular page on Instagram that has given the creator, Ben Kirby, over 200 000 followers. In 2019, Kirby observed the growing number of celebrity preachers in America wearing rather expensive sneakers. So he started posting simple screenshots from these celebrity preachers’ Insta pages alongside the price tag of the sneakers. They began at 1000 US dollars and have hit heights of over $5500! These are crazy, silly amounts of money that became hard to explain other than pure greed. Kirby worked out that the average monthly household rent of church members was not even half of what some of those sneakers cost. It’s an outrageous sign of plundering God’s people, and of course, it made the news. Kirby’s Insta page kept trending throughout the lockdown when people were losing their jobs left, right and centre, but still the preachers kept turning out in fresh kicks.

These are the stories about Christians and churches that make the headlines; splashy, trashy corruption. You could think that God’s gone silent, because scandal and corruption is all we see his leaders doing. In the days of 1 Samuel, that’s all that seemed to be happening amongst the priests at Shiloh. We met Eli, the dodgy priest last time, rocking on his chair at the back of the temple thinking Hannah was drunk while she prayed for a baby. Today we are introduced to Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who are described as ‘worthless men’ because of their greed. They’re not wearing 1st century fresh drop Jordan 1 sandals, but their greed is just as shameful. However they’re not greedy for sneakers, but for meat. 

They are described as taking a big fork, sticking it into a boiling pot and pulling out bits of meat, which seems weird to us, but it was actually a horrible rejection of God’s word. The lamb that was boiling in those pots, was brought to the temple by faithful Israelites to offer as a sacrifice. Lambs that these people had tended and relied upon for their income, but in gratitude to God, they had offered them up as a sacrifice of praise. A sign to God that they trusted in his provision and his mercy to them. 

Nevertheless, while the fat hadn’t even been rendered off the meat, Hophni and Phinehas would snap up all the choice bits of meat and stuff their face with it! They would take whatever they wanted from all the Israelites who came to worship at Shiloh. There’s no secrecy here. Hophni and Phinehas parade their greed in broad daylight as they wrestle meat away from the worshippers of God. It’s brazen greed, just like a preacher on a platform in a $5000 pair of Yeezys. 

But it gets worse. As well as stuffing their faces, 1 Samuel 2:22 we are told that Hophni and Phinehas were sleeping with the women who served in God’s house of worship. What had started as greed for a feed has turned into a far more sinister and sickening appetite. It should shock us, but it probably doesn’t surprise us. As well as the media reporting about the financial scandals of church leaders today,         their sexual scandals are all too commonplace. In fact, they have become unremarkable, so used are we to seeing them on our screens and in our news feeds.

Another failure is Eli himself, because when he confronts his worthless sons over stuffing their faces and sleeping around, he is hopeless. ‘Boys, it’s not good what you’re doing. Why are you being so naughty?’ is pretty much all he says in an ineffective manner. Consequently, Hophni and Phinehas ignore their old man, just as they have ignored God’s word, which spells their doom. Being greedy and sexually dodgy is bad enough, but to do these things with God’s sacrifices and God’s servants in God’s temple is to attack God himself and that leaves these fellas without anyone to defend them. God delivers a message to Eli saying that because of his lack of discipline and Hophni and Phinehas’ wickedness, that his family is going to be removed from serving at Shiloh forever, and the sign that this is God’s punishment will be that Hophni and Phinehas will die on the same day.

Such diabolical deeds in this passage aren’t they? They have diverted our attention away from the person who this book is named after. 1 Samuel begins with a focus on faithful Hannah and her desire for a son, and then Samuel is born, to grow up under Eli’s roof. Samuel is meant to be the focus, but the splashy, trashy headlines of ‘Priests’ Potluck Runs Out’ has been distracting us. It can seem like this is all God does these days, gets embarrassed by dodgy church leaders.

But if we look closely at our passage again, we see that Hophni, Phinehas, Eli—they’re just blips on the radar. God is quietly working away in the unremarkable. We’re told in 2:18-19 that Samuel served in the presence of the LORD, a mere boy dressed in a little robe that his mother, Hannah, would bring for him each year at the annual sacrifice. Then after Eli wimps out with his worthless sons and they go back to their temple prostitutes, the writer tells us: ‘By contrast, the boy Samuel grew in stature and in favour with the LORD and with people’ (1 Samuel 2:26).

Here is where God is at work, slowly growing and refining the character of Samuel. In Chapter 3, God speaks to Samuel and tells him of his plans to raise him up as priest, but it doesn’t happen at the entrance to the temple in front of Hophni and Phineas philandering. It doesn’t happen around the cooking of the sacrificial meat in front of all Israel. No, it happens in the quiet of night while Samuel is sleeping. As such, at the end of Chapter 3 we are told: ‘Samuel grew. The LORD was with him, and he fulfilled everything Samuel prophesied. All Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a confirmed prophet of the LORD. The LORD continued to appear in Shiloh, because there he revealed himself to Samuel by his word’ (1 Samuel 3:19-21) 

The word of the Lord continues to tick along in the unremarkable. The true word of God’s faithful promise to establish a faithful leader for his people signals the downfall of the dodgy priests. That’s what has exposed the PreachersnSneakers—not the media, or Ben Kirby’s Instagram, no it’s the word of God. The word of God made flesh in the faithful priest-king Jesus, who reveals God’s grace to us that: ‘…has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age’ (Titus 2:12).

Lavishing yourself in $5000 sneakers or committing adultery—that’s the godlessness and worldly lust that gives the church a bad wrap, and the word of God exposes it. The real action of God’s work in this world doesn’t happen on Instagram, it happens in the seemingly unremarkable, but glorious transformation of God’s word shaping God’s people to live sensible, righteous and godly lives. That’s what happens in the life of Samuel, and it’s what happens in the Christian friends and teachers here at TRAC, and I pray that God’s word will come to work in your life too.

This is an edited extract from this term’s Chapel series. You can listen to each week’s Chapel talk on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Gareth Tyndall | College Chaplain