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.
At that time Eli, whose eyesight had
begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the
lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of
the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then
the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel! and he
said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called
me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie
down again.” So he went and lay
down. The Lord called again,
“Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli,
and said, “Here I am, for you called me.”
But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the
word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third
time. And he got up and went to Eli and
said, “Here I am, for you called me.”
Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down;
and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is
listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down
in his place.
Now the Lord came and stood there,
calling as before, “Samuel!
Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak,
for your servant is listening.”
Many of you know and have
interacted with Leslie Wilson, our office manager. If you call or stop by the church office,
hers is the face you’ll see and the voice you’ll hear first.
One of the things that I am
personally most grateful for about Leslie is that if you want access to me, you
have to go through her. This is her role
as a gatekeeper. I have bad news for
salespeople and solicitors of all kinds who “just want a minute” of my time –
Leslie isn’t going to let you through.
She knows if you’re calling from a call center, she is trained to listen
for that delay and click of a robo-call.
If someone calls or stops by and wants to speak to “The Reverend,” “The Pastor,” or “Andrew,” clearly they don’t
know me, and they don’t get in.
Sometimes, of course, this
has humorous consequences. Earlier this
week, my good friend Pastor Mark Muckler from Mouzon UMC came by so we could
head out to lunch together. He rang the
buzzer at the back door, Leslie answered the intercom, and goofing around he
said, “Yes, Is the Reverend available?”
Leslie was on her way to go downstairs and answer the door to see who it
was, and she said, “I’m gonna go see who it is and get rid of them – they asked
for “The Reverend.” I told you she takes
her job seriously!
In today’s text from 1 Samuel
chapter 3, God keeps calling, and calling, and calling, and can’t quite get
through. God is trying to get ahold of
Samuel, and he keeps calling him by name, but we are told that Samuel didn’t
yet know the Lord, and so he had no clue who was speaking to him.
But the problem clearly
predates Samuel. We are told in verse 1
that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not
widespread.” On top of that, Eli, the
old priest, is going blind. The
symbolism is ripe for the kind of parody you’d see on Saturday Night Live. A
priest with failing eyesight! C’mon,
really? No wonder visions were rare!
Enter Samuel onto the
scene. He is living with Eli, the old
blind priest and serving in the temple because a few chapters earlier, his
mother, Hannah, prayed for a son, and agreed that if God gave her a son, she
would give the son back to God. That
doesn’t seem fair; shouldn’t the boy get some choice and some say-so in the
matter? Shouldn’t he get to grow up to
be whatever he wants to be? Maybe he
wants to be a shepherd or a sailor or a tentmaker or a carpenter or something
the world desperately needs - an honest politician? Why should he be thrown into the temple and
raised to a lifetime of service to God without even being consulted? It’s so . . . un-American.
Hannah’s promise may appear
rash or arbitrary, but it is akin to what we do in baptism, whether we are
baptizing a child or an adult. In
baptism, we declare a life as no longer belonging to the individual, but to
God. When the water is poured and the
Spirit is invoked, we may as well be stamping “Property of God” across the
chest of the person being baptized. Our
baptismal liturgies confirm the call and blessing of God upon the life of that
person. When parents bring a child for
baptism, they are proclaiming, as Hannah did, that our children do not belong
to us, but are given to us by God, and we give them back to God for God to do
in their lives whatever and however God desires. Similarly, Hannah gave her son, Samuel, to
the Lord.
By the time we catch up to
the story in our text for today, several years have passed and Samuel is a
young boy, no more than 12. He is lying
down in the temple in that place between sleep and awake, and a voice calls to
him in the night: “Samuel! Samuel!” Obediently, if not somewhat begrudgingly, the
boy jumps out of bed and says, “Here I am! You called me!” as he scurries into
the room of Eli, the old, blind priest.
“Silly boy! I didn’t call
you! Now quit bothering me and go back
to bed!”
The scene is vaguely familiar
to anyone with children in the home. The
adults are tired and the child won’t stay in bed. In slapstick comic fashion, not once, not
twice, but three times the child shows up in the adult’s room when he should be
in bed. But finally, the light bulb goes
off in old Eli’s head, and to his credit, he finally seems to get it, summoning
up the last bit of his mojo right near the end to do what he was supposed to be
doing all along. And yes, the gears in
his brain are surely a little rusty; after all, God has to call Samuel three
times before Eli remembers that the Lord sometimes does this sorta thing. In verse 9, he says, “Go, lie down; and if he
calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” They
say even a blind squirrel still finds a nut every now and then. Even a blind, old man whose spiritual sight
dimmed long ago still discerns a vision from God every now and then. The word of the Lord was rare in those days;
visions were not widespread - but neither
was completely extinct.
Many interpretations of this
text set up Eli as both the foil and the fool, but let us not overlook the
positive contribution to the story he makes.
Remember, Samuel hears God’s voice, but he does not recognize it on his
own, he doesn’t know who it is, and he doesn’t know how to respond to it
properly. Dottering old Eli tells him
all he needs to know. His eyes were
almost dim, but not quite - there was still enough of a flicker of God’s Holy
Spirit within him to help young Samuel hear the call of God.
Eli tells Samuel to go back
and lie down. In other words, to be still,
to be quiet, and in the dark. He tells
Samuel to go to a place where he can’t see or hear anything else, where there
is nothing to distract him from hearing and responding to God.
So it is for us. When it comes to hearing a word from God,
sometimes we simply need to stop, and wait, and sit in the silence, and listen
for God. Sometimes we need to lie down
in the dark and be still and discern what God is speaking. For goodness’ sake, we need to stop making
our own noise, too. When the word of the
Lord is far too rare and where visions are not nearly widespread enough, as in
the days of Eli and Samuel, whenever there is the perception that God is no
longer sharing a word or a vision, it is not that God has stopped speaking, but
that humans have stopped listening. The
absence of a word or vision from the Lord has more to do with our human refusal
to listen than with any divine reluctance to speak.
Very often, listening for God
requires listening to each other. One of
the oft-overlooked but crucial details of the story of the call of Samuel is
that both Samuel and Eli had to listen to each other for God’s call to be
heard.
I think one of the great
disservices the church does to itself - scratch that - I think one of the
greatest sins the church commits is that often we don’t listen to each
other. Hearing the call of God in the
midst of a Christian community requires that we listen to each other, and when
we don’t, the results are literally faith-shattering.
Let me give you an example
from an article I read this week from someone describing what happened in a
recent church service he visited. You
can read the entirety of the article on our church website.
“I was recently in a church
service where the message of the sermon was about the intergenerational
representation of congregations, and one of the points was that previous
generations needed to be willing to listen to the stories and voices of the
younger generations as well.
“Now at some point in the
midst of this great message the children in the Sunday school class had been
taken outside to play in the grass with some balloons, and you could hear their
laughing and shrieks of joy and surprise outside the windows of the sanctuary.
What an appropriate backdrop for such a message!
“And then it happened. An older gentleman in the congregation stood
up, walked clear down the side aisle, opened the door to the church yard and
told the children that they needed to quiet down because a service was taking
place inside. During a message about
generations needing to be willing to listen to one another, some guy actually
got up and told the younger members of the church to shut up.”
Aside from being a really
mean thing to do and a complete missed opportunity, my guess is that was a
congregation in which the word of the Lord was rare, and visions were not
widespread. I don’t even want to know
how long it had been since anyone had sensed the Holy Spirit there! But what happened in that church on that day
could have been avoided by a close reading of this text we’ve been listening
into today. The success of the call of
God in today’s text hinges on the willingness of the generations to listen to
each other, and share with each other, and trust each other.
Young Samuel shared his raw,
unbridled, experience of God; old Eli shared his mature, structured,
understanding of God. Both were
necessary in the story in order to hear from God, and what I want us all to
realize is that neither side had the totality of God’s interaction all to
themselves - young and old needed each other.
The story is only complete because of what both brought to the table,
and because they could listen to each other and trust each other, they were
able, together, to discern the voice of God.
Eli and Samuel had to listen to each other for God’s call to be heard.
Friends, God is speaking all
the time. God is relentless in
calling. And here’s the great thing - all Christians are called into
ministry! Not just pastors and seminary
professors and church officials and other so-called “professional”
ministers. All Christians are called
into ministry! Church reformer Martin
Luther called this “the priesthood of all believers,” we Methodists refer to
this as the “ministry of all the baptized.”
The terms are diverse but the sentiment is the same - all those who
follow Jesus are called to be in ministries that further the cause of Christ,
that promote healing, wholeness, and reconciliation, and that help bring about
the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
On a day like today, Missions
Sunday, we are reminded in real and concrete ways that we are all called to be
in ministry. The financial commitments
you have all made today and will make over the coming year provide the
resources needed to support those who are making a difference in people’s lives
- around the corner and around the world - in the life-giving name of
Jesus. And there are no shortage of
hands-on opportunities to serve and engage in the reconciling ministry of Jesus
- so many places where we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus to those
around us in ways large and small, and I am so grateful to be the pastor of a
church who cares so deeply and so passionately about those outside our walls
that Missions is in our blood.
You may not have thought
about it this way, but what we do in Missions is in response to the call of God
on the lives of individuals in our congregation, and our congregation as a
whole. You see, the call of God to all
people in every generation is consistent and simple: First, listen. Second, do.
That was how it happened for Samuel, for prophets and apostles and
saints through the centuries and for us today.
First, listen - for the voice of God, for the instruction of God, for
the call of God. Second, do what God
tells you to do.
The first task is to listen. In a world full of noise - much of it self-generated - one of the
most important spiritual disciplines we can cultivate is simply to listen for
the voice of God.
God is still speaking. God is still calling us all by name. The question is whether we are still and
quiet enough to hear that call. Are we
listening to God? Are we listening to
each other? God is speaking your name
today, because God has a call upon your life.
When God calls our name, the response is still the same as it was for
the boy Samuel in the middle of the night in the temple: “Speak, Lord, for your
servant is listening.” If we’ll do that,
the word of the Lord will be abundant, and as for visions? There’ll be plenty.
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