Speak, Lord, We're Listening

2nd Sunday after Epiphany
1Samuel 3:1-20
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
John 1:43-51

Thought’s Before Worship:
As we prepare our hearts and minds for worship, consider the time when God called you to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Were you young? Were you old? Did it happen all at once, or has God been continually calling and re-calling you into a closer relationship with Jesus?

Today we witness two instances of God calling people into ministry and relationship with God – Samuel, Philip, and Nathanael. In scripture and beyond, God has set a precedent for calling ordinary, everyday people into relationship with God and ministry in God’s name. Is God calling you? To what? What’s preventing you from hearing or accepting God’s call on your lives?

Sermon

In thinking about our passage from 1 Samuel today, I cannot shake the image of a…happily…married couple. I imagine this scene.

The woman’s sitting in a chair, reading the paper or watching the morning news. The sun’s shining through the windows, lighting the room and bathing it in warmth, despite the winter cold. She’s enjoying herself and appears content. Then, suddenly, her peace is assaulted by a shrill voice from the other room. In stomps her husband of fifty-plus years with complaints and chores. You didn’t pay this bill, and why did you do this, and … he goes on and on. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

The woman is used to this, and knows that he doesn’t really mean any harm by all his nagging. But still, it gets old for her to hear again and again of the things she needs to do. So, in a deft, unperceived movement, she reaches up to her ears and turns off her hearing aids, first one and then the other. Without changing her expression, she continues to play along with her husband’s nagging, nodding or mumbling along: yes, dear. You’re right dear.

Thinking of this scene, I’m drawn to the biblical author’s introduction to Samuel’s call: “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread” (1b). Why wasn’t God’s voice heard among a people who were called God’s chosen people? Is it that God is not speaking or that we’re no longer listening very well? For the woman with hearing aids, it’s not that the voices stopped, but that she stopped listening, and then intentionally prevented herself from hearing. And such was the case for the people when Eli’s sons Hophni and Phinehas were priests at Shiloh.

Regardless of God’s actual activity, the people weren’t listening, which is evident from the surrounding passages, and alluded to in today’s passage. The people couldn’t listen because the priests, those appointed to listen and carry messages between humans and God, were unfaithful.

The priests were breaking the rules of conduct for priests, which the writer explains just before our reading (1Sam 2:12-17). Priests were entitled to a little bit of the meat that people brought for sacrifices. The accepted practice was to stick a fork into the boiling meat; the priests’ portion was whatever came out on the fork. Instead, Hophni and Phinehas were demanding that people give them the best cuts raw so they could cook it to their own liking. As if that weren’t enough to anger God, they were being sexually promiscuous.

After the author tells us about their actions, we are told that “a man of God came to Eli” and confronted him about the despicable behavior of his sons, bearing a message of judgment from God on Eli’s family (1Sam 2:27-36). So, from the looks of it, it’s not that God wasn’t speaking; it’s that the priests had stopped listening to God, and this caused the people to suffer. Represented by the author of 1 Samuel, the people felt as though God was silent: they felt lost and alone.

Indeed, for all practical purposes “the word of the LORD was rare in those days,” and I wonder if we don’t feel like that ourselves sometimes. Certainly those who do not believe in God go about their daily lives without a thought of God or divine direction for their lives. But, consider responses to some fairly recent world events.

When a tsunami crushed multiple Asian countries in 2004, the question most on people’s lips was, “Where was God?” And wasn’t that one of the biggest questions after hurricane Katrina (that, and “where was the government aid?”)? Or, think about the violence that’s recently re-emerged in Israel-Palestine: people talk as though only a miracle will bring an end to almost 1600 years of religious violence in the area. All this secular talk of miracles and God’s location is underpinned by the suggestion that God has been absent and needs to get back with the program.

Is this not evidence of our own sin, our own turning down of our God-hearing-aids? The temptation’s strong. Like the woman, it’s in some ways easier to live without hearing other voices: we don’t have to do anything. We are often more apt to ask, “Where was God?” after something bad happens, than to actually engage God in conversation all the time.

Is it that the word of the Lord is rare in these days…, or is it more the case that we’ve turned off our God-hearing-aids? In our own lives, perhaps we go all day, or all week without a thought of God. Perhaps we go from task to task and plan to plan without ever thinking that God might care or offer guidance.

Then we come to church on Sundays hoping behind our skepticism that God will show up and speak a powerful word to us, a word that will make our ears tingle. We say we want God to speak to us; yet, we’d do well to wonder, “Is it God who’s silent or absent; or is it that we’ve left no room for God in the busy-ness of our lives; or have we intentionally kept God safe at arm’s length by choosing our sinful ways rather than the way we know to be true?”

Yet, even when Eli’s sons were misbehaving, with their God-hearing-aids turned off, God showed up. In the stillness of the early morning, before the candles of the Lord’s presence flickered out, God called a boy named Samuel by name – a name that sounds like the phrase, “God has heard.” God calls to the boy, not the priest, as though saying, “I have heard. I’m not silent.”

So Samuel wakes Eli, thinking it was him who called. Eli sends him back to sleep: “I didn’t call; lie down again.” Twice more this happens: God calls, “Samuel,” the boy jumps up, “Here I am,” and runs to Eli, who sends him back to bed. But after the third time, Eli comes to his senses, realizes it’s the Lord calling and amends his instructions.

See, Samuel “did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him” (v.7). So he needed help to hear. God kept speaking to Samuel, and when he needed help, God provided the nearly blind priest Eli to help him see and hear. God enabled Samuel to hear and know God’s voice.

God worked through the mentoring relationship of Eli and Samuel so that he could best hear the word of the LORD. And after that, Samuel continued to hear the word of the LORD, for at the end of the text it says that everyone knew that Samuel “was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD” (v.20).

And after Samuel truly heard God, he helped Eli to hear God’s message for him and his family. Even when it was a message that Eli did not want to hear – that his family would be punished for their unfaithfulness – Samuel bore it to Eli faithfully, and Eli heard it as God’s word. In a time when the writer and the people thought that God was silent, God enabled the people to hear and know God’s true voice.

Similarly, God is working in our midst to enable us to hear God’s word for us. We have Sunday school programs, children’s nights, and youth group in which youth are guided and directed in the ways of God. Through these programs our children will grow to be like Samuel, able to hear and know God and respond as God’s witness for the world. God is enabling our young people, through us, to hear and know God’s voice.

Look also to the faithful seeking of the lay leadership and others who are joining us in prayer. God is speaking and we are turning ourselves to listen. We are attempting to de-clutter our lives and Spirits to make room for God to speak truth and wisdom and hope. Look to the God-focused questioning and seeking in Bible studies and fellowship groups. Look to all the people generously serving others – donating money, clothes, and time to various community organizations and individual needs. Look to the conversations over coffee with church friends and business friends. God is enabling us to hear God’s voice.

We all have a tendency to turn down our God-hearing-aids – we limit our prayer, worship, Bible study, service, and Christian fellowship. Yet, God keeps nudging us back to God – keeps bumping up the volume on our God-hearing-aids through our interactions with others and our worship. God keeps nudging and calling us, just as God kept calling Samuel until he realized that it was the LORD calling him. And just as God placed Samuel with Eli for guidance, God has given us a community called the Church in which we help one another hear and know God’s word in our lives.

And with God speaking, and us hearing , we’ve really only one faithful response: we cry out like Samuel – “Here I am…Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (v.10b). And even if, like for Eli, God’s message is hard to hear and bear, more challenge than we expect, we can still respond in faith: “It is the LORD; let God do what seems good” which God will always do (v.18b).

God enables us to hear God’s word and know that it’s true so that we can live according to God’s word. God called Samuel so that he would become the next leader of Israel. Likewise, God calls us so that we can become leaders of our church and our community. God calls us to respond as Eli – It’s God, who is good; so be it; amen. God calls us to respond as Samuel – Speak to us Lord, we’re listening. God calls us to carry God’s message, no matter the cost, so that others will know God’s word and love. Let us pray…

Speak, Lord, we’re listening.
Through your Word you spoke the world into existence;
With the breath of your Spirit you calmed the turbulence, stirred up the Body of Christ, and formed a new people by water and the Spirit.
In your Son, your Word took on flesh that the entire world might see and know you and your love.
So speak, Lord. Speak to us. Give us ears to hear your Word.
Though it may be daunting, give us courage to respond as Samuel did – “Here I am!”
Though you may bear words we prefer not to hear, give us Eli’s courage to accept your message as Truth – “You are the Lord.”
Speak, Lord. You’ve gotten our attention, and we, your servants, are ready and willing.
Breathe into us the breath of truth that we might live as your Body in and for the world.
Speak, Lord, for we, your servants, are listening. Amen.