1 Samuel 3: 1-10
Steve Lindsley
January 15, 2012
You can tell when someone is listening to you – I mean, really listening to you. They’re not sitting there playing with their cell phone; they’re not distracted watching TV or reading a book. No – when someone is really listening to you, you have every bit of their attention. They are looking at you, and there’s this look in their eyes that lets you know they’re fully engaged in what you’re saying. When you tell them something bad, their face cringes up. When it’s something funny, they may even laugh. And you don’t need to repeat anything or remind them of something you said a few sentences back. You have their full an undivided attention. And you know what? It’s a good feeling to be listened to!
Now I’m probably like a lot of you – I don’t always do a good job of letting someone know that I’m listening to them. So this past week I did an experiment of sorts – I made a concentrated effort in “intentional intense listening.” Whenever someone spoke to me about something, I did my best to stop whatever I was doing, look at the person, and hear them out. And when I did, here are some of the things I heard people tell me:
- I heard someone voice concern about how they were sick but the sickness hadn’t been diagnosed yet. They were going to a lot of doctors and they were all telling her different things. It was pretty frustrating for her.
- I had someone express fear and anxiety about upcoming surgery. They were glad to have a date on the calendar, but still very nervous about all the “what-if’s.”
- I heard frustration with the grown children of a close friend who is struggling with old age and is still living in their home when they really should be placed in a full-care facility.
- I heard a lot of people express concern and prayers for the Zeller family, friends to many of us, whose six-year old son Nathan had a seizure this past week and is still recovering at Brenner's Hospital.
- I heard a new parent express joy and relief that their baby was finally starting to sleep through the night.
- And I heard excitement from a nine-year old I’m particularly close to about some lyrics he recently wrote for his next rap song.
So that’s what I heard this week when I made the effort to really listen. The thing is, though, listening isn’t always easy. Or, to put it another way, sometimes it’s hard discerning exactly what it is that you’re hearing. Signals get crossed, voices get muddled. It’s especially the case when it’s God that’s speaking to us; trying to tell us something important, trying to show us the way. Listening can get really hard then.
Just ask the two people we find in the scripture that Bruce read earlier. You know, I don’t think it’s by chance that this lectionary passage falls on the Second Sunday of Epiphany – that often-neglected day in the life of the church when we celebrate the arrival of the three kings to the manger and the revelation of God’s coming in the newborn baby Jesus. Sometimes that enlightenment is as clear as a bright star in the night sky. Other times, though, the voice of the Lord is one we often mistaken for something – or someone – else. That’s what’s going on in this story of Samuel and Eli in the temple – hearing, but not really listening. Seeing, but not really perceiving. Confusion in that moment of epiphany.
And you know, I love the way the writer of Samuel starts things off. With his opening words in the third chapter we are informed that, even though all this took place thousands and thousands of years ago, in a time where we’re tempted to think that God’s miracles and visions were an everyday occurrence, instead we are told this:
The word of the Lord was rare in those days,
Visions were not widespread.
So from the very opening sentence, we are not just reading a story – we are in it; right in the thick of it. I mean, when was the last time an angel of the Lord – a true bonafide angel – appeared in your living room to deliver a message? When was the last time waters were parted in your presence, or prophets carried up into the heavens in chariots of fire? When was the last time dry brittle bones were suddenly enfleshed and brought back to life, right before your very eyes?
Exactly. Those sorts of things don’t happen all that much in our day and time. And they weren’t happening much in Samuel’s and Eli’s, either.
It’s the dead of night, we are told. Almost dawn – the lamp of the temple; the lamp that would stay on all night to keep the place illuminated in darkness – the lamp hadn’t gone out yet. There are two sleeping in the temple. One is Eli, the old priest who’d been there for years, who had served God faithfully day in and day out, who had seen it all and heard it all. The other is Samuel, a young boy, raised in the temple by the priest, his protégé.
And so early on this morning, not quite yet dawn, in a time when the word of the Lord was rare and visions were not widespread, God spoke. But God didn’t speak to the faithful priest, as one might expect. Instead, it came to the boy Samuel, who had no idea what to do with it. Because these kinds of things didn’t happen. He assumed it was Eli, so Samuel went into his quarters and asked the priest what he wanted. Woken from his slumber, Eli told the boy he was mistaken – he did not call him – and told him to go back to bed. This happened a second time, and then a third time. And it was on the third time that Eli realized something else was going on here. This was not the boy’s imagination. He was hearing a voice, and that voice belonged to God. So Eli sends him back to his room, and directs Samuel to respond next time with the well-known: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.
Now – before we go on further, before we get into the heart of this sermon about how and what it means to really listen to God, I want to deviate just a second to make note of something here that often goes unnoticed, overlooked, not listened to. See, I don’t think it was insignificant that God chose to speak to the boy Samuel instead of the seasoned priest Eli. Nor do I think we should ignore the fact that Eli discounted Samuel with each early morning waking and had to be hit over the head with it until he saw it for what it was.
You know, we live in a culture – especially here in the rural south – where a whole lot of authority and deference is placed in the lap of the preacher. And somehow we make this assumption that they have this “hotline to God,” if you will. And it’s not just within the church. Sometimes I walk around feeling like I’m wearing a t-shirt that says, “Ask me that question you’ve always wanted an answer for.” Plane trips where total strangers sitting next to me will feel license to disclose their entire life story. Random emails from someone who wants me to explain a tragedy in their life. All because of what I do for a living.
I’ll never forget the story of a minister colleague of mine; about how he and some buddies of his were out golfing one Saturday afternoon in the spring. They were on the back nine when the clouds came unexpectedly and the bottom fell out. And as they huddled together under the shelter, avoiding the torrential rain and watching their afternoon slip away, one of the minister’s friends turned to him and said with some exasperation, “Can’t you do anything about this??” He couldn’t, of course. And he quickly retorted with what’s become one of my favorite pastor lines: “Sorry, I’m in sales, not management.” I use it whenever I can!
The fact is, preachers don’t have access to all the answers. They don’t have an exclusive hotline to God. Which is why long ago, when God apparently wasn’t in the habit of speaking much, when God decided to speak, he chose to speak to a young boy who had no idea what was going on. Not the priest. Not the preacher. Never discount the fact that you are just as able – and sometimes more able – to be the recipient of God’s message in your life; calling you to do something extraordinary. Never discount that.
On the contrary, expect God to speak to you! Expect it! As hard as that often can be. It’s tough knowing when the voice you’re hearing is coming from God, isn’t it? It’s hard knowing for sure if that “nudge” you feel inside is God nudging you, or something else. We have something in common with Samuel, my friends; we’re just not accustomed to God’s voice. We don’t really have any experience with it. The word of the Lord is rare in these days, visions are not widespread.
You and live in a culture where anything outside the norm can be rationalized away. We’ve accepted the fact, even become comfortable with the notion, that God doesn’t break into our ordinary world anymore. We don’t have waters part right in front of us. We’ve never seen thousands of people fed with a few pieces of bread and fish. And we’ve certainly never witnessed a dead man walking out of his tomb one Sunday morning. We live in a world where the knee-jerk reaction to anything outside the ordinary, anything miraculous or wonderful, sounds an awful lot like Eli: You’re dreaming. You’re hearing voices in your head. Don’t pay any attention to them. Go back to bed. Go back to sleep. You’re just dreaming.
And it’s only when we realize who is speaking to us that we are able to reorient ourselves to respond with that wonderful act of faith: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!
This past week at our Bob Chilton Bible study, we were talking about this passage, talking about Samuel and Eli, talking about a God who speaks and how we struggle to listen. One of our members, a recent transplant of the United Church of Christ, shared a quote by the late Gracie Allen, wife of comedian George Burns, that had become that denomination’s motto:
Never place a period where God has put a comma.
God is still speaking.
She explained that the church had little comma buttons and little comma lapel pins; and that the comma was part of their logo on their website and on t-shirts and coffee mugs. A simple comma.
God hasn’t stopped speaking! What do you think this world would look like if we actually lived like our God still speaks to us; if we made a concentrated effort to keep listening? What would it look like, in this age of absent visions and misheard words? What do you think God is saying to us right now about our culture that is driven by fear? If we really listened, what do you think we’d hear God say about the billions here in our town and around the world who can’t remember the last time they had a decent meal? What does God have to say to us about those people who suffer from some form of domestic violence in our country every nine seconds? Or those who die of treatable diseases, like AIDS, every eleven seconds? What wonderful, challenging things would God say to us, if we really listened?
Not a period, Samuel. Not a period, people of God. A comma. God is still speaking. We should keep listening. Thanks be to God. AMEN.
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