1 Samuel 3:1-10

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.” Then the LORD said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”

Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” He said, “Here I am.” Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him.”

As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.

Years ago a writer named Rod McKuen took pop American culture by storm with his books of poetry and albums, both containing his innermost feelings about love, loss, and society. Written without much attention to the craft of poetry, McKuen’s poems connected to a generation searching for self expression.

And I, of course, was one of that generation.

And so, like all my girl friends, I bought not only the book but the album entitled Listen to the Warm. Like all my girl friends, at bedtime I doused the lights in my room, lit a single candle, put on the album and listened to McKuen’s husky voice as he mused on love and life. Like all my girl friends, after a time I would blow the candle out and eventually drift off to sleep listening to the warm.

What a contrast this is to our story from the Hebrew Scriptures for today, a story that when read in its shorter form sounds like a sweet children’s story but is in reality far from that. It’s the familiar story of little Samuel bedding down in the temple of the Lord in a time when as the author says, the word of God was rare, little Samuel awakened by God in the night not once, not twice but three times, little Samuel who mistakenly believes that Eli, his elder in the temple, is calling him. Eli, of course, finally figures out what’s going on and tells the boy to go back to bed and when awakened again, to invite God to speak to him.

If we were to stop the story right there, we might well imagine that what the boy Samuel heard from God as he lay in his bed, young and expectant that night was something warm and comforting.

But this is not what this story says at all. Samuel does not listen to the warm, if you will. He listens to a storm—a hurricane, in fact—God’s hurricane that Samuel, himself, will ride as it rearranges the personal lives and the political landscape of insiders in the land of Israel.

And so we learn at least in this story that listening to God will not necessarily bring us rest and comfort. God, our God, is not some kind of husky, self-absorbed voice, come to throw a warm blanket over us and send us back to sleep. No, God our God comes with a word for us, the word that is rare or scarce in our consciousness or in the world around us, the word that we or the world needs, a word of comfort if need be, but just as often a word of challenge and conflict. And in either case, a word of action, a word of action related to the repair of our lives or the repair of the world around us.

But why is all of this in our story happening to a child? Why in this case are we given the story of a child who is awakened from his sleep and asked by God to both listen to the storms of changes in Israel and even in his youth to participate in them? Why the story of a fearful child who is asked to receive a difficult message in the night and deliver it in the light?

You might say that, well, this is the story of the call of Samuel, renown prophet of Israel, and so it follows that this story would take place when he was a boy to express how important he was as a prophet to his people, and, Melissa, maybe, just maybe, it actually happened that way.

But another reading might say that this: This is a story not just about the call of Samuel, renown prophet of Israel, but about you and me as we struggle to listen to God—as we struggle to allow ourselves to be drawn into the rare, even scarce word of comfort or challenge that God wants to speak to the world but needs us to enact in the world.

And out of that you might say that the reason that this is the story of a child learning to listen is that it’s only out of our “child,” out of the most trusting and dependent places within us that we’re able to listen to the comforting or challenging word of God and, though afraid, to act on it.

And you might also say that here in this room there are people struggling with listening both to the comforting and the challenging things that God seems to be whispering to them in the night. There are people struggling with listening to God’s comfort and challenge and with the call to action that God brings these. And that the only way they or we can listen or have the courage to act is to be as a child, dependent on and trusting of God.

Paul Tillich, a noted theologian who taught at Union Seminary in NYC, was once challenged by a conservative student in a lecture hall. The student rose, Bible in hand, and asked, “Dr. Tillich, do you believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God?” Tillich answered: “If you grasp it, no; if it grasps you, yes!”

This in my estimation is what listening to God from the consciousness of an open, receptive child is about—being grasped, being pulled into something that has you rather than you having it. And, of course, this is why we do not want to listen.

We don’t want to listen because God’s words of comfort might mean we would also be called to abandon anything that dishonors us, and this might mean the end of habits or relationships that we are at least used to. We don’t want to listen because God’s words of comfort might mean we might also be called to comfort others and this might mean the end of our own particular brand of self-absorption, our own version of listening to Rod McKuen poetry at night in our candle-lit room.

And we don’t want to listen because God’s words of challenge might come with a call to action to step into a storm that we don’t feel ready or qualified to engage in, a call to action that is about questioning the status quo, troubling those who have been our elders with God’s words of repair and renewal that are often about justice, reconciliation and forgiveness.

We don’t want to listen. And, of course, no one can make us listen, can they?

But know this, that God is still speaking, that God’s word, whatever that may be for us is still trying to elude our grasp and trying to grasp us through our most receptive and trusting consciousness in the middle of our, in the middle of the world’s night. God is still speaking.

God is still speaking to you and to me, here in this place and in this time of confusion and loss, personal and societal. God is still speaking.

God is still speaking with a word of comfort or challenge and a call to us to enflesh that word just as God did in the incarnate one. God is still speaking.

And so if you hear someone call your name and then call it again and then cal it again, imagine for a moment that it is not your boss looking for what work you owe her; it is not your family, looking for what they need from you. It is God searching for where you might be willing to be the child who says, “Speak, O holy one, for your son, your daughter is listening.”

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