It Takes Two to Listen

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January 18, 2015

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Samuel served the Lord by helping Eli the priest, who was by that time almost blind. The Word of the Lord was rare in those days.

But one night, Eli was asleep in his room, 3 and Samuel was sleeping on a mat near the ark of God in the Lord’s house. They had not been asleep very long 4 when the Lord called out Samuel’s name.

“Here I am!” Samuel answered. 5 Then he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am. What do you want?”  “I didn’t call you,” Eli answered. “Go back to bed.”  Samuel went back.

Again the Lord called out Samuel’s name. Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am,” he said. “What do you want?”

Eli told him, “Son, I didn’t call you. Go back to sleep.” The Lord had not spoken to Samuel before, and Samuel did not recognize the voice. 8 When the Lord called out his name for the third time, Samuel went to Eli again and said, “Here I am. What do you want?”

Eli finally realized that it was the Lord who was speaking to Samuel. 9 So he said, “Go back and lie down! If someone speaks to you again, answer, ‘I’m listening, Lord. What do you want me to do?’”

Once again Samuel went back and lay down. The Lord then stood beside Samuel and called out as he had done before,

 “Samuel! Samuel!”

 “I’m listening,” Samuel answered. “What do you want me to do?”  The Lord said:

Samuel, I am going to do something in Israel that will shock everyone who hears about it! 12 I will punish Eli and his family, just as I promised. 13 He knew that his sons refused to respect me, and he let them get away with it, even though I said I would punish his family forever. 14 I warned Eli that sacrifices or offerings could never make things right! His family has done too many terrible things.

The next morning, Samuel got up and opened the doors to the Lord’s house. He was afraid to tell Eli what the Lord had said. 16 But Eli told him, “Samuel, my boy, come here!”

 “Here I am,” Samuel answered.

Eli said, “What did God say to you? Tell me everything. I pray that God will punish you terribly if you don’t tell me every word he said!”

Samuel told Eli everything. Then Eli said, “He is the Lord, and he will do what’s right.”

As Samuel grew up, the Lord helped him and made everything Samuel said come true. 20 From the town of Dan in the north to the town of Beersheba in the south, everyone in the country knew that Samuel was truly the Lord’s prophet.

Sermon: "It Takes Two to Listen"

Have you ever heard God speaking?  Really, I’m asking!  I realize for some it might be troubling to admit that you’re hearing voices, but let’s just lay aside that fear.  When have you heard God speak to you?

Some of you have heard God speak to you.  And some of you have been sitting in a pew all your life and you’ve never really heard God say anything.  We could say, in the face of secularism and loss of faith in the institution of religion that the Word of the Lord is rare in our days.  Many people talk about God.  But a Word from God seems lost in the racket of our frantic time.

That was also true of Samuel’s time.  There were corrupt politicians and more corrupt religious leaders.  There was senseless murder and precarious finances. There was a disorganized group of people who wanted to be like the great powers of their day, to have a King.  Because a King would change it all.  That would make everything better.

You see, these people of Israel didn’t really expect for any greater power to intervene.  Certainly not God.  A King was the best they could hope for.  The Word of the Lord was rare in those days.

But, for reasons we’ll never understand, God decided to get chatty one night, with a boy named Samuel and his mentor, Eli.

Eli was a minister, but he didn’t hear God speak any more than anyone else.  He watched his sons abuse their priestly power to take advantage of the most vulnerable in the name of God.  He saw his people Israel turn from faithfulness to greed and lust under such leadership.  His eyesight was failing him and so were his children.  He’d pretty much given up on a divine intervention when Samuel came in the middle of the night, asking why he’d been called.

It’s important to realize it took Eli three of these interruptions to recognize that it was actually God calling Samuel.  The Word of the Lord was rare in those days. 

But on that particular night, the cold ember of faith within that old priest Eli began to tingle with warmth, and he instructed his protégé with perhaps the most important words he would ever hear, “Go, lie down, and if God calls you say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” 

Note that Eli said, “if”.  Even those other three calls weren’t enough to prove to him that God might actually call again.  He’d had enough experience of the silence of God to put too much stock in God speaking.

But God wasn’t done with this wake-up call: Samuel was called again, and said what Eli told him to, and then God spoke a word that Samuel didn’t particularly want to hear, and certainly Eli didn’t.  God was calling out Eli for his sons’ blaspheming and power-hungry ways.  Eli wasn’t restraining them from such sins, and so he was as guilty as they were. 

The trembling boy Samuel, with sleep still in his eyes, reluctantly told his teacher all these troubling things God had said.  And that old man Eli was almost relieved that even punishment meant at least God was doing something, and said, “God is God.  Let him do what seems good to him.”

We hear that Samuel went on to become a trustworthy prophet of the Lord, that he did give Israel the king they wanted, though Saul turned out to be about the sorriest sort of king there was.  Samuel seems like the main character in this story.  But I think the courageous person in our story is actually Eli.

You see, Eli knew God wasn’t pleased with him, in the way of that guilty tingle we all get when we buy something far too extravagant, or drive by a homeless person, or perpetuate gossip, or keep things the same just for the sake of it.  Eli knew that tingle of guilt, he’d known it for many years.  And so, when Samuel thought Eli was calling him, I think that old priest knew what was happening after all.

I think he knew that seemingly-silent God was finally speaking.  And I think he knew it wouldn’t be good news.  The self-preserving choice would’ve been to, of course, lie, and tell Samuel that he did call him, asking him to trim the candles, or pray his prayers, or sweep the floor, or some other arbitrary task.

Eli was possibly tempted to do this, because it took him three times to get it right.  But finally he did.  He listened, not with his ears, but with his heart.  His guilt-tingling heart.  He told Samuel the truth: that God was calling.  And he received the judgment he knew was due to him, similar judgment he’d heard from God before. 

Scripture tells us the tragic ending of Eli’s tale, that after the Philistines killed his sons and captured the ark of the covenant in battle, Eli fell over with despair and died at age 98, blind and afraid.  His life was mostly a case of getting it wrong.  But just once, he did get it right.

He got it very right.  That old man had the courage to help a young, sleepy protégé hear God speaking to him, even if those words would bring his own sins to light.

Who wants to hear that sort of Word?  Eli certainly didn’t, especially from someone younger and less experienced than him, but he listened anyway.  And because he listened, Samuel was able to hear God’s voice, too. 

This passage begins by telling us that the Word of the Lord was rare in those days.  But what if it wasn’t?

What if it was just that this Word wasn’t particularly what the people wanted to hear: that corruption and sin, greed and injustice had to stop?  That worshipping power and privilege at the expense of the most vulnerable had to stop. 

If the Word of the Lord is rare in our days, maybe it’s for the same reason.  Maybe it’s because it makes us tingle with guilt like Eli.  Maybe we prefer God’s silence to God’s judgment.  But we should be sure that, if the word of the Lord is rare, it is not because we’re afraid of it.

God might not always bring a Word we want to hear, but God will tell us what we need to hear.  And if we are brave and humble enough, as Eli was, we might just find that God has been speaking in the middle of the night every night of our lives, in the midst of imperfect community each time we gather together, and will never stop speaking. 

But we can’t hear God’s Word alone.  Samuel needed old, feeble Eli to listen.  Eli needed young, questioning Samuel to listen.  We need each other to hear the voice of God.  We need each other to say, as Terry and Randall and Carol say today when they are ordained and installed as elders of our church, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

We need each other to figure out the difference between indigestion in the middle of the night and the tingling of God speaking to us.  Eli might have got very much wrong in his life: but what he got right is what matters: he helped those who would come after him hear and respond to God’s voice in new and powerful ways.   

That voice of God is hard to hear. 

It’s hard to hear God speaking when your own doubts drown out any trust in your own voice, much less God’s.  It’s hard to hear God speaking when you don’t have food to eat or heat in your home.  It’s hard to hear God speaking when you feel the church is not a safe place for you.  It’s hard to hear God speaking when you feel that no one really expects much of you, much less wants you to succeed.  But God is still speaking – and it is our job to help each other recognize that voice.

You can probably tell by now that I don’t actually believe that the Word of the Lord is rare in our days…

But what is rare is someone willing to help others listen, especially when listening will challenge our way of doing things. 

If you want to hear the voice of God, don’t stare into the heavens begging, or pore over books on listening, and definitely don’t listen to endless sermons (ha).  If you want to hear the voice of God, help someone else hear it. 

And then be brave enough to trust God speaking through them, even if that means things have to change.  It takes two to listen.  And it takes all of us to respond with humility and courage.  Amen.