The Calling of Samuel

Sermon for Sunday, January 18, 2009
Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-20

This story of Samuel’s calling is a well-known Old Testament story. Samuel is a boy living as a servant in the house of Eli, a priest. Although he lives in the house of priest Eli, he does not know God. So God calls to Samuel in the middle of the night, and he keeps running to Eli. Finally, the third time Samuel runs to Eli, Eli realizes that Samuel may be hearing the voice of God. So he tells Eli to treat it as such. Eli goes back to his bed, lies down, and hears the voice a fourth time. He says to the voice what Eli instructed him to say: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” And God appears to him and speaks to him, giving him a message. That message is that Eli’s house will be punished. Eli has done nothing wrong as a priest ruling over Israel, but you see, his sons are, how shall I say, “wild and crazy guys!” And now the boy Samuel, a servant of Eli, is commissioned by God to proclaim God’s judgment on Eli, his master.

Perhaps the most common response to this story is to praise Samuel for his willingness to listen to God and his courage in delivering the message of God. And surely, Samuel is a character to be praised in this story. Samuel is curious, courageous, and young enough and perhaps even naïve enough to admit he saw and heard God.

First, Samuel is curious. He wants to know why this voice is calling in the night, and why Eli keeps denying that he is the one calling Samuel. “If Eli is not calling me,” Samuel must be thinking, “then who is?” Eli tells him is probably God, who Samuel does not know at this point in the story. So Samuel hears the voice again, and curiously says, “Speak, I’m listening. Tell me why you keep calling me in the middle of the night, you mysterious voice.”

Then, Samuel hears God’s message. “I’m supposed to tell my master Eli WHAT?” he must be thinking. And in the morning, he is nervous about telling Eli the judgment that will fall on his house due to his wild and crazy sons. The Scripture doesn’t tell us why he’s nervous, but he is likely nervous for 2 reasons. First, he has to tell his master bad news, punishment on his house. Second, this bad news, this judgment, is one that is a judgment against Samuel’s own job security. The man who writes his paychecks, the man who feeds him, the man who gives him housing is the man who Samuel is proclaiming will fall and lose everything. And when that fall happens, Samuel might be out on the streets. He must be aware of this reality. Yet Samuel musters up the courage to tell Eli about God’s judgment, and Eli accepts the judgment on his house.

Third, Samuel’s age is a crucial detail of this story. The word of the Lord was rare in those days, the author tells us. And then we hear a story of a young servant having a vision of God and receiving a message from the voice of God.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock over the past few weeks, you know that this evening the Steelers and Ravens will play for the AFC Championship. The QB for the Ravens, Joe Flacco, is a rookie enjoying more success than rookie QBs are supposed to enjoy. And he’s been reminding a lot of people of Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger in his rookie year. In that year, 2004, Big Ben was too naïve to know that as a rookie he wasn’t supposed to win every game he started in the regular season. He was too naïve to know that rookies didn’t win playoff games. Yet Ben won them, albeit with the help of a great team surrounding him. Flacco has enjoyed similar rookie success, winning 2 playoff games already – something no one else, even Ben Roethlisberger, ever did.

Both Flacco and Roethlisberger were too naïve in their rookie season to know the odds against them. Through young eyes, each seemed to coast through their rookie year without even realizing that being very successful is not normal for a rookie QB. Samuel is like an 11th century BCE version of Roethlisberger or Flacco. He’s so young that he doesn’t even realize that seeing visions of God isn’t normal. He hasn’t been around long enough to know that “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; [that] visions were not widespread.” So when he has a vision of God, and hears God’s voice, he possesses a level of openness that most people those days may not have had.

All this praise for Samuel is surely warranted. He was curious, courageous, and naïve in a positive way. But all too often, we stop our interpretation of the story right there. Yay, Samuel! Good job, buddy! Way to go! You heard the voice of God! But just as it would be silly to say Ben Roethlisberger or Joe Flacco were rookie success stories all on their own, without good teams surrounding them, it would also be silly to say that Samuel’s courageous acts were performed without any help. In our reading of this story, we must be careful not to place too much praise on Samuel. We must remember Eli’s critical role in this story.

You see, had it not been for Eli, Samuel would never have been able to discern who it was that was speaking to him. As I’ve already noted, Samuel does not know God prior to his vision. So he has no idea who’s calling him. He’s confused. He keeps thinking it’s Eli, but Eli keeps denying it. There’s no other possibility. As open minded as Samuel is, he’s also completely clueless. He’s too young to have any idea what’s going on. Thankfully, Samuel had Eli to help him. He had a spiritual guide in old man Eli, an aging priest who is so old he’s practically blind. And Eli was able to perceive that is was God calling out to Samuel. Eli practiced expert spiritual discernment, using the wisdom he had accumulated over the years to mentor the young Samuel. In this story, we see a wise old priest mentoring a young, energetic boy – the wisdom of Eli being passed on to young Samuel. I find it interesting that Samuel is sleeping just a few feet away from the Ark of the Covenant – the presence of God – yet he does not know God. And he does not know it is God calling out to him. Even with the presence of God just a few feet away from us, sometimes we can’t see or hear God at all. Sometimes we can’t because we don’t know God. But with the help of others who do know God, people like Samuel who do not know God can quickly become God’s messengers on earth.

Samuel needed Eli to help him discern what exactly was going on. And Eli needed Samuel to hear the voice of God. Eli knows that a judgment will soon be handed down on his house. Just before this passage, a man from God comes to Eli and tells Eli that his house will be punished for his wild and crazy sons. So I suspect that here in chapter 3, Eli is curious about God calling out to one of his young servants. Perhaps Eli has an idea that God might be passing on the same message of judgment a second time, as a confirmation that it is true.

So Samuel needs Eli, and Eli needs Samuel. Samuel needs Eli to help him understand God’s calling for him. And Eli needs Samuel’s help to find out what the voice of God has to say to him and his household. Without Samuel’s naivete and obedience, Eli will not hear God’s message. But without Eli’s spiritual guidance and discernment, Samuel will not hear God’s message. Only through the gifts of both Eli and Samuel is God’s message heard loud and clear.

Because both Eli and Samuel opened themselves up to the possibility of God speaking to them, together they were able to hear the voice of God – even though it was not a message either one wanted to hear. Similarly, sometimes we need the help of others to hear God’s call on our lives.
Over New Year’s, while playing with my 2-year-old nephew, it was interesting how sometimes I was the teacher, and other times he taught me. I was his Eli, and he was my Samuel. For Christmas, we gave him a set of plastic bowling pins. Immediately, he picked up a pin, started swinging it, and tried to hit the bowling ball with it. He was trying to play baseball with bowling equipment. Lisa and I had to teach him about bowling, because he was clueless.

But earlier that morning, Jonathan had taught this old Eli a few things. He taught me how to play with his new keyboard. It had all kinds of buttons on it, and when I tried to push buttons to make it do what I wanted it to, I always messed it up. So Jonathan had to instruct me how to work this complicated keyboard. Within a couple of hours of each other, I helped him through my wisdom of experience, and he helped me through his wisdom of youth.

Sometimes, we are in Eli’s position. We think we know what God’s message is for us, but we need the help of a Samuel to confirm that message. Other times, we are in Samuel’s position. We hear a call on our lives, but we are so clueless that we need the help of an Eli to interpret that message, to guide us in our spiritual discernment.

Whether we are Eli or Samuel, we cannot always hear God alone. There will be times when we are too clueless to know it’s God calling us, and there will be times God speaks to us indirectly, through the words of other people. But if we trust in God’s power, we will be able to accept the help of others as we seek to understand God’s call more clearly. If we work together as members of the body of Christ, together we can hear the voice of God calling out to us in the still of the night. Together we can draw closer to God and His message for us, just as Eli and Samuel did on that dark night in the house of the Lord. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.