“God Calls Samuel” 1 Samuel 3: 1-21

  When I say the phrase “God’s call” in the context of a sermon one of three things happen. One, people start to recount some of the call stories in scripture - Moses and the burning bush, Samuel, David, the disciples and conclude that they are not called because it didn’t look like that for them. Two, people start to say how pastors and missionaries are called but not anyone else. Or three, say “thank goodness I’m not called”. Or some combination of the three.

Friends, let me just say that for the next few weeks we are going to be lifting up call stories from the Hebrew Scriptures and I want you to set aside any of those three things. Instead, I want you to hear me clearly. You are called. By virtue of your baptism, you are called. Your call may not look like my call or the call of the person sitting next to you, but you are still called. 

So in light of that, let us enter into today’s scripture passage from in 1 Samuel. Samuel was the son of Hannah, a woman who was barren for years. She stood by and watched her husband and his other wife be able to have child after child and her heart was broken. One day she was at the temple, crying out to the Lord with such vigor that the priest of duty, Eli, thought she was drunk. However, she prayed to God promising to dedicate her child to service in the temple if God would only hear the cry of her heart. God heard and God responded and Samuel was born. 

By 1 Samuel 3, Hannah has fulfilled her promise to God and Samuel is living in the temple with Eli, in order to serve the Lord. One night, Samuel was laying down tending to the lamp of God in the temple and he hears this audible voice calling his name. Making the rational conclusion, he believed that it must have been Eli calling to him. Only when he went into Eli’s room, he was told that he hadn’t been summoned and to go and lie down. This happened three times before Eli realized that it must have been the voice of God calling out to Samuel.

At that point he instructed the boy to go and lie down, but next time he hears the voice, for the voice will call again, that he is to respond not by running to Eli, but by saying “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.”

The persistent voice of God did call out for Samuel a fourth time and he did exactly as Eli had instructed. And what came forth was beyond his wildest imagination. 

God was going to do something completely new in Israel and he wanted Samuel to be a part of it. But in order to do so, Eli’s house has to be punished. 

Understandably, Samuel is not keen on sharing this vision from God with Eli, the one who had served as his mentor and who he was serving under. But Eli insisted that he share what had been told to him. 

Normally when we talk about the call of Samuel, we focus on Samuel. It is even in this week’s sermon title - “God calls Samuel”. But I want to back up for a moment and focus on Eli. Eli who did not always get things correct. Eli who had sons who were defiling the temple but whom he would not punish. Eli who though Hannah was drunk. Yet in this moment, Eli is able to realize that Samuel is hearing the voice of God, something that does not happen every day, and instruct him in how to respond. 

Friends, do you have an Eli in your life? I’m not talking about someone who doesn’t always get things correct. I’m talking about someone who can help you recognize the movement of the Holy Spirit in your life. Brothers and sisters, we all need Eli’s because sometimes the voice of God comes to us through other wise people. 

Maybe its a friend who can speak truth into your life. This friend does not need to be perfect, but they do need to be connected to God. This also doesn’t mean that everything that they say will be from God, friends. We still need to have some level of discernment. But sometimes a friend will just say something that smacks us upside the head in a way that we know is the Holy Spirit. 

A moment like that came from me just a few weeks go with a wonderful friend and colleague. I was telling her how I kept trying to fix something and it wasn’t working. And all of a sudden she said to me “Michelle you are trying to make the back of the cross stitch pretty and that is not your job”. Talk about a Holy Spirit message. All of a sudden I realized if I kept focusing on what seemed to be going wrong that I would miss the bigger picture of what God was calling me to. And I thank God for this message and the one who carried it to me.

Maybe you don’t have friends like this in your life. Then how can you seek out other wise people? Maybe a good option for you would be a spiritual director. A spiritual director is a person who holds space to listen to you and listen for the movement of God at the same time. I have had a spiritual director companion me for the entirety of ministry. I would not be able to live into this call without someone asking me monthly, “where do you sense the movement of God?” And hold me accountable. If that is something that you may be seeking in your life, let me know, and we can have a conversation about some wonderful spiritual directors who live close to this area. 

The second important thing about Eli is what happens next in the scripture passage. Eli knows that Samuel has a message from God and he can guess that it is about him and his family. Samuel probably wasn’t looking him in the eye and Eli knew that this wouldn’t be an easy message to hear. Yet, he encouraged Samuel to speak it. He wasn’t defensive. Instead he replied, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”

Sometimes are call is also to say things that we are afraid to put voice to. Now once again, friends, we need discernment here. We have way too many folks in this world who think they are speaking for God when really they are just spouting their own stuff. We also need to discern when to speak and when to be silent. I am a firm believer that we need more people to read the book of James and realize the power of the tongue and that not everything needs to be said. 

But if we are like Eli and are on the receiving end of some challenging words from the Lord, instead of becoming defensive, what would it look like to pray over what was said and ask if it is from God and respond accordingly. This is truly a bold prayer that allows us to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, even when it is difficult.

Friends, no one else can live into your call for you. But we can have people who walk beside us and encourage us to live into our call. And we can put ourselves in a position to be open to what God is speaking to us, even if it is something difficult. Let us seek to live into the call on our lives, together, as the body of Christ. Amen.