Scripture 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.”
Sermon “Answering God’s Call”
We can’t really talk about Samuel without talking about his mother, Hannah. It is her story that opens 1 Samuel, the book we are reading today. Hannah, like many women of her era, is a wife among wives, and in contrast to her sister-wife, who is very fertile, but also, very unkind, Hannah is unable to bear a child. Her husband loves her dearly and tries to make up for it in varied ways, but in the end, we find Hannah in the temple at Shiloh, pouring out her grief to God in prayer. In fact, her prayer is a bargain. She tells God, give me a son, and I will give him back to you. She promises to dedicate her not-yet-conceived child to God’s service.
Eli the priest is there, sitting beside the doorpost of the temple. Hannah is so distraught, he thinks she is drunk, and scolds her to “put away [her] wine.” Then she turns to him, and says, Oh no. This is not drunkenness. This is bitter sorrow. I have been pouring out my soul to the Lord. And she explains her situation. Eli, who is facing serious family problems of his own, responds to Hannah, “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.” (1 Sam. 1:17)
The tradition of giving a tithe to the Lord in the form of a child is an ancient one that carries into this day—a childhood friend’s pride in her firstborn being a priest is in some ways connected to that notion that a family will be blessed if they give their most precious treasure to God. What Hannah promises God is in a different category, though. She is so shamed not to have borne a child—by her culture and by her sister-wife—that, for the gift of such a child, she is willing to give him back.
After Samuel’s birth, Hannah sings a song of gratitude and triumph, which sounds very much like Mary’s song, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” In it, Hannah, like Mary, stands alongside those who are oppressed, and sees God’s care for them. Dr. Valerie Bridgeman, in her commentary on this passage writes,
The story of Samuel, then, does not start with this voice [the voice of God, in our passage], nor with Eli’s training, but rather with the mother who suckled him; who cooed over him; who prayed for him; who sang over him; and who weaned him from her breast so that he would be free to learn how to minister to God. This prequel to Samuel’s call ought to be considered as we ponder our own call.[i]
So, we come to that voice in the night. Samuel is a young boy. His mother had brought him to the priest Eli at the temple at Shiloh after weaning him—which may have been as late as age 4 or 5. (She also brought a three-year-old bull, roughly a bushel of flour, and a skin of wine, as well as a little robe she made for him. Throughout his years as a child serving in the temple, she brought him a new coat each year, when she and her husband went up for the yearly sacrifice). We don’t know how long Samuel has been living in the temple, but he is still, according to the text, a child—so, no older than 12, but as young as 5. I read this week that, traditionally, it has been believed children reach the age of reason between 5 and 7.
But he is a child. Our passage opens with the disconcerting words that “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” (1 Sam. 3:1). Immediately after that, we read that Eli’s eyesight had grown dim, which is probably symbolic of his shortsightedness where his sons have been concerned.
Eli had two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. They were, to put it bluntly, scoundrels. The text tells us, they had “no regard” for the Lord or their duties. They would steal people’s offerings for themselves. They had sex with the women who served in the temple, which, at the very least was adultery, but which was also most non-consensual sexual harassment or even rape, since the priests held such emotional and psychological power over the people. Eli was appalled by his sons’ behavior, and confronted them about it, but they didn’t listen, and he didn’t invoke the authority he had to discipline them or remove them. The word of the Lord was rare in those days, and visions, even rarer.
But now Samuel is there, young, incredibly young, yes. But he is a child who has been promised to the Lord since before he was even conceived. As the psalmist writes, “In God’s book were written all the days that were formed for Samuel, when none of them as yet existed.”
So, in the middle of the night, when all is quiet, Samuel hears God’s voice, twice. Each time he runs to Eli, to say, Here I am, you called me! But Eli says, no, I didn’t… go back to bed, lie down. On the third time, though, the old man understands what is happening. His eyes may be dim, but he still knows when the voice of God is calling… even when it is calling someone else. Finally he tells Samuel to go and lie down, but this time, encourages him to say, “Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.” And Samuel does. Our passage ends here. But the information Samuel receives is detailed following our passage—and it’s not good. It’s about Eli, and about his sons, and how God will exact punishment, both for the sons’ crimes against the Lord in the temple, and Eli’s crime of not restraining or removing them.
This is a strange story, but it has a ring of truth about it…one of the things I treasure in scripture is that it tells us everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Though this story has come down through thousands of years, and its situation is unlikely to closely resemble any scenario we might experience in this year of our Lord 2024, there are still points of contact. I believe this story teaches us
God might call upon us before we seem or feel ready.
Samuel is a child, perhaps as young as 5 years old. His mother is still making him little robes each year, because he hasn’t yet grown into the robes they keep around the temple. And yet Samuel is the vessel God chooses to receive this divine proclamation.
God might call upon us to do something incredibly difficult.
Here, God calls upon Samuel to relay devastating news to the person who is his de facto father. I think we can safely say, this is not something a child in this position would want, ever. Nevertheless, after being coerced by his mentor, he does relay the whole message to Eli, who responds with either a resigned or an incredibly faithful sigh: “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.” (1 Sam. 3:18)
God might call upon us to do something we’ve never done before.
In fact, I think this is the most likely scenario, every time, with the call of God. If we’re already doing something, God isn’t going to call us to it… unless we are wavering, or wondering, or burned out. God calls us, and nine times out of ten, we say, “Oh, wow, wait, I dunno…” Or maybe, that one time, we excitedly say, “Oh, wonderful, yes!” and then realize, I can’t do that. (This is the part where God laughs, because that’s exactly how I reacted to that first bolt of lightning to the chest that I should be a pastor.) I can’t do that, we think, and then, God says, “It may take a while.” (For me, it was 14 years.) We say, “Well, I don’t see the path here.” And God says, “I’ll work it out.” (Which, with God’s call, God does, every time.)
Or, sometimes we say, “No, this isn’t the right job for me.” And we’re right. And then we find another way to serve that feels exactly right, and God’s in that, too.
God might call us through an unexpected source.
In this story, God calls Samuel directly, no intermediary. God speaks words Samuel can hear, and gives Samuel a clear message which Samuel can speak.
It’s not always like that. God may call us through a conversation with a friend. God may call us through the news we read or see or hear. God may call us through what scripture calls a still, small voice… so quiet, we almost can’t hear it in the hubbub of everyday life. Then, it’s like a little tickle, or a whisper, one we can barely hear, or see. A friend of mine described feeling a call like this: “My head was filled with noise, with static. And then, suddenly, it was absolutely silent. And then I knew.” God can call us through the sign on the side of a bus or through a song we hear on the radio. God can call us through dreams—there’s lots of that in the Bible. God can call us through pain, through loss. God can call us through the worst day, the one that starts out with a flat tire and ends up with the kids fighting and the chicken burning.
God might call us more than once, in more than one way.
Remember, Hannah dedicated her son to a life in God’s service. That was Samuel’s first call. The voice at night is, as far as we know, his second call, his call into the life of a prophet and priest.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, though he was the son and grandson of Baptist ministers, did not, initially, feel a call to ministry. Here is his call story, according to the Washington Post,
[King] grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in the 1930s and ’40s. His parents weren’t rich, but they did have a car and a piano.
Martin and his siblings liked board games. His favorite was Monopoly. Like other kids, he had chores. His sister complained that when it was Martin’s turn to do dishes, he would hide in the bathroom.
Martin grew up in a segregated time… When he was 14, he traveled 90 miles with his teacher to a speech contest. On the way home, the bus driver made them stand so that white riders could sit. “It was the angriest I have ever been,” he later wrote.
Martin wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer. He wanted to help people. He was already a powerful speaker. His college teachers showed him he could change people’s lives by becoming a preacher. So he did. In 1954, at age 25, he became pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama.
King believed nonviolent protest was the way to react to evil and wrongdoing. The next year, when a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, King led a citywide protest. Black people refused to ride city buses until all riders were treated the same. It took many months, but [it] finally happened…[ii]
It appears to me that Dr. King had at least two calls. First, through the encouragement of teachers, he discovered his call into ministry, a call he had witnessed up close in his family. His second call happened on that bus. Sometimes, anger is a signal that you are being called.
Be assured of this: God will call you. That’s because you have been baptized into the ministry of Jesus Christ through God’s church, and one of the outcomes of baptism is, you’re a part of God’s ministry of love, justice, and peace, and that means, not all calls will be specifically church-y. Many calls are to the concerns God has, and we all have, for God’s world, and God’s people everywhere.
So, I ask you, what is God calling you to do in this time and place? Practice listening for that still small voice. Start listening in a different way to the conversations you have with friends. Start asking yourself, what is that bus trying to tell me? Or that song, or that book, or that news story.
God will call you, because you are God’s beloved child, and there is much, much work to do.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Valerie Bridgeman, PhD, Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs, and Associate Professor of Homiletics and Hebrew Bible at Methodist School of Theology in Ohio. “Commentary on 1 Samuel 3:1-10 [11-20],” Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, Working Preacher, January 14, 2018. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-1-samuel-31-10-11-20-4.
[ii] Kidspost, “For Martin Luther King, Jr., preaching was a family tradition,” The Washington Post, April 3, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/who-was-martin-luther-king-jr/2013/08/15/77340d5e-f96a-11e2-8e84-c56731a202fb_story.html.