Sermon for 2nd Sunday after Epiphany – 1 Samuel 3:1-20

Have you ever God call you? What was it like? Some folks have pretty interesting stories, like angels singing and wild visions. Others feel like they’ve heard God call in totally ordinary, mundane things. I remember the first time I heard God call. I was at a theological conference of all things. I wasn’t in candidacy or anything yet. Just a casual churchgoer. I remember having a great time. At the end of the weekend, we were standing around a room doing a closing prayer, and it suddenly hit me – “Wait a minute! I’m not ready to leave! These are the folks I’m supposed to be working with! This is what I’m supposed to be doing!” And lo and behold, here I am….

Our Old Testament reading gives us another kind of call story. God calls the prophet Samuel. But to understand Samuel’s call, it’s important to remember where Samuel comes from. It starts with Elkanah and his two wives Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah bears children but Hannah is barren. “The Lord had closed her womb.” Now, Elkanah is a dutiful husband to Peninnah and father for their kids, but it’s no secret how much he loves Hannah, and Peninnah resents it. So Peninnah bullies Hannah upside and down. Torments her. Treats her like trash. What kind of woman can’t bear children? For years this goes on and what does that do to a person? All she can do is weep. Can’t eat, can’t sleep.

So Hannah goes to the temple and weeps bitterly as she prays in desperation. “If only you would look on the misery of your servant and remember me.” It’s a miracle she prays at all. She feels completely forgotten by God. “Give me a child, and I swear to give him to you as a Nazirite until the day of his death.” Now, that’s strong. That’s a holy order. She’d be giving him up to live his whole life in the temple. But whatever it takes.

Now while she’s weeping and praying her heart out to God, the temple priest Eli is watching. He thinks she’s drunk. So he yells out “how long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself?” But Hannah pulls herself together just enough to say “No, my lord, I’m not drunk. I’ve been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard me as a worthless woman.” Now, Eli is kind of a jerk, but he does one thing right. He bestows God’s blessing upon her. And indeed, she conceives and gives birth to her son Samuel. She even keeps her promise to God. Once Samuel is weaned, she takes him to the temple and leaves him there for the Lord.

Now, I know that’s not in our readings this morning, but we need to remember it in order to understand why God calls Samuel. We hear that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” God’s been pretty silent for a while. See, Israel is full of political and social chaos. Israelites brutalizing each other. It’s a bad scene. So maybe the prayer of this one righteous woman so surprises God that God sets something new in motion. Fast forward. Samuel’s living at the temple and serving Eli the priest. But it’s messed up. Our passage says, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” Like going to church your whole life and never hearing about Jesus. What’s Eli been teaching him all this time? But Eli’s old and tired and growing blind, so maybe he’s been checked out for a while. We know what that’s like, right?

It’s night, and Samuel is just drifting off to sleep when he hears. “Samuel! Samuel!” So he jumps up and runs to Eli. Who else would it be? Eli’s like, “no, it wasn’t me. Go lie down.” Three times this happens, before it occurs to Eli that maybe this is God calling. So he tells Samuel IF God calls again, say “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Which he does. Then God unloads a huge prophecy to Samuel and it’s not good. See, Eli’s been a bad priest for a long time. It’s not just calling Hannah drunk. It’s his sons. They’re deputy priests, but they steal and rape and raise all kinds of hell. Does Eli put his foot down? Oh, he asks his sons why they sin against God, but that’s about it. Maybe because it’s easier to just sit on his temple throne while his sons just blow him off. So God tells Samuel something to make Samuel’s ears tingle. God swears to destroy Eli’s family for their sin and blasphemy, and raise a faithful priest instead.

Now, what’s Samuel supposed to do with that? His life has always revolved around Eli. Eli’s like a father. This word from God is going to ruin everything. Samuel’s terrified. Morning comes, and Eli asks what God said. How amazing that Samuel actually delivers the news. But that’s not the real shock. The real shock is Eli’s response “It’s the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.” How can you be any more checked out than that?

You know, God’s call is serious business. God never called a prophet when things were peaceful and calm. God calls because there’s a word to be spoken to shake us up, to say something must change. But who wants to bring up divisive stuff when we know what our friends will think. They’ll say we’re just a part of the problem and cut us off. This turmoil that we’re living through is too much for so many folks. They’re tired of division. They’re checked out, like Eli. If we’re honest, don’t we feel the same way? So we all start talking about unity because we’re desperate. But here’s the thing about unity. You can’t have unity without repentance. Otherwise it’s just denial. And there’s a lot of denial going around. Even after all we’ve seen and suffered, can we honestly claim we’re repentant? Yet, without repentance, what’s left for God to say to us?

Yet, God is still speaking a word to us. A living word made flesh in the body of Jesus, our Lord. Who died on the cross, was buried, and yet he rose for our sake. Jesus went to hell and back for you and me and never once asked us if we wanted him to. And in the power of his resurrection, Jesus comes to each of us in spite of our fear and fatigue and he calls us by name. He knows our hearts are stubborn. He knows we feel stuck in a losing battle with ourselves. He knows how much we have to repent for, but he doesn’t wait around for that. He doesn’t have that kind of time. Instead he just comes out and gives us this holy word – “I forgive you.”

Now, the way that Jesus calls us is very different than what Samuel heard. I’m not going to say that you’ll never hear a voice in the middle of the night, but the thing is that it never starts out that way. Jesus doesn’t want it to be a mystery. He’s all about full disclosure. So it starts in the waters of our baptism, in the community of faith who promise to keep us in faith, and even to hold that faith for us when we can’t hold it together anymore. Our names were called and we were forever marked with the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Or maybe we’re not baptized. I was a baby, I can’t remember. So we also have those people of faith we’ve met throughout our lives, who Jesus calls by the Holy Spirit and sends to us. Those folks whose gracious words and actions beckon us “come and see.” But it’s not some kind of test or trick. It’s more like being seen for the first time exactly as you are and knowing what the gift of dignity feels like.

Now, it’s nice to know that Jesus is calling us, but for what? It’s the same reason God called Samuel. Things are broken. They need to be fixed. But Jesus does a tricky thing. He knows we hate commands. So he calls us through other folks to make us into a community, because when we know others we’ll actually care about them. We want the best for them. We want them to know the same love that we know in Jesus. That’s how we fix what’s broken. By being in relationship with each other, the kind of relationships that break down divisions and bring the true unity that only comes through compassion. Of course, Jesus never said it would be easy, but he promises “You will see greater things than these.” May you and I see this greatness in abundance through Jesus our Lord.