1 Samuel 3:1-11
January 19, 2003
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
The great theologian, Karl Barth said that all human history begins in being addressed. “Adam, where are you?” That was God’s first question to us. Later, God would ask, “Who told you to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree?” Then when Cain killed his brother Abel out of jealousy, God said, “Where is your brother?” God then said to Cain, “What have you done?” If God asked me those questions, my ears would be tingling!
As God’s creatures, we like to address God with our own questions too. “God, do you exist?” “Where are you?” “Why do you allow suffering in the world?” “Are you good?” But our questions to God are not nearly as interesting as God’s questions to us. “Adam and Eve, who told you that you were naked? Who told you to eat the fruit off that tree?”
Finding our Own Answers
Our whole lives are attempts to find answers to our questions. The modern picture of our selves is a picture of the self. With answers, we can become free and independent. Modern novels and movies depict heroes who can all by themselves wipe out the enemies, end up with the girl, and save the world for democracy. Our popular culture tells us that if our neighbor has one, we need to go and get one for ourselves. And with busy lives and different schedules, we often find ourselves buying one-portion servings of TV dinners and eating it in front of the TV by ourselves.
Our world says things like, “I am who I am, as I am. I am the captain of my life, master of my soul, detached, independent, free, un-addressed.” We are alone.
The reigning thinking in our culture claims autonomy and freedom from accountability. We are efficient consumers in an open and free economy. Life is what we want, what we say. We live for and by ourselves. No wonder loneliness is one of our modern afflictions.
Biblical Dialogues
In our lesson for today, we see that young Samuel was trying get some sleep. Samuel didn’t know the Lord yet. The Lord called, “Samuel, Samuel!” And he said, “Here, I am” and ran to Eli whom Samuel thought called him. Now old Eli whose eyesight was getting bad said, “I didn’t call you, go back to sleep.” This happened again. And then on the third time, Eli finally realized that if he wasn’t calling Samuel then maybe it was the Lord himself. So Eli instructed Samuel that when the Lord calls again say to the Lord, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
God wants to have a dialogue with us. He is asking questions of us and wants to address us with his directions for our lives. But we must also listen and want to have a dialogue with God for our ears to tingle.
God addressed Abraham and Sarah to go from their country to a new land so that they will become a great nation, with a great name and become a blessing. Abraham and Sarah came into being only after being addressed by a voice other than their own, a voice who comes to them not with a question but a promise.
Moses who could have been lost in the river as a baby, thrown into jail for killing an Egyptian, doubted himself and his ability to speak, was addressed by someone other then himself. God said from a burning bush, “Moses, Moses, Come no closer! Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” And Moses replied, “Here I am.”
Or young Mary, a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, who was probably already scared and worried about being married was greeted by an angel from God. “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Finally Mary said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
And in John 1:43, Jesus went to Galilee and found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Then Philip found Nathanael and told him that he had found the one whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth. Nathanael wondered if anything good can come from Nazareth but when Philip convinced him to come and see, Nathanael said, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” It took Jesus himself to come to Philip and Nathanael to show them how to be disciples.
Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Mary, Philip, Nathanael, Samuel, and countless others in the Bible would not have been people we would have known if God didn’t address them. They became God’s people because God took the time to talk to them, to address them and they listened and responded back. They dialogued with God and their ears were tingling.
Talking with God
One time when I went home to Boston to visit my mother, my mind was preoccupied with too many things. I was standing in front of the fireplace mantle reading some mail while my mother was trying to talk to me. I was oblivious and preoccupied. As far as I was concerned, she wasn’t there until Joy saw what was happening and yelled at me for not listening to my mother. When we don’t recognize and acknowledge that someone is addressing you, it’s so easy to deny that person’s existence.
When we allow someone to address us, it is a threat to the persons whom we think we want to be. We long for stability and independence, yet to be addressed is always a reminder that we are still under construction, unfinished, dependent, and are in need of someone else to complete who we are. I might not want to admit it at that time, but I still needed my mother to remind me of who I was still becoming.
Isn’t our relationship with God that way too? When God is trying to dialogue with us and we refuse to listen, we ultimately silent God. We are saying that we have made it on our own and the last thing we need is for God to be telling us what to do. No wonder sometimes we think that God is dead.
Last Sunday we talked about how the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus as he came out of the waters in his baptism. And a voice from heaven said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am pleased.” God is constantly talking to us and wants us to reply back. Baptism for us is having a dialogue with God. God calls us to repentance and we respond by saying that we need forgiveness. We ask our baptismal candidates to meet with our Deacons because we want to talk with them. We invite them to share their testimonies with you because we want you to get to know them so you can dialogue with each other. In baptism, we have new life in Christ that leads to being in a dialectical relationship with one another.
To address God is to acknowledge that God exists. To have a vibrant relationship with the living God is to say, “God, you are alive in the world! You are with me every minute of my life. God, you are as real in the world today as this person who is sitting beside me. Let’s talk.”
And when God addresses you, God acknowledges that you are alive too.
Children & Young Adults
It’s not easy being a kid today. Many children today don’t have someone to whom they can turn. Simply having biological parents doesn’t guarantee for a child that he will have parents to guide him and to help him make sense of this world that he’s a part of.
A little girl told her minister, “I don’t say the “f-word” anymore. You know f-a-m-i-l-y. I don’t say ‘family’ anymore, because it hurts too much.”
Samuel was more fortunate than many of our children today. Samuel had a family in the person of old Eli. When Samuel heard that voice calling out to him in the night, Samuel was able to turn to Eli, who helped him to hear what God was saying. Samuel and old Eli had a relationship that recognized each other and knew that the other existed.
Can the church be like Eli for the Samuels of the world today? Can we take the hungry, abused, and lonely kids that are all around us and—like Eli did for Samuel—help them to hear what God is saying to them? Can we help them to hear that the way things are is not the way things will always be?
But when you enter into a relationship with a child or a youth, that’s not always an easy thing. Young people ask tough questions. One of the first words that a youth learns is “Why?” And they keep on asking, “Why? Why? Why?” “Why should I become a part of this church?”
Do we have a good answer to that question? Some of us might be tempted to say, “Come because of the music.” But the truth is that if young people are interested in music, they’re going to find something more of their liking on the radio or internet. Others might say, “Come because of the fellowship.” Fellowship is certainly something that our church can offer. But again, the reality is that if youth are after fellowship, they’re probably going to find just as good fellowship at the mall or around their neighborhoods. Still others might say, “Come to church because of the people.” But again, if people are all that the church has to offer, then young people can find friends they like at their school cafeteria or out at the playground. Kids and young people realize that they don’t need the church if they’re just looking for music, or fellowship or people.
By young people asking us, “Why?” they force us to see what is so special about the church. Why is it that kids and young people should bother to come here? Old Eli has the answer. “It’s God,” he says. “Listen, it’s God.”
The Deacons last week unanimously passed a task force proposal to hire a “Young Adult Ministry Coordinator” for the church. This contract position with a very modest monthly stipend is not in the 2003 budget but I want you to support it when we vote on it on February 2. We need a Young Adult Ministry Coordinator to identify people who are in their late 20s and 30s to come to church—not for music or for fellowship or for the friendly people that we are. We need this coordinator to dialogue with other young adults about God! We want young adults to discover like Samuel did that, “It’s God who is calling them into service!”
Did you notice that at first Eli didn’t want to listen to Samuel. Eli was old and although the “lamp of God had not yet gone out” of him, his eyesight had begun to grow dim. If God wasn’t so insistent, Eli might have discouraged Samuel from listening to God’s call and just told him to go back to sleep. But God wanted to dialogue with Samuel and he wouldn’t give up. And finally after three tries, Eli got the message and he perceived that maybe it was the Lord.
I hope and pray that as our church continues to grow that we are not like old Eli whose eyesight has gone dim and we are unwilling to see or listen to our children, youth, and young adults. When God is speaking to them, he may say, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.” When God is talking with us and we are listening to his call, we have a tingling dialogue. It won’t be an ordinary conversation but a tingling dialogue. It won’t be the same people talking with each other but it will include many people: the children, youth, and young adults. The dialogue will tingle both our ears!
Dialogue Covenant
You and I can have this tingling relationship with God too. God is always out looking for us to dialogue. In the Psalm139, the Psalmist said,
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.”
We can’t get away from God because God cares for us. In dialogue we are addressed and made more than we would have been without the conversation. Here is a God who speaks in earthquake, wind, and fire. Yet, here is a God who also evades our grasps by the still, small voice.
We need the courage and faith to stand up to God and demand bread, peace, reconciliation as well as the gracious willingness to submit to another who is sometimes against us in order to be with us. In this kind of dialogue, we call it “covenant.” “I will be your God and you will be my people.” God promises, like a good mother (like my mother), to resist us, to never let us go, to push us out on a journey, to always receive our prayer, and to sometimes when we are asking God a question and we want him to say “Yes” he may answer, “No.”
We enjoy thinking of ourselves as people who make decisions, independent, free. We see ourselves asking questions so that we will have all the answers. But the truth is that God wants to dialogue with us and wants us to respond. God sees that we are not as self-sufficient and independent as we think we are. There’s still so much more for God to teach us. When God was calling us to him and we didn’t answer, God sent his own Son, Jesus Christ into the world to have a face to face dialogue with us. It took Jesus to teach us that we need God and our ears have been tingling ever since!
God thought of us so much that here was God Almighty who wants to talk with us. By addressing us by name, God acknowledges that he loves us. And when we respond back like Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening,” we recognize God in our lives and in the world. And God promises that what will be coming will tingle both ears of anyone who hears it.
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord, we confess how one-sided our conversation with you often is. We are so eager to speak, to tell you our wants and our needs. Our lives are diminished when we fail to wait upon you, to listen for your life-giving, life-directing word. Forgive us for our resistance to grow and turn our ears to you so that we may find meaning and direction for our life. Amen.