Sunday 17th January 2010: The Call of Samuel
1 Samuel 3
What did your parents want you to become?
For some youngsters the expectations of mum and dad can at times seem overwhelming. And in the end none of us can dictate our children’s future and ultimately it has to be their decision. My parents were rather surprised when I announced one evening I wanted to become a minister. My two brothers are still getting over the shock!
In the story of Samuel from the Old Testament we have a mother who desperately wants her son to be a servant of God. Hannah longed and prayed for a child, and when he was born she dedicated his life to God. That was all very well but in the end such a dedication was her’s and not his.
One of the reasons why I’m a Baptist Minister is that I value Believer’s Baptism. To me the most honest and straight forward reading of scripture means that I reckon New Testament baptism is for those who have made the decision themselves to be baptised. It hasn’t been forced on them and the vows they make are never made on their behalf.
Well in today’s story Samuel, still an apprentice priest, he encounters God for himself and makes that personal commitment that marks the start of his long adventure with God.
A few years ago I tagged on to a coach trip organised by the Elgar Society to the Birmingham Oratory. It was there that Cardinal John Henry Newman once lived and worked, and this is what he once said: God has committed some work to me that he has not committed to another. I have my mission.
Cardinal Newman had that sense of being called by God to a unique piece of Christian service. A job, as it were, that had his name on it. Well after the night described in chapter 3 I think Samuel felt the same.
Firstly this morning I just note the Silence at Shiloh.
Shiloh was the shrine, the holy place where Eli and Samuel lived, the home of the physical manifestation of the presence of God for the Jews, The Ark of the Covenant. If God were going to speak anywhere you would expect it be to at Shiloh. This place had the atmosphere of Canterbury, Rome and Didcot (that’s the location of Baptist House by the way) all rolled into one!
Yet God was silent at Shiloh and had been for many years.
Of course you might be forgiven for thinking that Yahweh was always speaking in the Old Testament. Didn’t he thunder from heaven during the plagues and Exodus, communicate with Moses on a mountaintop, lead the people through the desert navigating them via a cloudy pillar by day and a fiery one at night. Yes, but these episodes had now stopped and there was silence at Shiloh.
So it would be a mistake to think of him as a next-door neighbour sort of God, someone whom you were always bumping into.
1 Samuel 3.1: The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.
The reason for this breakdown in communication was probably a family one. Eli was a good and faithful priest, but he knew the heartbreak of having sons who did not follow in his footsteps. They had attractive names but unattractive personalities. Hophni and Phinehas had turned their backs on God and rejected his covenant. The previous chapter and verse 12 puts it like this, pulling no punches: Eli’s sons were wicked men; they had no regard for the Lord. Therefore, it seems, his voice was rarely heard.
Every night Samuel bedded down at Shiloh and slept in front of the Ark of the Covenant. He lived and dreamed the spiritual life his mother had always wanted. But even he had not heard the voice of God. All of that changed the night of chapter 3 as in the wee small hours God calls out his name. He has to do it three times because Samuel mistakes God’s voice for Eli’s.
Another silent time for Israel was between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New. Scholars estimate that God was silent for 400years. A communication embargo only broken with the prophesies of John the Baptist calling the people to repent and prepare for the coming of Christ.
I wonder if we feel God is silent today? There may be times in our lives and pilgrimages when the presence of God does seem remote and his voice very faint. Yet most of us would have to admit it isn’t that God hasn’t been speaking its just that we are not that good at listening.
He still speaks through his Word, through scripture. He reveals his majesty in creation. He gives us lessons and offers us directions as we muse on history; the world’s and our own.
If we really want to hear the voice of God then in 2010 he still speaks in these ways and through these channels.
I love the honesty with which Soren Kirkergaard writes when he says: A possibility is a hint from God. Or as the hymn writer refreshingly puts it: Lord you sometimes speak in whispers, still and small and scarcely heard.
Silence at Shiloh, secondly there was talking To Eli.
It is, I suppose, a touching moment. There in the middle of the night Samuel runs to Eli’s room. It happens twice. By the third time the penny drops with Eli if not with Samuel. Verse 8: then Eli realised that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel: Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.
Eli, this father figure, shows no sign of jealously that God speaks to the younger rather than older priest. He must have been disappointed in his own sons; he seems thrilled to have shared this precious moment with his adopted charge.
The reality is that Samuel needed Eli’s counsel and encouragement if he were to hear God at all. By himself he got the signs wrong, but with Eli’s help God got through to him.
The rather obvious, yet important, lesson there is that so often we hear God best as we talk with each other.
The very real value of Deacons’ and Church Meetings is that in these contexts we together discern the voice of God. I would be very suspicious of a church led by just one person. The congregational principle has always been central to Baptist churches. That is a belief that as we talk together we hear God speak to us through each other.
After that evening when I pocked my head above the newspaper and just casually mentioned to mum and dad that I was thinking of leaving the bank and training for the ministry I had to go through lots of committees.
Here was the process:
- Speak to my Minister
- He sent me to speak with the Area Superintendent
- He sent me speak to the College Vice Principal
- The College sent me back to speak to my Area Ministerial Recognition Committee
- They sent me back to the College to be interviewed by the Council
- Then 4 years of training
- Final interview with London Area Superintendent and put on Settlement list
- He sent me to Kettering to speak to Donald MacKenzie, Minister of Fuller Baptist Church
- He invited me to meet the Deacons there and talk about me becoming Assistant Minister
- They put my name to the Church Meeting who said yes!
- Ordained June 1987 and inducted to first church September 87
Its not a bad system, in fact I believe it’s a very good one. And you’ll have been part of it yourself as you ponder a decision, after all the praying and thinking the light often breaks as you talk it through with a friend.
Samuel leans much about God from Eli.
In all of this our aim is to be obedient to God. We want to be God’s servants and say yes to him. That’s why I like this story about President Lincoln. During the Civil War a lady exclaimed effusively to Abraham Lincoln: Oh Mr President, I feel so sure that God is on our side, don’t you? Ma’am, he replied, I am more concerned that we should be on God’s side.
For Samuel part of the process in discerning the will of God for his life and being obedient was by talking to the old priest Eli.
Now finally this morning after the silence at Shiloh and talking to Eli there came the Listening to God.
It may be obvious but the main verse in the narrative is surely verse 10: The Lord came and stood there, calling as at other times: Samuel, Samuel! Then Samuel said: Speak, for your servant is listening.
Ever sensed it’s sometimes easier to speak to God, even at him, rather than listen to him. I felt a bit like that during the Tsunami Tragedy of 2005. Perhaps understandably many people started asking God questions or even accusing him. Suddenly this God who is ignored and never listened to year by year was accusingly put into the centre of the frame. There were, of course, no simple answers. But it just threw up the sort of scenario of people talking to God at the bad times and never listening to him during the good. And those of us inside the church can do it just as much as our friends outside.
By contrast the other day I was talking to an older member, a lady in her 90’s and she brought up the subject of prayer. She told me she was still learning, she felt, how to pray. These days, she said, I do more listening than just bringing to God a long list of things I want. In her words, she goes to the spiritual supermarket a little less often these days.
As Samuel listened to God that night he heard news that would change his life. God wasn’t going to use Eli’s family to lead the people anymore. God was going to reveal himself to the people through Samuel. Samuel wasn’t just going to be the priest of Shiloh but the Prophet of Israel.
Verse 19: The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognised that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord. The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word.
This wasn’t ever going to be an easy ministry, and Samuel would eventually confront even kings with God’s word of judgement. His first task, however, must have been one of the hardest, to tell the man who was his mentor that his family were to be by passed by God. Eli took it well and said to Samuel: he is the Lord; let him do what is good in his eyes.
Corrie Ten Boon had a saying for all those times when God calls us to walk a difficult road or carry out a tough task, here it is: When God sends us on stony paths, he provides strong shoes.
In the future the student priest from Shiloh would need some very study footwear.
God called Samuel and today he calls us all. He calls us all to represent him in the world – we all have that priestly and prophetic role.
Let me close by sharing with you this anonymous verse, it describes the calling given to you and to me:
A Christian
Is a mind through which Christ thinks
Is a heart through which Christ lives
Is a voice through which Christ speaks
Is a hand through which Christ helps.
May God help us all to fulfil our calling this week.