All-In for On-Call

Text: 1 Samuel 3:1-20
Theme: “All-In for On-Call”
2nd Sunday after the Epiphany
January 15, 2012
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

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.

2 One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. 3 The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the LORD, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the LORD called Samuel.

Samuel answered, “Here I am.” 5 And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down.
6 Again the LORD called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

“My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.”

7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.

8 A third time the LORD called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

Then Eli realized that the LORD was calling the boy. 9 So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

10 The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”
Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

11 And the LORD said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle. 12 At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. 13 For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons blasphemed God,[a] and he failed to restrain them. 14 Therefore I swore to the house of Eli, ‘The guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’”

15 Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the LORD. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, 16 but Eli called him and said, “Samuel, my son.”

Samuel answered, “Here I am.”

17 “What was it he said to you?” Eli asked. “Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you.” 18 So Samuel told him everything, hiding nothing from him. Then Eli said, “He is the LORD; let him do what is good in his eyes.”

19 The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD.

First Presbyterian Church movie-goers, at least the ones I’ve chatted with recently, have given the “two thumbs up” to the motion picture Joyful Noise which stars Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton. It’s showing at the Movie Tavern right behind our church building. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m looking forward to it based on our folks’ recommendation. Queen Latifah and Dolly play characters who are involved with a small town choir that makes it to the big time. Based on the movie trailer alone that you can watch on the Fandango website, it has great music; it’s funny, and it has a happy ending – attributes, all, that people seem to resonate with more and more. Again, it’s called Joyful Noise.

Would it be appropriate to call the Word of God a “joyful noise”? Noise, whether it comes from the Word of God either read or proclaimed or from somewhere else, is all but omnipresent. One could argue that we insist on noise – as long as it is not too noisy. Solitude, or quietness, is not something that we’re comfortable with for very long. I know many people, myself included, who have to have some background noise to virtually everything they do short of sleep. Headphones and earbuds are omnipresent. Radios, TVs, and stereos blare. Constant stimulation is all but a must. There’s something about noise which seems to animate life. Removed from noise of some sort or another, we feel closer to the silence of death.

Noise, like the gift of faith in God, comes through our ears. “Faith comes by hearing, and what is heard is the preaching of Christ,” the apostle says. But what kind of noise is it? We can hope that the noise – like genuine faith itself – is joyful.

Little Samuel, in today’s Old Testament reading, hears noise in what seems to be the middle of the night. Someone is calling his name. Samuel, you might recall from Bible reading or Sunday school, is a little boy whose life was dedicated to God from birth. His mother Hannah desperately wanted a child. The Lord blessed her with one, and she, in turn, dedicated the little one’s life to the Lord. Thus, we find little Samuel “serving the Lord” under Eli, the priest. The boy, at this point, did not yet fully know who he was or what he was doing, but he was learning what it meant to serve.

The noise – or, in this case, the voice – came three different times. “Samuel,” said the voice. Running to Eli, Samuel replied: “Here I am; you called me.” “I didn’t call,” says Eli. “Go back and lie down.” The voice comes a second time: “Samuel!” Samuel gets up and goes to Eli again. By this time, Eli is probably wondering why he’s not being granted a good night’s sleep. He says to Samuel: “My son, I did not call; go back and lie down.”

Dutifully, Samuel does as he’s told. At this spot in the narrative, we are given an interesting tidbit of information. We are told that “Samuel did not yet know the Lord; the Word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” Then, the voice comes a third time: “Samuel, Samuel!” A third time, Samuel thinks it is old Eli calling for him. He goes to Eli. This time, not as drowsy as he once was, Eli realizes that it was the voice of the Lord. This is all the more significant given what we were told at the beginning of the story: “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.”

Eli changes his instructions to the lad. As before, he is to go back and lie down, but if the voice comes again he is to say: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

The Scripture says that the “Lord came and stood there” calling out ‘Samuel! Samuel!’.” Samuel replies: “Speak, Lord. For Your servant is listening.”
Samuel is about to get an earful. Our Lord says to him: “Look, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle.”
Stop right there. It’s time to ask the question: have our ears lost their ability to tingle? We hear so much from so many sources. Information passes into our auditory canal so fully and so frequently that it is all but impossible to process. If the noise is joyful, it may grab our attention for awhile. But hearing is so common-place that we can take it for granted. We can rightly ask if our ears have lost their ability to tingle.

I wonder if tingling ears is the same as having itching ears? The Bible does speak of “itching ears.” In the New Testament portion of Scripture, we come across Paul’s second letter to his young protégé, Timothy. He says to him: “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

Based on a couple of interesting and revealing articles from USA Today in the past few months, it is clear that the ears of America, if you will, are increasingly NOT itching to hear the Word of the Lord. George Barna, a keen observer of religious life in America, is quoted to have said: “We are a designer society. We want everything customized to our personal needs – our clothing, our food, our education.” Now, according to these articles, it’s our religion too. In other words, we’ll listen to pastors, preachers, spiritual guides, rabbis, imams, you-name-it, who tell us what our “itching ears want to hear.” It’s not about God; it’s about us. And God is only good insofar as he meets our specifications.
This, of course, is crass idolatry – or, in other words, the worship of self. While the statistics show that the number of people who have “accepted Jesus” has risen, so has the number of people who have not been in church for the last six months. In 1991, 24% of the public was unchurched. Today, it’s 37% and trending even higher. All of it goes to show that a majority of us claim to be religious, but we are very confused and conflicted about it. This is not a surprise; we’ve known it for years. The data also shows that we treat matter of faith something hopscotch. We jump from one thing to the next, from one tradition to another, and we pick and choose the teachings and the emphases that we deem to be important. It’s called hopscotch spirituality – or, if you prefer, smorgasbord spirituality. But now, we have an increasing number of people for whom it makes no difference if they’re believers, atheists, or agnostics. One scholar calls them “Nones.” Hence, when it comes to faith, spirituality, religion, etc., they have none. Another observer, coining a new term, calls this growing demographic “Apatheists.” At the root of that word is apathy. In other words, people just don’t care.

A man named Rusty Steil, from Denver, Colorado, grew up in a Lutheran home and for quite some time retained the “strong moral code” of his parents. But, as he grew older, he could not stick with the “ancient myths of people trying to make sense of the world.” Steil says, “I don’t find much comfort in imagining there’s an all-powerful God who would allow people starving and all the natural and man-made disasters,” he says. He calls himself a “live-and-let live” atheist.

Mark Silk, a professor of religion at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, can uinderstand where Steil is coming from. He writes: “The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal.”

It was just another day at work for Eli. The little boy Samuel was there too. The Word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. God must be busy doing other things. So, dear Lord, do give us a break if we have moments of apathy. What’s more, the word had not yet been revealed to little Samuel. He was blissfully ignorant. Ears that don’t tingle and the ears that don’t itch are the ears that become apathetic.

But all of that changed overnight. The Lord stood there and said, “Samuel, Samuel!” Samuel replied: “Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.” From that point on, Samuel was all-in for on-call.

Later, Samuel found his identity in passing along to others the words of the Lord. All of Israel discovered, we are told, that Samuel was trustworthy in what he said.
First Presbyterian Church, we are at are best when we, too, are all-in for on-call. We find and affirm our identity in passing along the words of the Lord that have been revealed to us.

What a word it is! Ours to share is the good new – yes, the joyful noise! -- that God so loved the world that, in Jesus Christ, He was willing to go through the cross and grave. He took upon Himself our sin, our alienation, our rebellion, even our spirituality, our religion, our traditions, our deism, our theism, our atheism, our agnosticism, our apathy, and our self-centered ears itching to hear what we want to hear. In exchange, He gave us the forgiven life – life filled to the brim with grace and gracefulness, with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.

Are you all-in for on-call? If so, then the words of today’s Hymn of Sending will be especially meaningful:

Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night…
I will go, Lord, if You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.

Amen.