I Samuel 3:1-21 "Listening" Scott Hoezee

Over the last quarter-century, audio, visual, and computer technology has advanced more rapidly than our ability to prevent these gizmos from taking over the minds of our youth. Not so long ago, parents who wanted to monitor what their kids saw or listened to had a somewhat easier time of it. The TV only got three channels and there were no DVD players around. If the kids were going to listen to music, it would have to be whatever came out of the Hi-Fi in the living room, and so mom or dad could listen in easy enough. Dirty pictures were limited to dirty magazines, and kids did not have ready access to such things.

I need not point out how much has changed. Cable TV, Gameboys, I-Pods, the Internet and the like allow kids to be exposed to far more than was possible before. So now parents try to arm themselves with a new arsenal of protections: Spam filters on email, parental controls to restrict websites, V-chips in TVs--these are among the ways we twenty-first century parents try to protect our kids from messages inappropriate for the young.

As a general rule, we do not want children to hear things they are too immature to handle. But what if the heavy-duty message in question comes to a child directly from God himself? Over the years we have tended to view I Samuel 3 as a charming, Sunday school-like tale filled with some humor, told with good narrative style that builds up suspense, and conveying the bottom line that sometimes God works through children. Many children's sermons on this passage (including probably some of mine) end by saying, "So you see, boys and girls, God can talk to you, too. Will you listen for God just like Samuel did?"

What we forget is that the message Samuel heard clearly frightened him. God himself told the lad that this message would tingle the ears of everyone who heard it. But it was Samuel's ears that were to tingle first! If even adults would get the willies hearing what God had to say, you can imagine how this child felt. The next morning Eli practically had to threaten Samuel just to get the boy to cough up the truth. Maybe part of Samuel's hesitation stemmed from the fact that he knew Eli would not like the message very much. But I suspect another reason was that Samuel was afraid Eli would wash his mouth out with soap!

Why did God make a young boy the messenger for something so grim? That question becomes even more poignant when you realize that Eli had already heard this message. If you look at the very end of I Samuel 2, you see that someone who is called "a man of God" had recently come to Eli and delivered to him a harsh word of judgment from Yahweh. For too long Eli had allowed his two sons to turn the house of God into a brothel. Hophni and Phineas were dreadful lowlifes who mugged some of the people who came to worship God even as they raped others. Sometimes they stole the people's offerings and other times they forced themselves on some of the lovelier young women who came to worship.

But Eli, for all his good points, also bore a striking resemblance to Milquetoast. Even as his sons carried on like some drunken sailors at Mardi Gras, the most their father could manage was to stand on the sidelines wringing his hands, shaking his head, and mumbling ineffectively, "Boys, stop. Please. Don't do that!" Eli was eminently easy to ignore.

In a way, Hophni and Phineas embodied everything that was wrong with Israel during the time of the judges. People were just generally running wild and running amok, doing what was right in their own eyes. Long ago Yahweh had given them a blueprint for living. Now people kept sketching their own plans for life, making up the rules as they went along.

So as bad as Hophni and Phineas were, many of their compatriots were no better. To put it mildly, this was not what God had had in mind when he led the people out of Egypt and settled them in the Promised Land. If things did not turn around, Israel would become as thoroughly pagan and secular as Babylon, Egypt, or any other nation you could name. Samuel the man, and also the two biblical books that bear his name, represent the new thing God was about to do in order to bring about precisely the turn-around that Israel needed.

And it begins with the return of God's Word. Samuel in this third chapter did not tell Eli anything new. But because it clearly was a Word from God, Eli took it seriously. We are not told in chapter 2 how Eli reacted to the prophecy of the stranger. Did he chalk this stranger up as a crackpot not to be taken seriously? Did he take it with a grain of salt? Or did he believe this man's prophecy that Eli's sons would both die on the same day and that, as a result, Eli's family line was finished in terms of the priesthood? We don't know. What we do know is that when Samuel delivers the bad news, Eli believes it as God's Word and seems to resign himself to the fate that awaited him and his family.

Eli received God's Word from Samuel and he took it seriously, difficult a Word though it was. Precisely that attitude would turn Israel around eventually. Because in this chapter it is clearly the case that the divine Word occupies center stage. As this new corner is turned by Israel, it will be the Word that creates the change.

Just look at how this concept of the divine Word weaves through this chapter. We begin right off the bat in verse 1 with the declaration that "in those days the word of Yahweh was rare; there were not many visions." The people were both deaf and blind when it came to receiving communication from God. Yet by the end of this same chapter in verse 21 we are told that because of Samuel's presence at Shiloh, all of a sudden God's bringing his word became a common occurrence once again and, what's more, Samuel's word then went out to all Israel. So we go from a kind of Mojave Desert of the divine Word in verse 1 to a monsoon rain shower of that same Word by verse 21.

And the source of this radical change can be very neatly tracked down to the precise midpoint of chapter 3 in verse 10 when Samuel says, "Speak, for your servant is listening." Your servant is listening. Maybe it was the listening that made the difference. Maybe the reason God's Word had been rare was not so much because God wasn't trying to say something but because no one was tuning in, no one was listening. And just maybe that is true in life more often than not. But more on that in a moment.

First I want us to note a small detail in this story that I highlighted for you before. It comes in verse 3 when we are told that "the lamp of God had not yet gone out." In a strictly literal sense (which is where most commentators leave the matter) this may be little more than a temporal reference. The lamp in question is the golden menorah that God instructed Moses to fashion along with the rest of the tabernacle and temple furnishings. This lamp was to be fueled by oil that the people brought to the temple as part of their offerings to God.

There is some difference of opinion among scholars as to when this lamp was supposed to have been lit. Some think it was like an eternal flame that was to burn day and night. Others think it was to be lit only from dusk to dawn. In any event, to say that "the lamp of God had not yet gone out" may be a way to indicate that Samuel's call came shortly before dawn when the nighttime supply of oil was just about gone. So maybe saying "the lamp of God had not yet gone out" is like our saying today, "the alarm clock had not yet gone off." This is the wee hour of the morning, in other words.

But in the context of I Samuel 3, I like to think there is also a symbolic significance. The lamp's flame symbolized the presence of Yahweh in the temple as he dwelled on the mercy seat atop the Ark of the Covenant (also mentioned at the end of verse 3 as you may have noticed). Yet as chapter 3 opens, this lamp is flickering, is threatening to go out. That flickering, shimmering, sputtering flame could very easily stand for how a lot of people at that time viewed also the presence of God. Israel had descended into an evil chaos. Even the priest's own sons were lustful thugs such that you took your life into your hands just by going to church! If God had not yet abandoned Israel, surely he would one day very soon.

However, verse 3 tells us that this lamp, and the presence of God it symbolized, had not yet gone out, and those two words are key. The lamp had not yet gone out and God had not yet left his people. Most folks were living as though God didn't exist. But because the lamp still had some life left to it, because it had not yet gone out, there was hope.

The truth of that hope is revealed when God calls out to a willing listener. Samuel's willingness to listen turned things around. If it is true that this revelation came just before the sun rose, then that is also a good symbol of the new day dawning in Israel. God's word and Samuel's words would become almost interchangeable, which is why verse 19 says that God did not let any of Samuel's words "fall to the ground." Nothing Samuel said fell flat or could be easily written off as so much empty talk. A new day had come, and the Word of the Lord made the difference.

But what does this chapter have to say to us all these millennia later and as we live in a nation very different from ancient Israel? Well, certainly there is some hope in this passage. In the wider church, here at Calvin Church, or within the confines of our individual lives as disciples of Jesus, there are times when we feel abandoned by God, when we yearn for a sign of his presence but can't seem to find it. And for anyone here today who feels that way, those two little words "not yet" provide hope. God is always here, however dim his light may appear to your eyes of faith at any given moment. He has not yet left you, and he never will, and so who knows what new day may dawn for you or for all of us.

So we could talk about hope this morning, but since that will also be my focus on Thursday at our Thanksgiving Day service, I would rather take us a different direction this morning by asking the question, "What is the Word of God and are we able to hear it, listen to it, and heed it today?" Recently we formalized that part of our service after the Scripture reading when the readers says, "This is the Word of the Lord" and the rest of us respond with "Thanks be to God."

Whether we reflect on it or not, that is our way of affirming our Reformed belief that Scripture is the living Word of God's truth. If you visit different churches once in a while, you know that not everyone says this anymore. In some churches these days the reading of the Bible is preceded by the phrase, "Listen for the Word of God." But that almost seems to say that Scripture may, here and there, now and then, contain elements of God's Word. So the careful listener can pick out the genuine bits and pieces discard the rest.

And indeed, not a few people in the wider church world refuse to say that Scripture is a living Word of truth to which we humbly submit ourselves. In some places Scripture is now treated as what one writer recently termed "a friend." The Bible is a friend with whom to have conversations. Scripture says what it wants to say, you say what is on your mind, and then you compare notes. Sometimes we agree with what our friendly Bible says but at other times we simply have to disagree (as good friends sometimes do) and so we go our separate ways on this or that point.

In September I was part of a panel discussion at Calvin College as several of us dialogued with a British theologian and philosopher who was the guest speaker at the conference. In our comments both a Religion and Theology professor from Calvin and then also I myself happened to throw in the phrase "the authority of Scripture," hence referring to our Reformed idea that the Bible is divine revelation that we take with the utmost seriousness. When it came time for the British scholar to respond to the panel, among other things he said to me and to the Calvin professor, "I heard you mention 'the authority of Scripture' in your remarks. Surely you misspoke, yes? You didn't really mean that, did you?" He then went on to assert that really nobody believes that anymore. The Bible has no authority in the way we Reformed fellows seemed to claim.

We assured our British brother that we had not misspoken. But many people today say that if you want to talk about the Word of God, you must refer to Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, and not to any ancient collection of documents contained in the Old and New Testaments. Jesus is the only Word of God and we follow Jesus, not a book. But this should not be an either-or proposition. Unless someone wants to claim that Jesus, the Word, is waking them up in the night with direct and brand spanking new revelations; unless someone wants to claim that Jesus the Word is sending them divine emails, then I don't see how anyone can claim to know who Jesus is or what it means to follow Jesus unless they are willing to believe that Jesus as the Word of God has poured his living Truth into a living Word that comes to us via the inspired Scriptures. Without some kind of foundation, some kind of biblical starting point and bottom line, it is too easy to turn Jesus into a silly-putty Savior who will endorse most any point of view, agenda, or movement out there.

Last Saturday's Religion section of the Press featured a big article on a local postmodern, contemporary "church" that meets at Amway. The article's author noted that this is not a typical church in any sense and, among other things he noted that you'd be hard-pressed to find a Bible anywhere. Later in the article the pastor admitted that even some of the people who have risen to leadership positions "don't have the Jesus thing figured out." As my wife pointed out, surely there is a connection between no Scripture and a fuzzy, hazy idea of Jesus (or the Jesus thing, which strikes me as a most insulting phrase).

Jesus is the Living Word but he also comes to us through his inspired Word, and so it is our place to say, "Speak, Lord, your servants are listening." Make no mistake: this is risky. When the Living Word speaks to us, we will not always hear pleasant things. We will not always get our personal agendas endorsed. We will not always be told that if only we stay faithful, then new and exciting opportunities are just around the corner. The Word from God that young Samuel heard was deeply disturbing, ugly, almost brutal. It was a word of judgment, and nobody is wild about being judged, being challenged, or turned in a direction he or she does not wish to go. Living under God's Word is not easy, and let's not pretend that Calvin Church or any of us has this all locked up, either. It is an ongoing challenge both to want to hear God's true Word and to then live by what we hear.

We Reformed people are quick to point out that even so, we are not naive hearers of the Word. We have a long and rich tradition of hermeneutics that recognizes that a wooden, literalistic, one-size-fits-all approach to the Bible does not constitute faithful listening. But still we say that even so, the text, the living Word, and the equipping of the Holy Spirit as we read those texts, are our bedrock. We don't invent new texts, we don't ignore hard texts, we don't soften scandalous texts. We do what we can to live by the Word.

A week from today we begin our annual reflection on the Word made flesh. As we celebrate that incarnate Word, we should also be thankful for the written Word that brings us the whole sacred narrative and the shining grace that stands at its center. Dark though this world seems to be, we recall that the light of God's truth has not yet gone out and it never will. Because before Scripture concludes, the apostle John had a final vision in the book of Revelation, at the center of which is Jesus in whose hand is the lampstand of truth, burning brightly for all eternity. And so as earlier in this service, so again I say to you, this is the Word of the Lord. Let us together say, "Thanks be to God!" Amen.