June 2, 2024 – Second Sunday After Pentecost
Rev. Gary Percesepe
The story begins on an ominous note: “The LORD’s word was rare at that time.” Eli, the high priest, has made a mess of things. His family has corrupted the nation’s religious rituals for private gain. The corruption in God’s house is mirrored by the general corruption of the nation. Graft, grifters, greed. Sound familiar?
Nevertheless, the word of the LORD intrudes one night, troubling the sleep not of Eli, whose sleep ought to have been troubled, but of the little boy, Samuel. On the horizon is a new age for Israel, which manifests as a
voice calling in the night, “Samuel, Samuel.” Old man Eli is a mentor to Samuel, and beneath the surface of the text we can feel the tension between the seasoned veteran and his protégé. The vision comes to the young boy and not the old man. Did you catch the writer’s not so subtle wordplay in our text between “visions” that are rare and Eli’s being “unable to see?” The irony is thick as the early morning fog of Kula, hinting that although God still bestows visions, the visionless religious leaders are not able to discern the new thing that God wants to do.
The untutored young boy hears the voice which the older, experienced leader fails to hear. Eli’s career is doomed because of his poor performance as a spiritual leader. Eli’s children will pay dearly for their father’s failures, whereas Eli’s hānai child will be elevated.
Samuel may be young, but he does not cower in the corner, nor does he disavow his prophetic responsibility to practice fearless speech. “Speak, your servant is listening” is the textbook response when one’s name is called by God.
We see this repeatedly in the bible—God makes a new beginning with a voice in the night. There is an echo of the primal voice that hovered over the chaotic darkness at creation and spoke to it: “Let there be light!” New worlds become possible when God’s voice intrudes into the night and troubles our sleep.
It was dark that night in the Temple, but it was also a dark time in the history of the nation. There was great moral confusion. The old ways had led to corruption, old leaders were morally compromised. Many followed the devices and desires of their own hearts rather than the ways of God. The word of the LORD was rare at that time. Not many visions or revelations. Few memorable sermons. Not many heard their names being called in the middle of the night.
But the silence would not last forever. The voice finally comes one night because God does not leave God’s people without a witness. It may not come from the president of the Temple, or the Vice Moderator or Moderator or Senior Deacon or the Chief Warden or even the kahu or the bishop or the Conference Minister, but somewhere even in the darkest midnight the Stillspeaking God is calling someone to rise up, hear their name and answer the call.
Many voices cry out for our attention in this world, but it’s usually a marketing call, it’s the chattering voice of the television, it’s another ad on Spotify interrupting our play list, it’s a bill collector or your iPhone blowing up with messages, or it’s your own voice of shame, condemning yourself once again for failing to measure up, for not being good enough, pretty enough, wealthy enough, happy enough—but sometimes at midnight a voice comes from outside of you.
Sometimes it comes mid-day. It’s happened to me in church, when everything is quiet after the singing of the hymn, and the congregation settles down and I rise and walk to this desk only to discover something deep within that is more than me just talking to myself. Or maybe it happens that in the middle of the sermon you hear something more than what the preacher is saying. Or your house grows quiet and you’re alone at last with your thoughts, when you discover that your thoughts are not exclusively your own. There’s another voice coming from a place outside of you, a voice that knows where to find you even when you’re hiding. It’s little Samuel and old Eli all over again. Because Christians don’t really volunteer for anything; we answer a summons, as my Black friends like to say, you don’t volunteer you been voluntold! Nobody in this room showed up to worship this morning on their own. You got called.
Finally, I have a confession to make. I used to like this old story but as I’ve gotten older, I don’t like it as much. I aged out of it. Sometime after my fortieth birthday it dawned on me that I wasn’t the boy, Samuel. I was the old, professionally trained, experienced, credentialed, ordained vision-less Eli. I began to ask: Why did God call the kid? Why did God bypass the experienced, credentialed, licensed professional and go to the ignorant, untrained, immature kid? It hurt to know that the word of the Lord was rare in my day, which meant you couldn’t find a good sermon for love nor money and that meant mine, too. And I began to feel sorry for old Eli. God finally stirs and speaks, but why is it to the kid and not to me? There was old Eli, working for the Lord for six decades, full time at the Temple, waiting for a word from the Lord, and there was God bypassing Eli, jumping over two generations, and going to the child, Samuel, who didn’t even know who God was. And then I remembered other bible stories from my youth where God calls a teenager named David to save the nation, God calls a teenaged Jewish girl named Mary to be the God-bearer, twelve year old Jesus goes to the Temple and confounds the tenured professors in the Department of Religion, and the apostle Paul blurts out that God chose what the world considers low class and low life and less than zero to confound the wise, to reduce what they considered something to be nothing, and he said this to all the big shots in his proud no account foolish congregation who thought they were all that and a bag of chips, but God was not impressed.
Sometimes God goes out of his way to bypass religious officials and goes straight to the kids.
I hope that those of us who are older now will be like old Eli and patiently instruct the young saying, “Go and lie down. If he calls you, say ‘Speak Lord. Your servant is listening.’ I hope the kids will be brash enough to risk saying, “I’m here. Use me.” I hope the church welcomes and makes space for the voices and visions of the young. We might begin with our own grandchildren. Maybe we’d even want to talk to our children. We could ask them: Where is God in your life right now? What is God asking you to do? What might ask ourselves the same question as a church. Amene.