Scripture:  I Samuel 3:1-10

 One of my early vivid memories of church was sitting in worship one Sunday as a young child.  I was maybe six or seven years old, and on this particular morning a light bulb managed to wiggle itself loose from the ceiling of the sanctuary and come crashing to the floor right in the middle of worship.  The Presbyterian church where I grew up wasn’t the biggest or tallest in town, but that sanctuary ceiling was high enough to give a renegade bulb time to gather significant speed before hitting the floor.  There was a loud “POP!” when it did, which was followed by the tinkling of glass skidding every which way.  And then some commotion—shrieks of surprise, audible gasps, and more than a few who’d probably been nodding off a moment earlier standing up to defend themselves from further attack. 

 The minister, having been in the middle of a sermon, was quiet.  I know now that whatever he thought he was going to say that morning had been eclipsed entirely by a fluke incident, and there was no going back.  From that moment on, he could have unlocked the deepest mysteries of scripture only to find during the coffee hour that all anybody wanted to talk about was that falling light bulb.  Looking back, I imagine that people’s surprise gave him a few seconds to think after the bulb hit, and when the dust had settled and the congregation was looking forward again, he began a new sermon with these words:  “God said, ‘Wake up!’”

I guess sometimes that’s what it takes.  An arresting, startling moment—a sure sign that Somebody wants our attention.  Haven’t you ever caught yourself asking God for just such a thing?  “God, if you could just send a signal of some kind—to let me know you’re there, that you’re listening…?  A wink and a nod, maybe?” 

There’ve been times in our lives when our prayers have been more earnest, when we’ve been most fearful and most in need of God that we would have welcomed something—anything—crashing to the floor, something we could point to and say beyond all shadows of doubt, “God is here, calling me to attention.”  But bulbs crashing to the floor are rare these days, and when they do come, they’re unexpected, which means that we often devote our energy to the clean-up.  

I’m a sucker for the YouTube video montages of church bloopers, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong during a worship service.  The baby kicks over the baptismal font, a cat walks down the aisle during worship, the groom faints, the bride faints, the minister faints, candelabras crash to the floor…  Of course, what the videos don’t show you is what happens next—how the minister recovers, for example (assuming he or she isn’t the one passed out on the floor), and tries to bring some semblance of order back to the service.  My guess is more often than not, the question at hand is, “Now where were we?” and some attempt is made at business as usual.  The wonderful and sometimes frightening thing about worship, however, is that there should be no such thing as business as usual.  Interruptions can arrive as gifts to those of us who’ve become entrenched in our routines and rituals. 

All of this is to begin today by saying that we seldom come to church to be interrupted.  I doubt that’s why you’re here this morning—to be interrupted—to be jolted awake in a way you weren’t expecting.  I imagine that if you were to invite a friend to worship next Sunday, you’d say something like, “Oh, I think you’ll enjoy First Presbyterian.  We like it a lot.” You wouldn’t say, “Come worship with me.  It will interrupt life as you know it and disrupt your thinking and believing!”  We tend to not come to worship for the unexpected.  Rather we arrive to rest and sink into comfortable routines that meet our comfortable expectations.

We read in the Hebrew Scriptures, in I Samuel, that “the word of the LORD was rare in those days,” that “visions were not widespread.”  And so maybe we can well imagine the people of God settled into comfortable routines of worship and life, cajoling themselves into thinking that all was right with the world.  After all, if God is not speaking, it must mean that everything’s ok…  If God’s not delivering messages through prophets or dropping light bulbs on your head, you must be doing something right.  Maybe another way of beginning this passage in I Samuel would be to say, “The word of the LORD was rare and visions were not widespread in those days, and so the people of God became confident that their status quo was acceptable to themselves and to God.” 

It’s actually kind of nice when the word of the LORD is rare, and it’s really quite convenient when visions aren’t widespread.  When God isn’t talking or showing up, it means that we can sit back and enjoy ourselves, confident that if God’ll do something if we get too far off track. I wonder if that’s how folks felt back in Samuel’s day—that all was well with the world, since God wasn’t doing much to fix it. 

But then God came and spoke to Samuel, a boy in the temple.  We don’t know how old Samuel was at the time, but we can guess he was eleven or twelve.  It was night, and all were asleep when the voice came.  “Samuel.  Samuel.”  Then Samuel did what all three of my daughters do when they wake up in the middle of the night.  They go wake somebody else up because it’s fun to be awake at two in the morning, and who would want to keep that experience all to themselves? Samuel goes to wake up the priest, Eli. 

Now by all rights, Eli should have been the one receiving messages from God. He’d been a priest all his life and was dedicated to his ministry.  But Eli’s sons had run amok, abusing the priesthood and taking advantage of people with their power.  As much as he cared for his work, Eli had failed to reign in his sons, and about this God was not happy.  And so the word of the LORD came to Samuel.

It’s sort of funny to think that Samuel was raised in the Temple but wasn’t taught to expect God to say much.  He runs to Eli thinking that Eli must have called him, and Eli says “No.  Go back to sleep.”  Again it happens, and again Eli sends him back to bed.  Then again, and by now both Eli and Samuel have lost all hope of a good night’s rest, but still neither is catching on.  The last time Samuel comes to Eli’s side and says, “Here I am—you called,” Eli realizes what’s going on and instructs Samuel, “Go lie down, and if you hear the voice again, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’”

The image that has stuck with me from this story is of two people, Samuel and Eli, lying awake, restless.  Samuel is lying in his bed, awake, tossing and turning, and he’s wondering, “Whose voice is that?”  Eli is lying awake in his bed, tossing and turning, and he’s wondering, “Why isn’t God talking to me?”

Haven’t you been restless, and haven’t you wondered both?  Restless at night, tossing and turning, wondering, “I hear something—a voice, but whose voice is it?”  Or restless at night, tossing and turning, crying out, “God, where are you, and why won’t you say something?”

In Samuel’s story, the voice comes to a child, which during an age when visions were rare, was unexpected.  But this is in keeping with other stories in Scripture—where the least likely people are the ones hearing God’s voice and bearing the good news.  Just a few weeks ago we told the story of the shepherds, who were some of the first to know of Jesus’ birth.  Remote, homeless shepherds, out in the field, treated to an angel chorus and the announcement of good news. 

There’s another gospel story that occurs to me as I think about Samuel.  Remember when Jesus was out in the wilderness with the crowds?  There were thousands of them, and at one point, everyone was hungry, but there was no food.  The disciples came to Jesus and said, “People are hungry, Jesus.  Where are we going to buy enough bread?”  But then one of the disciples found an unlikely provider—a boy who had five loaves of bread and two fish.  Jesus told the disciples to have the people sit down, and then he took the loaves and fish, blessed them, and fed everyone, until all were satisfied. 

Here’s what I’m wondering this morning.  What if, on the way to see Jesus, that boy had turned to his parents and said, “Mom, Dad, I’ve been thinking about it, and you know, there’s going to be a lot of people coming to see Jesus today, and I bet they’re going to get really hungry.  So I think I’d like to use my five loaves of bread and two fish at some point this afternoon to feed everybody.”

Can you imagine what his parents would have said?  “Oh, honey, that’s a nice thought.  We’re proud of you that you would think so generously, but that is impossible.”  Or, “Isn’t that sweet, dear.  Our little boy thinks he can feed the world with five loaves of bread.”  Or even, “Son, put that bread away.  If others find out how much food we’re traveling with, we might have to share it.”

In this story, Jesus performs the miracle but a child is the source of the abundance.  As one theologian points out, “Children make very good Christian disciples because they readily believe in the foolishness of God.  They have ample room in their minds to hold miracles, visions, and dreams.  A childlike imagination believes there is a trap door behind the wardrobe and that the line is thin between the possible and impossible.” [1] 

We might say that children are the ones who are often restless enough to stay awake for whatever it is God might say or do.  Could it be that there were adults in the crowd that day keeping their fish to themselves?  We’ll never know.  What we do know is that a child was present with an imagination that was restless enough to believe that he could make a difference with what little he had.

Some questions to consider.  Are we restless enough to receive a word or two from God?  Or do we tend to want to just go back to sleep?  Are we faithful enough to listen to those to whom God is speaking? 

I wonder to whom God is speaking these days.  I wonder what messages of challenge and change are falling on the ears of our own young people, and I wonder if we, like Eli, can be perceptive enough to listen to and encourage those voices among us.  Samuel’s message to Eli was a difficult one for him to hear, but in his faithfulness to Samuel, Eli was in turn faithful to God.  Might we follow suit?  Trusting God enough that we even trust one another to bear God’s living word…  God give us strength, insight, and courage.  Amen.

1.  Enuma Okoro in “Grappling with a Theology of Play,” which appeared in Communitas, an Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary publication for the College of Pastoral Leaders, vol. 8 2011.