Sermons

January 17, 2009

"Can You Hear Me Now?"

1 Samuel 3:1-10

Rev. Cheryl Magrini

My kitchen was a mess – in bedlam actually. At this time my husband Pete and I had two little boys, just 15 months apart. I was a lay person working at Kingswood United Methodist Church as the Director of Children and Family Ministries. Oh – and I also directed three children’s choirs. So you can imagine that the position was 40-50 hours a week. Luckily, I was able to do the administrative work from home. One day, not unlike many others at that time, I was in the kitchen working and our two boys, Dan and John, were happily playing. Dan, age 4, had a fun scooter that he had to move Flintstone style with his feet. It had a phone on the front. Dan scooted over to me, lifted up the phone, looked at me very seriously and said, “Mom, God is calling you.” Surely I was quite surprised, but like a Mom does, I pretended to talk to God. Then he happily scooted away. God was saying, “Can you hear me now?”

The influence of small children on the course of faith cannot be underestimated. From our Hebrew Bible reading, Samuel was a child well waited for and deeply wanted by his mother Hannah. Day after day she prayed and wept in the temple that she would have a child. She promised the LORD that if she had a child she would dedicate him to the work of the priesthood at the time of his weaning. Hannah did indeed keep her promise to the LORD and brought him to be raised in the temple by Eli, the priest, when Samuel was about the age of three, the age of weaning.

The story of the young boy Samuel who finally hears and understands the message the LORD had for him is a moving story. It took three times for Samuel to understand that it was the LORD who called to him. In Eli’s wisdom, he finally told Samuel to remain in his room and to reply to the next call with the words, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” God was saying, “Can you hear me now?” Then Samuel grew up to be a prophet that all of Israel trusted as a prophet of the LORD.

Sometimes we do not ourselves understand the word that God has for us. We might want a sign, or a word like Samuel had. When I was teaching public school, before being in lay ministry and ordained ministry, I used to pray for God’s will for my life to be printed in very large letters on the billboards that I passed everyday for five years. I loved teaching, but I felt a deep restlessness about God’s will for my life.

Roberta Bondi, church historian and author, describes a time when she lost her faith. She no longer understood the meaning of the crucifixion. She knew the meaning intellectually. What she had lost was the meaning for her faith journey. Bondi writes: “At that time I had no regular practice of prayer, but I prayed in my fear anyway…” Do not give up. God wants to meet us in prayer, even prayer that is uncertain.

One of the best-known passages in all of Christian history is: “Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.” This is the opening sentence of St. Augustine’s book, Confessions. John Wesley calls this longing for something beyond ourselves: “prevenient grace.” My first history professor in seminary said, “God woos us, and opens our spiritual eyes.” I find comfort that as I search for God that God is indeed searching after me, also. Struggling in being faithful is part of striving to be all that our baptism calls us to be. We are indeed baptized into a royal priesthood where all are called to be working in Christ’s name as we say in the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” No matter who you are we will encounter doubt and questions, just as did Roberta Bondi.

God speaks to us saying, “Can you hear me now?” God is always with us. Are we listening?

We look forward to remembering the life and ministry of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that changed life in the United States forever. His mission that took his life was grounded in prayer. At a particularly difficult time, Coretta Scott King tells about the prayer life of her husband:

“Martin bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud to God: ‘Lord, I am taking a stand for what I believe is right. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I have nothing left. I have come to the point where I can't face it alone.’”

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., knew that alone he could not face what God had called him to do. God gave him strength and courage for what God had called him to do at that time in our country’s history.

It may or may not be in God’s purpose to lead a desegregation movement, but you may feel the burning in your soul to speak up for those who have no voice in this society and to serve as an advocate. You might be seeing all around you school children who cannot read or do not have enough books, and that is the draw of your heart that God is moving you towards. Perhaps there are ones who are homebound, ill, have lost a family member or friend and your heart breaks. You are lured in the expression of your faith to pray daily for these people.

So many of us desire deeply to have a discipline of prayer and silence. Our souls are restless to be in the presence of God, who has given us the Holy Spirit to envelop our souls as we pray. And silence. How do we quiet our minds? When do we do such as this? We cannot hear our names being called with all the cacophony that accompanies us day in and day out. God is saying, “Can you hear me now?,” and so often our answer is “no.”

Where is it that you and God meet in the gifts you have been given? How do you live out your baptism in service to others as all baptized Christians must do out of a response to the love of God who first loved us? To what is your heart drawn? Frederick Buechner writes in his book: Wishful Thinking, a Seeker’s ABC about one’s vocation, coming from the Latin vocare. While one’s vocare may or may not be one’s job, the vocare can be discerned by looking for what brings you the most joy and the work that the world needs most to have done. In other words, “The place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (119 ) Vocation does not mean leaving the country, although it might as we have several opportunities for international missions. Vocation can mean being a person who listens to the pain of others. Vocation can mean helping someone to read. Vocation can mean feeding someone who is hungry. Vocation can mean being an advocate in court. Vocation can mean painting ceilings or buildings walls for transitional living. Vocation can mean volunteering at a hospital. Vocation can mean writing about faith and life. Vocation can mean expressing faith through song.

At the heart of where, what, how, when, you answer the lure of your “spiritual eyes being opened,” I believe with all of my heart and faith that prayer must underline all that we do to serve the needs of a hurting world. It is not I, you, or us that serves of our own ability. The vocation of service comes only out of deep prayer, and that means listening, quiet, opening up to the deepest desires of our hearts.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, was executed at the Flossenburg concentration camp on April 9, 1945, shortly before the camp was liberated. Before this tragedy, he delivered lectures on Christology in 1933 at the University of Berlin. Following is an excerpt from one of his lectures:

“Speaking of Christ origins in silence. Silence about Christ is the ground of speech…The speaking of the church through silence is the proper proclamation of Christ. Prayer requires both silence and crying out at the same time, both in the presence of God and in response to God’s word”. (31)

A contemporary woman, Marian Wright Edelman, offers us the example of working for the betterment of children beyond all odds in living out her spiritual call. She is the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, a non-profit agency. She graduated from Yale Law School and was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar. She has so many accomplishments that I could not begin to list them here.

She developed a child advocacy organization, the Children’s Defense Fund that has worked tirelessly for thirty-five years to ensure that all children have an equal start in life. The policies and programs of the Children’s Defense Fund seek to lift children out of poverty; protect them from abuse and neglect; and ensure their access to health care, quality education, and a moral and spiritual foundation at the national level and state levels.

God awaits your answer to the unconditional love that God first showered upon us. God is saying, “Can you hear me now?” Our answer is to hear the call of God and to bend our knees in silence to hear and answer the call.