Homily for Proper 4, Year B
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Richmond VA
Texts:
Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening
The last time that I stood in this pulpit and offered up a reflection, it was Easter season and I was speaking about the holy nature of rest. Some of you have wondered if I preached that sermon just for you. I’m never one to second guess the message that the Holy Spirit inspires, but as the saying goes among clergy: we always preach the sermons that we ourselves need to hear. Even when I was standing here delivering that message, I knew in body, mind and spirit that I also needed holy rest: to rest quietly in the presence of God.
Being a little like the restless young Samuel, I have had a few false attempts to create a space for holy rest. Case in point: during the one “sabbatical” I had as a social work professor, I traveled to a seminary to teach classes as a visiting professor! I honestly find a lot of joy in my work, but that isn’t the point. The prodding of God has been there, and the wisdom of spiritual mentors in my own life confirmed and validated the need to be still and listen. Being who I am, I needed to do more than go to my mat…I needed to drive several hundred miles and up a mountain to a monastery without cell service in order to do it. But this recent time of silence, prayer and holy rest has been exactly what I needed, in ways I could never have imagined.
In a more rested state, God’s voice becomes more clear.
Today’s story of Samuel and Eli is one I’ve heard often, and maybe you have too. But in my more rested state, I find myself hearing something playing out in this story that it was easy for me to overlook in the busy state of doing in which I often find myself. I tend to hear this story from the standpoint of Samuel receiving the direction he needed to do what he needed to do. But there is a deeper point in this story: God knows Samuel. God isn’t inviting Samuel to do something new. God is calling to Samuel to be Samuel. God already knew who Samuel was, even in his youth: Samuel the listener. Samuel the messenger. Samuel the prophet.
God, not Samuel, is the actor in this story of prophetic witness. God knows the boy Samuel, in ways that Samuel does not even know himself. God calls Samuel’s name to get his attention. Young Samuel, through the wise discernment and counsel of Eli, learns to open his ears and his heart to hear God.
God had searched out and known Samuel. And God searches out and knows us, too.
You have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar.
The words of our psalm today are a prayer of gratitude to the God who knows us, who already knows what we are capable of and where our thoughts dwell. But we are a people and a culture of independence and self-direction, prizing our free thinking and our free speaking. Hearing that God knows us so fully and anticipates our needs can sound childish, naive and maybe even terrifying. So, I wonder into the possibility that this story of Samuel is conveyed in our Holy Scriptures precisely because it invites us to see God’s knowledge of us and action on our lives through divine-human relationship, embodying like Samuel the same spirit of child-like trust.
This isn’t always what we think we want from God. We want to see our enemies vanquished and the desires of our hearts fulfilled. We want neon signs and big, repeating announcements from God that tell us with certainty where to go and what to do. We chide ourselves for not doing enough, not working hard enough, not living up to some mysterious potential others seem to have for us or letting ourselves down from attaining what we’ve come to believe are the ultimate achievements of our goal-driven lives.
And all the while, God who already knows us and loves us exactly as we are and understands who we are waits for us to lie down on our mat and invite the Holy One into that very present moment with us: Speak Lord, your servant is listening.
When he listened, Samuel understood that God was asking him speak God’s words to someone who was his caregiver. He was frightened, but he understood. Eli understood, too. He received the message Samuel delivered, knowing and acknowledging his words were from God. The story that we hear today is one part of a larger narrative; Eli’s sons are described earlier in this text of our first lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures as wicked scoundrels; Eli knew that their actions were betraying the holiest of places, stealing offerings that were appointed for God and violating the covenant of trust God had made with their ancestors and subsequent generations designated to serve as priests and keepers of the temples and holy places of Israel.
They knew who they were and who God had appointed them to be, but they did their own thing. And it was a greedy, evil thing that harmed many people.
Samuel not only opened his ears and heart to listen to God but through the nature of who he was, he responded by doing the hard thing, even as a young child, speaking with his voice the words that God had shared with him. Samuel was a prophet; not because he learned or earned the right but because that was who he was. Eli knew Samuel, who had been entrusted to his keeping. And Eli knew the truth of the message from God. In that moment, hard as it was, we are given a glimpse of how God was present with all the people in this story: the faithful but failed minister, the wicked scoundrels, the hurt and hurting people, the unlikely prophet.
We also see the relationships these people have with God: Eli followed some of the rules but ultimately was ruled by fear of his sons; he ignored the evil perpetrated by his family and he eventually emptied into the consequences that had been set in motion. The wicked sons of Eli meet their end in the next chapter of the story during a battle in which the most holy object, the ark of the Covenant, is also taken from Israel. In contrast we are told, “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.” The times in which Samuel would go on to live and minister were hard times. But Samuel rested in the presence of God.
The story of Samuel reveals the trust into which God invites us. Call is rooted in relationship. Being who we are, in the company of God’s presence, means fundamentally that we value and prioritize our relationship with God over all else. We see it for the gift of love that it is.
And that outpouring of divine love is what the holy rest of sabbath is all about.
The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.
When we pause to hear and take in this story of the Hebrew scriptures, we better understand the story and the nature of Jesus’ response in the Gospel text, too. This isn’t a story of Jesus breaking the rules. This is a story of Jesus realigning our human understanding of Sabbath with God’s intended purpose.
God’s desire for God’s people is relationship. God’s desire for us is relationship. Relationship with God allows us to rest fully and wholly, with vulnerability and trust, in the presence of the Holy One who knows us, and loves us for exactly who we are. Our Gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus, the very essence of God-made-human, is fully engaging in relationship with God when doing exactly what he came among us to be and to do: to nourish and nurture, to teach and heal, to embody resurrection and life.
To follow our call is to rest in God. To rest in God is to embody the gift of knowing that God sees us, knows us, loves us and carries us step by step into the holy, loving and lifegiving work we are made to do. Exactly as we are. Loved, beloved people who are known by God and essential to God’s work in this world. In this, we are asked to trust and invited to rest.
That’s true even when we don’t yet have the words to describe what that work is. Samuel didn’t have the words, but he had the openness of heart. When we open to hearing God’s voice and responding like Samuel, “speak Lord, your servant is listening” then we will be carried and supported step by step: through the hard days of speaking truth to power; through the hungry days when in feeding others, we ourselves are fed; through the broken days when we yearn for the healing of ourselves, one another and the world and find the source of that not through our own merits, but through the grace of God.
This is the essence of discipleship, of our invitation to be part of God’s vision for the world that is being revealed to us step by step, with God’s help. So trust…and rest…in that loving vision.
Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.
small points of light 