You know, if God had hired an executive search firm to recruit leaders, not a single one of his chosen candidates would have survived the first cut.
This morning, it’s a kid fighting off sleep in the sanctuary of Shiloh. A scrawny shepherd boy out in the field, entirely forgotten even by his own father. There’s a grief-stricken woman who speaks the truth in the name of her child. Ichabod. Even God, at the center of the story, is overlooked by a people infatuated with the warrior kings of rival nations.
For four weeks this fall, we will recall together God’s stubborn preference for the unlikeliest choice.
The whole story starts with a song. A woman, Hannah, brings her toddler son, this miracle for which she had prayed in hopeless anguish. She brings her son to the temple and lifts her voice in praise of the God of surprises, the God of reversal, the God of the unlikely candidate. God, she says, is the rock against which the weapons of war will be shattered. God is the one who humbles the arrogant exalted and lifts the poor to the seats of princes. God is the one who hears the cry of the desperate. God is the one who has heard her cry.
Shemu. El. God has heard. Samuel. That’s her boy.
That’s her boy lying in the pitch black of the sanctuary. The word of the Lord was rare those days. Visions had all but ceased. The divine had gone eerily quiet. The old priest, well he is failing. Not just his eyesight. His sons are corrupt. He knows it but will not stop it.
Says nothing.
In other words, it is a dim season for the future of faith. And there in the dark, our narrator drops a single ray of hope in verse three. The lamp of God had not yet gone out. It may be dim. But the light is still burning. Remember that.
And there in that silent sanctuary, the hidden God, the silent God, awakes. Samuel.
Samuel? That kid? He doesn’t even know who God is. Can’t recognize God’s voice. Doesn’t know how it sounds. Sam assumes it’s the old man muttering in the room next door. Three times, he hears his name. Three times, this dutiful boy springs to life, sprints down the hall to his aging mentor, eager to be helpful. Here I am! They are the right words, but it’s the wrong room.
If you have ever been woken up three times in the middle of the night by the same child, you know how thin Eli’s patience should be running by now. But instead of snapping, something shifts for the old priest. I think it’s the distant memory of his own call to ministry, that moment in his life when he heard Eli! Eli! I think perhaps it is the fading but not snuffed out possibility that perhaps after all these years, after these decades, God is somehow speaking again.
He looks into the room and sees that the lamp has not yet gone out. He answers the boy: You go back into the sanctuary and lie down. If you hear your name again, answer the one who is calling you, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
This is my favorite story in the Bible. Years ago, before our first son was born, Sara and I were each drawn independently to the name Samuel. We believe it was meant for him. And yet, despite my familiarity with this story, perhaps because of my familiarity with this story, there is something in these ten verses I missed until preparing to preach it at this moment. It is Eli’s unexpected response. I think it tells us everything about what it means to be the church.
You have to understand that in the temple at Shiloh, Eli is the man in charge. He is the priest. He’s the one entrusted with sacred responsibilities. He is the mediator between God and people. He is the only one authorized to sacrifice on their behalf. He is the interpreter of holy texts. It is his literal, actual, daily job to listen for God’s voice. And when it comes, after decades of waiting, the call is not for him. And Eli knows it.
How easily he could have guarded his position. How simple it would have been to simply send the boy away.
Thank you, Sam. Must be for me. Go back to bed. I’ll handle it. You’re too young to understand, kid. You haven’t been fully trained. And by the way, you don’t even come from a priestly family. You don’t know God. Can’t recognize God’s voice. Not yet. Not now. Too soon. Too much. It’s over your head. Beyond your ability. Leave it to me. Go lie down.
Here’s what struck me this time around. Eli will not pull rank or protect power. He does send the boy back, but with this instruction. The call is for you, son. It’s your turn. Without that single moment of recognition, Samuel may have missed his life’s purpose.
Orval Wintermute was Eli for me. Orval—Professor Wintermute—was a world-class Biblical scholar and tenured professor for 38 years of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Duke University. He translated the Gnostic Gospels found at Nag Hammadi in the 1960s. And for those of you who aren’t Biblical scholars, that’s a big deal.
But it’s not why I’m thinking of Orval this morning. After he retired from decades in the academy, Orval, who was an ordained Presbyterian minister, returned to the parish. Specifically, he became the part-time pastor of a fifteen-member congregation an hour north of Durham. One summer, in the midst of that call, Orval had knee replacement surgery, and that church asked a college freshman to preach and visit members in his place.
Before he let me loose on the congregation, Orval introduced me to them. For the next three years, we made that trip together. Through crisis, illness, conflict and loss, we drove and we talked. We talked theology, and we talked scripture. We talked caring for people and for a congregation. We even created a thought experiment on those rides. We dreamed up a 5,000-member congregation and talked about how you would go about leading such an immense church.
Orval listened. He encouraged me. It was on those car rides that I began to perceive my own call.
To hear my name.
Since then, I have been to seminary. I have read many books on ministry. Nothing taught me more than what I learned riding shotgun in Orval’s car or watching him pull his chair next to a dying woman’s bedside so that he could hold her hand while he prayed. In the corner of that room, a college student was watching, feeling the tug toward a life of ministry.
We all need an Orval. We all need an Eli.
The word of the Lord was rare in those days. Feels rare these days, too.
For decades, we have been inundated with post-mortems on the American church. You’ve heard them all. The collapse of congregations, the dwindling of denominations, the loss of moral authority. Our decline has been blamed on everything from Sunday morning soccer leagues to political captivity to salacious scandal.
The word of the Lord was rare in those days. The house of Eli was failing. Collapsing. And there was a kid asleep in the sanctuary. He did not know God’s voice. He just kept running back and forth from the sanctuary to Eli, this old man he trusted, hoping to be useful. Here I am!
And at last, Eli understood. You have to know what it took for that elderly priest to tell the boy: the voice you’re hearing, it is God’s voice. The call is for you.
Eli had no idea what was coming, what would be said. So, in the morning, he asks Samuel, “What did you hear last night?” Sam is too terrified to tell him. Eli must drag the words out of the boy. And so, Samuel stands before his mentor and tells the truth. Divine judgment is coming against your house. Your sons are corrupt, and they will be punished.
Imagine that moment. Eli spent his whole life in this temple. He knew every ritual, every syllable of every prayer, every note of every hymn. And now God calls a new generation to turn the page. Eli’s era is ending, and not with a sweet story of passing the torch. It will be a devastating reversal.
Eli could resist, protect his status, his family, his reputation. He could silence Samuel in Shiloh. But here’s what the old priest says: It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. I need you to know that is not resignation. It is courage. Eli will not stand in the way of the truth.
And here is our lesson. We can carefully preserve the institution and lose what it exists to carry. A faith worth passing on. Our children watch what we do with the things we claim to believe. They see what gets our attention. They notice what we are willing to sacrifice. They know what comes first for us. They are learning what matters from the lives we lead.
Our Samuel is in seventh grade now. Much to his father’s delight, he has taken up speech and debate. It’s the activity that set the course of my vocation, and I swear he found it all on his own. Last week Sam told me he wants to write an original oratory on the dangers of artificial intelligence. When I asked him why he chose that topic, he did not hesitate.
Because your generation isn’t taking it seriously enough, and we’re the ones who are going to have to live with it.
He wasn’t kidding. He wasn’t performing. His words were deliberate and carefully chosen. And, for a split second, I will confess I considered pushing back. Now Sam, leave the big questions to the grown-ups. You’re too young to understand. We’ve got this.
And in that moment, I realized how badly I wanted those words to be true. But they are not true. In ways we must face, we have failed them. He was right. He’s thirteen. The call is for him. It’s his turn. And so, I asked to read it when he is finished.
Hannah called her boy Samuel. Not a name, but a promise: God has heard.
He heard his name in the sacred darkness. He did not know who was calling. He needed someone to help him. Someone to listen. And finally, Eli got it right.
The word of the Lord was rare in those days. But the lamp had not yet gone out. It has not yet gone out. It is not too late.
Somewhere, a nineteen-year-old is wondering how the church can speak so boldly of love and justice on Sunday and fall so silent when those words carry a cost.
Somewhere, there is a child who is asking, “Why are you building a world with so little concern for those who will come after you?”
Somewhere, God is speaking through the voices we have dismissed or diminished. Too young. Too naïve. Too angry. Too inconvenient.
The question is not whether there is a word from the Lord. The question is whether you and I will have the courage to hear it. Samuel. Samuel.
Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.
Speak, son. Your parents are listening