Two Men of God; Old and Young: 1 Samuel 3:1-21

So the people of Israel traveled across the desert and eventually, after many years and many things occurred, they finally found their way into the land to which God had promised to Abraham all those years before. They settle in that land and it became their home.

And in that land was a woman named Hannah, a second wife, who was cherished by her husband even though she continued to bare no children. Although her husband did not hold her barrenness against her, but instead showed her favor in all things, this greatly distressed her. So she went to the temple and prayed for a child. In fact she prayed for so long and so fervently that the priest thought she was drunk and tried to oust her from the temple until she explained her situation to him. So, instead of tossing her out for being drunk, he blessed her for her faithfulness and her zeal for the Lord and sent her on her way. And in due time (that's how the scriptures say it, “In due time.”), she bore a son and named him Samuel and when he was old enough she took Samuel to the temple and gave him over to the Lord to serve God for the entirety of his life. So from the time he was a young boy, Samuel lived in the temple and served the Lord there under the priest Eli.

As Eli is left to raise Hannah's son, Samuel, as a servant of the Lord in the temple, he has his own troubles at home. He has two sons, who are grown. And, although he raised them to follow in the family “business” they were not cut out to be priests. They cheated the people out of their portions of the meat they brought to offer, not only did they take from the portions that were reserved for the people,  that they would take from the ones that were supposed to be given completely over to God and be consumed by fire. And as if that was not enough they were took advantage of the women who came to the temple, in ways that were not appropriate to go into due to the PG rating of this of this worship service. I am sure, it would not surprise you, to hear, God was not at all please these sons of Eli and declared, if they continue in their perverse ways, they were not long for the priesthood, or this world. And that pretty much brings up to date to where were in this passage.

Samuel is a bit older now, but still quite young. He is serving Eli and serving the Lord in the temple, but he “does not yet know the Lord.” Which is not to say that Eli has completely failed in raising Samuel in the ways of God, but is a way for the scripture to let us, the readers, who perhaps have heard of this prophet named Samuel and the things he did later on in his life; letting us know that this was before Samuel was Samuel, this is the very beginning. This is where it all started, before he the mighty prophet to the people, before he was a king maker or a king breaker. He was just a boy, who did not yet know the Lord, in the manner in which we are accustomed to. This was before all that, when he did not yet have a reputation, when he did not yet recognize the voice of the Lord, when it called his name.

And that is exactly what happened on this night, when Samuel was young and still slept in anonymity. In a time when the word of the Lord was rare and visions were scarce, in the middle of night, the word of the Lord came to a child. He did not recognize the voice of the Lord at first, but with some help from Eli who realized what was going on, was able, after hearing God call several times, to understand that it was the Lord who was speaking to him and respond accordingly.

God's call to Samuel and the message God gives to him is not a great one. God explains that Eli's sons are not long for the priesthood or this world. Being a priest and a prophet in Israel is not a “family” business, especially when the ones coming up in the family a disgrace to the temple, are disgracing God and generally making a nuance of themselves. God will not allow the sons of Eli to continue to be priests after Eli. Implied is that Samuel will serve as priest and prophet for God in their stead.

No matter how much Eli might have wished for his sons to be the men of God, we can only assume, he raised them to be, they were not. Being the child of a person of faith does not make you a person of faith. In fact being trained or raised by a person of faith does not make you a person of faith. Dare I go so far to say that being trained to be a pastor does not make you a person of faith? Being a person of faith makes you a person of faith.

Here we have examples three people who are raised and trained by a wonderful man of God. But only one of them actually is willing to hear and listen to the word of God. We do not know what the faith experience of Eli’s two sons was, but we can be pretty safe in saying they did not actually possess Eli’s faith in God. They knew how to be priests. They knew how to offer sacrifices, they knew how to guide and direct others in how to worship the Lord. But there is little indication that they actually lived out what it meant to be people who loved and worshiped God.

None of us can assume that we are Christians because we have been raised in the faith. The faith of our parents is not passed on to us like a hooked nose or a crooked smile. Although it is always important to guide and direct the children in our congregation in the ways of the Lord, I am pretty sure we all know that they will not believe simply because we bring them to Church each week and work to raise them in the faith. It is the same with our own faith. We cannot rely on the faith of anyone else to carry our own. We cannot assume that just because our mother or father had deep faith that simply because we come to church and were raised by them that we too will be people of God. Nor can we rely on the faith of our teachers and our pastors. Just because we have been trained in the ways of the Lord, does not make us people of God.

Our live and our actions will bear out the truth of our faith. We may have be led by amazing people of God, like Eli, but being led and taught by an amazing person of God will not necessarily make us the people of God we should be. We can learn and grow by being taught and guided by other great Christians, but unless we seek to be the people of God they are teaching us to be. Unless we study scripture, and seek to be the people God is calling us to be, in the end the actions of our lives will reflect something other than the character of God.

On one hand we have the sons of Eli, they tricked and cheated people, and they were dishonest and took advantage of their position. They were in short, men of very little if any faith. Their lives reflected the truth that the faith in which they were raised had very little bearing on the way they were actually living their lives. Then we have Samuel, who has received the same training they have, who has been raised by the same person who raised them. What we see in his life is a person who in all things desires to be a person whose life reflects the faith in which he has been raise.

When the lamp light is low and the night is long, Samuel is sleeping in the temple. God comes to him calls his name. He might not know it to be the voice of God. He might not know what to do when he hears the voice of God but he knows who to go to. When he is in the temple and he hears someone one calling, he goes to Eli to see what needs to be done. He is willing to listen, and follow instructions, even in the middle of the night. He may not know who is calling but he knows that he needs to be ready to listen and to do what he is called to do. Even when he has yet to really know what it means to be a person of God, Samuel was willing and ready to do what needed to be done. He was willing to seek guidance and to listen.

The message God tells Samuel that Eli’s sons will not be priests after him. That it will be the messages that God gives to Samuel that will make the ears of those who hear tingle. From this point on it will be Samuel who God will use and through Samuel God will work.

And Samuel goes back to his bed with this knowledge. He was ready, he was willing, he was eager to hear the word the Lord had to say to him, but it must have been really hard to know that God was calling you to shake up the status quo. That God was going to change the way things were done, that God was going to use you to undercut the way things had “always” been done. He sat awake that night knowing that God was choosing to work through him instead of working through Eli’s sons.

It is neat to think that God called Samuel by name. That he was minding his own business, doing the work his mother had commissioned him to do and God comes to him and calls him by name. God chose him, the little boy Samuel, the nobody who was more of a servant to a dottering old priest than anything else and called him by name. It would be easy to focus on how amazing it is that God calls us, you and me to do the work and the will of the Lord in this world. That God uses people like you and me who are just going about our mundane lives, doing our mundane things to carry out the very work of God.

The thing is that God did not wake Samuel up in the middle of the night to ask him to continue doing what he was doing, to affirm the work he was doing in the temple, helping Eli and serving Eli. He did not call Samuel by name to ask him to call him to a position of prestige and comfort. He did not even call Samuel to go tell that they were doing great! God did not call Samuel to do anything fun or easy. He called Samuel and in doing so called Samuel to change the way things were done, (sons of priests became priests), to uproot the status quo and to break the system.

Then with the first morning light, Eli calls Samuel into his room and asks him, “What did God have to say?” And Samuel has to tell him that God is going to get rid of his sons and that God is choosing Samuel to be prophet and priest in their stead. I am sure that Samuel expected Eli to get mad, to rail against him, to declare him to be a false prophet. I am sure there are any number of responses Samuel imagined as he lay in his bed, definitely not sleeping, until morning, but Eli did none of those things. Eli accepts the will of the Lord. He knows his sons, he has seen them, and although his father’s heart had a hard time seeing it, he knows that they really cannot go on serving as priests. They are simply not fit for the duty. He accepts the will of the Lord.

As people of God, the things God has to say to us are not always easy to hear. But when we, are like Eli and truly seeking after God; when we are like Eli and truly want to hear what it is God is saying, we will accept it and go with it, even if it is hard to hear, even if it means that we or those we love will lose our positions of authority and power. There is much we can learn from Eli’s, “Let the Lord do what seems good.” Wow. The faith it must take; the obedience, the maturity, to hear a hard word of God and accept it!

Here we have Samuel, at the beginning of his life, before anyone knows who Samuel is, when he is just a nobody, a servant of a priest, doing what he is told, God comes to him. Samuel does not even know the voice of the Lord when he hears it, but he is willing to listen, to hear, to do what needs to be done. He is willing to seek out leadership and guidance from another who does know. And he is willing to do whatever it is God is calling him to do; even if the call is scary, even if the call is to bring about change that others might not be willing to accept; even it if means shaking up the status quo and dismantling broken systems. He is ready to hear, willing to listen, and eager to carry out the work and the will of God. We all should be a little more like Samuel.

And we have Eli, at the end of his life. Old and set in his ways; faithfully seeking God even at the end of his life. He has made some mistakes, but he is still listening for God. He is still serving God. He is still teaching and guiding those younger than he, to walk in the faith, instructing them to how to hear God’s voice, instructing them on how to listen and how to obey. And even willing to accept the word of God, even when it means that he will lose his power, his position and his authority, he is willing to accept the will of God, even when it does not seem like good news to him, he is willing so see that the work and will of God is good even when he does not like what it means for him. We should all be more like Eli.