"did You Call?"
Children's sermon
Illustration
Preaching
Sermon
Worship
Object:
Dear Fellow Preachers,
The lectionary texts for January 19 bring up a timely need ... listening to the call of God to enter ministry.
When is the last time you preached on THAT topic?
So for this installment of The Immediate Word team member Carlos Wilton discusses that important subject, touching on the paucity of clergy who follow a traditional career path. Wilton is basing his approach on the story of the Lord's call to the prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20).
Following his primary contribution for today, you'll also find a full-text sermon by Wilton as well. We've also given you an alternative approach by team member Carter Shelley, as well as related illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon.
"Did You Call?"
By Carlos E. Wilton
1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)
The Message on a Postcard
"Did you call?" That's the question the boy Samuel asks of his mentor, Eli, when he awakens unexpectedly in the middle of the night.
It's not Eli calling, of course, but the Lord. But how's young Samuel to know the difference?
Through discernment, of course: the process of identifying and authenticating God's call.
Then, as now, that's a tricky business. There are voices from within, and voices from without: the counsel of trusted friends and the advice of near-strangers. Desires and dreams must be balanced against duty and discipleship. When it comes to a particular call to serve the church, there's also the voice of the Christian community to consider: surely God's people have a say on the subject of who exercises ministry in their midst.
We live in a relentlessly individualistic society that glorifies personal achievement and wealth. Too often, to speak in such a culture of "vocation" or "calling" elicits incomprehension at best and ridicule at worst. Newspaper headlines tell of physicians, alarmed by soaring malpractice-insurance premiums, threatening to hang up their stethoscopes. Does the quaint old idea of vocation enter into such a momentous decision?
As for most mainline American churches, we're facing an ordained-leadership crisis: one that's been slowly and silently building for many years. The demographics are inescapable. Our seminaries are filled with second-career candidates for ministry: men and women who tell fascinating life-stories, but who can offer only a fraction of the vocational longevity of their traditional-aged predecessors. The church has largely forgotten its responsibility to raise up the most promising young people in our midst, those who will not shy away from the old-fashioned idea of a lifetime of service. How can we speak winsomely to them of ordained ministry as a vocation, when the public approval-rating of the clergy continues to slide, and the highest aspiration of so many of their peers seems to be retirement at age 30?
"Did you call, Lord -- really?"
Some Words on the Word
This is the familiar story of the call of the prophet Samuel. Although it's sometimes thought of as a children's story (because Samuel is so young at the time of this first direct encounter with the Lord), its message is pertinent to any age. It may be tempting to use it as the basis for a message affirming the importance of children in God's eyes, but that probably wasn't the way it was originally intended. Hebrew culture, like most other ancient cultures, accorded children very low status until they reached early adolescence (the high infant-mortality rate probably had something to do with this; adults were reluctant to take a risk on valuing children whose chances of survival hovered somewhere around 50-50, or worse).
There are two principal reasons why this story has attained such prominence. First, it demonstrates the importance of the prophet Samuel. Combined with the earlier story of Samuel's mother, Hannah, having dedicated him to the Lord from the day of his birth (and even before), it demonstrates the importance of this great prophet, who stood astride the transition from judges to kings. As Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg says in his commentary on 1 and 2 Samuel, "There has not been a man like him since the days of Moses.... Samuel unites in his person the three offices of Christ who is to come, prophet, priest and king." 1 Second, this story is, psychologically, a remarkably astute treatment of the experience of discerning spiritual truth.
There is a larger context to the story as well: God's judgment upon the house of Eli, for the corruption he tolerated and perhaps even fostered. Indeed, the message the Lord gives Samuel to pass on to Eli is one of harsh judgment.
What's striking about Samuel's experience of God's call is its ordinariness. There is no burning bush, as in the call of Moses; no seraphim and burning coals, as in the call of Isaiah. There is just the quietly growing inner realization, within a young boy, that God has a special purpose for him.
Another point worth mentioning is that Samuel is unable to sort out his call on his own; he needs the help of someone else (in this case, the hapless Eli, against whom the Lord's judgment will ultimately be directed) to discern what's really going on. And where would Samuel be without his mother, Hannah, who "left him [at the temple] for the Lord" [1:28]? In a similar fashion, many of our theological traditions emphasize the "outer call" of the Christian community, as having equal importance along with the "inner call" of private spiritual experience. The outer call of the Christian community is a message very much worth sharing, in this highly individualistic society in which we live.
The fact that "the word of the Lord was rare in those days" is probably seen by the author as the fault of Eli; the Lord has withheld the theophanies that might otherwise have come, skipping over the corrupt Eli and his sons, in order to focus on the young nobody, Samuel.
Scott Hoezee, writing in The Lectionary Commentary,2 suggests a homiletical emphasis on the line, "the lamp of God had not yet gone out" (v. 3). Although it's unclear whether this sacred lamp is meant to be a 24-hour-a-day "eternal flame," or is merely lit from dawn to dusk, there are rich homiletical possibilities in the image of flame, in these days following Epiphany. Truly, God's light does not go out. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." [John 1:5]
A Map of the Message
Most Christian denominations in our country are either facing a shortage of parish ministers, or will soon see such a shortage. For decades, the average age of seminarians has been increasing; the phenomenon of large numbers of second-career candidates for ministry has been much commented-on: but only to identify an apparent trend toward older ministers, and to celebrate the rich life-experience so many of them bring to their ministries.
If we look at this phenomenon in terms of generational cohorts, however, the future looks rather disturbing. Another way of interpreting the demographic data is to say that, ever since the 1960s, seminaries have been filled primarily with members of a single generation: the baby-boomers. That generation has simply aged in place, as it were. The idealistic children of the 60s and early 70s, for whom sociology rather than business was the most popular college major, have been supplying our seminaries for decades. Now, the youngest of the baby boomers are reaching the age where a mid-life change in vocation is becoming difficult.
And what of the generational cohorts that have followed the boomers: the busters, generation X, and so on? They haven't been well represented in our seminaries at all.
The consequences for the enlistment of candidates for ministry will be severe, unless we as church leaders rediscover the importance of preaching and teaching regularly about God's call to ordained ministry. The long duration of the preparation-for-ministry process in most of our denominations is working against us here: the young people to whom most of us, as preachers, have the greatest access (today's high-schoolers) could not possibly graduate from seminary for another seven to eleven years, at the very earliest.
Another factor that makes preaching on God's call to ordained ministry more difficult is the rapidly declining prestige of ordained ministers in our society. Even before the recent, very public troubles in the Roman Catholic priesthood, ministry has been "slipping in the polls" that seek to measure the most-respected vocations. In a late-2001 Gallup poll on how people perceive various professions with respect to honesty and ethics, firefighters rated the highest of any profession (not surprising, in light of the praise appropriately heaped on the heroes of 9/11). Nurses and members of the U.S. military were rated at 83% and 81% respectively. In honesty and ethics, clergy are rated only 64% -- somewhat lower than the next category, medical doctors. Most media portrayals of ministers or priests show us either as harshly judgmental, secretly corrupt, or harmless buffoons.3
Many of us who've been in ministry for a while remember well the days when it seemed there was no shortage of parish ministers, but rather a surplus (actually, that's never been the case for smaller parishes outside major urban and suburban areas -- but that was the general perception). We've heard, all too often, about how stressful an occupation ministry has become. Burned by "the worship wars," shocked by confrontations with "clergy killer" parishioners, demoralized by other problems in our congregations, some of us may (in our weaker moments) have wondered whether we can recommend this occupation to anyone.
Yet increasingly, the demographics are suggesting that we urgently need to be about this business of helping our people claim their role of raising up the most promising young people in their midst -- and we need to be about it not today, as they say, but yesterday. This passage from 1 Samuel provides an excellent text for doing so.
Notes
1 Westminster, 1976, 43.
2 Edited by Roger E. Van Harn (Eerdmans, 2001), 173-175.
3 http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=66220
A Full-Text Sermon
"Did You Call?"
A sermon by Carlos E. Wilton
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)
"... if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'"
--1 Samuel 3:9b
"Not a very promising crowd," the preacher thought to himself, looking out over the pulpit. Only a handful had turned out to hear him speak -- even though he had traveled all the way to Scotland from South Africa.
The preacher's name was Robert Moffat. He was a missionary. That night, Moffat's "mission" was particular indeed: to find men -- and bring them back to Africa, to the mission field.
Women he wasn't especially interested in (this was the early 1800s, after all). The preacher would thank the women for their prayers and good wishes, but most everyone agreed that the hardships of Africa were not for members of "the fairer sex."
Yet "the fairer sex" was all Robert Moffat had that night; and only a handful of them at that. To make matters worse, his pre-arranged text was Proverbs 8:4, "Unto you, O men, I call."
Moffat raced through his sermon, finishing early -- trusting God to make something of it, somehow. When it was over, he departed: to the usual round of polite handshakes and smiling thank-yous -- but not a single recruit to show for his efforts.
Or so he thought. Moffat had no way of knowing it, but his words that night would make an enormous difference in the history of Christian mission.
Unbeknownst to him, there was a man in the sanctuary that night ... well not a man, exactly, but a boy. High up in the choir loft he sat, waiting for the sermon to end, so he could perform his job: pumping the bellows of the pipe organ with his feet.
As he waited, the boy could not help but listen to the preacher's words. It seemed as though they were directed to him alone.
Years later, this same boy -- now a young man, by the name of David Livingstone -- would train as a doctor and pack himself off to the most uncharted regions of Africa, as a medical missionary and explorer. It was he whom Charles Stanley of the New York Herald would chase after for months, and finally discover on the shores of Lake Tanganyika -- greeting him with the immortal words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
All this took place because, one blustery Scottish night years before, a boy had listened -- had really listened -- in church.
§§§
It wasn't the first time something remarkable had happened, as a result of listening in church. Today's Old Testament lesson tells of the call of Samuel: that young boy who was "ministering to the Lord under Eli."
The voice Samuel hears is not that of a preacher -- but the unmediated voice of God. Samuel is in the temple for the very same reason David Livingstone is in church: it's his job.
Livingstone pumps the organ bellows; Samuel's task is to keep the "lamp of God" from going out in the middle of the night. Both of them, in other words, are the "hired help."
Samuel "hears" the Lord speaking to him three times, in a dream, as he snoozes on a pallet alongside the smoldering lamp. So real is the experience that Samuel swears he has heard the voice with his ears -- and so he goes off to wake Eli, the high priest.
A pretty gutsy young lad, that Samuel -- for he awakens Eli not once, but three times: in the same night. Each time Samuel announces, "Here I am, for you called me"; and each time the sleepy Eli growls, "I didn't call you; go back to bed."
It is on the fourth try that Eli -- a real charlatan of a high priest, caring only for money and power -- discovers, to his horror, that maybe God really is speaking to the boy. Then old Eli, despite his faults, gives Samuel a piece of remarkably good spiritual advice: he tells him that maybe next time he should sit up in bed and say, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
Samuel does exactly that, and from that day forward, his career as a prophet is officially launched. "The Lord was with him," the Bible says, "and let none of his words fall to the ground." [1 Samuel 3:19]
§§§
Sometimes I wonder if most of us are really listening -- in worship, in prayer, in reading the Bible. We have become so comfortable with the Word of God. We've printed it on elegant, India paper pages with gilded edges, bound those pages between covers of the finest, hand-tooled leather, and given the end product an honored place in home and church.
The name of God rises to our lips many times each day -- in table grace and bedtime prayer; in thoughtless expressions of "God bless you," or "God willing"; even in those meaningless (and slightly blasphemous) punctuations of speech: "Oh God," when the traffic light turns yellow, and "God, it's cold today" (as though the Lord really needs to be informed).
What a contrast this is to the Orthodox Jews, who write the name of God, "Yahweh," without vowels -- so they cannot pronounce it (even accidentally), thereby bringing down calamity upon their heads!
"The word of God may not be chained," writes the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor ...
...but you would be hard pressed to believe it on most Sunday mornings. We read scripture out loud as though we were reading income tax instructions to each other. Children draw on offering envelopes during the sermon; adults balance their checkbooks. If someone breaks the rules and gets excited by the word, there are plenty of other people -- including the preacher -- who can be counted on to calm that person down.
We are old friends with the word by now. There is nothing to get excited about. You can buy dishtowels with the Beatitudes printed on them. You can give Bibles to your children without worrying that what they read will upset their lives.
What has happened? Have we hobbled the word because we fear the harm it can do? (Quoted by William Willimon in Pulpit Resource, January 19, 1997, 13.)
When it comes to those outside the church, the situation is even worse. To the legions of those who have had some superficial acquaintance with Christianity but have drifted away, it's almost as though they've been vaccinated against the Gospel.
You know how vaccinations work; they've been much in the news lately, as the government ponders the wisdom of again making smallpox inoculations available, to counter the threat of biological weapons. A small amount of the microbe that causes disease is isolated in a laboratory, and injected into the bloodstream of the patient. The white blood cells surround the intruders, and defeat them -- thereby building up a tolerance to the same illness. Should the patient ever be exposed again, he or she will be protected.
In a strangely similar way, the word of the Lord is almost too commonplace today. Every motel room has its Gideon Bible; every courtroom witness is sworn in with a hand on "the Good Book"; on countless coffee tables and bookshelves across this great land, the scriptures are accorded an honored place.
Yet when are they ever read? When is their message ever heeded? When -- in this frenetic, over-programmed world of ours -- do we ever take time to simply sit in silence; to open ourselves to what the Lord may be revealing; to say, as Samuel did of old, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening"?
You and I make ourselves busy -- oh, so very busy -- and it works out very neatly that way, doesn't it? Sometimes I suspect that's half the reason for the mad pace of life today: so we don't have to tune our souls to the silence ... So we don't have to face the disturbing possibility that the Lord's agenda for our lives may be different from the one we have so carefully plotted.
§§§
"Life is short. Play hard." That's the bumper-sticker motto many of us live by. As the parent of teenagers, I can attest that this is the unofficial motto of many of our school and community organizations as well.
Leisure has become serious business in our society. We now have, in America, a multi-billion-dollar leisure "industry" -- how's that for an oxymoron: "leisure industry"? This industry provides everything from sporting goods, to time-share vacations, to pay-per-view movies. The incessant drumbeat of advertising not only calls us to line up for the leisure activities we already know we want, but creates in us a thirst for those we never knew existed.
Do you want to know where you see all these choices played out? In the sneaker store! We were in one of those specialized athletic-shoe stores the other day, buying shoes for the kids -- do you have any conception how many varieties are available? Why, they've got types of sneakers in there I've never heard of! Alongside the usual basketball and running shoes, they've got "court shoes" (that's what we used to call "tennis shoes"); bicycle shoes; and something mysteriously called "cross-trainers." Ask the clerks what they're for, and if they're honest they may tell you (with a wink) that "cross-trainer" is simply a fancy name for an all-purpose shoe. That's how complicated our leisure pursuits have become!
Once upon a time, "leisure" meant relaxing with a good book ... puttering around the yard ... spending a quiet evening at home. Now, it's results-driven. Leisure is that long list of things we've got to accomplish on our day off, or else we'll fall behind in our recreation. (Sounds like a second, or even third, job to me!)
Even in our recreation, some of us seem obsessed to produce or accomplish things -- often worthy things, to be sure, like a lower heart rate or cholesterol count, but things that (ironically) can create stress and anxiety all by themselves. What ever happened to play for its own sake, without a coach or trainer or pro to tell us how to do it?
Once upon a time, children simply used to be turned loose on their neighborhoods, to find each other and entertain themselves with backyard games. Now, it seems, kids scarcely have time to play. Once homework is taken care of (and sometimes even before the schoolbooks are opened), the kids are shuttled off to one after-school program after another. And as for the poor parents, who function as chauffeurs, equipment providers and appointment secretaries (and sometimes even coaches or advisors) -- they plunge themselves into a maelstrom of activity. On the worst days, they're left wondering whether there's even time for fast food.
John Ruskin once observed: "There is no music in a rest, but the making of music is in it." You know how it is, in music: every once in a while there is a rest, when players put down their instruments, when singers quiet their voices -- and count the measures until it is time to come in again. Without rests, there would be no symphonies; there would be no Broadway musicals; there would be no musicat all. A truly accomplished composer deploys the rests as surely as the notes, the silences as surely as the tones -- and, somehow, the composition is the richer for it.
So, too, with our lives. We need to "rest in the Lord, wait patiently for him," as that famous anthem by Mendelssohn puts it: and he will give us our heart's desire. (From "Elijah"; based on Psalm 37:7)
§§§
"Where there is no vision," the book of Proverbs says, "the people perish" (Proverbs 29:18, King James Version). Many of us, my friends, are quietly perishing out there, for lack of sustaining vision. We think we're fortunate to have so many leisure activities, when, really, many of these are keeping us from true leisure, from true recreation that is, at the same time, re-creating.
So raucous have our lives become, so filled with background noise, that we find it hard to hear the voice of God, calling in the night. Jesus said of the spiritually bedraggled people of his day: "seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand." [Matthew 13:13]
The same, sad to say, can be said of many of us, even we who call ourselves Christian disciples. We honor Jesus as "the Word," but make ourselves too busy to listen for his living word in our lives.
You and I have the power to change that. All we need do is give ourselves permission to say "no" to the busyness; to cease merely doing and start being; to listen for the voice of God in our lives. Start with just a few minutes a day. Empty your heart and your mind, and simply enjoy being who you are, a God-created person who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ. Simply thrill at being in the presence of your Creator.
I am becoming more and more convinced, the longer I am in ministry, that God is not silent; it is we who have stopped our ears. "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."
An Alternative Approach
By Carter Shelley
What is a call?
"Hey, Janet! Come home for dinner!" is a call.
Ring! Ring! "Mr. Smith, I am from the Surefire Vacuum Cleaner Company and we'd like to come by and show you how wonderful our vacuum cleaner is." That's a call.
Or there's the kind of call God issued to the boy Samuel in the middle of the night. "Samuel, Samuel."
And Samuel kept going to see his teacher Eli to find out what it was Eli wanted, until Eli -- who must have received a few calls from God himself in Eli's time -- urges the boy to respond as though to God ... and sure enough. God was calling Samuel with a special word about Eli's work and his sons' many sins. At an early age, God called Samuel to be God's messenger. That was Samuel's call.
This story of God's call to Samuel has always held great power for me. For one thing it is one of the many biblical examples of how involved in human lives God is. For another, I believed with all my heart that God was perfectly capable of forgoing pen and paper or use of the telephone and choosing instead to call one directly out of sleep into God's work. In fact, with the certainty of childhood, I promised God that I would never doubt God's existence if God would promise not to call me in the middle of the night -- an action on God's part that I was certain would cause me to have a cardiac arrest despite my tender 10 years. So far we've both kept faith with our end of the bargain.
It is from the Bible that we Christians get our idea of a call from God to some particular work. There are many biblical examples: Abram become Abraham, Moses, Deborah, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Mary, John the Baptist, Jesus' call to his disciples, and Paul. Christians place great importance upon call. It's not something only biblical heroes and heroines experience. Christians are called into church membership and a Christian life. Ministers are called to pastor churches and serve as hospital chaplains, campus ministers, counselors, and missionaries. We believe these calls begin, not with our initiative but with that of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I think it's significant that those who receive such a call from God are not always eager to accept it. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Jonah all resist God's call because they recognize that the call God offers will not be problem-free or popular. Having rashly volunteered to serve as God's prophet, Isaiah gets these daunting words from God: "Go, and say to my people: 'Hear and hear, but do not understand; see and see, but do not perceive.' Make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed."
Jeremiah protests his tender years do not equip him to accept God's call. Instead of words of support and encouragement, God challenges Jeremiah to prophesy in the face of family rejection, social ostracism, and the surefire certainty that the doom to come will indeed occur if Jeremiah's message gets rejected.
Jonah goes so far as to ship himself off in the opposite direction, because he senses that those to whom God would have Jonah prophesy are not his kind of people; therefore, Jonah doesn't much care whether they live or die.
And what if Jesus had used as his opening gambit with the disciples these cheerful, but true, words? "Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men, which means, many will admire you, many will despise you, and ultimately all you'll have left is disaster and your leader dying on a cross."
For three years I served as a presbytery associate responsible for the care and support of ministers. In that circumstance I daily experienced the joys and frustrations, the heartache and the hard times church ministers face. Friends, it's a hard way to make a living. That's one reason it's a "call" and not a job. The burnout rate and the ever more and more frequent church conflicts that arise from unrealistic expectations of congregations and emotionally depleted clergy has grown over the past 25 years.
Of course, that's not the whole story, but it continues to be part of the story even for 21st-century clergy. You see, being a minister isn't as much fun as it was in previous centuries. From the third-century Church Fathers up to the 1950s, pastors of prosperous and expanding American suburban churches had prestige and influence. They were admired, respected, and viewed as persons of faith and authority expected to serve as leaders in their communities and model representatives of the Christ they served. Ministers might not make as much as doctors or lawyers or business folk, but they had status and full sanctuaries on Sunday mornings to inspire them to keep plugging away at the call they had received to serve God and others in the church.
Such a sense of call and an ongoing sense of purpose are harder for young adults and, frankly, many ministers to maintain in 2003. Making money and being able to pay a home mortgage, finance a car, and save for one's children's college education rely more on the Dow Index that they do on faith these days. The stress levels that most Americans feel with our fast-paced lives and multi-task demands makes it harder and harder for churches to find lay support for many of its traditional ministries and social service programs. In addition, those who feel such pressures on weekdays often develop unrealistic expectations for the man or woman who serves as their pastor. The results can be disenchantment, anger, conflict, and defections -- sometimes by church members and sometimes by ministers to new church positions or second career options.
Thus, if we are to encourage older teenagers and young adults to seriously consider whether they have a call to ministry, we also need to consider how we can support them in their preparation for and ability to serve in church situations where they are loved, respected, and occasionally allowed to be as human as the rest of us. This starts with an examination of the expectations put upon the children and spouse of church ministers as well as an examination of the part church members play in sharing the call to ministry that their pastor leads them to provide rather than provides in their stead.
Three vital ingredients are required for a call to serve Christ to ring true and enrich the life of the one called and the ones whom he or she will serve:
1) God's call to a vocation;
2) Church members, youth advisors, friends, ministers, and family voicing a belief that the individual may indeed have a call and should explore that possibility, because God's call isn't always as immediate or clear as that received by Samuel or Jesus' disciples, but can still be as true;
3) Ongoing support of ministers as well as ministerial candidates through financial support, prayers, love and encouragement, and concrete assistance when hard times arise.
Related Illustrations
Somebody once took a look at all the people in the Bible who stepped forward to answer God's call, and found that none of them had much in the way of credentials -- at least not in ordinary, earthly terms. I don't know who wrote these words -- they've been circulating for quite some time as an anonymous document -- but here's the roster:
Moses stuttered.
David's armor didn't fit.
John Mark was rejected by Paul.
Timothy had ulcers.
Hosea's wife was a prostitute (so was David's great-great-grandmother).
Amos' only training was in the school of fig-tree pruning.
Jacob was a liar (so were Abraham and Isaac).
David had an affair.
Solomon was too rich.
Jesus was too poor.
Abraham was too old.
David was too young.
Peter was afraid of death.
Lazarus was dead.
John was self-righteous.
Naomi was a widow.
Paul was a murderer.
So was Moses (so was David).
Jonah ran from God.
Miriam was a gossip.
Gideon and Thomas both doubted.
Jeremiah was depressed and suicidal.
Elijah was burned out.
John the Baptist was a loudmouth.
Martha was a worrywart.
Mary, her sister, was lazy.
Samson had long hair.
Noah got drunk.
Did I mention Moses had a short fuse?
So did Peter, Paul -- well, lots of folks did.
You get the idea -- it's terribly easy to make excuses. God asks, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Instead of saying, "Here am I, send me," a great many of us respond, "Who, me? It couldn't be!"
But the simple truth is, God never calls people who are qualified. Instead, God calls the unqualified -- then qualifies them, giving them the spiritual gifts they need to do the job.
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No one is ever called to the ministry with a voice so loud that everyone in the family can hear.
-- Fred Craddock
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When you are young, I think, your hearing is in some ways better than it is ever going to be again. You hear better than most people the voices that call to you out of your own life to give yourself to this work or that work. When you are young, before you accumulate responsibilities, you are freer than most people to choose among all the voices and to answer the one that speaks most powerfully to who you are and to what you really want to do with your life. But the danger is that there are so many voices, and they all in their ways sound so promising. The danger is that you will not listen to the voice that speaks to you through the seagull mounting the gray wind, say, or the vision in the temple, that you do not listen to the voice inside you or to the voice that speaks from outside but specifically to you out of the specific events of your life, but that instead you listen to the great blaring, boring, banal voice of our mass culture, which threatens to deafen us all by blasting forth that the only thing that really matters about your work is how much it will get you in the way of salary and status, and that if it is gladness you are after, you can save that for weekends.
The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only years that they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else."
--from The Hungering Dark, by Frederick Buechner (HarperCollins)
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"Follow your bliss."
-- Joseph Campbell
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Leonard Sweet tells about an evangelist named Sam "Golden Rule" Jones who had "quittin' meetings" for those who were converted at his revivals. These meetings were designed to get people to confess their sins (cussing, drinking, gambling, and so on) and then have everyone pledge to quit their sinning.
It seems that at one of these meetings, a lady was asked what she was going to quit. She said she hadn't been doing anything and was going to quit doing that. Maybe it's time for us to quit doing nothing, too!
--From a sermon posted by Jim McCrea on the Ecunet Internet discussion group, July, 1999.
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Johann Sebastian Bach once said it's not difficult to play the organ; one has only to put one's hands and feet in the right place at the right time.
In a similar fashion, in our most important work, we follow God's call. The music is already there, in the mind of God; we have only to follow.
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In the film, City Slickers, Billy Crystal plays an advertising salesman who, on his 39th birthday, realizes he has slipped into a midlife crisis. His patient wife's patience with him has just about run out. When two friends suggest a vacation on a cattle drive out West, his wife tells him to go and find his smile.
The Billy Crystal character is fascinated by the tough old cowhand played by a taciturn Jack Palance. At one point, the awed city slicker asks the weathered cowhand to tell him the secret to life.
"One thing, just one thing," he says, poking a leathery finger toward his face.
"What is it?" the city slicker asks, impatiently.
"That's for you to find out," says Palance.
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Sometimes I think that those spectacular call stories in the Bible do more harm than good. At the very least, I suppose, they are good reminders that the call of God tends to take you apart before it puts you back together again, but they also set the bar on divine calling so high that most people walk around feeling short.
--Barbara Brown Taylor, "True Purpose," in the Christian Century, February 21, 2001, 30.
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The Lilly Foundation has been funding a project of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, called "Project Burning Bush." Its purpose is to identify promising high-school students, and invite them, using a summer-retreat experience, to consider ordained ministry as a vocation.
Some quotations from program participants can be found at: http://www.projectburningbush.org/quotes.html
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Vocations which we wanted to pursue, and didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
--Honore de Balzac
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When I was in New Mexico I lived nearby the Santuario de Chimayo where during Holy Week thousands of pilgrims would come, walking hundreds of miles, some of them, to be healed, to give thanks for healing, or simply to walk in solidarity with the suffering of Christ. I asked an Hispanic friend: Where is a good spot along the road to view this procession? He was horrified. This is not something you view; this is something you do.
--Julia Aldrich, writing on the Midrash Internet discussion group, March 29, 2002
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I have one life and one chance to make it count for something ... I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference."
--Jimmy Carter
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The Christian ministry is the worst of all trades, but the best of all professions.
--John Newton (1725-1807)
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A man should only enter the Christian ministry if he cannot stay out of it.
--D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981)
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The meaning and value of my ministry are not based on my feelings, not determined by the needs of a congregation or the world, not dependent on personal drives or ambitions, successes or accomplishments. Rather my ministry is rooted and dependent on God's call.
--Speaker unknown. Quoted in Weavings, September-October 1986, 33.
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Charles Colson is the Nixon White House lawyer who was involved in the Watergate cover-up, was convicted, and sent to prison. He became a Christian in the midst of all that, and out of that experience he founded the Prison Fellowship ministry. In his book Life Sentence, he relates how, after coming home from prison, he had trouble falling asleep in his comfortable bed. One night, he finally fell into a fitful sleep, and dreamed he was back in Maxwell Prison in Alabama. He awoke with a start.
He lay there in the dark, trying to go back to sleep, but it wouldn't come, and his mind returned to the prison. He remembered a conversation he'd had shortly before his release with an inmate named Archie. Archie had said, "You'll be out of here soon. What are you going to do for us?"
"I'll help in some way. I'll never forget this stinking place or you guys."
"They all say that. I've seen big shots come and go. They all say the same thing. Then they get out and forget us fast. Ain't nobody cares about us. Nobody."
"I'll remember, Archie."
"Bull."
Was the nocturnal memory God calling Colson to make room in his life for him? It seems so.
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John Seybert was the first bishop of the Evangelical Church, one of the forerunner denominations that came together to form the United Methodist Church. Born in 1791, Seybert entered the ministry in 1820 and became, somewhat reluctantly, a bishop in 1839 -- reluctant because he didn't think he was worthy.
In those days, being a bishop of the church didn't get you a lot of honor. It just meant you worked harder and traveled even more than the regular circuit riders. Seybert never married, but devoted his life to the church, traveling constantly until his death in 1860 to begin new congregations and minister to people on the frontier. From his journals, we know that he logged some 175,000 miles by horse and wagon, preached 9850 sermons, made 46,000 pastoral calls, held 8,000 prayer meetings, and helped establish congregations throughout the Midwest. For all this, he received a salary of $100 per year, out of which he paid all his expenses. Bishop Seybert was moved by human need. He frequently gave people money out of his own pocket with no thought of repayment.
Before entering the ministry, Seybert was a cooper -- a barrel maker -- and he was making a decent living at that trade, but he thought he was feeling the call of God to preach. He wasn't sure, however, and delayed answering the call because he was uncertain whether God was truly calling him. But here's what he wrote in his journal:
I [finally] determined, if it be God's will, to labor in his vineyard with my Evangelical brethren. I should have gone sooner, had I been certain that the Lord wanted me to go. However, I had no rest at my cooperage, and concluded that the only way to get into the clear, concerning this matter, was to make an effort [italic mine]. If the Lord blesses my labor with the awakening and conversion of sinners, and the edification and encouragement of saints, I determined I would serve him in this way with all my ability, wherever I might have to go, whatever crosses I might have to bear, and however long the task might last. (S.P. Spreng, The Life and Labors of John Seybert, [Cleveland: Lauer & Mattill, 1888] 34.)
--From Stan Purdum, "The Importance of Starting," preached February 18, 2001.
Worship Resources
By Larry Hard
ADVANCE PREPARATION
Place in the chancel and/or carry in the processional a clergy stole, a chalice, a baptismal bowl or pitcher of water, a large Bible, and other items that represent ordained ministry.
Invite college or seminary students preparing for ministry to be liturgists. Include active and retired clergy in vestments to participate in the service. Ask a seminary representative to say a few words about ministry and missionary needs. Use banners that contain symbols or reminders of ministry.
CALL TO WORSHIP
Leader: Let us join in the call to worship.
People: Who is calling us to worship?
Leader: God calls us to worship.
People: How does God call us to worship?
Leader: God calls us in scripture to worship.
People: Are there other ways God calls us?
Leader: God calls through the voice of conscience.
People: How do I know this is the voice of God?
Leader: God calls through friends and the church family.
People: Is this also how God calls pastors to ministry?
Leader: Listen to God calling you to worship and ministry.
People: I will listen and respond.
INVOCATION
We praise you, God, for the ways you have called us into your church to be nurtured in the caring fellowship of faith. We thank you for calling prophets and pastors to speak your word and to do your ministry. Give us ears to hear and minds to receive what you are calling us to do in the church and world today. Amen.
HYMN: "Lord, Speak to Me"
CONFESSION
God of my childhood, forgive me for being unaware of how pastors and others influenced my life and shaped my spirituality.
God of my youth, forgive me for ways I refused to respond to your call to lay or pastoral ministry in the church.
God of my adult years, keep me open to new ways you call me to do ministry in your name. Hear my silent prayers of confession.
SILENT CONFESSION
WORDS OF PARDON
May the One born to reveal God's grace, give you assurance that you are loved and forgiven. Knowing you are given new opportunities, listen to the inspirations of the Spirit, calling you to live with love and joy.
SONG "Two Fishermen" (words and music by Suzanne Toolan)
or
HYMN "God Calling Yet!"
RECOGNITION OF THE "CALLED ONES"
Print names in the bulletin of those who have served as pastors of the church, those of the congregation preparing for ministry and clergy who are part of the community. Ask a lay leader to invite all clergy, chaplains, and missionaries present to stand. Pastors of the church stand with them. A lay member could be invited to lead the Thanksgiving.
WORDS OF THANKSGIVING
Leader: Let us thank God for our pastor(s) and others who have responded to God's call.
People: We thank God and we thank you for responding when God called you to ministry.
Leader: Let us be aware of ways these persons have been prepared and trained for the vocation of ministry.
People: We are grateful for schools and seminaries where they have grown in understanding and developed skills for ministry.
Leader: Let us pledge our prayers and support for these persons who have been in ministry, and those who will respond to God's calling.
People: We promise to uphold our pastors in our prayers and to encourage those who respond to God's call today.
(This would be a good time for a seminary representative to speak about the needs and opportunities for those called to church vocations.)
HYMNS
"Here I Am, Lord"
"Lord, You Give the Great Commission"
"Have Thine Own Way"
SONG
"Go Ye, Go Ye into the World" (words and music by Natalie Sleeth)
A Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
1 Samuel 3:1-18
Object: A telephone, a walkie-talkie, a letter, a human voice
Good morning, boys and girls. When someone wants to get in touch with you and give you a message, how does he or she do it? (let them answer) They call you on the telephone. Do you like to talk on the telephone? (let them answer) The telephone is fun, isn't it? How many of you have walkie-talkies? (let them answer) When I was about your age, I had a walkie-talkie and so did some of my friends and that was a lot of fun. How else can people get in touch with you? (let them answer) Good, they can write you a letter or send you a post card, can't they? And how does you mom or dad get in touch with you? (let them answer) They just use your name and when you hear them use your name, you know they want to talk with you, don't you?
Today I want to tell you a true story about a boy named Samuel. He lived with a man who was kind of like a pastor. His mother, Hannah, had promised God that she would give Samuel back to God's care and work. So when Samuel was just a young person he went to live in the temple with his mother's blessing. Eli, the priest, was very comfortable with Samuel and cared for him. But one night, before the candles in the temple burned out, Samuel heard a voice using his name. He heard, "Samuel, Samuel."
Samuel thought it must be Eli calling him so he went and presented himself to Eli. But Eli told him that he had not spoken a word and that he should go back and lie down on his bed. Only a few minutes later, Samuel heard the same thing. Again, he got up and went back to see Eli. But Eli insisted that he had not called Samuel, and he told him to lie down again. A third time this happened, only now Eli knew that something great was about to happen. He told Samuel to lie down again, but this time he should listen to the voice calling him and then say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." Eli knew the voice was from God calling Samuel into his service.
Has God ever called you by name? (let them answer) Has God ever spoken to you on the telephone or the walkie-talkie or written you a letter? (let them answer) God doesn't seem to use those things. But God does speak to people in different ways. You remember that I told you about his mother, Hannah. She loved God dearly and she prepared her son Samuel for a ministry to God. Hannah's house was a spiritual home where she taught her family about God and God's work. Families with parents who love God very often prepare their children to hear God call them.
You remember Eli, the priest in the temple? Eli loved God and he helped prepare Samuel to hear God's call. Pastors love God and they would very much like their children like you to hear God's call and perhaps become a pastor like them someday. But most of all, God is present in our lives and sometimes he uses mothers and fathers and pastors and Sunday school teachers to prepare people to become pastors. Finally, God speaks to one of us in his own way to call us into the ministry.
Have anyone of you thought that you would like to be a pastor someday? (let them answer) God will not write you a letter or call you on the telephone, but he will touch you someday in a special way if he would like for you to serve him as a pastor. It may or may not be like Eli's voice but you will know it when you hear it. In the meantime it is important that your parents like Hannah and the pastor like Eli keep you close to God so that you will know the voice of God if he calls you.
The Immediate Word, January 14, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
The lectionary texts for January 19 bring up a timely need ... listening to the call of God to enter ministry.
When is the last time you preached on THAT topic?
So for this installment of The Immediate Word team member Carlos Wilton discusses that important subject, touching on the paucity of clergy who follow a traditional career path. Wilton is basing his approach on the story of the Lord's call to the prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20).
Following his primary contribution for today, you'll also find a full-text sermon by Wilton as well. We've also given you an alternative approach by team member Carter Shelley, as well as related illustrations, worship resources, and a children's sermon.
"Did You Call?"
By Carlos E. Wilton
1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)
The Message on a Postcard
"Did you call?" That's the question the boy Samuel asks of his mentor, Eli, when he awakens unexpectedly in the middle of the night.
It's not Eli calling, of course, but the Lord. But how's young Samuel to know the difference?
Through discernment, of course: the process of identifying and authenticating God's call.
Then, as now, that's a tricky business. There are voices from within, and voices from without: the counsel of trusted friends and the advice of near-strangers. Desires and dreams must be balanced against duty and discipleship. When it comes to a particular call to serve the church, there's also the voice of the Christian community to consider: surely God's people have a say on the subject of who exercises ministry in their midst.
We live in a relentlessly individualistic society that glorifies personal achievement and wealth. Too often, to speak in such a culture of "vocation" or "calling" elicits incomprehension at best and ridicule at worst. Newspaper headlines tell of physicians, alarmed by soaring malpractice-insurance premiums, threatening to hang up their stethoscopes. Does the quaint old idea of vocation enter into such a momentous decision?
As for most mainline American churches, we're facing an ordained-leadership crisis: one that's been slowly and silently building for many years. The demographics are inescapable. Our seminaries are filled with second-career candidates for ministry: men and women who tell fascinating life-stories, but who can offer only a fraction of the vocational longevity of their traditional-aged predecessors. The church has largely forgotten its responsibility to raise up the most promising young people in our midst, those who will not shy away from the old-fashioned idea of a lifetime of service. How can we speak winsomely to them of ordained ministry as a vocation, when the public approval-rating of the clergy continues to slide, and the highest aspiration of so many of their peers seems to be retirement at age 30?
"Did you call, Lord -- really?"
Some Words on the Word
This is the familiar story of the call of the prophet Samuel. Although it's sometimes thought of as a children's story (because Samuel is so young at the time of this first direct encounter with the Lord), its message is pertinent to any age. It may be tempting to use it as the basis for a message affirming the importance of children in God's eyes, but that probably wasn't the way it was originally intended. Hebrew culture, like most other ancient cultures, accorded children very low status until they reached early adolescence (the high infant-mortality rate probably had something to do with this; adults were reluctant to take a risk on valuing children whose chances of survival hovered somewhere around 50-50, or worse).
There are two principal reasons why this story has attained such prominence. First, it demonstrates the importance of the prophet Samuel. Combined with the earlier story of Samuel's mother, Hannah, having dedicated him to the Lord from the day of his birth (and even before), it demonstrates the importance of this great prophet, who stood astride the transition from judges to kings. As Hans Wilhelm Hertzberg says in his commentary on 1 and 2 Samuel, "There has not been a man like him since the days of Moses.... Samuel unites in his person the three offices of Christ who is to come, prophet, priest and king." 1 Second, this story is, psychologically, a remarkably astute treatment of the experience of discerning spiritual truth.
There is a larger context to the story as well: God's judgment upon the house of Eli, for the corruption he tolerated and perhaps even fostered. Indeed, the message the Lord gives Samuel to pass on to Eli is one of harsh judgment.
What's striking about Samuel's experience of God's call is its ordinariness. There is no burning bush, as in the call of Moses; no seraphim and burning coals, as in the call of Isaiah. There is just the quietly growing inner realization, within a young boy, that God has a special purpose for him.
Another point worth mentioning is that Samuel is unable to sort out his call on his own; he needs the help of someone else (in this case, the hapless Eli, against whom the Lord's judgment will ultimately be directed) to discern what's really going on. And where would Samuel be without his mother, Hannah, who "left him [at the temple] for the Lord" [1:28]? In a similar fashion, many of our theological traditions emphasize the "outer call" of the Christian community, as having equal importance along with the "inner call" of private spiritual experience. The outer call of the Christian community is a message very much worth sharing, in this highly individualistic society in which we live.
The fact that "the word of the Lord was rare in those days" is probably seen by the author as the fault of Eli; the Lord has withheld the theophanies that might otherwise have come, skipping over the corrupt Eli and his sons, in order to focus on the young nobody, Samuel.
Scott Hoezee, writing in The Lectionary Commentary,2 suggests a homiletical emphasis on the line, "the lamp of God had not yet gone out" (v. 3). Although it's unclear whether this sacred lamp is meant to be a 24-hour-a-day "eternal flame," or is merely lit from dawn to dusk, there are rich homiletical possibilities in the image of flame, in these days following Epiphany. Truly, God's light does not go out. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." [John 1:5]
A Map of the Message
Most Christian denominations in our country are either facing a shortage of parish ministers, or will soon see such a shortage. For decades, the average age of seminarians has been increasing; the phenomenon of large numbers of second-career candidates for ministry has been much commented-on: but only to identify an apparent trend toward older ministers, and to celebrate the rich life-experience so many of them bring to their ministries.
If we look at this phenomenon in terms of generational cohorts, however, the future looks rather disturbing. Another way of interpreting the demographic data is to say that, ever since the 1960s, seminaries have been filled primarily with members of a single generation: the baby-boomers. That generation has simply aged in place, as it were. The idealistic children of the 60s and early 70s, for whom sociology rather than business was the most popular college major, have been supplying our seminaries for decades. Now, the youngest of the baby boomers are reaching the age where a mid-life change in vocation is becoming difficult.
And what of the generational cohorts that have followed the boomers: the busters, generation X, and so on? They haven't been well represented in our seminaries at all.
The consequences for the enlistment of candidates for ministry will be severe, unless we as church leaders rediscover the importance of preaching and teaching regularly about God's call to ordained ministry. The long duration of the preparation-for-ministry process in most of our denominations is working against us here: the young people to whom most of us, as preachers, have the greatest access (today's high-schoolers) could not possibly graduate from seminary for another seven to eleven years, at the very earliest.
Another factor that makes preaching on God's call to ordained ministry more difficult is the rapidly declining prestige of ordained ministers in our society. Even before the recent, very public troubles in the Roman Catholic priesthood, ministry has been "slipping in the polls" that seek to measure the most-respected vocations. In a late-2001 Gallup poll on how people perceive various professions with respect to honesty and ethics, firefighters rated the highest of any profession (not surprising, in light of the praise appropriately heaped on the heroes of 9/11). Nurses and members of the U.S. military were rated at 83% and 81% respectively. In honesty and ethics, clergy are rated only 64% -- somewhat lower than the next category, medical doctors. Most media portrayals of ministers or priests show us either as harshly judgmental, secretly corrupt, or harmless buffoons.3
Many of us who've been in ministry for a while remember well the days when it seemed there was no shortage of parish ministers, but rather a surplus (actually, that's never been the case for smaller parishes outside major urban and suburban areas -- but that was the general perception). We've heard, all too often, about how stressful an occupation ministry has become. Burned by "the worship wars," shocked by confrontations with "clergy killer" parishioners, demoralized by other problems in our congregations, some of us may (in our weaker moments) have wondered whether we can recommend this occupation to anyone.
Yet increasingly, the demographics are suggesting that we urgently need to be about this business of helping our people claim their role of raising up the most promising young people in their midst -- and we need to be about it not today, as they say, but yesterday. This passage from 1 Samuel provides an excellent text for doing so.
Notes
1 Westminster, 1976, 43.
2 Edited by Roger E. Van Harn (Eerdmans, 2001), 173-175.
3 http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=66220
A Full-Text Sermon
"Did You Call?"
A sermon by Carlos E. Wilton
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)
"... if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'"
--1 Samuel 3:9b
"Not a very promising crowd," the preacher thought to himself, looking out over the pulpit. Only a handful had turned out to hear him speak -- even though he had traveled all the way to Scotland from South Africa.
The preacher's name was Robert Moffat. He was a missionary. That night, Moffat's "mission" was particular indeed: to find men -- and bring them back to Africa, to the mission field.
Women he wasn't especially interested in (this was the early 1800s, after all). The preacher would thank the women for their prayers and good wishes, but most everyone agreed that the hardships of Africa were not for members of "the fairer sex."
Yet "the fairer sex" was all Robert Moffat had that night; and only a handful of them at that. To make matters worse, his pre-arranged text was Proverbs 8:4, "Unto you, O men, I call."
Moffat raced through his sermon, finishing early -- trusting God to make something of it, somehow. When it was over, he departed: to the usual round of polite handshakes and smiling thank-yous -- but not a single recruit to show for his efforts.
Or so he thought. Moffat had no way of knowing it, but his words that night would make an enormous difference in the history of Christian mission.
Unbeknownst to him, there was a man in the sanctuary that night ... well not a man, exactly, but a boy. High up in the choir loft he sat, waiting for the sermon to end, so he could perform his job: pumping the bellows of the pipe organ with his feet.
As he waited, the boy could not help but listen to the preacher's words. It seemed as though they were directed to him alone.
Years later, this same boy -- now a young man, by the name of David Livingstone -- would train as a doctor and pack himself off to the most uncharted regions of Africa, as a medical missionary and explorer. It was he whom Charles Stanley of the New York Herald would chase after for months, and finally discover on the shores of Lake Tanganyika -- greeting him with the immortal words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
All this took place because, one blustery Scottish night years before, a boy had listened -- had really listened -- in church.
§§§
It wasn't the first time something remarkable had happened, as a result of listening in church. Today's Old Testament lesson tells of the call of Samuel: that young boy who was "ministering to the Lord under Eli."
The voice Samuel hears is not that of a preacher -- but the unmediated voice of God. Samuel is in the temple for the very same reason David Livingstone is in church: it's his job.
Livingstone pumps the organ bellows; Samuel's task is to keep the "lamp of God" from going out in the middle of the night. Both of them, in other words, are the "hired help."
Samuel "hears" the Lord speaking to him three times, in a dream, as he snoozes on a pallet alongside the smoldering lamp. So real is the experience that Samuel swears he has heard the voice with his ears -- and so he goes off to wake Eli, the high priest.
A pretty gutsy young lad, that Samuel -- for he awakens Eli not once, but three times: in the same night. Each time Samuel announces, "Here I am, for you called me"; and each time the sleepy Eli growls, "I didn't call you; go back to bed."
It is on the fourth try that Eli -- a real charlatan of a high priest, caring only for money and power -- discovers, to his horror, that maybe God really is speaking to the boy. Then old Eli, despite his faults, gives Samuel a piece of remarkably good spiritual advice: he tells him that maybe next time he should sit up in bed and say, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
Samuel does exactly that, and from that day forward, his career as a prophet is officially launched. "The Lord was with him," the Bible says, "and let none of his words fall to the ground." [1 Samuel 3:19]
§§§
Sometimes I wonder if most of us are really listening -- in worship, in prayer, in reading the Bible. We have become so comfortable with the Word of God. We've printed it on elegant, India paper pages with gilded edges, bound those pages between covers of the finest, hand-tooled leather, and given the end product an honored place in home and church.
The name of God rises to our lips many times each day -- in table grace and bedtime prayer; in thoughtless expressions of "God bless you," or "God willing"; even in those meaningless (and slightly blasphemous) punctuations of speech: "Oh God," when the traffic light turns yellow, and "God, it's cold today" (as though the Lord really needs to be informed).
What a contrast this is to the Orthodox Jews, who write the name of God, "Yahweh," without vowels -- so they cannot pronounce it (even accidentally), thereby bringing down calamity upon their heads!
"The word of God may not be chained," writes the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor ...
...but you would be hard pressed to believe it on most Sunday mornings. We read scripture out loud as though we were reading income tax instructions to each other. Children draw on offering envelopes during the sermon; adults balance their checkbooks. If someone breaks the rules and gets excited by the word, there are plenty of other people -- including the preacher -- who can be counted on to calm that person down.
We are old friends with the word by now. There is nothing to get excited about. You can buy dishtowels with the Beatitudes printed on them. You can give Bibles to your children without worrying that what they read will upset their lives.
What has happened? Have we hobbled the word because we fear the harm it can do? (Quoted by William Willimon in Pulpit Resource, January 19, 1997, 13.)
When it comes to those outside the church, the situation is even worse. To the legions of those who have had some superficial acquaintance with Christianity but have drifted away, it's almost as though they've been vaccinated against the Gospel.
You know how vaccinations work; they've been much in the news lately, as the government ponders the wisdom of again making smallpox inoculations available, to counter the threat of biological weapons. A small amount of the microbe that causes disease is isolated in a laboratory, and injected into the bloodstream of the patient. The white blood cells surround the intruders, and defeat them -- thereby building up a tolerance to the same illness. Should the patient ever be exposed again, he or she will be protected.
In a strangely similar way, the word of the Lord is almost too commonplace today. Every motel room has its Gideon Bible; every courtroom witness is sworn in with a hand on "the Good Book"; on countless coffee tables and bookshelves across this great land, the scriptures are accorded an honored place.
Yet when are they ever read? When is their message ever heeded? When -- in this frenetic, over-programmed world of ours -- do we ever take time to simply sit in silence; to open ourselves to what the Lord may be revealing; to say, as Samuel did of old, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening"?
You and I make ourselves busy -- oh, so very busy -- and it works out very neatly that way, doesn't it? Sometimes I suspect that's half the reason for the mad pace of life today: so we don't have to tune our souls to the silence ... So we don't have to face the disturbing possibility that the Lord's agenda for our lives may be different from the one we have so carefully plotted.
§§§
"Life is short. Play hard." That's the bumper-sticker motto many of us live by. As the parent of teenagers, I can attest that this is the unofficial motto of many of our school and community organizations as well.
Leisure has become serious business in our society. We now have, in America, a multi-billion-dollar leisure "industry" -- how's that for an oxymoron: "leisure industry"? This industry provides everything from sporting goods, to time-share vacations, to pay-per-view movies. The incessant drumbeat of advertising not only calls us to line up for the leisure activities we already know we want, but creates in us a thirst for those we never knew existed.
Do you want to know where you see all these choices played out? In the sneaker store! We were in one of those specialized athletic-shoe stores the other day, buying shoes for the kids -- do you have any conception how many varieties are available? Why, they've got types of sneakers in there I've never heard of! Alongside the usual basketball and running shoes, they've got "court shoes" (that's what we used to call "tennis shoes"); bicycle shoes; and something mysteriously called "cross-trainers." Ask the clerks what they're for, and if they're honest they may tell you (with a wink) that "cross-trainer" is simply a fancy name for an all-purpose shoe. That's how complicated our leisure pursuits have become!
Once upon a time, "leisure" meant relaxing with a good book ... puttering around the yard ... spending a quiet evening at home. Now, it's results-driven. Leisure is that long list of things we've got to accomplish on our day off, or else we'll fall behind in our recreation. (Sounds like a second, or even third, job to me!)
Even in our recreation, some of us seem obsessed to produce or accomplish things -- often worthy things, to be sure, like a lower heart rate or cholesterol count, but things that (ironically) can create stress and anxiety all by themselves. What ever happened to play for its own sake, without a coach or trainer or pro to tell us how to do it?
Once upon a time, children simply used to be turned loose on their neighborhoods, to find each other and entertain themselves with backyard games. Now, it seems, kids scarcely have time to play. Once homework is taken care of (and sometimes even before the schoolbooks are opened), the kids are shuttled off to one after-school program after another. And as for the poor parents, who function as chauffeurs, equipment providers and appointment secretaries (and sometimes even coaches or advisors) -- they plunge themselves into a maelstrom of activity. On the worst days, they're left wondering whether there's even time for fast food.
John Ruskin once observed: "There is no music in a rest, but the making of music is in it." You know how it is, in music: every once in a while there is a rest, when players put down their instruments, when singers quiet their voices -- and count the measures until it is time to come in again. Without rests, there would be no symphonies; there would be no Broadway musicals; there would be no musicat all. A truly accomplished composer deploys the rests as surely as the notes, the silences as surely as the tones -- and, somehow, the composition is the richer for it.
So, too, with our lives. We need to "rest in the Lord, wait patiently for him," as that famous anthem by Mendelssohn puts it: and he will give us our heart's desire. (From "Elijah"; based on Psalm 37:7)
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"Where there is no vision," the book of Proverbs says, "the people perish" (Proverbs 29:18, King James Version). Many of us, my friends, are quietly perishing out there, for lack of sustaining vision. We think we're fortunate to have so many leisure activities, when, really, many of these are keeping us from true leisure, from true recreation that is, at the same time, re-creating.
So raucous have our lives become, so filled with background noise, that we find it hard to hear the voice of God, calling in the night. Jesus said of the spiritually bedraggled people of his day: "seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand." [Matthew 13:13]
The same, sad to say, can be said of many of us, even we who call ourselves Christian disciples. We honor Jesus as "the Word," but make ourselves too busy to listen for his living word in our lives.
You and I have the power to change that. All we need do is give ourselves permission to say "no" to the busyness; to cease merely doing and start being; to listen for the voice of God in our lives. Start with just a few minutes a day. Empty your heart and your mind, and simply enjoy being who you are, a God-created person who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ. Simply thrill at being in the presence of your Creator.
I am becoming more and more convinced, the longer I am in ministry, that God is not silent; it is we who have stopped our ears. "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."
An Alternative Approach
By Carter Shelley
What is a call?
"Hey, Janet! Come home for dinner!" is a call.
Ring! Ring! "Mr. Smith, I am from the Surefire Vacuum Cleaner Company and we'd like to come by and show you how wonderful our vacuum cleaner is." That's a call.
Or there's the kind of call God issued to the boy Samuel in the middle of the night. "Samuel, Samuel."
And Samuel kept going to see his teacher Eli to find out what it was Eli wanted, until Eli -- who must have received a few calls from God himself in Eli's time -- urges the boy to respond as though to God ... and sure enough. God was calling Samuel with a special word about Eli's work and his sons' many sins. At an early age, God called Samuel to be God's messenger. That was Samuel's call.
This story of God's call to Samuel has always held great power for me. For one thing it is one of the many biblical examples of how involved in human lives God is. For another, I believed with all my heart that God was perfectly capable of forgoing pen and paper or use of the telephone and choosing instead to call one directly out of sleep into God's work. In fact, with the certainty of childhood, I promised God that I would never doubt God's existence if God would promise not to call me in the middle of the night -- an action on God's part that I was certain would cause me to have a cardiac arrest despite my tender 10 years. So far we've both kept faith with our end of the bargain.
It is from the Bible that we Christians get our idea of a call from God to some particular work. There are many biblical examples: Abram become Abraham, Moses, Deborah, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Mary, John the Baptist, Jesus' call to his disciples, and Paul. Christians place great importance upon call. It's not something only biblical heroes and heroines experience. Christians are called into church membership and a Christian life. Ministers are called to pastor churches and serve as hospital chaplains, campus ministers, counselors, and missionaries. We believe these calls begin, not with our initiative but with that of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I think it's significant that those who receive such a call from God are not always eager to accept it. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Jonah all resist God's call because they recognize that the call God offers will not be problem-free or popular. Having rashly volunteered to serve as God's prophet, Isaiah gets these daunting words from God: "Go, and say to my people: 'Hear and hear, but do not understand; see and see, but do not perceive.' Make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed."
Jeremiah protests his tender years do not equip him to accept God's call. Instead of words of support and encouragement, God challenges Jeremiah to prophesy in the face of family rejection, social ostracism, and the surefire certainty that the doom to come will indeed occur if Jeremiah's message gets rejected.
Jonah goes so far as to ship himself off in the opposite direction, because he senses that those to whom God would have Jonah prophesy are not his kind of people; therefore, Jonah doesn't much care whether they live or die.
And what if Jesus had used as his opening gambit with the disciples these cheerful, but true, words? "Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men, which means, many will admire you, many will despise you, and ultimately all you'll have left is disaster and your leader dying on a cross."
For three years I served as a presbytery associate responsible for the care and support of ministers. In that circumstance I daily experienced the joys and frustrations, the heartache and the hard times church ministers face. Friends, it's a hard way to make a living. That's one reason it's a "call" and not a job. The burnout rate and the ever more and more frequent church conflicts that arise from unrealistic expectations of congregations and emotionally depleted clergy has grown over the past 25 years.
Of course, that's not the whole story, but it continues to be part of the story even for 21st-century clergy. You see, being a minister isn't as much fun as it was in previous centuries. From the third-century Church Fathers up to the 1950s, pastors of prosperous and expanding American suburban churches had prestige and influence. They were admired, respected, and viewed as persons of faith and authority expected to serve as leaders in their communities and model representatives of the Christ they served. Ministers might not make as much as doctors or lawyers or business folk, but they had status and full sanctuaries on Sunday mornings to inspire them to keep plugging away at the call they had received to serve God and others in the church.
Such a sense of call and an ongoing sense of purpose are harder for young adults and, frankly, many ministers to maintain in 2003. Making money and being able to pay a home mortgage, finance a car, and save for one's children's college education rely more on the Dow Index that they do on faith these days. The stress levels that most Americans feel with our fast-paced lives and multi-task demands makes it harder and harder for churches to find lay support for many of its traditional ministries and social service programs. In addition, those who feel such pressures on weekdays often develop unrealistic expectations for the man or woman who serves as their pastor. The results can be disenchantment, anger, conflict, and defections -- sometimes by church members and sometimes by ministers to new church positions or second career options.
Thus, if we are to encourage older teenagers and young adults to seriously consider whether they have a call to ministry, we also need to consider how we can support them in their preparation for and ability to serve in church situations where they are loved, respected, and occasionally allowed to be as human as the rest of us. This starts with an examination of the expectations put upon the children and spouse of church ministers as well as an examination of the part church members play in sharing the call to ministry that their pastor leads them to provide rather than provides in their stead.
Three vital ingredients are required for a call to serve Christ to ring true and enrich the life of the one called and the ones whom he or she will serve:
1) God's call to a vocation;
2) Church members, youth advisors, friends, ministers, and family voicing a belief that the individual may indeed have a call and should explore that possibility, because God's call isn't always as immediate or clear as that received by Samuel or Jesus' disciples, but can still be as true;
3) Ongoing support of ministers as well as ministerial candidates through financial support, prayers, love and encouragement, and concrete assistance when hard times arise.
Related Illustrations
Somebody once took a look at all the people in the Bible who stepped forward to answer God's call, and found that none of them had much in the way of credentials -- at least not in ordinary, earthly terms. I don't know who wrote these words -- they've been circulating for quite some time as an anonymous document -- but here's the roster:
Moses stuttered.
David's armor didn't fit.
John Mark was rejected by Paul.
Timothy had ulcers.
Hosea's wife was a prostitute (so was David's great-great-grandmother).
Amos' only training was in the school of fig-tree pruning.
Jacob was a liar (so were Abraham and Isaac).
David had an affair.
Solomon was too rich.
Jesus was too poor.
Abraham was too old.
David was too young.
Peter was afraid of death.
Lazarus was dead.
John was self-righteous.
Naomi was a widow.
Paul was a murderer.
So was Moses (so was David).
Jonah ran from God.
Miriam was a gossip.
Gideon and Thomas both doubted.
Jeremiah was depressed and suicidal.
Elijah was burned out.
John the Baptist was a loudmouth.
Martha was a worrywart.
Mary, her sister, was lazy.
Samson had long hair.
Noah got drunk.
Did I mention Moses had a short fuse?
So did Peter, Paul -- well, lots of folks did.
You get the idea -- it's terribly easy to make excuses. God asks, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Instead of saying, "Here am I, send me," a great many of us respond, "Who, me? It couldn't be!"
But the simple truth is, God never calls people who are qualified. Instead, God calls the unqualified -- then qualifies them, giving them the spiritual gifts they need to do the job.
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No one is ever called to the ministry with a voice so loud that everyone in the family can hear.
-- Fred Craddock
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When you are young, I think, your hearing is in some ways better than it is ever going to be again. You hear better than most people the voices that call to you out of your own life to give yourself to this work or that work. When you are young, before you accumulate responsibilities, you are freer than most people to choose among all the voices and to answer the one that speaks most powerfully to who you are and to what you really want to do with your life. But the danger is that there are so many voices, and they all in their ways sound so promising. The danger is that you will not listen to the voice that speaks to you through the seagull mounting the gray wind, say, or the vision in the temple, that you do not listen to the voice inside you or to the voice that speaks from outside but specifically to you out of the specific events of your life, but that instead you listen to the great blaring, boring, banal voice of our mass culture, which threatens to deafen us all by blasting forth that the only thing that really matters about your work is how much it will get you in the way of salary and status, and that if it is gladness you are after, you can save that for weekends.
The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing someday that they have spent the only years that they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else."
--from The Hungering Dark, by Frederick Buechner (HarperCollins)
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"Follow your bliss."
-- Joseph Campbell
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Leonard Sweet tells about an evangelist named Sam "Golden Rule" Jones who had "quittin' meetings" for those who were converted at his revivals. These meetings were designed to get people to confess their sins (cussing, drinking, gambling, and so on) and then have everyone pledge to quit their sinning.
It seems that at one of these meetings, a lady was asked what she was going to quit. She said she hadn't been doing anything and was going to quit doing that. Maybe it's time for us to quit doing nothing, too!
--From a sermon posted by Jim McCrea on the Ecunet Internet discussion group, July, 1999.
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Johann Sebastian Bach once said it's not difficult to play the organ; one has only to put one's hands and feet in the right place at the right time.
In a similar fashion, in our most important work, we follow God's call. The music is already there, in the mind of God; we have only to follow.
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In the film, City Slickers, Billy Crystal plays an advertising salesman who, on his 39th birthday, realizes he has slipped into a midlife crisis. His patient wife's patience with him has just about run out. When two friends suggest a vacation on a cattle drive out West, his wife tells him to go and find his smile.
The Billy Crystal character is fascinated by the tough old cowhand played by a taciturn Jack Palance. At one point, the awed city slicker asks the weathered cowhand to tell him the secret to life.
"One thing, just one thing," he says, poking a leathery finger toward his face.
"What is it?" the city slicker asks, impatiently.
"That's for you to find out," says Palance.
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Sometimes I think that those spectacular call stories in the Bible do more harm than good. At the very least, I suppose, they are good reminders that the call of God tends to take you apart before it puts you back together again, but they also set the bar on divine calling so high that most people walk around feeling short.
--Barbara Brown Taylor, "True Purpose," in the Christian Century, February 21, 2001, 30.
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The Lilly Foundation has been funding a project of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, called "Project Burning Bush." Its purpose is to identify promising high-school students, and invite them, using a summer-retreat experience, to consider ordained ministry as a vocation.
Some quotations from program participants can be found at: http://www.projectburningbush.org/quotes.html
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Vocations which we wanted to pursue, and didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
--Honore de Balzac
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When I was in New Mexico I lived nearby the Santuario de Chimayo where during Holy Week thousands of pilgrims would come, walking hundreds of miles, some of them, to be healed, to give thanks for healing, or simply to walk in solidarity with the suffering of Christ. I asked an Hispanic friend: Where is a good spot along the road to view this procession? He was horrified. This is not something you view; this is something you do.
--Julia Aldrich, writing on the Midrash Internet discussion group, March 29, 2002
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I have one life and one chance to make it count for something ... I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference."
--Jimmy Carter
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The Christian ministry is the worst of all trades, but the best of all professions.
--John Newton (1725-1807)
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A man should only enter the Christian ministry if he cannot stay out of it.
--D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981)
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The meaning and value of my ministry are not based on my feelings, not determined by the needs of a congregation or the world, not dependent on personal drives or ambitions, successes or accomplishments. Rather my ministry is rooted and dependent on God's call.
--Speaker unknown. Quoted in Weavings, September-October 1986, 33.
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Charles Colson is the Nixon White House lawyer who was involved in the Watergate cover-up, was convicted, and sent to prison. He became a Christian in the midst of all that, and out of that experience he founded the Prison Fellowship ministry. In his book Life Sentence, he relates how, after coming home from prison, he had trouble falling asleep in his comfortable bed. One night, he finally fell into a fitful sleep, and dreamed he was back in Maxwell Prison in Alabama. He awoke with a start.
He lay there in the dark, trying to go back to sleep, but it wouldn't come, and his mind returned to the prison. He remembered a conversation he'd had shortly before his release with an inmate named Archie. Archie had said, "You'll be out of here soon. What are you going to do for us?"
"I'll help in some way. I'll never forget this stinking place or you guys."
"They all say that. I've seen big shots come and go. They all say the same thing. Then they get out and forget us fast. Ain't nobody cares about us. Nobody."
"I'll remember, Archie."
"Bull."
Was the nocturnal memory God calling Colson to make room in his life for him? It seems so.
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John Seybert was the first bishop of the Evangelical Church, one of the forerunner denominations that came together to form the United Methodist Church. Born in 1791, Seybert entered the ministry in 1820 and became, somewhat reluctantly, a bishop in 1839 -- reluctant because he didn't think he was worthy.
In those days, being a bishop of the church didn't get you a lot of honor. It just meant you worked harder and traveled even more than the regular circuit riders. Seybert never married, but devoted his life to the church, traveling constantly until his death in 1860 to begin new congregations and minister to people on the frontier. From his journals, we know that he logged some 175,000 miles by horse and wagon, preached 9850 sermons, made 46,000 pastoral calls, held 8,000 prayer meetings, and helped establish congregations throughout the Midwest. For all this, he received a salary of $100 per year, out of which he paid all his expenses. Bishop Seybert was moved by human need. He frequently gave people money out of his own pocket with no thought of repayment.
Before entering the ministry, Seybert was a cooper -- a barrel maker -- and he was making a decent living at that trade, but he thought he was feeling the call of God to preach. He wasn't sure, however, and delayed answering the call because he was uncertain whether God was truly calling him. But here's what he wrote in his journal:
I [finally] determined, if it be God's will, to labor in his vineyard with my Evangelical brethren. I should have gone sooner, had I been certain that the Lord wanted me to go. However, I had no rest at my cooperage, and concluded that the only way to get into the clear, concerning this matter, was to make an effort [italic mine]. If the Lord blesses my labor with the awakening and conversion of sinners, and the edification and encouragement of saints, I determined I would serve him in this way with all my ability, wherever I might have to go, whatever crosses I might have to bear, and however long the task might last. (S.P. Spreng, The Life and Labors of John Seybert, [Cleveland: Lauer & Mattill, 1888] 34.)
--From Stan Purdum, "The Importance of Starting," preached February 18, 2001.
Worship Resources
By Larry Hard
ADVANCE PREPARATION
Place in the chancel and/or carry in the processional a clergy stole, a chalice, a baptismal bowl or pitcher of water, a large Bible, and other items that represent ordained ministry.
Invite college or seminary students preparing for ministry to be liturgists. Include active and retired clergy in vestments to participate in the service. Ask a seminary representative to say a few words about ministry and missionary needs. Use banners that contain symbols or reminders of ministry.
CALL TO WORSHIP
Leader: Let us join in the call to worship.
People: Who is calling us to worship?
Leader: God calls us to worship.
People: How does God call us to worship?
Leader: God calls us in scripture to worship.
People: Are there other ways God calls us?
Leader: God calls through the voice of conscience.
People: How do I know this is the voice of God?
Leader: God calls through friends and the church family.
People: Is this also how God calls pastors to ministry?
Leader: Listen to God calling you to worship and ministry.
People: I will listen and respond.
INVOCATION
We praise you, God, for the ways you have called us into your church to be nurtured in the caring fellowship of faith. We thank you for calling prophets and pastors to speak your word and to do your ministry. Give us ears to hear and minds to receive what you are calling us to do in the church and world today. Amen.
HYMN: "Lord, Speak to Me"
CONFESSION
God of my childhood, forgive me for being unaware of how pastors and others influenced my life and shaped my spirituality.
God of my youth, forgive me for ways I refused to respond to your call to lay or pastoral ministry in the church.
God of my adult years, keep me open to new ways you call me to do ministry in your name. Hear my silent prayers of confession.
SILENT CONFESSION
WORDS OF PARDON
May the One born to reveal God's grace, give you assurance that you are loved and forgiven. Knowing you are given new opportunities, listen to the inspirations of the Spirit, calling you to live with love and joy.
SONG "Two Fishermen" (words and music by Suzanne Toolan)
or
HYMN "God Calling Yet!"
RECOGNITION OF THE "CALLED ONES"
Print names in the bulletin of those who have served as pastors of the church, those of the congregation preparing for ministry and clergy who are part of the community. Ask a lay leader to invite all clergy, chaplains, and missionaries present to stand. Pastors of the church stand with them. A lay member could be invited to lead the Thanksgiving.
WORDS OF THANKSGIVING
Leader: Let us thank God for our pastor(s) and others who have responded to God's call.
People: We thank God and we thank you for responding when God called you to ministry.
Leader: Let us be aware of ways these persons have been prepared and trained for the vocation of ministry.
People: We are grateful for schools and seminaries where they have grown in understanding and developed skills for ministry.
Leader: Let us pledge our prayers and support for these persons who have been in ministry, and those who will respond to God's calling.
People: We promise to uphold our pastors in our prayers and to encourage those who respond to God's call today.
(This would be a good time for a seminary representative to speak about the needs and opportunities for those called to church vocations.)
HYMNS
"Here I Am, Lord"
"Lord, You Give the Great Commission"
"Have Thine Own Way"
SONG
"Go Ye, Go Ye into the World" (words and music by Natalie Sleeth)
A Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
1 Samuel 3:1-18
Object: A telephone, a walkie-talkie, a letter, a human voice
Good morning, boys and girls. When someone wants to get in touch with you and give you a message, how does he or she do it? (let them answer) They call you on the telephone. Do you like to talk on the telephone? (let them answer) The telephone is fun, isn't it? How many of you have walkie-talkies? (let them answer) When I was about your age, I had a walkie-talkie and so did some of my friends and that was a lot of fun. How else can people get in touch with you? (let them answer) Good, they can write you a letter or send you a post card, can't they? And how does you mom or dad get in touch with you? (let them answer) They just use your name and when you hear them use your name, you know they want to talk with you, don't you?
Today I want to tell you a true story about a boy named Samuel. He lived with a man who was kind of like a pastor. His mother, Hannah, had promised God that she would give Samuel back to God's care and work. So when Samuel was just a young person he went to live in the temple with his mother's blessing. Eli, the priest, was very comfortable with Samuel and cared for him. But one night, before the candles in the temple burned out, Samuel heard a voice using his name. He heard, "Samuel, Samuel."
Samuel thought it must be Eli calling him so he went and presented himself to Eli. But Eli told him that he had not spoken a word and that he should go back and lie down on his bed. Only a few minutes later, Samuel heard the same thing. Again, he got up and went back to see Eli. But Eli insisted that he had not called Samuel, and he told him to lie down again. A third time this happened, only now Eli knew that something great was about to happen. He told Samuel to lie down again, but this time he should listen to the voice calling him and then say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." Eli knew the voice was from God calling Samuel into his service.
Has God ever called you by name? (let them answer) Has God ever spoken to you on the telephone or the walkie-talkie or written you a letter? (let them answer) God doesn't seem to use those things. But God does speak to people in different ways. You remember that I told you about his mother, Hannah. She loved God dearly and she prepared her son Samuel for a ministry to God. Hannah's house was a spiritual home where she taught her family about God and God's work. Families with parents who love God very often prepare their children to hear God call them.
You remember Eli, the priest in the temple? Eli loved God and he helped prepare Samuel to hear God's call. Pastors love God and they would very much like their children like you to hear God's call and perhaps become a pastor like them someday. But most of all, God is present in our lives and sometimes he uses mothers and fathers and pastors and Sunday school teachers to prepare people to become pastors. Finally, God speaks to one of us in his own way to call us into the ministry.
Have anyone of you thought that you would like to be a pastor someday? (let them answer) God will not write you a letter or call you on the telephone, but he will touch you someday in a special way if he would like for you to serve him as a pastor. It may or may not be like Eli's voice but you will know it when you hear it. In the meantime it is important that your parents like Hannah and the pastor like Eli keep you close to God so that you will know the voice of God if he calls you.
The Immediate Word, January 14, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
