Sermon for September 7, 2008        

               1 Samuel 1-3                   

Rev. Sharon James Fazel

We chose this scripture today not according to lectionary readings set forth for adults, but according to lessons which launch our children’s curriculum in Sunday School this morning. Today they’re dealing with the story of Samuel, child born late in life to Hannah.

Because childbearing, and more specifically son-bearing, was most often the measure of a woman’s worth in Hannah’s time, Hannah thought herself unworthy because she was barren, even when her husband told her that she was nevertheless the more loved of his two wives. In the part of the story before what Denny read this morning, Hannah went to the temple and prayed her heart out that she would bear a son. In this sacred holy temple, where the whisperings of this desperate woman were muttered with great intensity, Hannah promised the Holy One to whom she prayed that if she bore a son, she would offer him up for service to that same God, once he was weaned from her breast. And that’s just what she did. She offered to the Holy One the very gift of life she had so desired for so long. It’s biblical testimony to the concept that if we truly love our children, we only “lease” them, rather than “own” them!

And so, in the scene that Dennis read to us, we see the child Samuel sleeping at the side of the old priest who had blessed and raised him in the temple. Samuel is accustomed to responding to the needs of the priest, so when he awakens to the sound of his own name, he goes directly to Eli, saying, “Here I am!” Samuel was there. He was ready. He heard the call and went straight to the source. But – he went to the wrong source! Why?

Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? He went to the source he was accustomed to, to the source who had trained him and raised him from toddlerhood to boyhood. And yet, we see in the story that, although he has three times begged Eli’s attention, Samuel still has not connected with the real source of the call. It seems a lot to expect of a child, doesn’t it? And it seems like Eli, an adult proclaimed a “high priest,” should have been able to figure out Samuel’s dilemma before three tries! But we adults don’t often “get it” right off the bat, do we? We react in a knee-jerk fashion, assuming we know better than our kids, and don’t always listen first to what they have to say. (Maybe none of you are guilty of this, but I sure am. A lot, lately. Just ask my son!)

But the point here is that, despite an elder’s counsel that his sense of being called was some sort of silly dream, this child persisted. He kept answering the call he’d heard. And finally, the priest figured it out, and helped Samuel name the true source. When Samuel listened to the call as it came to him from within himself, rather than from outside himself in Eli, he was able to answer that call, and claimed his place in Israel’s history, as a true prophet.

This story of the boy Samuel reminds me of another story about a child – a story whose source I have been able to discern only as “anonymous.” More than likely, you’ve heard it before, but I repeat it here as we, together, prepare ourselves for answering the call to Holy Communion:

A man walking along a shoreline upon which thousands of starfish had washed up, and were dying in the sand, saw a child picking up the starfish one by one and throwing them back into the sea. Approaching the child and intending to share the wisdom of good common sense with the child, the man said: “You know, there’s no way you’re going to get all those starfish back into the ocean. There are so many here, do you really think what you’re doing is going to make a difference to anybody?”  Picking up another starfish and tossing it carefully back into the ocean, the child replied: “It makes a difference to that one!”

As we begin this new season of church life together, let us listen for the call of the Divine from within our children, from within ourselves, and from within all of Earth’s creatures, knowing that when we say “Here I am!” to any of those sources, we indeed make a difference not only to the one calling, but to the Holy One who calls us all. Amen.

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