Learning the Voice: The Responsibility in the Room

The elder minutes still have last month's we-hear-God sentence. We will listen when the call has a calendar. Three chairs around this table already know which household named a word after the last vote, and which chair still treats the next named hearing as staff work. One of those chairs called a they-probably-need-space sentence prudence and then kept the meeting on time. Nobody spoke the next word the room already needed.

A man two chairs down signed the last vote that printed the listening line on the packet. He also signed the first one that left the named call in a smaller office. He has a sentence about caution. He has not asked who still holds the room.

This is a sermon about the responsibility already in the room. If you preach 1 Samuel 3 as a map of anyone's private impression, you will lie. If you preach it as a boy in Yahweh's temple, an old priest whose eyes have grown dim, a rare word, a lamp that has not gone out, a call Samuel cannot yet name, and an Eli who finally teaches him how to answer, you give this church a God who still speaks, and a people who cannot treat a printed we-hear-God sentence as the charge the chairs already keep.

Text

Hear the night as Holy Scripture tells it, from the World English Bible: "The child Samuel ministered to Yahweh before Eli. Yahweh’s word was rare in those days. There were not many visions, then. At that time, when Eli was laid down in his place (now his eyes had begun to grow dim, so that he could not see), and God’s lamp hadn’t yet gone out, and Samuel had laid down in Yahweh’s temple where God’s ark was, Yahweh called Samuel. He said, “Here I am.” He ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; for you called me.” He said, “I didn’t call. Lie down again.” He went and lay down.