Learning the Voice: What This Changes Between Us

The hallway still has two versions of the same word. Last month this church said we hear God together after a named impression went public in the foyer. One person received that sentence as cover. The chairs around them received a quieter version by Tuesday: we do not want to quench anything, we should wait and see, nobody wants to be the one who tests a brother.

A teenager two seats down is deciding whether this church learns a voice together, or whether one unofficial I-heard-from-God sentence writes the public life the rest of you have to live under.

This is a sermon about what 1 Samuel 3 changes between you. If you preach it 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 keep one unofficial hearing as the last word a watching room is allowed to keep.

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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.