The Rev. Dr. Seth Weeldreyer, First Presbyterian Church of Kalamazoo
June 2, 2024 – Second Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 3:1-19; 2 Corinthians 4:1-7
She said she’d begin our Session meeting with a Living Faith devotion. Our own Samuel. But a medical situation arose. In her absence and in the Spirit of our texts this week, I invited: remember a time when you felt someone really listened to you. What did that listening look and feel like? What makes for good listening? Friends put away everything—phones, books, anything else that could distract focus. They respond with affirmation or a further question that shows they understand me. We’re seen for who we are, no judgment, just as we are in that moment. Feeling valued like we have “a place at the table.” It’s deep trust and affection ongoing over 40 years of friendship, decades of marriage. Often that connection goes deeper through shared vulnerability. Can we recall a time someone really listened?
Friends, in this era when phone calls for service begin with automated pick a number, through which we may never get to a real person on the other end. In this era of growing use of artificial intelligence, which has some value, but can’t we tell a difference in our correspondence? In this era of reducing political discussion to sound-byte attacks, dehumanizing, intimidating, doxing, cancelling to silence a perceived opponent. In our society, as often in our personal lives we sure have problems with really listening to others. And if we have any hope for our months of electioneering and whatever fractures in relationship we face ahead, surely it must include good listening. I know we get it. That’s why you recommend to me books to read. Why we lament and vent and sometimes repent of what we could have done better ourselves. How do we listen well to one another? Our insights guide how we imagine listening to God.
Ancient narrators tell us the boy Samuel was sleeping near the Ark of the Covenant. Here’s the background. The ancient Hebrews wandered in the wilderness. Transient, vulnerable, no permanent home. They had stone tablets of the Ten Commandments and built a large wooden box to carry them wherever they went—God’s presence with them. A tent in the center of their camp enclosed the ark. Young Samuel was apprenticed to Eli the much older chief priest who bore responsibility for care of the ark. Samuel begins to sense God calling. Confused, he goes to Eli for clarity. There’s a lot of literary allusion. The lamp of God’s presence flickering but not out. Visions for goodness rare. Ancient Hebrew society is stressed and they look for leaders to guide the way. Samuel eventually gets God’s call—a very nascent beginning to so much listening and uncertainty to come. Like a first bite of an appetizer with a 39-course meal in living faith for Samuel to chew on in life ahead. He’ll call Saul to be king, then tell him he’s failed. He’ll move on to David … and yeah, that’s complicated. From the start and throughout, as he listens, he’s given hard prophetic words to speak. The word of the Lord: go tell Eli he and his family are doomed to be demeaned, diminished, punished for all of their corruption and abuse. Perpetrated by Eli’s sons, but he’s just as guilty, because he knew about it and did nothing. Yeah, we know about that in our time.
Listening to God, seeking Sacred Grace for us and for our world is hard work. Maybe Session members observations could help. Practice giving undivided attention to God’s way, truth, life in Jesus. Focus on the divine voice of love, compassion, grace, peace amid a cacophony of harsh cut-downs and selfish cut-ups. Notice little things. Keep in regular contact over a long time. Years ago, when beginning ministry, John Philip Newell’s book Listening for the Heartbeat of God helped me. It’s a kind of primer on a Celtic expression of Christianity—more positive and empowering than other doctrines and assumptions about humanity. To hear God, Newell says, listen for goodness that always exists. Listen amid creation. Listen through all of life. Listen with imagination. Listen and get engaged. We listen within ourselves, he urges, then echoing the advice of other saints, we compare it with what we hear in the voice of Jesus and what we know as we get our teeth into humankind’s more beautiful and hard realities—the struggle and suffering and light (dare we say the lamp of God) shining even in places of deep darkness. Thereby, we live our shared ministry: to liberate the goodness of God already at the very heart of all life, yearning for release.[i]
And importantly for our Presbyterian witness, listening for God’s voice centers in holy friendship. We listen for God speaking through the voice of other people. Here’s what I love about the Samuel story. Eli urges an open posture of humility and vulnerability—say: speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. And in the end, Samuel says the same words to Eli as he did to God: Here I am, Lord … Listening to God and listening to others intimately, inextricably entwine.
You see, friends, especially now when polarizing forces threaten to tear us apart. we need each other. History is littered with people claiming God told them to say or do something bonkers and harmful even deadly for other people. We need each other to check our worst impulses. And even more, even better, we’re more inspired, more balanced, more affirmed and energized in full flourishing life when we listen to voices that make us say—“yeah, I like that!” Alongside others that may be harder to hear, with perspectives difficult to accept, lived reality challenging to connect with.
Best we can tell there wasn’t good listening between Paul and the early Christians in Corinth. His letters have beautiful passages about love being patient and kind, not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude; about us as the body of the risen Christ. And they arise out of conflicts among Paul and the people. In our text Paul is defending against personal attack. I love how he turns it all toward God in Christ. Toward good news of Holy Love for all that is better and bolder, underpinning and overarching everything else we do. He also essentially appeals for humility. For courage and honesty as one of you recently noted. Knowing our own vulnerability. That’s what clay jars represent—jars that can so easily break … like the ancient shards from Petra in Jordan that surround our communion cup. Our lives are frail and vulnerable, and yet we like Samuel and Eli, Miriam and Marys and Paul … we bear the treasure to value beyond all measure. God’s radiant presence—the lamp of God in Eli and Samuel’s day, the unquenchable light in the darkness Christians in all ages have listened for and found. To switch metaphors, maybe it’s not unlike the voice of a singing bowl from eastern spiritual traditions.
As Eugene Peterson continues the Message Paul shared, we don’t confuse God’s incomparable power with us. You know for yourselves there’s not much chance of that. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus they do to us – trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us – he lives! … Jesus life in us all that more evident.
Here’s the reality, friends. Society isn’t listening to what the church has to say about current concerns, like we used to be able to assume. Maybe in part it’s because headlines from Christian churches aren’t helpful. Maybe we can practice something better. More than partisan posturing, postulating, pontificating let’s begin with opening our hearts undistracted even wider than our big red doors. Opening our ears and minds to pay attention, pose affirming questions, as we value everyone at this table. You see, I believe that as prophetic as Samuel, as powerful / apostolic as Paul in our time and place, God calls us to model good listening with one another. Parents and teachers listen through questions even posed with attitude to pry open real treasure shining inside. Children and friends listen through memories and even laments to treasure radiant wisdom of our elders. On Wednesday night guests are welcomed here with care, served with a smile, as other friends table to table listening for prayer concerns that are all about others’ real lives and loves. We listen to others speaking another language, finding a home among us. We listen beyond our ears alone as we read and care with hearts opening to others’ reality. That’s why we cultivate a garden to feed people whose food source is insecure. That’s why we speak out for concerns or swing hammers and paint brushes and so much more. You know, as others witness the way we listen and imagine a place for them, then maybe they’ll open hearts to hear among us the good news: You Are Loved!
As we share our communion bread and cup today, here’s what I imagine. We pour the juice—the covenant cup of salvation and forgiveness the very life of Christ, and I imagine our clay vessels filling with all stories and hopes and fears brought in this sacrament across all times—these cups holding all voices. Dear friends, in a few moments, as we hear a servant say the bread of life, of heaven, the body of Christ given for you, listen for God’s voice confirming our place in the banquet of life and calling us all to speak prophetic words of love, grace, peace. Then let’s practice at the picnic, in all our meetings and casual conversations, listening for the treasure of Holy Love held in the vulnerable earthy vessels of our lives. By God’s grace, the promise of living faith will resound through our time and beyond to anyone else with a heart yearning to say Here I am, Lord.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] See J. Philip Newell, Listening for the Heartbeat of God (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997), 18-19.