Created Anew: Finding Your Samuel Voice

Steve Lindsley
(1 Samuel 3: 1-20)

I find myself drawn this morning to the very last verse of our passage today:

And all Israel knew that Samuel was a prophet of the Lord.

I think there are a couple of reasons why I’m drawn to this. For one, this isn’t a passage I read all that much, at least the second half of it. I’m betting I’m not alone in this. When we think of the story of young Samuel in the temple, we think of the part Rebecca read, because that is the part that makes for great storytelling and preaching. This back-and-forth between God and young Samuel, who had lived in the temple since he was a baby, left there by a grateful mother who was just glad to give birth to him in the first place; left there to be trained by the head priest Eli to one day be a priest himself.

I’m drawn to the narrative that unfolds in the middle of the night; of a young boy hearing the voice of God and assuming it is Eli doing the speaking. And Eli thinking it’s just a boy’s sleepy imagination running wild, until three times in when it hits him where this voice is really coming from. And so he sends Samuel back to bed with a directive to respond next time by saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

As a preacher and teacher I’ve tended to focus on just that first part of the story because the sermon or lesson plan that comes from it practically writes itself: the need for us to recognize God’s voice when we hear it, and to respond ourselves with “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

I’ve just never paid much attention to what comes after it. And truth be told, the way the lectionary presents it on this Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, it gives the preacher a bit of a pass. That second half of the passage, verses 11-20, it’s listed in parenthesis, which is a lectionary way of saying, “you don’t need to bother with this if you don’t want to.” So, I haven’t. Until this Sunday.

It’s certainly not the fun part of the story. Samuel does as Eli commands and God speaks to Samuel about things to come for Eli and his family. And it is not good. Eli, as wonderful a man as he was, as highly thought of as he was, is not unlike most of us whose families are far from perfect. Over the years, Eli’s sons had routinely abused their priestly power and privilege for personal gain. They took for themselves what they could simply because they could. Eli had long struggled with how to deal with his scoundrel sons because he loved them. And as we know, when we don’t hold people accountable for their actions, things only tend to get worse.

So the message God commands Samuel to tell Eli the next morning is one of reckoning for his sons. Justice will be served. I can only imagine the embarrassment this must have been for the old priest. It wasn’t like his sons’ behavior was some big secret. But to have your family’s dirty laundry acknowledged by God and voiced to you by your young protege could not have felt very good. And the reckoning – the knowledge that his sons, and family by extension, were facing consequences for their actions. This was not the best news to wake up to after a night of interrupted sleep.

Which brings us back to that final verse again:

And all Israel knew that Samuel was a prophet of the Lord.

I’ve been thinking about that verse in light of the complete story because what I’m curious about is what exactly it was that led “all of Israel” to know that Samuel was a prophet. Make no mistake, Samuel was indeed a great prophet; the first one, actually, and one of the best, as far as speaking God’s word to God’s people. The great prophetic tradition with giants like Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, you can draw a line through them all the way back to Samuel.

But check out the language here: it’s not saying that they all knew he would be, one day a prophet. It says they knew he already was. In that moment. And that’s what has me wondering, because in that moment Samuel was a kid. Just a kid. How could all of Israel look at this kid and go, “now there’s a prophet right there, lemme tell ya!” I mean, he didn’t even have facial hair yet. Isn’t that like a prophet requirement or something? And he wasn’t yelling or screaming or railing like we think prophets do. What was it that made it so obvious to everyone in Israel that young Samuel was a prophet?

Could it be that he spoke the word of God? I mean, prophets certainly do that. He gave voice to what God has commanded him to speak. Is that what made everyone see him as a prophet? Or could it be that God came to him and spoke his name in the middle of the night and woke him up, three t...