The Blessing of Disruption

Rev. Beth Hoffman Copenhaver

September 15, 2024

Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1–10

Beginning last week and through these fall months, our worship theme is “Reimagining Our Call”. This time is meant to encourage you to personally consider where God is leading you as well as to discern how we, as Plymouth Church, right now, understand God beckoning us towards communal action. To do this work might mean to put down some preconceptions of your understanding of call or to do some investigation and creative thinking if you have never considered the concept of call in your life. Our scripture today is one of my favorite “call stories” because it lifts up the gifts of intergenerational relationship as well as the special abilities children bring to community. It is a story with consequences while also providing a tender look at the difficulties of aging and deciphering which “heart voices” (that still small voice within) are true. Some of you may have heard this story dozens of times, for others it will be brand new. I invite you to open yourself to careful listening and notice what stirs your spirit through the words:

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.

At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But Eli said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So Samuel went and lay down. The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But Eli said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if God calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for I am listening.’ ” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, Lord, for I am listening.”

Prayer

What is a call or a calling?

Over the years I have had many conversations with folks around this short word with big, rather ambiguous meaning: call. It’s a word we use a lot in the church, and there is belief that call is reserved only for those who pursue a career in the ministry. Let me express wholeheartedly that I do not believe that is true. Everyone is called. We just don’t use the word much in our secular circles. Instead we toss it out in sermons and bible studies in a way that feels exclusive, reserved for those deemed “special”. And honestly, ministers don’t help much with that particular connotation. Get a room full of clergy together and we all work hard to “one up” one another on the drama around our calling to be pastors. I can assure you that none of us have had God appear to us as God did Moses, in the form of a burning bush. None of us have been touched by a fiery ember by an angel like Isaiah. And none of us have abandoned our boats and our jobs and our families without considerable thought like the disciples who, as Scripture states, dropped everything on the shore line when Jesus said “Follow Me” and apparently, never looked back. But clergy love to talk about their own “call narratives” and I think these stories have a way of becoming more elaborate as time passes, sort of like the size of Uncle Arvin’s musky caught in the midst of the worst storm in history in 1964 grows exponentially larger every time the tale is told at the Thanksgiving table.

I have had church members express frustration over the concept of call, equating the understanding to career choice. It’s hard to see God’s involvement over 50 years of bone crushing labor in a steel plant – except for the fact it provided income to feed a family. Or folks who wind up at the tippy top of a corporate ladder after a lot of hard work combined with luck and maybe even some wheeling and dealing feeling like their spirit has been sucked dry due to greed, competition, pressure. Yes a call can lead to a career but that is more exception than rule.

After my own grappling with an understanding of call here is how I would define it: A call arises from prayerfully listening to the still, small voice within as well as to the voices of the community affirming God’s summons. It is through congregational life that we are invited to tune into God’s presence and allow God to shape our life and work. I understand the nature of call best through the often used words of Frederick Buechner: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” A call is a holy nudge, an internal urging to do something differently from what you are doing currently. We can work hard to ignore feelings that are leading us somewhere new and for awhile that can work. But a call does not let go of us, the internal voice grows louder, the external encouragement becomes stronger, our sense of direction changes even when we cannot name exactly where we are supposed to go. And yes, a call to lead to a change of vocation, but it can also have nothing to do with our life’s work and instead be an invitation to surpass our comfort zone, enter in to a new space or new place, try something we could never imagine, advocate for justice in a way we have yet to show up. The possibilities of calling truly are endless, but we cannot claim our call if we do not begin with listening: to God, to others, to our own heart.

I love the call story of Samuel because it is so real. Any of us who have been awoken in the night – whether by a noise that startles, a baby that cries, a phone that rings… if we’ve been taken by surprise we need some time to adjust, to orient ourselves to the situation, to center ourselves in the present moment. I’ve been known to answer a shoe instead of the ringing phone, to rush into a child’s room certain of calamity when instead it was the cat who was howling, to jump out of bed ready to face off with an intruder that is only the television left on long after I had fallen asleep. In our scene this morning we have Samuel, a young boy, who as a baby his mother Hannah dedicated to the temple and into the care of the priest Eli. Samuel is dreaming dreams made for little ones when he hears a voice shaking him awake and presumes it is his mentor, his beloved Eli, who is becoming aged and frail, calling for him. Why would this child think for any reason God might be speaking to him? Even when we are completely alert and 100% attentive, God’s voice isn’t always easy to decipher or define. Often we need some assistance in figuring out God’s message for us, or at the very least a person with whom to process our perceived interaction. Calling becomes real when it is affirmed by others. How many of us have been enlightened by an Eli who sees something in us that eludes our own realization? As empowering as it is to discern God’s leading for our life’s direction, it is equally important to help others realize their calling as well. Which is what Eli does. It takes Eli awhile to figure it out, too… the third time is the charm. Eli determines the reality of the situation and in that moment many things happen: Eli must surrender that God’s call is for Samuel, and Eli must relinquish a sense of power and authority and humble himself to be led by a child. Eli must use his God given wisdom to help direct Samuel’s response. And even though the reader is not yet aware of this, Eli faces punishment for mishandling an abuse of the law by his own sons, and knows that part of God’s decree to Samuel will be to inflict repercussion on Eli. Still, he directs Samuel back to bed and gives him instructions we could all heed: Listen. Listen. Listen. Eli’s role in Samuel’s calling reminds us that we learn how to discern God’s voice and call in proximity to people who have come before us. Those who help attune our ears and heart to hear from God. Those who remind us that listening is the most important spiritual practice.

The call of Samuel and the guidance of Eli suggest to us that God calls at the most inopportune times, that call is a disruption to status quo. And if we don’t know that we should really be listening – rather than speaking and doing and making and consuming, we have a good chance of missing out completely on how God is prodding us. But it is so easy to become distracted, isn’t it? The demands of the world consume us and God’s voice tends to get drowned out too easily. All the secular details of the day – from family commitments to obsessions with our phones and social media – vie for our time and often keep us from tuning in to the life nurturing, life changing call from God. My daughter, Hannah, is our family’s truth teller. She says what no one else really wants to hear. When she was younger she had an uncanny way of seeing right through my distractions. If she suspected for one second that my undivided attention was not on her but rather on the myriad of other things floating through my brain she would say, sharply: Momma! Focus! Tune in! Who am I kidding… she still does this but now it is with a much more sarcastic, “Hello? Did you hear anything I just said? Are you even listening?” Her tactics do work, pulling me back to the present to give her the attention she deserves. God didn’t stop calling Samuel when he fell back to sleep. That’s the good news … God doesn’t stop calling. We can ignore, avoid, change directions, sleep through every alarm, try to drown out that nagging tug on our spirit…. But God doesn’t stop. Some of us take a little longer than three presses of the snooze button to recognize God’s voice… Samuel and Eli figured it out pretty quickly. But we are given our whole lives to live into the potential God has for us. And that, my friends, is very good news.

A call is not static. Humanity evolves, the needs of the world change, the Divine also expands. To be faithful to call is opportunity to develop rich spiritual practice, to stretch our comfort zones as we heed God’s invitation, to be mindful of the deep connection between what we believe and how we live in the world. This week I will commemorate the 30th anniversary of my ordination to pastoral ministry. It is a startling observance, mostly because I can’t believe I am old enough to have been doing this church thing for 30 years. And then I remember all the life in those thirty years – all the joy and the sorrow and the struggle and the pain and the hope and perseverance… and the faith; always the faith. My call story is simple and beautiful to me. I believed for years as a young adult that God was calling me to a career on the stage, that professional theatre and acting was to be my path. I was 21 when I realized, with much sadness, that was not what I was meant to do. The problem was that without the theatre I didn’t know who I was or what I was SUPPOSED to do. It was an Eli in my life who mentored the way for me, opening doors of possibility that I didn’t even realize existed. It was that Eli in my life that taught me how to listen for God’s prompting, how to open my heart in prayer and discernment. In a sudden and unexpected decision, I went to seminary right after college graduation. On a TRIAL basis. I did not yet completely trust that ministry was my call. I felt a nudge, I had affirmation from community, I had a mentor exposing my gifts I couldn’t yet name. Those years were filled with both doubt and discovery, all the while I questioned God on God’s choice. Me, God? Really? I listened to my classmates speak about their call stories, many of them professing they came to seminary kicking and screaming but could no longer say No to God. I didn’t feel that way… and at times that made me wonder if I was an imposter. Yet on my ordination day, September 18, 1994, in a beautiful ceremony filled with music and messages, the pews filled with my great cloud of witnesses – some who had known me from birth and others who joined my journey along the way – when I knelt for the laying on of hands, a most profound moment in an ordination service, I felt the weight on my head and my shoulders and my back while also hearing, loud and clear for the first time… that still small voice within saying “This. This. This.” And while my call has absolutely shifted and changed and developed and evolved over three decades I have never doubted my calling is in service to God, that I am called to live a life of faith in a complicated world, that I am called to know the Divine claims me as beloved, granting me what I need to do the ministry I am commissioned to do. “This. This. This.”

A call is disruptive. God beckons, God nudges, sometimes God shoves us into situations both unfamiliar and complicated. Samuel’s first act as a rising prophet would be to prophesy judgment to Eli. A calling is not a path to the easier life. Sometimes call presents as a quiet, slow awakening−perhaps to a life of service or an injustice that needs to be addressed. However you come to know call, and I am happy to have a conversation with any of you who are wondering just what you are being called to do, may you know it as a blessing and not a burden, may it provide for you a life beyond anything you might imagine, and may you respond like Samuel, “Speak, God, for I am listening.”

Amen.