Sermon by Rev. Wayne Irwin
October 28, 2007

Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 3:15-4:1

My son Aaron was five years old,
when he came into my home office one day
with his toys.
And parked them on a chair.
And began to play.
And to talk.
Mostly to talk.
Mostly he talked.
Mostly I was busy.
"Daddy?"
. . . "Yes, Aaron."
"Daddy?"
. . . "Yes, Aaron. I'm listening."
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Aaron. I'm listening. Just working, too."
"No, Daddy. Listen to me with your face!"

When we pray, we mostly talk.
Outwardly. Inwardly.
We mostly talk . . . And do we listen?
We mostly are preoccupied with talking,
with our own message and requests of God.

Old Eli taught the child Samuel to do
what Aaron was asking of me . . . to listen.
Taught him instead to pray:
"Speak Lord, your servant is listening!"
But how often,
when we pray
are we only saying:
"Listen, Lord, your servant is speaking!"

Think of your own prayer life.
Your own moments of conscious
conversation with God.
And ask yourself
how much of it is listening.
For so many of us,
prayer seems to consist of mostly talking
of mostly giving God instructions:
"Do this. Do that.
Be here. be there.
Bless him. Bless her.
Cure this. Cure that.
Fix this. Fix that.
And even though I haven't studied much,
help me do well
on this exam."


I was telling a Bible story in service,
to the children,
with a young boy sitting wide-eyed,
leaning forward,
seeming to hang on every word.
And afterwards he approached me,
and he said:
"You know, when you told the story today,
you used the word 'the' 42 times."

Sometimes we do listen when we pray.
But maybe what we hear is not the message.

Long ago I became involved
in a project
looking to provide a radio reading service
for print-handicapped persons
here in southern Ontario.
Reading the daily newspapers
and weekly magazines
on the sideband of an FM radio station signal.
And I was involved, on behalf of the church.

The project took me to Ottawa for hearings
before the Canadian licensing board,
the CRTC.

And through that project
I became aware of a device,
then new on the market
for recording voice digitally.
Blind students in the University of Toronto
were testing the thing
by recording lectures.
And finding that they could play them back
at double or triple the speed, or faster,
without the pitch of the voice being changed.
The gadget being digital.

And they were discovering
that by listening to a voice speaking
at even five times faster than normal,
they could retain more of the content
by doing that . . . than they could
when they were listening at normal speed.
And why?
Because of their intensified concentration.

So a blind student
could listen to a fifty minute lecture
in ten minutes,
and retain more of the information
than a student who was not blind.

So, an assist to listening, obviously,
is intense concentration.
We hear so much better when we can focus.
When we can listen "with our face," as it were.

And, I presume, we all know
that we hear much better
when we can see the lips moving.

I've worn this beard for 37 years.
But that's one of the reasons
I have always shaved out the chin.
So you can see my mouth better.
Because I know it helps your hearing
. . . to be able to see my lips.
As for the people behind me, in the choir,
they have to concentrate the more,
in order to catch whatever I say.

I was walking up James Street a while back.
It was summertime.
And the person with me was a naturalist.
Someone not used to
the cacophony of noises
here in the inner city.
And suddenly he stopped.

"A cricket," he said. "Did you hear it?"
"No," said I. "Not with all these noises."
"I spend my life listening to nature," he said.
"So I hear what I tune myself to hear."

And really, so do we all.
If we tune ourselves to hear accolades,
that's what we hear.
If we tune ourselves to hear gripes,
that's what we hear.

And we may well hear
what it is we want to hear;
but we may well also miss
what it is we need to hear.
We may well miss
what it is that God would have us hear.

The excited crowd at the soccer game
goes wild in the rush towards the gates,
celebrating a win.
But the gates are locked.
And people fall down in the rush.
Unable to get up.
But the masses behind keep pressing forward.
Everyone celebrating.
Everyone cheering.
Making a joyful noise.
But doing it so loudly
that no one can hear the screams
of the people who are being crushed.

And when the gates give way,
and the crowd surges through,
many are injured.
And some people die.

It is no one's intention that anybody die.
But it happens
because the crowd cannot hear
what the crowd needs to hear . . . and to heed.

Sometimes we think we're hearing,
But what we're hearing is the excitement,
and maybe not the warning.
The euphoria
but not the cries of pain.

Said Jesus to the religious of his day: (Mat 13:14ff)
quoting the prophet Isaiah:
"You will indeed listen,
but never understand;
you will indeed see,
but never perceive,
for you have closed your ears,
and shut your eyes,
and allowed your heart to grow dull."

That's why even the Church sometimes sins.
Gets its ladder against the wrong wall,
its ear against the wrong track,
its policy set against the wrong injustice.
It's why Jesus declared
the Sabbath was made for us,
and not us for the Sabbath,
the Law made for us,
not us so there'd be someone to obey the Law.
Even the institution that exists
to be a corporate embodiment of the risen Christ
can disconnect from its own raison d'ˆtre,
can lose sight of its vision and its mission
and succumb to the greater forces of the world.
Looking to its financing for its security.
To its power for its affirmation.


And the story of Samuel
tells a similar tale.
The 3rd chapter begins with these words:
"The word of the LORD
was rare in those days.
Visions were not widespread."

And the story of Samuel
goes on to tell of this person
who learns in childhood
not only how to listen,
but how to hear
that which is Word of God,
and how to own the courage
to speak truth to power.

Samuel, brought to the Temple
by his mother, Hannah.
Seemingly barren.
His birth a miracle.

And Samuel raised there.
Nurtured there.
Trained there, from his early years.
And supported there
by his mother's visits and her prayers.

And residing with the aging custodian priest,
old Eli,
he sleeps in the sacred tent.
No Temple building yet.
Eleventh century BCE.
Samuel sleeps beside the holiest artifact,
beside the Ark of the Covenant,
beside the nation's symbol
of the presence of God.

And in the night,
when Samuel hears his name called,
and thinks it's the voice of Eli,
he discovers that it's not.

That it's the voice of the Unseen Someone,
the voice of the One old Eli calls "the LORD."
The voice of the One
young Samuel has heard of from his mother,
and all through his limited life from others
within the Temple precincts.

Has that sort of thing ever happened to you?
Have you ever heard your name called
in the deep of the night?
When no one else is there?
It happened to me. 35 years ago.
When a four year old boy
went missing from the community,
where I was serving in ministry,
in north Burlington.
The child just vanished one day.
Never to be seen again.
And I was very much a part
of the pastoral aspect of all of that.

And as I lay in my bed
in the wee hours
of the first Sunday morning after that,
asking in my prayer for inspiration,
seeking the appropriate word
for the service in the worshipping community
that very next morning,
I heard my name called.

And it was like a shout in the room
"Wayne!" Like that.
I heard it that clearly.
I heard it so clearly, I sat straight up in bed.
And I opened my eyes
to see who'd come into the room.
But there was no one there.

Something had occurred
within my brain
such that I could not distinguish its experience
from the hearing of an actual voice.

And it surely claimed my attention.
Seized hold of my consciousness.
And it was followed
by a very clear set of ideas
as to what I would say,
and as to what else I would do
for the people of that community
in their service of worship
on that Sunday morn.

Samuel hears his name called, like that.
And then an instruction
the first word from God, it seems,
to be heard . . . in a very long time.
Not that God hasn't been speaking.
Just that no one's been listening.


The concept is lifted up for reflection
in George Bernard Shaw's
amazing play, St. Joan,
telling the true story of Joan of Arc,
of this illiterate, 17-year old country girl,
listening to voices she identifies
as St. Michael, and St. Catherine
and St. Margaret.
Abandoning petticoats in favour of chain mail.
And leading her fellow Frenchmen
to victory over the dreaded English.
All this in the 15th century.

And Joan of Arc's faithful efforts
lead, as we know,
to her trial by the Church as a heretic,
and to her execution,
to her burning at the stake.

500 years later
that same Church that put her to death
beatified her, declared her to be a saint.
And Shaw wrote his play because of that.
And because of his play,
he was awarded
the Nobel Prize for literature, in 1925.

But in his preface to the play, Shaw observed
that there were no villains in it all.
That the churchmen, and the politicians
all had relatively good intentions.
But the tragedy turned
on what ordinary people discovered
themselves to be doing . . .
despite their good intentions.
They could not fathom the idea
of God really speaking to a young girl.

And when we read the Hebrew Bible,
what we Christians call the Old Testament,
it seems that the people in those stories
also believe God only speaks through leaders.

When Moses is leading
the people believe God speaks through him.
When Joshua is leading
the people believe God speaks through him.
And how many Christians today believe
God speaks only through the Church?
That God does not speak directly to them.

Some say this is a Protestant idea:
Martin Luther's "priesthood of all believers."

Maybe so.
But there has been an acknowledgement,
by the whole Church,
but only within the last 50 years or so,
an official recognition by the Church
that encounter with the living Christ
cannot be controlled by the institution.
That the Christ can be encountered by anyone,
at any time, and anywhere.
Even in churches teaching a different doctrine.
And even outside the Church.
That's where our respect
for peoples of other faiths or of no faith arises.

And the Biblical example par excellence?
The man Saul
who became the Apostle Paul,
and who, despite his hatred for Christians,
encountered the risen Lord,
not inside the Church,
but on the road to Damascus.

We can encounter Christ anywhere.
And we can hear from God anywhere.
At any time. Any one of us. Or all of us.
On any day.

And the legacy of Samuel
is the learning as to how important it is
for us to be listening.
To be tuning in.
To be attending . . . to God's presence.
Everywhere.
And to God's message. Anywhere.
Tuning in to what we need to hear.

And as for talking,
the great mystic Meister Eckhart put it this way:
"If the only prayer you say in your whole life,
is, 'thank you,' . . . that's enough!"

In the great line of the Judges of Israel,
Samuel is the last.
In the great line of the Prophets of Israel,
Samuel is the first.
He is the leader assisting in the transition
from the confederacy of the Hebrew tribes
to the new Kingdom of Israel.
He is the new nation's Magistrate.
The new nation's Visionary.
And its quintessential Listener.

The legacy of Samuel?
That God knows your name.
And that God calls to you,
speaks to you . . . personally . . . every day.
And that you can hear the message
. . . if you listen.

So the question this morning is this:
Are you able to hear that voice? That message?
In the midst of the cacophony of life?
Are you able to notice?

First of all, you are to listen with your face.
But to which voice?
Well, keep in mind
that Jesus accepted the responsive love
of even the prostitute,
that he touched the lepers
and those whom the religious
deemed unclean,
and that he encouraged his followers
to care for the well being
of even the most despised,
the Samaritans.


So the Voice to which you are to attend,
is the Voice of the One who is your Shepherd,
the Voice you recognize
because of your personal relationship.
The Voice that speaks acceptance.
The Voice that speaks hope
The Voice that speaks compassion
and caring for the well-being of even the enemy.

And it is the Voice that speaks guidance . . .
for you . . . in minute detail.
even moment by moment.
And that says to you, again and again:
"You are my beloved.
With whom I am well pleased.
Live your life in my Love.
Live your life in my Spirit.
And enter into my Joy."

The legacy of Samuel:
Whenever you pray . . . remember to listen . . .
with your face!

Amen.