“He Refuses to Work Alone” January 15, 2012

I Samuel 3:1-10 & John 1:43-51 Stephens City UMC

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I. When appearing before a United Methodist Board of Ordained Ministry a candidate will be asked many questions about their knowledge of the Bible and theology and United Methodist polity, but the foundational question for everything often comes in the form of an invitation, “Tell us about your call to ministry.”

A. If Samuel, whom we read about in our Old Testament lesson, were to appear before the Board of Ordained Ministry today he would tell them about his childhood and one special night when he was trying to sleep.

1. Samuel is basically an apprentice in the temple to the priest Eli and in return for his service he receives room and board and training in how to be a priest.

2. He’s not very old and the writer of I Samuel tells us that Samuel “did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” (I Samuel 3:7)

B. Some commentators have pointed out that those words describe quite a few modern day Christians.

1. It is like we are sleeping for we do not fully sense the divine activity going on around us.

2. God is at work and we’re snoring away.

C. That’s about as funny (and the writer of I Samuel means for this to be funny) as the report in this passage that God’s voice was unexpected in the temple.

1. Excuse me!

2. Shouldn’t one expect to hear God’s voice in the temple?

3. The last place one would not expect to hear God’s voice was in the temple.

4. As the Rev. Lawrence Wood, a United Methodist pastor in Michigan was noted, the biblical writer is letting us in on the fact that apparently the temple had become more of a museum than the home of the living God.

5. Let the modern day listener beware!

D. The comedy continues with the Lord calling “Sam-u-el, Sam-u-el,” which means “God has heard.”

1. The boy Samuel wakes up, says “Here I am!” and runs to the priest Eli whose name literally means “my God” but it is not Eli who has called him.

2. So the Hebrews would have thought this hilarious that Samuel was running to “my God” (i.e. Eli) who is not God.

3. This scene gets repeated several times with Samuel always going to Eli, “my God,” rather than to his true God.

4. Of course, the writer is hoping that you and I will have some insight into the fact that we have a tendency to run to that which is not the true God so we look just as silly as Samuel.

E. Now the third time things change for Samuel and Eli.

1. God calls again to Samuel so the boy in essence hears “God has heard. God has heard.”

2. On this occasion when Samuel goes to Eli, the priest (for what is the first time in many years) wakes up and offers the sort of guidance he should have been providing as a priest.

3. He instructs the boy to say “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

F. So Samuel goes back and is again called by God and this time instead running to Eli whose name means “my God” he stays put and enters into conversation with the true God.

1. It is a powerful conversation as God informs Samuel “I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.” (3:11)

2. At this point the slapstick comedy turns into a drama because God is about to do some very serious stuff.

3. Eli’s sons have disgraced the priestly line and because the priests haven’t been doing their job, God is going to give to Israel a King to rule them.

4. This is a big change.

5. And Samuel, because he has demonstrated the ability to listen, will play the role of kingmaker.

6. That’s what will happen down the road but to be prepared for that role Samuel needs some help and his helper will be none other than Eli.

7. As Rev. Wood points out in his article on this passage, Eli has an ironic name, he’s a blind man and is a disgraced priest for having failed to discipline his sons Hophni and Phinehas, yet he is the one used by the Lord to introduce Samuel to God.

8. The fact is that Eli is blind in more ways than one, but he has seen enough that he can be of help in this situation.

G. And that gives other imperfect people like you and me hope, in that if God has used imperfect people in the past, so he can use people like you and me.

1. Bishop Will Willimon tells a modern version of this story using an experience he had while serving as the pastor of a local church.

2. Willimon relates that he knew a woman who prayed to God to deliver her from a painful and difficult family situation.

3. Her husband was addicted to alcohol and her adult children had to pay the price for his problems.

4. The pain experienced by the adult children led her to experience much pain.

5. She told Willimon that every night, before bedtime, she knelt at her bed and prayed that God would heal her husband of his addiction and that God would bring some sort of order and direction to her children’s lives.

6. Night after night she prayed, but the problems still persisted.

7. It seemed that God had turned a deaf ear to her prayers.

8. Yet she had something to be thankful for.

9. She had some wonderful, loyal and very attentive friends.

10. One of her friends called her every day, just to check in.

11. Her friend provided her someone she could talk with, someone who knew the whole story, someone who would listen and not judge.

12. She also had her church and the small group that she attended.

13. One morning she confessed to her friend, the one she talked to every day, her disappointment and even her anger that God had not seen fit to deliver her from her family distress.

14. Her friend listened to her complaint.

15. Then her friend said to her, “But Alice, God did answer your prayer, at least partly. God sent me.”

H. Willimon’s point is that God doesn’t personally come and fix things for us.

1. Sometimes God delegates and sends someone like Eli who is imperfect or you and me who are imperfect to just listen and to say a few words.

2. It works for God if we’ll just allow Him to use us in that way.

II. This is true not just in the Old Testament but also in the New Testament.

A. There are a couple of things going on in this passage from John this morning and the first is “Who is this Jesus?”

1. There are a group of people looking over at Jesus and they assume that the fact that he is from Nazareth explains who he is.

2. Nathanael is among this group of on-lookers and he’s skeptical that the Messiah could come from such a small town.

3. He just bluntly says “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

4. Nathanael is making the same mistake that initially Samuel made.

5. The divine voice was speaking to Samuel but he assumed it to be the voice of Eli.

6. The Son of God is standing right in front of Nathanael but he assumes him to be an ordinary man, perhaps Nathanael even knew that Jesus had worked as a carpenter.

B. Just like there were ironic matters in our account from I Samuel so there are ironic matters in this passage from John.

1. In I Samuel there was the irony of the names.

2. In John’s Gospel the irony is that Nathanael is so focused Jesus’ journey from Nazareth to Galilee that he misses that Jesus has journeyed from heaven to earth.

3. Later in John’s Gospel Jesus will have to deal with many opponents and one of their issues is that they could never believe that Jesus had come from God.

C. It is this matter that separates that group from the group we refer to as the disciples and that brings us to the second thing going on in this passage.

1. At some point while living in Nazareth Jesus decided to walk from Nazareth to Galilee and there begin his public ministry.

2. One of the moving and inspiring moments for me on my trip to the Holy Land in 1986 was to be in a boat on the Sea of Galilee and for our guide to point to the Northwest to a pass in the mountains that it called the Valley of the Doves.

3. The guide explained that that was the pass through which Jesus would have walked from Nazareth to get to Galilee and the thought of that decision and where it would lead Jesus took my breath away.

4. But in our passage for today there is another breathtaking decision that Jesus is making.

5. The decision is not where to go, but who he is taking with him.

6. As the Rev. Elton Brown from Minnesota whose insights I mentioned last week has written on this passage “Jesus is selecting followers.”

D. Will Jesus select Nathanael?

1. We now know that he does select Nathanael.

2. John leads us to believe that Jesus selected Nathanael because he was without guile.

3. I like Nathanael because I believe he was someone who showed what he believed.

4. You could see it on his face.

5. As Rev. Brown has written, Nathanael would have made a lousy poker player but a wonderful friend.

6. He appears to have qualities such as honesty and genuineness and integrity and open-mindedness.

7. He’s a great guy but Jesus makes him more than that – Jesus makes him a disciple.

E. I think Jesus selected Nathanael as a disciple because Jesus had the ability to read people’s hearts.

1. Before Nathanael knew his own heart Jesus knew Nathanael’s heart and what was in Nathanael’s heart was what Jesus was looking for in a disciple.

2. Jesus can still read hearts.

3. He can read my heart; he can read your heart.

4. And when he reads your heart I think he’s looking for something more than that you believe in him.

5. He’s looking for your willingness and desire to follow him.

6. Folks, it is not enough to believe in Jesus.

7. What Christian faith is about is following the Christ.

8. Discipleship means going with him on his journey, even though it means going all the way to the cross.

III. The cross is where the great work of redemption is accomplished and the Son goes about this great work just like the Father.

A. Long ago the Father refused to work alone and so He called a young boy named Samuel.

1. Long ago the Son refused to work alone and so He called a young man named Nathanael.

2. The Father and the Son along with the Holy Spirit still continue to refuse to work alone and so they call.

3. They do that because they know your heart.

4. Do you hear the call?

5. Can you without guile say, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”?