INFREQUENT VISIONS
I Samuel 3:1-10   John 1:43-51
A Sermon by the Rev. Odette Lockwood-Stewart

“People were not listening to God in those days, and God did not speak.  Word from the Lord was rare in those days.  Visions were infrequent.”   This is the context for God’s call to the prophet Samuel.

The boy, Samuel was asleep in the Temple, outside the room of Eli, the judge and priest. It was almost dawn, not quite.  God called Samuel by name and each time, Samuel woke up and got up.  He assumed it was his master Eli calling him for assistance. And so each time he heard his name called, Samuel said, “Here I am” and ran to Eli. Eli told him to go back and lie down, that he had not called him.

After the third time Eli perceived that God was calling the boy. So he told him that the next time he heard his name called to respond, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

I just heard an interview with Jamaican American Hip Hop musician will.i.am.  He talked about inspiration.  He said,
“When inspiration calls, you don’t switch it over to voicemail. You pick up.  You hold a conversation.”
Not necessarily.
When inspiration calls me...  
I might be busy.  I might be on another call, or too distracted by other noises or voices inside and out to even hear the call.
When inspiration calls you...
When the Spirit calls... When God calls...
You might be asleep.  You might wake up disoriented, not sure where you are or who is calling. So you might head off in the wrong direction, or turn over and go back to sleep.
When inspiration calls us...
We might not like the stillness that listening requires of us, or the challenge of change that the call requires of us.

Every week in worship we pray our joys and concerns (we may even give God some guidance on specifically how to answer our prayer) and then we respond together, “Loving God, hear our prayers.” It is a powerful and beautiful act of worship.

We ask God to hear us.  What would happen if in addition to asking God to listen, we opened our lives to listen to God?  We would pray our joys and concerns, and then respond together, “Speak Lord, for your servants are listening”  Followed by stillness. Stillness.

I hope and pray that the events of this week ... our remembrance of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ... and the historic inauguration of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States,... I hope and pray that these days will encourage us to look at and listen to the call of God in our lives.

Dr. King heard a call and saw a vision that illumined his soul and inspired his actions.  He made plain the relationship between compassion and justice in these words that we read together a few moments ago:
“On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act.  One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.”
                        -Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam”
But Dr. King’s call and understanding of that call and response to that call grew in community.
Eli helped Samuel understand that his call was of God.
Others can help us understand that our calling is from God.
We can help each other to listen.  

Fred Downing’s book, To See the Promised Land, studies the formation of Dr. King’s faith, and the people that helped to awaken his call in a way that relates King’s path and growth and transformation to the potential in every one of us.  

I love reading about Dr. King as a young man, a new pastor described as a “good, but not great preacher,” who worried about every sermon.  I love remembering that Dr. King was 26 years old at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  His story is part of the larger and longer story of the struggles and hopes of a people. His story is part of God’s unfolding story of a new heaven and a new earth.  Dr. King himself wrote, “The story of Montgomery is the story of fifty thousand ... Negroes who were willing to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery until the walls of segregation were finally battered by the forces of justice...but neither is this the whole explanation...nor can it be explained by the appearance of new leadership.  The Montgomery story would have taken place if the leaders of the protest had never been born.”
(Stride Toward Freedom)

Every once in a while we may catch a whisper, hear our name, catch a glimpse of a purpose that calls us, faith that propels us, possibility that inspires us, and we know our lives are claimed in a new way. But in every moment... every moment... we are seen and known and heard and loved by a God who calls us by name.  The name of the boy Samuel, who grew into the great prophet of God’s judgment and renewal, Sam u el means “God has heard.”

Our Gospel reading from John tells the story of the calling of Jesus’ disciples.  Jesus called Philip.  Philip shared his excitement with Nathanael. Now Nathanael was an honest and skeptical sort.  So Philip said, “Listen to this.” “Come and see.”  “Check it out.”  Nathanael did not expect much, and he did not see anything extraordinary in Jesus.  It was that Jesus had seen, known, and loved him before they met that called Nathanael. Philip and Nathanael joined the community of followers.  We are called when we are seen and known.

On June 28, 2006, Barack Obama spoke before a conference on “Call to Renewal:  Building a Covenant for a New America.” He described his own call to faith that came when he was working as a community organizer in Chicago.  He said,  
“I was working with the church, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me.  They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs.  But they sensed that a part of me remained removed and detached, that I was an observer in their midst.  And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well—that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.
And if it weren’t for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn – not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.... to... see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active palpable agent in the world.  As a source of hope.”

Scholar Richard Boyce writes, “When words from the Lord are rare, listening and hearing becomes a communal affair, dependant on both the hearing and the speaking of the community together.”

Sometimes it is a call in the night. Sometimes a vision that will not let go.  Sometimes it is being heard, being seen, being a part of a story larger than our own, a story of God doing a new thing.  God calling us by name.
Thanks be to God.