The boy Samuel was just a toddler when his mother Hannah handed him over to the priest Eli, returning the son she had long prayed for back to God, so that he would grow up in the shadow of Israel’s worship, tutored in a life of sacred service. Guided by the priest Eli, Samuel learns how to live at the temple, which at this point is not a building but a tabernacle, a huge tent of meeting where the divine and holy touch. We can imagine a growing boy, gaining skills at lighting candles, welcoming worshipers, preparing the day’s sacrifices or sweeping up the burnt ashes. On this night he is sleeping deep inside the tent next to the ark of God, a box containing Israel’s sacred relics – a piece of manna, tablets holding the 10 commandments. One preacher compared Samuel’s sleeping space to rolling out a sleeping bag in a graveyard or next to a volcano. If you have ever wandered an unlit church at midnight or awoken to a house so quiet you can hear the earth humming, the you would recognize the mixture of awe and dread that comes with feeling unusually close to the Force that sparks the universe.
Samuel has taken his role because Eli’s sons have failed to uphold their duties, choosing instead to eat the meat of animals brought for sacrifice and to prey upon women who come to the temple. They are, says scripture, scoundrels. Eli attempts to correct their behavior, but his actions have no effect. Hear the despair seeping through the moment: God’s word was rare in those days, as were visions. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, but the wick is steadily decreasing. When God calls out “Samuel,” the boy assumes it is the old man needing his nightly assistance. Samuel runs to Eli’s side three times before the priest intuits who is calling.
A multitude of voices cry out to us daily, demanding our attention. Buy now before the sale ends! Best podcast ever! Have you finished the survey, signed up for the class? There is also, as Theodore Wardlaw notes, the internal critic inside of us, the voice of a parent long deceased or a teacher who noted our inadequacies. To listen for the calling voice of God, concludes Wardlaw, is not as easy as it sounds.1 And nighttime can be a space of fearful worrying or strange wondering we might laugh at in the morning. Preacher, Debi Thomas, recalled how scared she was as a child of nighttime sounds. Creaking stairs, hooting owls sent her scurrying to her parents’ bedroom. These days, she continues, “if I hear a voice in the night, I probably won’t call my parents but I will question my sanity. I’d cut back on caffeine. I would sign up for yoga. I’d probably do everything but believe God is talking to me.”2
Although raised with sacred space and doing religious tasks, Samuel yet not been fully introduced to God. So the voices persisted. With Eli’s help, Samuel is able, finally, to address his caller. “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Despite the despair of the moment, the failure of Eli and his offspring, and Samuel’s inexperience, God’s calling continued. If ever we are tempted to doubt God’s involvement in the messiness of our lives, Samuel’s story renews the promise: God speaks. Barbara Brown Taylor says, “It is our faith and our hope that, since the beginning of time when God’s word created heaven and earth ….God has been speaking to us, and is speaking to us still.”3 This is not just a story about Samuel learning to hear that divine voice. It is a story about God’s persistence in communicating with us. It can be disheartening amid the cacophony of voices – so many harsh, dismissive or unhealthily tempting – to search for God’s speech. Maybe it does require quiet, or space to simply sit. Certainly it requires wise elders and trusted companions so that we might listen together.
A different type of calling unfolds in the first chapter of John’s gospel. Here Jesus appears in the opening verses. “In the beginning was the Word…the Word was God.” As the chapter unfolds John narrates the mystery of the Word made flesh encountering ordinary people. John the Baptist is first. Then comes the unnamed disciple, followed by Andrew who takes Jesus home to meet his brother, Peter. In each encounter, Jesus, rather than making declarations about fishing for people, says simply, “Come and See.”
Come and See is an open invitation; a low-pressure gesture of welcome. Walk alongside me. Take one step and then another. Notice my voice. Watch my healing touch; my capacity to turn water into wine. Ask me a question. Come and see.
Nathanael is the 5th follower to meet Jesus, brought to the Messiah by way of Philip. Nathanael is skeptical. What good can come out of backwater, tiny Nazareth? How is it that you, Jesus, embody God’s promised coming? In responses Jesus says, I see you, Nathanael. I know you, who you are, where you come from, what dreams, hopes, disappointments, fears crowd your heart. Come and see where I am going. Take one step and then another.
We are so familiar with Jesus’s calling of his disciples that we can miss how extraordinary this exchange is. Jesus does not offer an outline for the next few years. There is no business blue-print, nor promise of security, money, or fame. Instead, there is deep recognition. I know you. I see you. Come and see me.
Then comes this strange reference to angels ascending and descending. Those first readers of the gospel would likely recognize the reference to Jacob, who, ran from the brother he had cheated, slept one night in the wild with a rock for a pillow and there dreamt of a ladder between heaven and earth. In Jesus’s retelling the angels travel across his body, and like Jacob, Jesus’ offers an assurance, Here I am, with you, in me God has come to dwell on earth. Here we are together. Come and see what God can do.
Separated by centuries, the stories of Samuel hearing God’s voice and Nathanael encountering Jesus offer us space to listen for God’s presence, to anticipate God is calling us through the stuff of our lives, and to watch how we might encounter Jesus along the way.
I was 8 months old when my parents brought me for baptism, waiting a few months longer than when they had baptized my older sister because my health issues at birth had made them hesitate to bring me out into a crowd. After the water splashed and the prayers spoken the minister introduced me by saying, “You already know this child. You have prayed for her, brought meals to her family during her illness, sat with her parents in the surgical waiting room. Sacrament claims Jesus’s presence today, but you, church, have shown it.” My parents told me this story every year on my birthday, and to this day, I hear it as my first encounter with Jesus, coming through the fleshly, faithful lives of other disciples. When I was a little older, a preteen, I was serving one Sunday as an acolyte. Just as at Grace, I say up front amid the choir, with a clear view of the altar. It was a communion Sunday, so I watched the minister break the bread and lift the cup. During the final hymn, something about the holiness of the space, the choir singing around me, and the nourishment of bread and cup ushered me into deeper awareness of Jesus’ presence. I am here. Come and see.
Decades later, in my twenties, struggling through the challenges of coming into adulthood, I learned amid the prayers, the faithful community, and my worries that Jesus is not a memory, or a set of good example stories, but a living, abiding presence, whose promise of greater things means coming to learn to live and die and live again in the shelter of his cross-shaped life. Come and See.
Grace Church also walks with Jesus: through your steady prayers for each other, your hard work of dreaming for the future, despite the upheaval of the past years, through your unwavering commitment to being a church of wide welcome via public statements on portico banners or feeding children weekly without fanfare or expectation of thanks. These acts are an embodiment of Jesus. They are our trust in God’s promise to speak to us still and to empower us to be holy presence to others. As another year begins, may you ponder anew the voice calling out your name. May we together meet Jesus along the way and sense the invitation. Come and See, where we can go together. Amen.