Were the most important things in your life resulting from a great plan? Did it involve checklists, deadlines, and clearly defined targets? Or did it feel more like something chose you? On your road to one journey, you were sidetracked into something that became more important. You were in the right place at the right time. It was fate, love at first sight. You didn’t know what else to do, so you followed the path before you. Somehow, something, someone-God, randomness, serendipity, or the Holy Spirit opened the door, and you walked through it.

I am a planner and a strategist at heart, yet most of my life has unfolded through a series of chance opportunities – people I met or fell in love with, doors I knocked on were closed, and others opened right beside me, and I went through them. A biographer could see it as random or the work of the Holy Spirit, depending on the worldview. Is it chaos, serendipity, or providence? I made choices all along the way, but I still ponder how often life chooses us first.

Samuel, the main character in today’s text, has his future shaped from birth. His mother, Hannah, had been barren and rejected but was then blessed with a son. In gratitude, she dedicates Samuel to God. As a young boy he lives in the Temple and serves Eli, the elderly chief priest. We could think that young Samuel is set for life in service to God in the Temple, but he has no choice. Think of his childhood. Did anyone play “hide-and-go-seek” with him? Did he ever play baseball? Where would he get his first kiss? 

The text tells us, “The word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were not widespread.” Why would that be? Doesn’t God speak in all times and places, calling people to follow the divine vision of the future? Well, only if someone is listening. 

The passage also says Eli’s eyes were dim. His lack of sight was not only from old age. What Eli could not see was the corruption of his two sons. They used their influence for wealth and personal retribution, so no one had confidence in the priesthood. I Samuel says that Eli’s sons would take the meat to be sacrificed to God, and they would eat it for themselves. While strange to our ears, when people don’t respect the rituals and customs of their work, they likely disrespect the purposes behind the ceremony, too. Eli’s sons treated their ministry as belonging to them rather than God, and they enriched themselves.

Trust is essential for any institution. When public service becomes a path to wealth, when elected officials become millionaires in office or promote their golf courses and hotels, and when clergy bless it all, the Word of the Lord becomes rare in those days.

Interestingly, young Samuel is called to be the trusted prophet. God doesn’t call someone rising in the priesthood or a great rabbinical scholar. Samuel hasn’t proven himself. He is just a youth. Does this mean everyone else has capitulated, and God is moving to the next generation? When Samuel hears a voice in the night, he has no context of divine speech, so he assumes Eli, the chief priest, woke him. Twice, Samuel goes to Eli, and twice Eli says it isn’t him, so go back to bed. Neither Samuel nor Eli identifies this voice as a prompt from the divine Spirit. Samuel thinks it is the human voice of Eli, and Eli can’t hear a darn thing. What should the voice of God be like? Should they have expected thunder rumbling in the night, or would it be more comforting, like Morgan Freeman, who is often cast as the voice of God? We don’t expect God in the quiet promptings underneath our inner clutter and fears.

Samuel had to learn how to listen. If there is no listening environment for important speech, challenging questions are discouraged, and honest wrestling is treated like unwelcome dissent, then a community stops talking about what really matters. 

Eli is not a total failure. His one act for good is to tell Samuel that this is God trying to speak to him. Next time you hear the voice say, “Speak for your servant is listening.” Eli finally spoke one sentence that matters, which still resonates centuries later. Samuel learns to listen to the divine Spirit, becoming the first great prophet of Israel. He will anoint Israel’s first king, Saul. He is the one to challenge King David regarding Bathsheba. Samuel is the first in the line of prophets, stretching from Elijah and Elisha, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Martin Luther King, Jr. When society enriches the powerful against the weak, God responds by whispering to prophets.

I’m ahead of the story because Samuel is only a boy. God asks him nothing but to pay attention and watch what happens. “I am about to do something that will make peoples’ ears tingle.” What makes your ears tingle? If you Google tingling in the ear, you will get articles on tinnitus, acoustic shock, or Meniere’s Disease. Tingling ears are a warning sign. Do you expect good or bad news? The Hebrew word in the text occurs eleven times in the Hebrew Bible, mainly in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and disaster usually follows.

God pronounces judgment on the house of Eli and his sons, and they will be dealt with. What a burden for young Samuel. He has to carry knowledge of things that will take years to happen. God is telling him where things lie and to watch, listen, and be ready. God is awakening him to terrible reality, and the prophetic word comes years later. 

What strikes me most in this text is that the primary qualification of a prophet is to listen. We associate prophetic people with being great orators or writers. They had something to say, but Samuel wasn’t old enough to have anything to say. He had not found his voice; maybe his voice had not even changed. God needs prophetic listeners. In the UCC, we’ve had the slogan for years, “God is still speaking.” But we don’t offer classes on listening. 

We remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for his outstanding courage and eloquence in his speeches and sermons. But in biographies about MLK, his close associates and friends said he was a great listener. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was a simmering pot of passionate leaders who often disagreed and competed. MLK listened to all of them and was influenced by diverse ideas and voices. Robert Franklin, Jr., who later became a professor at Morehouse University, said that MLK didn’t simply get the word of God on high and then tell his advisors what to do. He wasn’t just Moses,

“He’s more like Socrates. He’s sitting there. He’s asking questions. He’s interrogating. He’s thinking it through. He’s in prayer. He was constantly processing things.” “Moral Leadership: Integrity, Courage, Imagination.” By Robert Franklin Jr.

Dr. King’s famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” was influenced by his spirit of listening. There was one crucial exchange that the cameras didn’t catch. 

King had planned to cap his speech by exhorting people “to go back to our communities as members of the international association for the advancement of creative dissatisfaction.” Yet he hesitated when he got to that line in the speech because it just didn’t feel right.

And then he heard a voice from behind him. It was the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who was sitting nearby.

“Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream,” she shouted. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/20/us/martin-luther-king-jr-listener-blake/index.html

What happened next was a total ad-lib at one of the greatest moments of the civil rights movement, as King said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” He used the phrase eight times in a row with words like “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

If Mahalia Jackson had not said a word that day, Martin would have given a darn good speech on the advancement of creative dissatisfaction. But because he listened, “I have a dream” became the resounding words. Imagine, at such a pivotal moment, he listened and shifted in front of 25,000 people. 

I wonder if this is part of our problem today; amid all our emails, podcasts, texting, tweets, Snap Chat, Instagram, and TikTok, we are so busy looking for friends, followers, and re-tweets that we aren’t listening to each other. Maybe we have forgotten how. And the word of the Lord becomes rare. Rare, perhaps, but not impossible. God is still speaking, but are we ready to hear the voice calling our name in the night that will make our ears tingle?