Second Sunday of Epiphany
January 7, 2024

God Is Still Speaking

Lucy Forster-Smith
Senior Associate Pastor

Psalm 139 :1–6, 13–18
1 Samuel 3: 1-18

The boy lay on his mat. He heard something, some voice which roused him out of his slumber. It had been a tough time in the temple, his home, where he slept. It was a time when vision was dim both in the priest, Eli, and in the land. And we all know when the vision is dim, when darkness closes in, there is a haunting sense of anticipation or dread, whichever mood lays its blanket over the place at that moment. Sleep had seemed disturbed all over the place, with the cunning, seductive sons of the priest so offending the sacrificial practices that God was put off and ready to put them off as well. And at this rather dark time, this time when the world had closed in around Eli so as to smother the light, we are told, that the word of the Lord was rare.

“Samuel,” the voice called. Samuel, the child with a name that means “God has heard,” holds a reminder of his beginnings. You may recall it was Samuel’s mother, Hannah, who in her barrenness came to the door of the temple and prayed fervently for her womb to be opened up. Eli, this same priest, who sat at the door of the temple, thought she was drunk and chastised her for such behavior. “I am a woman sorely troubled, sir. I am pouring out my soul before the Lord because I am barren. I will do anything to have a child, and if God grants it, I will give him to the Lord all the days.” With this, Eli realizes her predicament, and he sends her off with the blessing of God resting upon her. And indeed she conceived, and when Samuel was weaned, Hannah, she took him to the temple and gave him into the keeping of the temple through the priest, Eli. “Samuel,” the voice called, and the child makes his way to the priest.

The boy came to the chamber of the old priest, rousing him from deep sleep saying, “Here I am, for you called me.” The ancient priest, Eli, startles awake. “I did not call; lie down.” Samuel obediently returns to his mat. But the voice calls again. “Samuel!” It is an urgent voice. And again Samuel goes to the priest and says, “Here I am, for you called me.” And again the priest sends Samuel back to sleep. Maybe by the time Samuel came back a third time the priest, Eli, was wide enough awake to realize that though his own vision was dimming with time and his own sons had lost any sense of vision for the call of Yahweh, the lamp of the Lord might still be flaring up from the flicker it had seemed to be for quite some time. And so the priest, on this third awakening, must have remembered the call, the voice, the summons that arose in his own life. Perhaps he remembered that day at the temple door with Samuel’s mother crying out to God. In any event, the sleepy priest perceives that it might just be the Lord. Eli may have shuddered, pulled the bedclothes close, and there in the middle of that very dark time, a very dark night, he instructs the child to return again to his place and if the voice came again, he should invite the word of God to come.

This story of Samuel, though it seems to be an idyllic account of childlike faith, comes at a time when there is tremendous upheaval in the life of the people of Israel. And what did that voice say to Samuel? God was about to do a new thing. The respected house of Eli, who have been promised earlier they will have authority forever, are now punished, and the tingling in the ears of the people, what is about to happen, is not a joyful and uplifting reality but a disruptive and devastating assertion that Eli has failed. It is to this scene that the call comes in a season of naïveté to a young boy. And we quickly become aware that to be called, to be named for a specific task, to be claimed by God, is at times a holy, spiritually uplifting task and at times a hideous calling. For to speak for God is often to be summoned to a task that is risky, costly, challenging.

In another time, a time that is many of our time, another child spoke out. “It is not easy being a King” (Credit to Randal Jelks, Letters to Martin: Meditations on Democracy). These words coming from Dexter King, one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s sons, is quite an understatement. The children of Dr. King grew up at a time when threats came to King’s family; when bombing and hoses were set on innocent people; when King’s vision was for a world where children had hope, where the color of one’s skin would not be predictive of their life outcomes; when King was gathering people in cities all over the country, including Chicago, trying to set right the wrong that had been inflicted and stand ready to confront the erasable sin of racism. It was a time, as in our scripture from 1 Samuel, when the word of the Lord was rare. It is that time. It is our time. “It is not easy being a King,” said Dexter King. Would he ever have thought that his father’s life would take shape in the way it did? He was a great preacher, teacher, mentor, justice-maker, a prophet after the manner of Samuel, whose call was to launch the new traditions of kings in the nation, Israel, and a prophet. King led in his time through dim days, when the inner sanctum of the passion for justice for all of God’s children was dim. God help King. God help the boy, Samuel.

Often the call of God comes through times when the skidding world hears a voice that calls us from the upended to upending. But that night in the temple it was not the full cup of affliction that came. It was a bewildered boy, who needed his mentor to help him know the Lord. That night, in a dim temple, where the lamp was flickering, the night was close, and the priest’s eyesight was failing, the priest instructs the child, like it is his last will and testament, “Go, lie down, and if the voice calls you, you say, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears.’” That old priest and this old world, with its own blindness, its flickering light, needed to trust that God is still speaking!

In this day, this hour, where is that word speaking to us? Like those times long ago, we live in times of tremendous cunning, craftiness, calculating. At times we may ask, “Has the lamp of the Lord gone out in our world, the very voice of God calling out in the night? Do you hear that call?”

I am convinced that God is speaking today through the unexpected. We must listen to the longing — the persistent voices of those whom we’d never expect — in this generation of young people. It is quite often those who carry the genetic proclivity of MLK and the prophetic proclivity of Samuel. Maybe they don’t “know the Lord,” but there is power in the godspeak I hear in some rap music, basement bands, slam poetry, and things I can’t even name. God is speaking through the uncompromising vision of wise and courageous middle-aged and older people. And when the boy musters up the courage to say the words, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears,” did the juices start to flow! The Lord told it plain to Samuel. And at the cracking of dawn, Samuel shuddering in his bare feet, the old priest wants to know what the word was. Yes, quaking in his bare feet; he tells it plain to Eli. And when Eli gulps down the implications of the end of his role and even his life, he utters, “It is the Lord speaking,” and the mantle is passed. It is God’s new day, laboring to bring something fresh, a great light to the people who walk in darkness!

In my first sermon here at Fourth Church almost six years ago, I spoke of hinge times, with some historians of culture having said that every 500 years there is a massive shift in the order of civilization. It was Phyllis Tickle in her book The Great Emergence who called it a once-in-every-500-years rummage sale, an upheaval in culture and worldview that reshapes our faith. Not unlike the Great Schism of the eleventh century and the Great Reformation in the sixteenth, the “tsunami of change is well under way, marked by the postmodern and post-Christian sensibilities of the millennial generation” (Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence).In that first sermon here, I suggested that we are living in times when the old order is coming to an end, and we stand on a threshold glimpsing what might be coming, but the hinges are opening and closing. And now, standing here on my last Sunday with you, could we ever have imagined what would transpire over these days we have shared?        

Throughout the last six years of ministry together here at Fourth Church we have navigated some of the most challenging social, political, theological, and personal days, at least of my lifetime. The enormous toll of the pandemic on the fabric of our life of faith; our outrage at the murder of George Floyd and the persistent bite of racism; the war in Ukraine and now the Middle East; so many lives lost through gun violence in our city, including some of our own Chicago Lights kids and employees; and mass murders in schools, malls, synagogues, churches, and clubs.

Did we have any idea that our life would be challenged in such a way? Well, to be honest, it is not surprising, because this is the world and this is our work, our calling; our response to God, to Christ, most often comes out of difficulty. Jesus’ work in his lifetime centered on moments of deep distress, deep pain, deep dis-ease in those he engaged. And in reflecting over these past days and months on my own call, it has always seemed to gravitate toward the upending moments — wars, yes, global but also warring factions on campus, to name a few. Indeed, my own call to ministry arose from a personal tragedy, a rape that carried with it a boatload of fear and uncertainty. And in the aftermath of that a voice came to me through young people, many of whom did not know the Lord, as we hear of Samuel. They pried me out of the dim place of little vision, of scrutiny of whether God was still speaking to this world. They asked me to accompany them into a new day. And it was the Harvard Memorial Church students and participants who helped me see that I might be a match for congregational ministry.

I thought I was the very last person to be called to a place like Fourth Church. I was too chaplain-y; too hang loose; too impatient with the old order; and as Nanette Sawyer reminded me this week, I said shortly after I arrived that I had no idea why I was here, and I guess I had little idea what I was to do. But I have been converted by you! I have come to know the remarkable, hopeful, generous embrace of the truth of God’s light shining through you into the dimness of this world.

There is a reason that Samuel was called. There is a reason that Martin was called. And there is a reason that you, the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, are called by God, through the power of the living Christ to bring your energy, intelligence, imaginative hearts, and love for each other to light. Because what is quite remarkable is that just at the moment when you think the very lamp of God has been quenched by the shivering cold of the night, that God, that Jesus-light that shines in the dark — the dark cannot put it out.

I am so honored you called me through the power of the living God, for the love of Jesus. And honestly, I stepped out with trepidation only be convinced that you never know where God is going to show up or when God is going to call you away. And so I leave with heartfelt gladness and deep, unwavering trust that the Spirit of God will bind our hearts in Christian love, no matter the distance, not matter the hour, all in God’s vast, sweeping, amazing grace. Thank you, God. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church