Answer the Phone
A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 2, 2024
The Rev. Robin Teasley
1 Samuel 3:1-20 Mark 2:23 – 3:6
Sometimes, when we are in church, someone’s phone will ring, or quack like a duck, or play a great song. This happens because we are blessed with technology and because we sometimes forget to silence our phones. During one of our Holy Week services there was a phone ringing in the vesting room, proving that clergy are not exempt from forgetfulness either. If this ever happens to you, please know that God forgives us. But I also need to tell you that every time it happens, I am so tempted to stop in the middle of the sermon or liturgy and say, “It’s God calling, answer the phone!”
Our reading from the Book of First Samuel is one of many "call narratives" in the Bible, stories about individuals who received a call from God. Just last week, we heard Raymond read the dramatic story of the Prophet Isaiah in the temple, having both a visual and auditory experience of God's call. "Who will go for us? Whom shall I send?" and Isaiah responded with those familiar words, "Here I am. Send me!"
When we think about this idea of being called by God, we often remember the stories of famous calls and think we would never be called like that – some of us even pray we won’t be! But I want to explore the idea of being called by God simply by virtue of our baptism, and our relationship with God, which are both based in the idea that we have been marvelously made, as the psalmist says, we are a wonderful work, and God’s hand is upon us. We have been created by God for a purpose.
And if by some measure we believe this, then we may expect that we will indeed be called by God. God calls us over and over, every day, from one moment to the next. God calls us to live our lives in the way Jesus has modeled, living lives of love, thankfulness, compassion, and justice. How do we know what God is calling us to do? How do we hear God’s call?
If you really want to hear God speak to you (and maybe you don’t), be attentive to what is going on around you. Look for places where God is already at work and join in. Another way to hear God is to be still, and you will need to be quiet. I know that is hard for some of us!
Our days are full of noise. Someone is talking, the tv or radio drones in the background, our electronic devices are constantly demanding our attention. Episcopal priest and author, Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that we refuse to be quiet because we’re afraid God won’t have anything to say in the silence. But more often, she suspects, what we’re afraid of is that God will have something to say." (1)
Call or vocation is not always and only about being a prophet, or being ordained, or even having some amazing gift that you share in church to give glory to God. Most of the time, call is simply following Jesus. Preaching the Gospel by example. Loving your neighbor.
Sometimes though, call is about doing the hard things, the things we would rather not do. Sometimes God calls us to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth - to hear this uncomfortable truth ourselves or to speak it to another. Samuel was called to speak an uncomfortable truth to Eli. Thankfully, Eli’s faithfulness helped him hear this truth and then trust that God would help him with the hard things that lay ahead.
In our Gospel reading, when Jesus allowed his disciples to pluck the heads of the grain and when he healed the man with the withered hand, both on the Sabbath, the religious authorities accused him of breaking the laws of the Sabbath. And Jesus responded with a question. Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath? To save life or to kill? If people are hungry, shouldn’t we feed them? If they are not well, shouldn’t we heal them? Isn’t that the Sabbath thing to do?
Perhaps Jesus was calling them to hear an uncomfortable truth, the truth that if we interpret a law such that people go unfed or are not healed, then we are not fulfilling the purpose for which God created us – to love one another. Augustine of Hippo understood this well, when he wrote “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” (2)
The religious leaders were unable to hear an uncomfortable truth from Jesus. And when they remained silent, he looked around at them with anger, he was grieved at their hardness of heart. I have to confess to you that when I read the words where Jesus looked at them with anger, where he was grieved at their hardness of heart, it brought me up short as I thought about times when my heart has been hardened in self-righteousness, and also in fear. God calls us to examine the uncomfortable truths, those truths about which we too often remain silent.
Perhaps hearing God’s call is not only about going out and doing amazing things for God, but also about looking within our hearts to examine our own uncomfortable truths; to answer God’s call in the way that Eli and Samuel did. Have you heard from God lately? God will not stop calling us, will not stop loving us, because we were created for a purpose. And if the phone rings, it might be God calling.
(1) Barbara Brown Taylor, When God Is Silent, The 1997 Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1998), 51.
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