Samuel – Salvaged Faith

Sing! Play! Summer! – Here I Am, Lord

Posted on June 2, 2019Leave a comment

Text: 1 Samuel 3: 1-11

Earlier this spring, we invited everyone at Immanuel to share with us some of your favorite hymns and songs. And this summer, we are going to highlight one of those pieces each week during our series: Sing! Play! Summer!
As the pace of activities slows down just a bit, we want to go back to those familiar songs that ground us in our faith.
We want to learn some new songs that will help us continue to grow in our faith.
And just as importantly, we want to have some fun and play and relax and let our spirits be re-energized by God and rest and recreation.
One of the pieces of our Sing! Play! Summer! Series is actually a six-week guide to summer fun and faith that we want to offer you and your families. It has some devotions, lists of related activities, new songs to learn, and ideas for making this the best summer ever!
You don’t have to do all six weeks in a row, but you could! Simply go at your own pace, enjoy this summer with your kids or grandkids or niblings or neighbors, and be sure to check out our church website for audio versions of the songs included!

Our very first song of the summer is actually the number one favorite song of the people of Immanuel: Here I Am, Lord!
This is also one of MY favorite songs and so we thought we’d kick off our summer series with the best of the lot 😊
Here I Am, Lord was written by Dan Schutte in 1981 and he based his work on two different call stories in scripture: Isaiah’s call in chapter 6 and Samuel’s call that we just heard a few minutes ago.
In fact, we were originally going to use the Isaiah story… but we are going to save that one for another Sunday coming up very soon!

The verses of the song remind us that the creator of everything in this world: the snow, the rain, the sea, the skies, the stars… this Creator God is not far removed from us, but hears every cry of God’s people. God feels our pain and weeps with love for us.
And God will not leave us in our despair and our sin, God actively works to save us! He provides bread, light, life itself… but… and most importantly… God does so through people like you and me.
Mr. Schutte comes out of the Jesuit tradition in the Catholic church and actually wrote this hymn for a mass for the ordination of Deacons in the church.
As he described the words of the chorus, he wanted to capture that sense that we as God’s people, aren’t always so sure about answering that call.
He writes: “In all those stories, all of those people God was calling to be prophets have expressed in one way or another their humanness or their self-doubt.”
So he adapted the sure-footed response from the mass to the words that perhaps we all find ourselves speaking:
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
Are you actually speaking… to me?

The chorus of this hymn takes us to that call that keeps coming again and again to the young boy Samuel in the middle of the night.
Samuel serves in the temple with the priest Eli and that night is charged with the duty of keeping the lamps burning until dawn in the part of the temple where the ark of the covenant was kept.
As we are reminded each winter when the peace light from Bethlehem comes through, it is not easy to keep a lamp burning over night. You worry the oil will go out or the wick will burn through.
So Samuel is sleeping there on his mat in the temple so that he can get up periodically and check on the lamp.
And there in the night… in the dark… God speaks to him.
We don’t know how old Samuel might be in this part of the story, a boy is all the scriptures say, but he has spent his entire life in the temple. His mother Hannah was barren and prayed with all her might for a child. When her prayer was answered she brought the child before God and left him in the care of Eli, the priest and Samuel grew up in the temple, serving the Lord.

But I think too often we focus on how Samuel heard his call and forget the details of what that call was TO.
You see, Eli had two sons: Hophni and Phinehas, and they were the worst pastor’s kids you have ever met.
When people came to offer sacrifices, some of the meat was always given to the priests for their service. But the boys wouldn’t wait until the sacrifice was over… but they would grab a chunk of the choicest meat right off the fire.
Today, it would be like if the pastor’s kid stopped the offering plates as they were being passed, took out the largest bills they could find for themselves, and then allowed everything to proceed. And they did it with threat of violence.
Not only that, but they also sexually harassed the women who served at the temple.
Samuel would have grown up, seeing the actions of these two young men, and likely would have been troubled in his heart by their example.
Maybe he even cried out himself, asking God to do something about it.
Well, God heard the cries of the people and God promised this injustice would end.
And God called Samuel in the night and gave him a vision of what he was supposed to do in response. Of the kind of leader he was supposed to become.

As a junior in college, I was convinced that I was going to be a meteorologist when I grew up. But I was also in leadership with the Religious Life Council at Simpson and had been involved in ministry through my local church. One afternoon, the chaplain called me into his office and invited me and a few other students to an event called, “Exploration.”
It was a conference for young people who felt like they were hearing a call to ministry – a place to explore what that meant for their lives.
I don’t remember much about that gathering, except for one worship service.
Bishop Minerva Carcaño was preaching… in fact, she might not have even been a bishop at that point… and before her message she read aloud for us the call story that Tony just shared with us in our scripture reading.
Bishop Carcaño is Latina and what I simply can’t get out of my mind is her calling out, over and over again through the scripture and her message that name in her gentle dialect:
“Samuel! Samuel!” (heard phonetically as Sam-well!)
Hearing her say that name in such a different dialect helped me to hear the entire passage in a new way. It was like it struck a new chord and snuck into every corner of my mind.
The entire drive home from that event, I thought about all of the people throughout my life who had been calling me into a certain type of ministry:
First it was my pastor, Bruce Ough, who is now a bishop of the church. He called me into his office after I gave the sermon for the youth sunrise service at my church and told me I was going to be a pastor someday.
Then it was my youth leader, Todd Rogers, who kept lifting me up into leadership and preparing me for a pastoral role, whether I wanted to accept it or not.
That voice of God had come through teachers and fellow students who had been gently encouraging me to consider starting down the path of pastoral ministry even as I ran in the other direction.
I realized that like Samuel, I thought I was simply hearing the voice of my pastor or my teacher.
I had never stopped to consider before that weekend that perhaps it wasn’t just a human voice after all….
Perhaps God was speaking to me and inviting me into a particular role in the world!

The reality is, God doesn’t just speak to people being called into professional ministry or to prophets from the Old Testament.
God speaks to all of us.
God is looking around at this world that you live and move and breathe in and God hears the cries of the people around us:
The fear and anger surrounding gun violence and mass shootings.
The reality of climate change and its impact upon our neighbors… especially farmers and those along rivers in the Midwest right now.
The impact not only of mental illness, but also desperation because of the lack of resources to respond.
The sense of isolation and abandonment experienced by LGBT youth who are turned away from their families.
The physical hunger of our neighbors young and old.
The crisis of desperation that leads some women to seek to have an abortion.
The stress upon the lives of our youngest people that impacts their ability to learn in a classroom.
The realities of addiction that lead so many to end up on the streets or in our prisons.
These are the cries that God hears. These are some of the people for whom God, out of great love is weeping.
And these are all places where I have seen and heard that you as people of Immanuel have heard God calling you to do something.
They are the things keeping you up at night…
Nudging at you…
Tugging at your heartstrings…

And friends… when God starts calling, God doesn’t stop!
I see so many of you answering God’s call through your work and your volunteer time.
You show up faithfully in classrooms and work with kids outside of school.
You are present with vulnerable and hurting folks at hospitals and in prisons and in shelters.
You are organizing with others to make an impact upon this world, to put your prayers into action.
You are present and reach out to that person who most needed to hear that they are loved by God.
I’m so proud of the way that you, the people of Immanuel, have already said,
“Here I am! I will go!”
I think it’s the reason that this song is the top of our list for our favorite songs to sing together.
But I also want to say… we all have fear and doubt and uncertainty about responding to God’s call. Every single one of us has asked that question,
Is it I, Lord?
Do you really mean me?
Why do you think I am capable of this?
if you are feeling that nudge, that calling to do something, and you don’t know quite what comes next… I have two things I want you to remember:
First: the advice from Eli to Samuel – Take it to the Lord. Pray and tell God that you are listening and you are ready to hear. Ask what God wants you to do.
But second: you aren’t in this alone. And just like Samuel had Eli, I’d love to sit down and chat with you and listen so that maybe I can help get you connect with other people who are already engaged in this work as you learn what it might means to say yes.

In the Night

Posted on January 18, 2015Leave a comment

When I was in college, our chaplain encouraged us to go to this event called, “Exploration.”

It was a conference for young people who felt like they were hearing a call to ministry – a place to explore what that meant for their lives.

I don’t remember a single thing about the conference, except for one worship service.

Bishop Minerva Carcaño was preaching and before her message she read aloud for us the call of this young man we hear about today.

But even though Bishop Carcaño is from Texas, she doesn’t have a Texas drawl. She is Latina. So what sticks in my mind is her calling out, over and over again through the scripture and her message:

“Samuel! Samuel!” (heard phonetically as Sam-well!)

Hearing her say that name in such a different dialect helped me to hear the entire passage in a new way. It snuck into every corner of my mind.

The entire drive home, I thought about all of the people throughout my life who had been calling me to ministry: my pastor, a youth leader, teachers and fellow students. I realized that like Samuel, I thought I was simply hearing the voice of my pastor or my teacher. I had never stopped to consider before that weekend that perhaps it wasn’t just a human voice after all…. Perhaps God was speaking to me!

So I love this call story. It helped me to hear my own calling into ministry in a difficult time of my life.

Today, as we continue our exploration of The Light in the Darkness, I notice as I read again this passage how God calls to us in the night, in our darkness, in our times of difficulty and asks us to serve, to lead, to go.

Samuel has been serving in the temple with Eli and that night is charged with the duty of keeping the lamps burning through the night in the part of the temple where the ark of the covenant was kept.

As we learned with the peace light from Bethlehem came through, it is not easy to keep a lamp burning over night. You worry the oil will go out or the wick will burn through.

So Samuel is sleeping there on his mat in the temple so that he can get up periodically and check on the lamp.

And there in the night… in the dark… God speaks to him.

We don’t know how old Samuel might be in this part of the story, a boy is all the scriptures say, but he has spent his entire life in the temple. His mother Hannah was barren and prayed with all her might for a child.

“Lord of heavenly forces, just look at your servant’s pain and remember me! Don’t forget your servant! Give her a boy! Then I’ll give him to the Lord for his entire life. No razor will ever touch his head.” (1:11)

Her prayer was answered. So Hannah and her husband brought the child before God and left him in the care of Eli, the priest.

Out of her struggle and despair, God blessed them with not only Samuel, but five other children.

So Samuel grew up in the temple, under Eli’s care.

But I think too often we focus on how Samuel heard his call and forget to pay attention to what he was called TO.

In that time, Eli had two sons: Hophni and Phinehas, and they were the worst pastor’s kids you have ever met.

When people came to the temple to offer sacrifices, some of the meat was always given to the priests for their service. But the boys wouldn’t wait until the sacrifice was nearly over and then take their share, as was custom… but they would grab a chunk of the choicest meat right off the fire. Today, it would be like if the pastor’s child stopped the offering plates as they were being passed, took out the largest bills they could find so they could go spend it as they pleased, and then allowed everything to proceed. And they did it with threat of violence.

Not only that, but they also sexually harassed the women who served at the temple.

And Eli didn’t stop them.

Oh, he said once or twice, “you probably shouldn’t do that,” but he never actually stopped them from doing so.

And God promised that this injustice would end. God promised to establish a new, trustworthy priest and that the sign of this prophecy would be the death of Hophni and Phineas on the same day.

So God waited until Samuel, who had dedicated his life to God’s service, was nearly ready. And God called him in the night with the vision that the injustice and outrage of Eli’s household would end.

Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine growing up in a place with a vision of what was good and right and true, and yet every day having those in power and in leadership stomp all over those ideals?

That was life for Samuel. He knew the struggle of his mother. He knew he was meant to serve the Lord. And every day, he watched as Hophni and Phineas drove people away from the temple, and took advantage of them. He watched as Eli did nothing to stop it.

Yet somehow, he didn’t allow the example of his mentor and peers to turn him away from his path.

Can you imagine what it would be like to find yourself called to do something?

To proclaim a different future?

To speak light out of the darkness?

I have been inspired by the stories of young people around the world who are doing just that.

Julia Bluhm is a 16 year old dancer who saw young women around struggling with their image based on photoshopped and unrealistic images of what it meant to be a woman. So she stood up to Seventeen magazine and asked them to commit to unaltered photographs and a diverse range of girls in their magazine. In 2012, the magazine committed to never change the size of a girl’s face or body and to show real girls n the magazine.

Malala Yousafzai was just 11 when she started promoting education for girls in the Swat Valley. She was targeted for assassination and survived and continues to work to ensure all children have access to education and rights for children and young people. When asked by Jon Stewart about what gives her courage to keep going, she talks about how she decided early on to speak the truth, even in the face of someone who wants to hurt her:

If he [the Talib] comes, what would you do Malala? …If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there will be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others…with cruelty…you must fight others but through peace, through dialogue and through education…then I’ll tell him [the Talib] how important education is and that I even want education for your children as well… that’s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.

Can you imagine proclaiming a different future? Speaking light out of darkness?

Today is Human Relations Day and we celebrate this Sunday in connection with Martin Luther King Jr. Day

To quote Dr. King: Every [one] must decide whether [they] will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

So with Samuel, we choose to seek the light of service and sacrifice, rather than to simply stand by and do nothing when we witness wrongs.

The United Methodist Church is committed to standing with those who are on the margins and who are struggling.

Rev. I Maliik Safir, whose church works with those gripped by addiction in Little Rock, sums up the work of Human Relations Day by recalling Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan: “to meet the poor, the disadvantaged and the underserved at the places where others have robbed them and help them to recover from the wounds of social inequality.”

But I think this Sunday needs to be about more than putting a few dollars in the special offering envelope to support these important ministries. You should do that, by the way… take out that envelope and give whatever you can to help us continue to serve in these places.

But God demands more of us than simply our financial resources.

I think this is also a day when we are called to look at the world around us and ask what is happening in our midst and how are we called to proclaim a different future.

In the dark of the night, where do you hear God calling you?

Has something kept you up at night, calling you to do something?

Have you felt the tug of your heartstrings around something you are reading in the news… issues affecting Des Moines and Iowa?

Is it around issues of incarceration? Racial disparity? Poverty? Mental health?

Are you called to advocate for others?

Speak truth to power?

Is there something at work or school that just doesn’t feel right? Can you do something about it?

Sit beside someone who is struggling?

If you are… take it to the Lord. Cry out that you are ready to hear. You are listening. Ask what God wants you to do.

And feel free to come and talk with me or Pastor Todd if there is a place you think we, as the church, should be responding. Because together, we can work to let the light of Christ shine in the darkest parts of this world.

As Dr. King said:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Let us be people who are not afraid of the darkness.

Who go to the darkness.

Who listen in the darkness.

And who work to let the light shine.

Prayers from under a blanket

Posted on February 19, 2013Leave a comment

Today’s prompt begins with verse 6 of the familiar Psalm 139 (NRSV): “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.”

Look up today. Let the high places catch your eye and your imagination. Be full of wonder as you pick up your pen to pray.

Holy God, we turned up the thermostat tonight.

Outside our walls the wind is rushing and swirling and stirring up everything in sight.

It is a cold and bitter wind.

It is the kind of that makes you want to hunker down and drop your head and close the hood of your coat in tighter.

It is a wind that humbles you.

Brings you to your knees.

It moves with such power that it goes through your very bones.

Goes through the bones of the house.

Gets to the core even if you are wrapped up tight.

Sometimes, God, you blow like that in my life.

Your Spirit moves so fiercely through me that I have to back away.

I want to curl up in a ball.

I want to become small so that you won’t notice me.

But you do.

You get to me.

You get into the depths of me.

But instead of a cold and bitter wind, it is a touch of fire, a spark of movement, a calling to go and to do.

And when I hunker down and try to resist, you get me anyways.

You fill me up so that I can’t take it anymore.

And brought low to my knees I have to respond.

Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.

Called By Name

Posted on September 28, 2012Leave a comment

If I ever doubted that I was called to this ministry with Imagine No Malaria, all of that was erased as we finished training this afternoon and closed a devotion and scripture and prayer. We started with the calling of Samuel – and the voice of God calling him out by name. We moved to the call of Jacob and a night of wrestling where God names him anew.

As we listened, my heart leaped in my chest. Both of those scriptures have been the ones I have turned to when I explain the call of God in my life. I heard Bishop Carcano tell the story of Samuel’s call when I was a college student and realized for the first time that God had been calling me through the voice of important people in my life. I have always had a push/shove/pull relationship with God and the idea of wrestling and asking questions and coming through on the other side different and more faithful has been a predominant narrative of my faith journey.

To hear each of those stories once again as the capstone of four days of training for a different direction in my life was powerful. It was an affirmation that for some reason I am called to be here and to do this new position.

I have had some fears and hesitations about the gifts needed and the travel required n the position, but I am learning that how we live out this campaign in Iowa is going to be different than in other places. I have tried very hard to practice good boundaries and healthy self-care habits around my schedule and my family and I was worried that this position would demand something that I couldn’t offer. But I’m figuring out that in this position, I will actually learn a better way of delegating, empowering, and supporting those I work with so that we can all do amazing things without killing ourselves in the process.

God has called me by name. Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.