10.12.25 – Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal @ FPC Abbeville, LA

When God Breaks the Silence

1 Samuel 3:1–21; John 20:21–23

Pre-Scripture Bridge – From Manna to Samuel

Last week, we were with a people in the wilderness…

They were hungry and complaining.

They were wandering and uncertain.

And God gave them manna, bread from heaven,

teaching them that daily dependence is the foundation of faith.

It was a call to become a faithful community.

It was a call to trust that God is One who provides what is needed,

even when we cannot see what’s ahead.

Through this story, we saw that God is One who shows up, with enough… at least for today’s daily bread.

Now, generations have passed.

The people have entered the land.

They have settled into houses and homesteads,

instead of the temporary tents of desert wanderers.

They’ve grown comfortable, maybe even complacent…..

The God who once thundered on Sinai now seems to have become silent.

[Read Scripture Passages]

The word of the Lord was rare in those days.

Note that it was not totally gone, just rare. God’s voice a bit quieter and less frequently heard.

The temple still stands.

The rituals continued.

The machinery of religion turned along as always.

But the voice of God seemed distant.

And our story opens with Samuel in the temple.

He had been dedicated to God before he could even walk or speak.

His mother, Hannah, had longed for a child,

and when God answered her prayer,

she kept her promise to bring him to the temple

and she left him there to serve the Lord all his life.

Samuel grew up surrounded by holy things: sacred music, prayers, sacrifices, lamps and incense.

He belonged to God before he even understood what that meant.

And still, Scripture says, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.”

That line stops me every time I read it.

Because it tells the truth about so many of us.

We can grow up in the church,

serve faithfully,

be dedicated by others’ prayers,

and still have to encounter God for ourselves.

How often does that still happen among us?!?

We keep the machinery of church turning.

We show up, sing the hymns, pass the plate, nod at the sermon,

But never actually expect God to speak!

This story reminds me that church isn’t about keeping holy habits going.

It’s about staying open enough for God to surprise us.

To interrupt our comfort,

to challenge our assumptions,

to call us by name

and send us back out in new directions.

The question of faithfulness isn’t measured

by whether we’ve come to church every Sunday for our whole life?

The question is whether we expect God to actually show up in our lives?

Because God still speaks in sanctuaries like this one….

Maybe not always in the ways we’ve expected….

But God does speak:

in the quiet nudge of grace,

through the word that unsettles and renews us,

with a voice that still calls our name.

In our story this morning, Samuel doesn’t yet know that voice.

He thinks it’s Eli calling him from the other room.

Three times he gets up, saying, “Here I am, for you called me.”

Three times, Eli sends him back to bed.

Until finally, the old priest realizes what the young boy cannot yet imagine:

God is calling.

I think we can all relate a bit to this story.

We are in another room and suddenly think we’ve heard something…

Was that someone calling our name?

but when we ask, everyone around us says, “No, it wasn’t me.”

We start to wonder if we’re just imagining it.

But maybe, just maybe, that’s how God begins to get our attention.

Not with a billboard or even a burning bush,

but with a whisper that keeps coming back

until we finally stop to listen….

And when Samuel finally listens,

what God says isn’t easy to hear.

His very first word as a prophet is one of judgment—

a truth he must speak to Eli,

the man who raised him,

who mentored him,

who taught him how to serve God.

That’s not the message Samuel expected.

And it’s not the message he wanted.

But that’s how God’s call often works.

It disrupts what we’ve grown comfortable with.

It asks us to speak truth even when it’s hard,

to act in ways that seem counter to what we thought we knew,

to trust that God’s unsettling word

is still a word of life.

In my experience, sometimes, the call of God sounds like a question…

It’s that thought we can’t stop thinking…

That situation we can’t get off our mind….

or a truth that keeps us up at night.

Sometimes, it’s a holy restlessness

that refuses to let us stay where we’ve been.

And I love that Samuel doesn’t recognize God’s voice on his own.

It takes Eli, the old, weary, half-blind priest who has let his sons run amok.

Eli has to help Samuel hear this call from God.

In the Presbyterian Church, we emphasize that calls from God are never solo events.

That’s why when a church calls a pastor, the Presbytery weighs in for approval.

We affirm that calls of God are between the individual, God, AND the community – like a 3-way call!

We need each other to discern what’s real and what’s noise.

We need people who will say to us: “I think that might be God calling.”

We need Eli’s around us.

And this story reminds us that a person does not have to be perfect for God to still use them….

Eli’s quiet wisdom is just as sacred as Samuel’s eager heart.

One hears the voice.

The other names it.

Together, they make space for God’s call to be revealed.

That’s still the way God works.

The Church’s listening is always communal.

God’s word doesn’t just come to one person with a microphone,

but through the gathered body,

through the conversations,

the prayers,

the shared discernment of people who keep showing up,

listening for life in the silence and among the noise.

So we learn to say, not just “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening,”

but “Speak, Lord, for your servantS are listening.”

All of us together.

But….

When God breaks the silence, it’s not always comfort that follows.

Sometimes it’s conviction.

Sometimes it’s a call that unsettles things before it restores.

Sometimes the voice that breaks through the quiet

invites us into work that feels too big,

too heavy,

too holy.

And, of course, the story, (our story, God’s story) doesn’t end in the temple.

It echoes forward to another night, in another room….

when the risen Jesus stands among his frightened friends and says,

“Peace be with you.”

Then he breathes on them and says,

“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

John’s gospel reminds us of another moment when God breaks the silence

not with thunder, but with breath.

Not with condemnation, but with peace.

Not with noise, but with Spirit.

And then Jesus says something strange.

At first glance, it might not even seem to really fit here…

Jesus says: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

In other words, God entrusts us with the power of mercy….

and the responsibility of what happens when mercy is withheld.

The breath of Christ becomes the breath of the Church,

and suddenly our listening for God’s Word must become the living of God’s peace,

our peace is tied up in our participation in God’s work of reconciliation.

It’s as if Jesus says,

“You have heard the Word.

Now speak it with your lives.

Let my peace move through you,

and my forgiveness take flesh in you.”

As I reflected on this story of Samuel and Eli, I was comforted by the similarity between that time and this one:

The word of the Lord is rare in our time, too.

But this story reminded me that it is NOT because God has stopped speaking,

but because we have forgotten how to listen….

and perhaps, how to respond once we’ve heard….

So maybe faith begins again here….

in the quiet,

as we tune out the world’s noise,

with the candlelight of the church flickering dimly,

with our hearts turned toward the whisper of God’s voice.

Maybe faith begins with our collective courage to pray together,

“Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.”

And when God breaks through the noise, and into the silence

may what we hear not only bring us peace,

but send us into the world

to speak peace,

to breathe forgiveness,

and to live as those who know that the lamp of God has not gone out.

Because light shines in the darkness and the darkness can not overcome it! And thanks be to God for this! Amen.