I speak to you in the Name of the All-Loving, All-Wise God, who was, and is, and is to come. 

I’m delighted to be here in this community of sacred resisters on this Sunday when we remember the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.  and at a time in the church calendar when many people focus on turning points, mystery, and divine encounter. 

I’ve always been intrigued by stories of everyday people who suddenly brush up against the holy. As a teenager, I had a friend who shared an experience of waking suddenly in the middle of the night and startling an angel who was perched nearby. I don’t know what she saw. But the idea that an angel might be so gentle and meek that it might be startled by the human gaze—that part I believed.  I remember telling her that I did believe in angels, but I wasn’t ready to see one. And for months afterwards if I awoke in the middle of the night, I kept my eyes closed. And I’d clap or wave my arms or cough or even on a couple of occasions say “I’m about to open my eyes” just to give any potential heavenly beings a warning to take cover and move out of view….  Of course, such encounters are largely out of our control. They come at the divine initiative and have effects we can only understand in hindsight.

Our text for today is Samuel’s story of encountering God. Now Samuel was the last person anyone expected to be the recipient of divine revelation. He was an outsider, a servant working for a spiritual insider—Eli. Samuel was expected to be a spectator to God’s mighty acts through another, not a channel for those acts himself. But God lavishes attention on people in the shadows, people who are just living their lives, minding their business until they have an encounter that changes everything. 

Our text from 1 Samuel 3 reads: 

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, “Samuel! Samuel!” and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, “Samuel!” Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call, my son; lie down again.” Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” 

So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”1

Then the Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.” Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” He said, “Here I am.” Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”

Now our text is an account of a mystical experience—a vision—that cannot be fully expressed in language.  In truth it is a thin glimpse of the divine, sheer as spider’s web, but enough to lift that delicate veil between the visible and invisible worlds.  In the Ancient Near East, such experiences were often described as dreams whether they took place while sleeping or awake and that’s the case here even though the term “dream” isn’t used in the text.  And because in that culture dreams were respected as vehicles through which deities sometimes spoke, they were tested by certain criteria: a setting in a sanctuary; near a sacred object; at night; the dreamer is awakened, called by name three times; the deity approaches and stands nearby—is in some way visible or feels near; the dreamer receives a message about the deity’s intended action; and remembers the message upon waking. The bible scholars who outline these criteria note that the point is not to provide a formula; divine encounters vary too widely for that.2 Nor should the dreamer feel superiority for having received the dream. Rather the aim is to show us the spiritual importance of being open to God, sensitive, discerning, listening. 

Samuel’s name in Hebrew, שְׁמוּאֵ֛ל (Shemuel), even sounds like the Hebrew word for “hear,” (shema). One of the meanings of Samuel’s name is roughly translated “I have asked of God” or “God has heard.” And this is because just two chapters ago, his mother, Hannah, was praying for a child, moving her lips in her supplication though making no sound. God heard her prayer even though it was fainter than a whisper. 

These references to hearing shouldn’t be reduced to literal audibility. Hearing is a metaphor—and an imperfect one—an ancient way of describing an awakening of consciousness, a sharpened perception. Or, as the great spiritual writer, Evelyn Underhill puts it, we humans are “amphibious” creatures who crawl around on the land of the visible world but are also able to swim in the realm of the Spirit.3 And that means we can hear, we can feel God whispering to us. When God whispers, God is very near. When God whispers it’s to strengthen a divine-human relationship. It’s a sign of intimacy, closeness. When God whispers, something important is being said. God is getting someone’s attention, to nudging them, making them supple to a new idea or opportunity, giving them a heads up about something very important, something they can’t understand without help. 

Oh God has a dramatic side, and we hear a lot about that. Sometimes people are overwhelmed, seemingly shattered by hearing from God. At Siani, for example, God thunders after the 10 Commandments are given and the people were so terrified that according to one rabbinic tale, God had to dispatch angels to put a hand on each person’s heart to calm them down. But God does not thunder at little Samuel. The text suggests a faint, voice, more of a whisper—a voice he seems to strain to hear.  In his youth he thinks it’s far away, but a whisper suggests closeness, intimacy. 

Samuel’s story is about how a whisper equipped a young boy to confront a grown man;

The story of how an outsider confronted the religious establishment;

About the weak confronting the strong. 

Such is the power of the divine whisper. 

Let me tell you a story about another divine encounter at a turning point in American history when racial segregation (and its interlocking apparatus to silence queer folx, women, people with disabilities and poor people) began to crumble. The year was 1956. Martin Luther King, Jr. was curved over a cup of coffee at a tiny kitchen table in his house in Montgomery, Alabama. He’d just hung up the phone with someone who threatened to kill him. He’d received many such threats in the past and been able to shake them off. But this one felt different. He worried about how his personal risks were being passed to his wife and child sleeping in the other room. And prayed with the urgency known only by the desperate. As he tells it: 

I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud.

The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. ‘I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid … I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.’

At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced God before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: ‘Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.’ Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.4

King got no promise of wealth or fame; no forecast of all that would happen in the next decade. And the hate speech and the threats? Well, they continued. The very house he prayed in was bombed days later. And high moments like receiving the Nobel Prize and Honorary Degrees would come alongside a shower of hate mail. He had to draw on the power of that whisper again and again and again. 

And I don’t know, but I believe that some twelve years later, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, unable to speak as the life seeped out of his body, that Martin felt the mysterious calm known by those who are enveloped in the gentle arms of God. And he heard a familiar whisper. 

Now King lived at a time of great cultural optimism. America’s fruit was still ripening on the vine. We have lived beyond him long enough to see that fruit fall to the ground and rot. We live at a time when the promise of equal, desegregated schools feels like a pipedream. When a swirl of coalescing forces make it is harder to build affordable housing than expensive housing. When our tortured planet wails for relief every way she knows how and is still ignored. We live at a time when violence stalks soldiers and civilians—in grocery stores, classrooms, and on battlefields across the globe. As the Apostle Paul says, ‘we wrestle not with flesh and blood’—or personalities, ‘but with powers and principalities’ that numb us to the suffering of others.5 Day by day, we’re being groomed to look into the faces of hungry children without wincing, to shrug off the elderly writhing in their beds, and consider no war an emergency as long as it happens on another shore. 

I wish these problems could be zapped by the adrenaline of a protest march or consumed by outrage. Protest has its place—a crucial place. But protest alone is not enough to make the dragon flinch. It will take moral imagination. The kind that, in Toni Morrison’s words, sees “a comfortable life resting on the shoulders of other people’s misery” as “an abomination.”6 We will need the supernatural power that comes from drawing on the songs, stories, and prayers of saints, martyrs, and spiritual ancestors like Martin Luther King. We will need the supernatural power of the divine whisper.  

Now let me tell you another story, one that’s still unfolding, about how the same God who whispered to Samuel in the temple, and King in his kitchen, appears to people today. Not just to Jews or Christians, but to Buddhists, Muslims, Bahá’ís, people of all faiths, no faith. Not just to men, but to people of all genders. Not just to the young but to the middle-aged and the elderly. 

You could be relaxed, curled up with a book and grilled cheese, a cat purring nearby, and God may come, stand nearby and whisper. You could be sitting at your office cubicle puzzling over some impossible problem or preparing for a city council meeting, and God may come, stand nearby and whisper. You could be worrying in a doctor’s office or gripping the armrest on a bumpy flight. And God may come stand nearby and whisper. Maybe you’ll sense a hard word of truth that begs to be spoken by you. At this time. Maybe you’ll feel a soft word of assurance telling you everything will be alright.  

What will happen if you listen to that voice? What will happen if you keep listening though all the powers of hell rise up in revolt? Speak Lord. Speak Lord. Your servants are listening. 

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May the gentle whisper of God guide you, comfort you, empower you, ignite you. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen.