Thetford First Congregational Church: Welcome

Good Words

Past Sermons Archive

Sermon 06/13/2010

Speak, Lord, for Your Servant Is Listening ~ by Reverend Thomas Cary Kinder
June 13, 2010 Third Sunday after Pentecost, Youth Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 71:5-6, 17-18; I Samuel 3:1-10; 3:19-4:1

We are here because of a man named Jesus who was part of the Hebrew people, but the Hebrew people might well have died out long before Jesus if it were not for a King named David, and David would not have become King if not for a great prophet named Samuel, and Samuel would not have become a prophet if it were not for the story we heard today, if the boy Samuel had not gone to the old priest Eli that night when God kept calling him, and Eli had not told him to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” But Eli would never have had the chance to say that to Samuel, and this whole chain of events leading to Jesus and to us being here today might never have happened, if Samuel’s mother had not brought him to church.

Many of us could say the same of our parents or grandparents. How many of us have received in church at least once in our lives just the wisdom or encouragement we needed, how many of us have learned a way to pray that helps us through hard times, how many of us have received comfort and support, how many of us have felt rejuvenated by this little weekly pocket of time away from our responsibilities, how many of us have gotten involved in a church program for social justice or charity that helped change the world around us for the better, how many of us learned to speak or sing in public because of church, how many of us saw our children become more confident or kinder or wiser because of church?

Think of all that has happened because some adults in our lives cared enough to bring us to church when we were young.

Of course, it is not quite enough just to come to church. We have to be at least a little bit open to it. If we come kicking and screaming and never open to what is here, the odds are we will never come back, and all the good we could have received in our lives from coming here may not come to pass, and all the things God is trying to say to us may go unheard, because we will not have been in church to have someone older and wiser say to us, “Go back to bed and say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ And then listen.”

It comes naturally to some children to kick and scream against going to church. It is to be expected. That is one of the church’s challenges. We need to translate the church’s gifts into terms that kicking, screaming children can understand as being in their interest to receive. Just as adults need beauty in church and need to feel their heart moved and opened by music or word or silence, children need attractions, too. They need yummy food, of course, but they also need programs that relate meaningfully to their lives. If they can experience even the smallest taste of the Spirit’s power here, they may leave for a while, but they will be among those who know to come back.

It seems to me that the entire chain of God’s work in the world depends on our listening, on our paying attention to what God is doing or saying within or around us. Samuel had to listen to God, but also old Eli had to listen to the boy Samuel, and through Samuel to God. Eli would not have known how to do that if he had not spent a lifetime learning to listen to God’s voice speaking in all kinds of ways.

Our youth groups and confirmation classes have tried to teach youth to listen to God. The first two youth I worked with in this church were Sarah Hall and Tim Johnson. I still have the notes they wrote when I asked them one day in 1998 what they felt called to do in life. They answered in a variety of ways, but the only specific jobs they mentioned were that Sarah wanted to be a famous actor or athlete and Tim wanted to be a professional snowboarder or skateboarder. Today they are both teachers, and Tim is preparing to apply to a Ph.D. program (and not in snowboarding or skateboarding). There is no way to know how much their training here in listening and serving contributed to their decisions, nor is there any way to trace what gifts Sarah and Tim received here that they are now passing on to students in Colorado and Massachusetts, but we can certainly imagine that we are part of the chain of God’s work in them and through them. Both Sarah and Tim said that day that they wanted to live in a world without violence or war. We can imagine that their experience in this church is helping them move the world a little closer to God’s realm of peace through the values they are teaching their students.

We need to teach our children to listen, but also we ourselves need to listen. We need to listen again today to what God is saying to us about our calling to serve our children and youth.

On April 27^th, 2007 this congregation unanimously passed a five-year strategic plan. We call it the DOV plan, DOV standing for Defining Our Vision. The planning process was guided by a book entitled Holy Conversations—it was all about listening to one another, listening to how God was speaking through us. We had conversations one on one, in small groups, in committee and board and council meetings and in congregational meetings. One of the things that came up over and over was how important our programs for children and youth are to us. If the Spirit was saying anything clearly, it was that this was part of who we are and what God is calling us to do.

This calling is reflected in the DOV plan, but the need to listen did not end when we adopted its mission and vision statements and objectives and goals. We need to keep listening every step of the way as we try to find the best way to fulfill our plan in an ever-changing context. In a minute, I am going to invite you to take part in a litany of listening. I am going to read parts of our DOV plan and ask you to listen for God’s voice speaking to us through it anew today.

Before we read the litany, though, I want to go over your line in it. You have only one line that you repeat, and it is Samuel’s line that says, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” There are two things I want to point out about this line. First, it begins with an invitation to God to speak, and it ends with the assurance that we are listening. This really is for our benefit more than God’s. It is to remind us of our intention, and to remind all those other voices inside us to become quiet that tend to chatter away and distract us from God.

The second thing to notice is that the heart of the statement establishes our relationship to God. Progressive churches tend to avoid the word “Lord” because of its associations with oppressive, undemocratic, patriarchal power structures, and that is a well-reasoned policy. But there is no other metaphor quite like it for expressing our relationship to God’s higher power. God is our boss. God is our judge. God is our protector. God is the owner of the land we inhabit, and has absolute claim over our lives, though we are free to rebel and be the servants of our self-will or of other powers. If we want to be in right relation to God, it will be as humble, loving, attentive servants of the most loving, wisest and strongest force imaginable. We will be like Mary, the sister of Martha, sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to him above all other authorities in her life, including her sister Martha and her nagging responsibilities. The one word, “Lord,” sums all this up. If we can get past all the baggage of that word and sit as if at the feet of a perfect Lord of love, we will know that there is nothing else in the world that we need think of or do to be happy and successful but listen and serve.

So I invite you now to turn to the insert of your bulletin where you will find the “Litany on Our Calling to Serve Youth.” Please pause each time after you read the line, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Close your eyes and listen for what God is speaking to you.

Litany on Our Calling to Serve Youth