Sunday Sermon 9th June - Communion

Communion

9/6/23

Call to worship

Hymn 559: There is a redeemer

Reading: 1 Samuel 3 John

Prayer

Hymn 644: O Jesus I have promised

Sermon

Prayer

Hymn 655: For your generous providing

Communion

Hymn 654: ‘Lift up your hearts’

Benediction

Hymn 533: Will you come and follow me

Welcome to our meditation for 9th June.

Today we look at God speaking to us, and how difficult it may be to hear what he is saying.

What do we do when that is the case?

We will look at this after John leads us in our prayer and reading for today.

Sermon

There is a thing about many Scots actors,

most of them have a story about a time when a famous director phoned them up to ask them if they would consider being in a huge blockbuster film,

and being Scots actors they presume that it is a wind up by one of their friends and so they tell them where to go, only to get phone call five minutes from their agent telling them that the phone call had been legitimate.

Listen to any talk show and you will find those stories abounding.

This is the story of Samuel.

God speaks to him and he doesn’t realise that it is God.

And why should he?

Samuel’s story is really quite sad.

His father has two wives, one of them who seems to be able to have children at the drop of a hat, and the other, Hannah, who seems to struggle.

So she goes to the temple to pray about it and the priest, Eli, presumes she is drunk for some reason and berates her.

When he realises he is wrong he asks her forgiveness and promises to pray that she can have children.

She in return promises that if she is blessed in this way then her firstborn will be given to the temple.

A year later Samuel is born and at about the age of three he was given to the temple to serve there.

That seems all very noble, but imagine this from Samuel’s point of view.

At the age of three he is abandoned by his parents to a priest who has done a terrible job of bringing up his own children.

He only sees his mother once a year when she comes to the temple with her husband and she gives him a new tunic every year.

I suspect that is the only clothing he has.

For that short time he sees the only person that really cares for him, and maybe after a few years she sees he has brothers and sisters, but they are never left at the temple, they get to stay with their mother.

They get to play with each other, they get to have a growing relationship with their mother and each other.

He gets to see her once a year for maybe fifteen minutes.

Even though he is living in the temple, why should God care about him, his own mother doesn’t care about him to want him near her.

The priest he was given to doesn’t want him near. To Eli this is not a son to look after, this is a servant to instruct.

The priest has a room to himself; Samuel isn’t even given a room, he just sleeps somewhere in the temple.

Just listening desperately for Eli’s voice so that he can make him happy, he wants to please an adult, because then he will be noticed.

God speaks but Samuel doesn’t believe that God would speak to him, so he doesn’t hear God speaking, he presumes it is Eli.

So a couple of insights which I hope are relevant.

The first is this.

It doesn’t matter what Samuel thinks about himself,

Samuel may not believe that God would care about him, want to speak to him, want to have anything to do with him.

But the truth is that God does care, God really cares.

How many of you have come here today, and even though it is communion, thinks that this communion is the churches communion?

This isn’t the churches communion, this is your communion.

God is offering these gifts to YOU.

The act of sacrifice on the cross to show his level of love, that was to show his level of love for YOU.

The promise of his presence in his life, this promise is for YOU.

The hope that this creates a lasting relationship where you can express that gift of love to others, that hope is for YOU.

God is offering these gifts to YOU, and God is watching to see if you accept those gifts, is longing for you to accept those gifts.

Like Samuel, you happen to be in God’s temple, you may have been sleeping all these years in here believing that God isn’t interested in you, but God is calling to YOU.

And here is a message of hope that might be even more important.

You may be terrified that everything that I am saying is true, but even though it is true, you haven’t heard God.

You haven’t believed that you are good enough for God, you may even believe that God wouldn’t want to talk to you.

Or maybe you feel guilty over something you have done and you are scared to acknowledge God.

Or maybe you have been so busy, so distracted that God’s voice was such a small voice to hear over all the clamour of the other voices calling for your attention.

And maybe you are terrified because all this time God has been trying to speak to you, and you haven’t realised it, and maybe the chance is gone.

Well here is the message of hope.

God never gives up.

God keeps on calling.

Again and again and again Samuel gets it wrong.

And God keeps on calling.

There is a story that Jesus tells of a son that breaks his bonds with his father.

And every day the father goes out looking for his son, hoping that he will want to come back home.

We don’t know how many years he went out to look, but every day the father would leave the house and look at the distant horizon, hoping to see his son and rush towards him to help him home.

And one day he sees that lost son and the celebration are so great.

What Jesus doesn’t tell us is how long the father would have gone out, I think the presumption is that he would never have stopped looking, never have given up on that son.

Whatever you do, never think that God has given up on you.

Never believe that you have lost that chance of a relationship with God.

God called on Samuel, even though he never believed that he was good enough.

And God never gave up on Samuel, no matter how many times he got it wrong.

This wonderful story is in the Bible because what is true of Samuel, is true for us as well.

God is calling on us, no matter how much we may believe that we are not good enough for God to even bother with us.

And God never gives up on us, no matter how many times we get it wrong.

Let us pray

Heavenly Father

You call us to awaken.

You call us to listen.

It feels to us Lord that a word from you is rare in these days.

There seems to be a lot of darkness out there.

We live in times of great uncertainty and it is difficult to know in whom to trust.

Every political party is telling us that we really should trust them, and not trust the other lot, but the other lot are saying the exact same thing.

Every nation is telling us that we should trust in their leadership and not trust the other nation, but then we find that the other nation is saying the exact same thing.

So many voices, all screaming into our ears, all demanding to be heard, all claiming to be the one voice that should be listened to.

Within this cacophony of noise help us to hear that we are being called by the Holy One

whose presence stands beside us.

Reveal your Word, lamp of God,

fan the flame of faith within us,

stand next to us

allow our souls to tingle.

Help us to see the truths that are eternal and need to be hear again and again.

That we are loved.

That we are loved deeply.

That we are loved so deeply that you were willing to risk even the life of your son to reveal that truth to us.

That we have a purpose within that love, the simple purpose to show that others are loved as well.