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“Speak, for Your Servant is Listening,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 1/18/15

“Speak, for Your Servant is Listening”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, CO

by the Rev. Melissa St. Clair

January 18, 2015

When you’re just starting seminary, stories about your call to ministry are life blood.  Everyone has one, and sharing them can easily become the pulse of just about every gathering.

For some, they’d tried to do other things with their lives.  They’d held full-time, and often well-compensated, positions in the corporate world before the call became too strong to ignore.  For others, there was a life event that radically altered the way they viewed their lives and the world.  For others, it was affirmation from people around them that they saw gifts for ministry within them.  For others, it was a clear revelation from God – if not a burning bush, then maybe another sign that was unmistakable.

And then there were those to whom God spoke directly.  Those stories.  Those were the ones that really got your heart racing and – depending on what tradition you grew up in – made you feel somewhat suspicious.   Maybe it was part jealousy; coveting the clear way forward that such an occurrence would surely provide.  Maybe it was part skepticism; does God really speak in plain English to plain people?  And if so, why to her and not to me?  And now that’s sounding an awful lot like jealousy again.

We read this morning two call stories – the first is from John’s gospel.

READ JOHN 1:43-51

The second call story we find in the Old Testament, from the beginning of the narrative that spans two books – 1 and 2 Samuel.  1 Samuel marks the shift from a time when the tribes of Israel structured people’s lives to a time of monarchy rule, when kings would rule Israel and Judah.  Even the governing grass can be greener on the other side.  Israel started longing for a king, like the nations around them had.  When that desire was fulfilled, the concentration of power ended up in human hands, which, of course, came with plenty of difficulties.

The priest Eli makes an appearance early on in Samuel, as do his two sons, both of whom are also priests. Corrupt ones, as it turns out.  One day, Eli notices a woman praying outside the temple silently, her moving lips the only indication of her intentions.  As we see on other occasions throughout scripture, an instance of faithfulness is interpreted as act of drunkenness.  In lieu of pastoral care, Eli tells the woman to put away her wine.

The woman, Hannah, stands her ground.  She explains to Eli that it isn’t the bottle she’s been pouring out; it’s her soul.  Hannah wants more than anything a child of her own, and she’s willing to promise that child’s life to service in the temple in exchange for that opportunity.  Sure enough, as soon as her son Samuel was old enough to eat on his own, Hannah brings him to Eli, saying, “As long as he lives, he is given to the Lord” (1 Sam. 1:28).

We pick up Samuel’s story in chapter 3.

READ 1 SAMUEL 3:1-10

Ruby Bridges was six years old when she walked into William Frantz Elementary School for the first time.  Nothing out of the ordinary in the life of a six-year-old, except there usually isn’t a crowd that could rival Mardi Gras waiting outside the school for your typical first grader.

Her mother, like Samuel’s, had taken a chance and made a promise.  It was 1960 in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Lucille Bridges and her husband Abon responded to a request from the NAACP volunteering their daughter Ruby to participate in the integration of the New Orleans school system.  Or least Lucille did.  Ruby’s father was much more hesitant.  It was Lucille who saw this as an opportunity not only to get a better education for her daughter; it was also a chance to take a step forward for all African-American children.

As soon as Ruby entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out.  All the teachers refused to teach while a black child was enrolled, except for one.  Mrs. Barbara Henry from Boston, Mass., taught Ruby alone for over a year, giving her an education as full as if she’d been teaching an entire class.

Ruby was threatened daily.  She could only eat food brought from home because there was a woman who would threaten to poison Ruby each day as she went to school.  She’d have to pass by a woman protesting with a wooden coffin containing a black baby doll, more disturbing than any words hurled at her, by her own account.

It was her mother who suggested that Ruby pray on the way to school.  She did, and she found that it provided her protection from the filth flung at her on those daily walks into the school.  One day Mrs. Henry saw Ruby’s lips moving as she passed through the mob.  As Ruby entered her classroom, Mrs. Henry asked what Ruby had said to them.  “I wasn’t talking to them,” Ruby told her.  “I was praying for them.”  Usually Ruby prayed in the car on her way to school, but that day she’d forgotten until she was in the crowd.[1]

Ruby Bridges, now Ruby Bridges Hall, grew up into a woman who honored the spirit of her mother’s commitment of her – a commitment to a life of service and working for the greater good, for justice for all.  Today, she chairs the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which she formed in 1999 to promote the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences.  The organization’s mission is to stop using children to perpetuate racism.[2]

How did these mothers, Hannah and Lucille, know when they made these commitments that their kids would be okay?  They didn’t.

There was no instruction manual, no road map, no blueprint.  There was faith.  There was hope.  There was trust.

It can be easy to get discouraged when God’s purposes for our lives and our world seem unclear.  After all, how many of us can say we saw Jesus coming toward us asking us to follow him like he did to Philip and Nathanael?  How many of us can say we’ve heard God calling our name in the night, repeatedly, like Samuel did?

Maybe you have.  I’m not here to discount that.  Far be it from me to say what God can and cannot do.  That’s business too risky for me.

How many of us can say that we’ve felt uncertain about what it is God is calling us to do?  About who God is calling us to be?

Would it have taken God so long to draft a blueprint of this kingdom we’re to be building??

As my friend Erin points out, “The first disciples didn’t have printed tracts, a 7-point salvation plan or a ‘repeat after me’ prayer for asking Jesus into your heart.  Yet they still got out there and told the good news to enough people that we’re still hearing it today.”[3]

It’s been said that the most successful people start before they’re ready.  If you’re working on something important, you’re pulled by excitement and pushed by confusion at the same time.  You’re bound to feel uncertain, unprepared, unqualified.  And yet – what you have right now is enough.  You can plan, delay, revise all you want.  Who you are, what you have, and what you know right now is enough.[4]

We could say the same thing about the most faithful people too, couldn’t we?

Samuel did.  The first disciples did.  Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.

[1] From The Story at rubybridges.com.

[2] All information, except noted above, regarding Ruby Bridges copied from Wikipedia.  See full entry here: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges.

[3] Erin Wathen, posted to Facebook on January 17, 2015.

[4] James Clear, Successful People Start Before They Feel Ready.  Read full article here: jamesclear.com/successful-people-start-before-they-feel-ready.