Samuel 3:1-21
“It’s What You Leave Behind”
July 19, 2009
Rev. Tom Harris
It is good to be back at Govans after being away for two weeks of vacation. My family and I spent the last two weeks visiting my mother down in Daphne, Alabama. Daphne is east of the city of Mobile, on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay. So, I really just went over to the Eastern Shore. My Mom lives on the outer edge of Mobile’s suburban sprawl in a subdivision and though I was looking forward to visiting with her and my brother and his family I was not really looking forward to spending two weeks in suburbia, USA. However, it turned out to be very pleasant. My mom’s house even though it’s in a subdivision, backs up to some woods. Last time I visited, her back yard was just a large square lot of sodded grass with some trees and the lot was surrounded by a low fence and then the woods past the fence. It was like they just cleared the lot with bulldozers and put sod on what used to be forest floor. But, over the past few years she has done some landscaping and replaced the further half of the sodded lawn where the trees are with pine mulch and planted about 20 bushes in the mulch so that the woods now seem to come up into the yard and one can sit on the back deck and feel like you are right on the edge of Alabama lowland forests.
In addition, the suburban sprawl even had some redeeming qualities. The huge outdoor shopping center that is about two miles from her home had a large fountain designed for children to play in. There was no standing water in the fountain, but there were several concentric circles of fountains of water of varying volumes shooting out of the ground in a variety of patterns and draining toward the center, while children could run and play in and out of the fountains on the non slip concrete all around. Around the fountain were tables with umbrellas so parents could sit in the shade and watch.
Let me just stop there and say wouldn’t that be a great thing to install out here on the front lawn of the church: a play fountain. It would draw families of all economic groups from local neighborhoods and all over the area to our church grounds and we could just wander around on hot summer days passing out brochures about Govans. It would be a service to the community and an evangelical opportunity. But as I thought about this I realized that thinking about such things was actually work and I was supposed to be on vacation so I stopped immediately.
Also over the two weeks, we went to see a movie, we went to the beach at Gulf Shores a couple times and a water park one day and for a couple nights Sasha and I left the kids with Grandma and went to celebrate our 15th anniversary at Panama City Beach. So all in all it was just a great vacation. And I do joke about making sure no work was accomplished, but there was one moment on the vacation that 1 Samuel chapter 3 jumped into my mind. Near the end of the vacation, my Mom took us all on a chartered 42 foot sail boat on Mobile Bay. Now I grew up sailing on the Intercoastal Waterway along the East coast of Florida. I love sailing and often wish I had the opportunity to make sailing a regular part of my life again. But, Oscar had never been on a sailboat. So, as we climbed aboard I started telling him about the different sails and lines and parts of the boat and he was actually interested in learning about it. Then when we got under way he and I walked up to the bow of the boat and sat down as the boat crashed through the waves before us. As we sat we saw pelicans flying around and I started telling him how pelicans dive head first, straight down into the water when they see a fish and they make a huge splash as they catch the fish in their big net like mouths. Then he asked me how you tell when the pelican is about to dive and I said, “Well, they kind of start to stall a little in flight and they tilt slightly toward the water and that’s when you know the pelican is about to dive and crash into the water.” And just as I described it we watched a pelican fly by and then stall a little bit, tilt toward the water and dive. It was the kind of moment you can’t experience from reading a text book and you don’t really want your children to learn it a class room with 30 other kids. It’s the kind of moment you want to have with a child, as you sit on the bow of a sailboat and watch the subject perform just as you describe.
It occurred to me at that moment that this is how Eli, must have felt when Samuel came to him in the middle of the night. Eli had dedicated his life to the service of God. He sought God’s Word in his life and God’s guidance both for himself and on behalf of others. He already knew that he had failed with his own sons to teach them their duty to the people as priests and his sons were corrupt and awful men. It had also been a long time since he had had an authentic spiritual experience himself. The Word of God was rare in those days. So at first when his servant the boy Samuel came in the middle of the night asking why Eli called for him, Eli did not think much of it. But, after Samuel came in the room for the third time it struck him what was happening. His heart must have quickened as he realized that Samuel was receiving a spiritual message. He was having a spiritual vision. All the scriptures Samuel had memorized to this point and the precise codes of conduct he had learned could not guide the boy through this moment. Eli had an opportunity now to pass on a life lesson to Samuel at a moment in time when Samuel’s heart was wide open to understanding this new experience.
So, then with the love of a father and a lifetime of faithful service to God, Eli, pulled Samuel close in that dark room and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “Samuel, the next time, you hear that voice, don’t leave the room. Stay right where you are. Something amazing is about to happen. When your name is called again, sit up in your bed, open your heart and your mind and say ‘speak, Lord, for you servant is listening.’ And then just wait there in the night and listen.”
So, Samuel went back and did what he was taught and had a profound spiritual experience. He had a vision of the Lord.
Now if the story were to end there it would be very nice little story. It would be a touchy feely story about teaching a child faith and spirituality. But, if we end the story there we miss the edge which is central to the message. The main point of the message that Samuel received was that God is about to bring Eli’s service as priest of the land to a bitter end. In the next chapter we find that Eli’s service ends with the death of his two sons in battle and his own death upon hearing that the Ark of the Covenant has been capture by the Philistines.
In his late night vision this is the message Samuel receives and then at Eli’s insistence he shares it with Eli who hears of his families down fall. So the big picture of the story is that Eli helps Samuel receive a message from God that Eli and his family are to be completely destroyed and Samuel will supplant them. So much for the sentimental touchy feely father-son moment.
But, in fact, though it is not touchy feely anymore, it is still a powerful moment that is profoundly true for every relationship that is between an older teacher and a younger learner. Parent to child, oldest sibling to youngest, grandparent to grandchild. The message is “I teach you so that you can replace me. I give you this knowledge because one day I am going to die.”
Whether it is the way pelicans dive, or how to be attentive to the Spirit’s call, or how to live a good life or how to bake good bread or how to use a carpenter’s square or how to treat a friend or how to treat a stranger, everything we teach to the next generation, is taught so that they can replace us. Everything we give is given so that life can carry on without us. It is our calling. It is our duty.
But, so not to end on a totally down note, let’s remember that our sharing with others, our teaching to the next generation is not just so we can be replaced but it is one way that we live forever. In other words, one expression of eternal life, is that we live on in the next generation through what we give them. I want to close with the lyrics of a country song. I’m an unapologetic country music fan. This is a song by Randy Travis, called “Three Wooden Crosses”. They song is about four people riding on a bus. They are a farmer, a teacher, a prostitute and preacher. The bus is in an accident and three of the four people are killed and one lives.
A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher,
Ridin' on a midnight bus bound for Mexico.
One's headed for vacation, one for higher education,
An' two of them were searchin' for lost souls.
That driver never even saw the stop sign.
An' eighteen wheelers can't stop on a dime.
There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.
I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.
That farmer left a harvest, a home and eighty acres,
The faith an' love for growin' things in his young son's heart.
An' that teacher left her wisdom in the minds of lots of children:
Did her best to give 'em all a better start.
An' that preacher whispered: "Can't you see the Promised Land?"
As he laid his blood-stained bible in that hooker's hand.
There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, Heaven only knows.
I guess it's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.
That's the story that our preacher told last Sunday.
As he held that blood-stained bible up,
For all of us to see.
He said: "Bless the farmer, and the teacher, an' that preacher;
"Who gave this Bible to my mamma,
"Who read it to me."
There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway,
Why there's not four of them, now I guess we know.
It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you,
It's what you leave behind you when you go.
