Creekside Church Sermon of January 19, 2003 "From Monologue to Dialogue" 1 Samuel 3:1-10	Rev. David Bibbee
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George was head over heels in love with Debbie, but the feeling wasn't mutual. He tried for months to get a date, and each time was painfully rejected. Finally Debbie agreed to go out with him. George was told to meet her at a certain place at a certain time.

At last, the moment he longed for came. He was seated next to his beloved. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a ream of all the lover letters he had written to her over all those months. The letters were full of passion and pain and burning desire, expressing his yearning to be in loving union with her. George began reading the letters. Letter by letter, on and on he went. After two hours he still hadn't read them all.

Debbie had enough. She stood and said, "What kind of an idiot are you? Your letters are all about me and how much you adore me. After all your pleading here I am right next to you and all you're interested in reading is your stupid letters!"

Debbie knew what it was like to be God. "I'm right here," God says, "but you're lost in reflective fog thinking about me and talking about me and trying to find me through your books. Why don't you just shut up, look and listen!"

God addresses us. God listens to us. God answers us. God has a voice, at least this is what we have been told. But we wonder sometimes. Okay…lots of times. People say they hear God with great clarity. Some say God has spoken to them in an audible voice. Others talk about their conversations with God like they would describe conversing with the cashier at the grocery store. This leaves most folks feeling out of the loop-left out because they have not heard anything like the voice of God speaking to them. Perhaps we have a "hunch" of The Holy from time to time-some intuition or dream, perhaps, which makes us wonder if it could have been God or if we were only hearing ourselves talking to ourselves.

We can all talk "about" God, but what about "with" God? Our text today comes from a time when the chosen people talked about God, but it had been a long time since anyone had heard from God. Our lesson says the word of the Lord was "rare in those days." There was an occasional vision, once in a great while, but that was about it. No one had heard from God till very early one morning when God spoke to a boy. "Samuel! Samuel!" the voice said. Thinking it was Eli, Samuel got up and went to his mentor to see what he wanted. Eli didn't need anything. He hadn't called Samuel. "Lie down. Go to sleep," Eli said.

Hannah, Samuel's mother, had made God a promise. She was barren. She prayed to God and said, "If I have a son he will be dedicated to you." Hannah's prayer was answered. Samuel was born. After he was weaned he was entrusted to the prophet Eli to train him in the ways of God. Samuel may have been twelve years old at the time. He slept each night in the same room as the Ark of the Covenant - the portable throne upon which sat the invisible presence of God. Samuel went back to bed and soon dozed off. Then he woke a second time to the voice.

"Psssssst! Samuel!" it said. Again the boy went to Eli. "I'm here. You called me." Eli replied, "I did not call you. I told you not to eat that pepperoni pizza before bedtime." If it wasn't Eli calling, Samuel had no clue of who it could be. Remember, it had been a very long time since God's voice had been heard. After the third un-summoned call, Eli realized what was happening. The drought was over. The silent treatment had stopped. God had something to say, and was saying it to Samuel. Go lie down and listen. If God calls, answer, "Speak Lord, your servant hears." And once again, God spoke. Samuel responded, "Speak Lord, for you servant hears."

The encounter certainly wasn't something Samuel expected. Come to think of it, none of the cast of personalities in the Bible that God called ever expected it. Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, David, Mary, Peter, Paul - all were minding their own business when God called them and sent them in another direction. Life is so different from then till now, but not God. God still is. God is here among us hidden in plain sight. God still speaks while we are minding our own business, and the business we mind makes it hard for us to listen to much of anything else -- God included.

When I was a student at Manchester College, a popular class was Paul Keller's "Interpersonal Communication." The primary textbook for the class was written by Paul. It was titled Monologue to Dialogue, and dealt with how relationships are created and nurtured through caring and careful discourse. It's something we sure could use today because there are so few good models for dialogue, especially on television. People don't talk "with" one another, but "at" and "through" one another. Conversations are adversarial, in-your-face. Conversation is competition. See who scores more points. Little listening. Little dialogue. Lots of monologue.

If we have a hard time listening to others, how will God get through? To make matters more difficult we live in a culture that tells us we are on our own-we are independent agents who are free from all externals. We sail through life each in our own little ship of which we are the admiral. We become what we decide we will become. We don't need God to tell us what to do. We've evolved beyond the need of having someone "out there." We've got the brains to figure life out by ourselves. And people who believe this are among the loneliest people in the world. Life becomes just a lonely monologue.

It only took me a day and a half into my solo sojourn into the wilderness last summer to start talking to myself. It started with questions. "Why did you leave your sunscreen back at the cabin?" "What are you fixing us for supper?" It wasn't long until I was having conversations with myself. "That's a beautiful pike." "It is, isn't it?" "What did you catch it on?" "A #14 chrome-finish Husky Jerk. I've got another one if you want it." "Thanks, David." I discovered that I am not a very interesting person to talk to. The experience impressed upon me the fact that we weren't made to live monologue lives.

In the book Life After God, a father reads his little boy fairy tales about cute animals who get lost in the woods, on highways, and in big cities. He felt a sudden dread having told his son about the animals, filling his head with stories about little creatures who were supposed to have been part of a fairy tale, but who got lost along the way. It became for him an image of the rest of the little boy's life, "Growing up with Kraft TV dinners and beer, in suburban swimming pools and jets that take away the ones we love to far off places and relationships which barely last a night, a generation who got lost along the way."

"Samuel! Hey, Samuel! I'd like a word with you." "Walter. Kristin. Cara. I have something I'd like to ask you." We prefer it the other way around. "Lord, we are still looking for a satisfactory answer about why there is so much suffering in the world. Why do bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people? If you want people to believe in you why don't you give once-and-for-all more concrete evidence which will stand up to scrutiny? Do you hear us? Do you even exist? If you do, can't you clear your throat or something to know you're there?" We know all the questions. And we still wait for answers.

Shouldn't it be the other way around? Instead of asking God questions, shouldn't we listen to the questions God asks us? "Adam, where are you?" "Cain, where is your brother?" "Whom shall I send and who shall go for us?" "I will question you and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" "Who do you say that I am?" "Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing?" "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" "David, son of Lewis and Ruth; Laurie, daughter of Gary and Pauline, do you love me?"

The God of Christianity is not remote or disengaged. Once we come into the world we are not turned loose to go our own way and make our own meaning. What a monumental bore that would be. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing to fall back upon. No one to be accountable to. Nothing worth giving your life to that lasts. The monological life.

God loves us too much to allow that to happen. We were made for dialogue - to answer God's questions with the offering of our lives. If this is so, then how do we listen? You have heard the quote, "God made us with mouths that close and ears that don't, which should tell us something." How do we listen? "Be still and know that I am God." How do we listen? Exodus 14: 14 says, "The Lord will fight for you. You only have to be still." How do we listen? Not by focusing on the earthquake, wind, and fire, but the still small voice of God in silence. W
e listen through prayer.

Eli told Samuel what to say when God called his name. "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." We get it turned around. We want to make sure God is listening. "Hear our prayers, O Lord." "Hear me when I cry out to you." We pull God's pant leg. "Pay attention, God. We want to tell you something." Maybe we would be less concerned about God's silence if we did less talking and did more listening to what God has to say.

It's what we long for, or is it? Someone said, "I think we do all the talking because we are afraid God won't, or, conversely, that God will.

A seeker once came before God in prayer and this is what he said: "God, I have been feeling strained, incompetent, hypocritical, and worth nothing. I seem to have been making one mistake after another revealing to others the inadequacy and fearfulness that have shaped my whole life. Why do I still have these feeling after so many years?" "You don't listen. Much of the strain you experience is the strain required to avoid listening." "I'm afraid to listen to you, God. You go right to the heart, straight through to the center. You're not polite. I don't know how to act around you. Yes, I'm afraid of you. In my mind I am drawn to you. But in my deepest self I am wary; you're going to do something to me." "What will I do to you?" "Take away my life. You'll strip me of everything I have. Make me vulnerable. Now I feel vulnerable, but then I'll "be" vulnerable - naked. I think you would do that because you're unpredictable, at least by human standards. You're dangerous."

"Why do you think I want to harm you?" "Because you demand that we love one another as you loved us and that means loving us to death. To obey your call to love is to put myself in a place where dying becomes possible. Why do you ask us to live like that? I can't think of a worse feeling than being vulnerable. Why do you ask that of me?" "Have I asked that of you?" "Well, not precisely. I mean, not directly…yet. But you would if I gave you the chance. I know you would. That's what you do." "But how do you know what I'll do?" "Well, I don't know for sure, but that's just as bad. Either you will call me to die or you'll do something I'll predict. How can I listen to you when I am so skittish?"

"Just listen and don't presuppose so much. You nurse so many assumptions. You try to visualize the future; you try to suppress the past; you try to anticipate everything. Just listen." "But why should I trust you? You don't protect your friends. It's dangerous even to be around you. Something's always stirred up where you are. There's no rest. Nothing is settled. I need rest, security, protection, clarity." "I know you do." "You do?"

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