You’re likely familiar with the account of God calling Samuel as a prophet. Sam is sleeping, God calls, and 3 times Samuel thinks it is Eli, the high priest. The 3rd time, Eli realizes it’s God and tells Sam to say, “Speak, for your servant is listening,” next time. When it does, Sam responds as told and God calls him into the public ministry. Very familiar. But let’s not schluff this lesson off as not a big deal. God directly called Sam. What an honor!  Sam heard God’s voice. What a blessing! God told Sam he’d take up reins as his chief spokesman to Israel. What a job! If this happened to you and you responded/served as faithfully as Samuel did, I think we all would be very impressed.  Called directly by God to serve him – that is impressive.

Now, this sounds bad, but let’s edit our text. Boy Samuel ministered before the LORD under Eli. In those days the word of the LORD was rare - not many visions. One night Eli, whose eyes were so weak he could barely see, was resting. In the early hours, he called Samuel. “Samuel, could you get me a glass of water?” Samuel ran with the water to Eli. He answered, “Here I am. Here is your water.” “Thank you, my son,” said Eli. Samuel went back to bed. Not long after, Eli called again. “Samuel, could you rub my aching back? Long day in the Tabernacle!” Samuel went to Eli. “Here I am.” And after a ½ hour back rub, Eli said, “Thank you, my son,” and Samuel went back to sleep. An hour later, Eli called Samuel a 3rd time. Samuel went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” “Yes, I did.  It is a chilly night.  Would you please get my slippers and put them on for me?”  Samuel did as asked.  “Thank you, my son,” said Eli, and Samuel went back to bed, not to be called again that night.

Sounds pretty nice, right? Esp. these days, any story about the younger generation serving the older does our hearts well. But compare that to the real way things went down and ask this: which is more impressive? Called directly by God and answering the call faithfully to be the leader of his people or called by an old man to get water, slippers and to give a back rub and faithfully doing it? One seems menial/simple. The other sounds impressive/honorable. No comparison! Or is there?

Surely God would be more pleased with the priest thing than doing simple tasks for an elder, right? Wrong. If the edited water, back rub, slipper text was real, wasn’t Samuel doing what was God pleasing, obeying one in authority over him? Dutifully running, respectfully speaking, and faithfully carrying out his tasks - isn’t that God pleasing? In not complaining about the lazy guy who won’t do anything for himself, and in being ready at the drop of a hat to serve Eli, was not God pleased? Before he was called as a priest, he was called by God as helper to Eli. God didn’t come to him in a vision. “Samuel, thou shalt take care of an elderly man.”  But God did give Samuel the gifts, the concern and the disposition for such a task.

But that can’t be as impressive as serving as a called priest, can it? It most certainly can/is. Yes, God used Samuel as chief judge in Israel to, more than others, share God’s will with his people. But as a boy, God used Sam to care for the man who did that until it was his turn. To faithfully carry out either task God put before him with diligence, reverence and honor – both are equally accepted by God who calls/empowers his people to serve whom/when/however. One’s as good as the other. 

The world doesn’t get that. And we can buy into it as well. When your kids are lazy at homework, what do you say? “Do you want to be a garbage man and spend your life picking up after others?” We can give the impression jobs like that are lowly tasks, yes, somebody has to do, but why can’t it be the neighbor kid? How can we incentivize kids? “Get As and be a doctor who make lots of $ and helps people!” One is seen as good/+ while the other can be looked down on and despised.

But where would we be w/o garbage men? Think about Africa and places where there’s no standards for trash disposal. Those places are breeding grounds for disease. My sis has been there and said it takes 3 days before you can breathe w/o wanting to vomit, it’s so gross. And she went as a medical professional. She, and many, are needed for a simple reason – there’s no one to take out the trash. If we, with 20/20 hindsight, could go back to when the problems started and ask people what they needed more – trash removal or doctors – we know the answer.  “We can’t live without the garbage man.”

The spiritual point in all this is? Not directly, as with Samuel, but indirectly, in different ways, God called us. He gave us gifts, gives us chances to use them in his service and strengthens us to be faithful in applying them. God has no hierarchy, no list of 100 callings where bottom ones are unimportant compared to top ones. Nowhere in Scripture does God say, “If you have the gifts to be a stay at home parent, fine. But if you can rise up to church president, or a called Gospel minster, or to a job that makes a lot of money so you can really financially support the church, that is something else!” Nowhere does God give the impression that serving in one way is better than serving him in another way.  Samuel serving Eli as a servant and Samuel serving God as a judge – both are on the same level before the Lord. In both Sam faithfully carried out his calling.

Regarding this, Luther said: “The maiden who cheerfully scrubs floors pleases God as much as I do when I give the most powerful, eloquent sermon man’s ever heard.” Think of it this way. Our SS teachers took time, prepared, and then, with love/patience taught a lesson to God’s little lambs. Let’s say the lesson was about respecting those in authority. The teacher does such a wonderful job the child gets that out of love for Jesus, she’ll want to serve him as she serves her parents. She goes home, and when mom says, “Honey, please take your plate to the dishwasher,” she does it, no ?s, no lip. Which is more God pleasing? Both are the same. Both are God’s people living up to the calling God set before them that day.

But that’s hard to grasp. We like hierarchies. We use them in business and neighborhoods. And we can easily bring them here. We can pat ourselves on the back because we, and I’m going to list random things here – take no offense – spent a morning shoveling snow while others slept. We worked for hours to find the right church music and others just sang. We spent hours to craft the right message and people just sat there. We labored, toiled, strove. And when all’s said and done, a part of us is looking for the pat on the back from God and man. “I don’t know what we’d do w/o you!” We want to be praised, we want our contributions noted and held up as the most impressive service man has ever given to God. We can scorn being man servant Sam, and want more than anything to be Judge Sam, the one with the power, the one others want to be.

See how dangerous this is? If we drink the Kool Aid, read our press clippings and think who we are and what we do is so much better, more impressive than what he can give or she can do, won’t that affect us today? Is it that much of a stretch to think that while we fluff our feathers and praise ourselves, we could easily say the words of confession and not really mean them? That we could hear a reading like the one with Sam and say, “Hey buddy, I’m right there with you - big stuff does God have planned for guys like us”?  That we could look at those next to us whose gifts and talent are not as praised by others and view ourselves as better?  If you think this can’t affect you, you are better than everyone in Scripture. Time and again people see themselves and others this way – I’m better, I can give/do more. And every time it happens in Scripture, it ends badly – people separated from God or having to be called to repent.  There is nothing that can not only rip a church apart like this attitude – the “my calling is higher” attitude. There’s also nothing that can rip God’s people apart than it as well.

We want to hear we are better, nobler, more eloquent and more important. But one word cuts us all down to size: sinner.  The externals may be different between you and your neighbor, but the base line’s the same. You both ought to be destined to an eternity apart from God and his grace.  We know those famous words, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But do you know what words precede those? “There is no difference.” Paul is saying that whoever you are, whatever you did or did not do, we are all really the same.  There is no difference.  All have sinned.  You, me, them, everyone.

There is only one who is different, and you know who. You want to talk about not working off the hierarchy? Look at Jesus.  We just were reminded about the humble conditions of his birth. What happened after that? Did Jesus say, “I, King of kings, deserve more than to live in this no name town - I want to live in Jerusalem”? Or, “I, Savior, don’t have to put up with these sinfully limited parents of mine – I know better”? Or, “I want a chariot and stallions to move me from town to town – no more walking for the Son of Man”? No, every step of the way Jesus embraced the calling his Father set before him. As a child, he pleased God as he was a faithful son to Mary/Joseph, as he carried out his daily tasks, even in a tiny berg like Nazareth.  As a man, he pleased God as was content, as he said, to be different than the foxes and birds because he has no place to lay his head at night.  He was content to carry out his calling to preach the Gospel to do so on foot with a group of local yokels tagging alone beside him.  Not once does Jesus say, “This is not what the Son of God deserves.  Am I not worthy of so much more?”  No, instead he scrubbed feet, ate week old bread, slept on a rock and stretched his aching back nightly.

And the crucifixion? No less noble of a death has ever occurred. Jesus is executed like the worst criminal of all time, and all the while he’s perfectly innocent. He never said, “I deserve better.”  What he did say is this: Father, I have come to glorify your name.  The Father’s name was glorified as Jesus lived out his calling, childhood, ministry, death and resurrection.

And because of that, there is again no difference between you and me, him and her.  Yes, all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, but do you remember how that verse ends?  There is no difference – they are justified freely by his grace.”  The result of Jesus’ humility, his faithfully calling following, is that in God’s eyes, we are not guilty of the sins we did commit, the snobbery, the self praising, the false humility.  You are a blood bought soul as is the child who can only sing Jesus Loves Me and the 90 year old who keeps slipping into saying the Lord’s Prayer in German.  Equal before God.  Equal as saints.

Doesn’t that reality help us get back on the right track?  Does that bring true humility and a true desire to serve?  And in serving, doesn’t all this make us want to do it not so we are praised and glorified but so God’s people are helped and his name is glorified?  There is no difference.  No difference in our need.  No difference in what God has done for us.  And no difference in how we serve him.  You may be called as a stay at home parent right now, or a lawyer, or a garbage man or a burger flipper or a white collar office guy.  God has given you the gifts to do these things.  And in doing them faithfully, honestly, diligently, you are living up to your calling, just as Samuel the servant did, just as Samuel the Judge did.

Over and over the Bible uses the picture of a body to describe our relationship to fellow believers.  Maybe you are a hand – your gifts are obvious to the body.  Maybe you are a knee – very valuable but often forgotten until there are problems.  Maybe you are an appendix – no one really sees or even understands the work that you do.  But we are all part of one body.  We are all called by our God into his family and we are all called to serve faithfully in whatever daily calling his gives us.  And we are all built up to carry this out as we look to our Savior, as we see the forgiveness he won, and as we see his attitude in carrying out his calling.  So whether you are the servant of Eli or Judge sent by the Almighty Lord, God help you, God help all of us live up to whatever that calling may be with our eyes of faith and ears ever tuned in to his voice, that when he calls, we may faithfully answer: “Speak, Lord, for you servant is listening.”  Amen.

You’re likely familiar with the account of God calling Samuel as a prophet. Sam is sleeping, God calls, and 3 times Samuel thinks it is Eli, the high priest. The 3rd time, Eli realizes it’s God and tells Sam to say, “Speak, for your servant is listening,” next time. When it does, Sam responds as told and God calls him into the public ministry. Very familiar. But let’s not schluff this lesson off as not a big deal. God directly called Sam. What an honor!  Sam heard God’s voice. What a blessing! God told Sam he’d take up reins as his chief spokesman to Israel. What a job! If this happened to you and you responded/served as faithfully as Samuel did, I think we all would be very impressed.  Called directly by God to serve him – that is impressive.

Now, this sounds bad, but let’s edit our text. Boy Samuel ministered before the LORD under Eli. In those days the word of the LORD was rare - not many visions. One night Eli, whose eyes were so weak he could barely see, was resting. In the early hours, he called Samuel. “Samuel, could you get me a glass of water?” Samuel ran with the water to Eli. He answered, “Here I am. Here is your water.” “Thank you, my son,” said Eli. Samuel went back to bed. Not long after, Eli called again. “Samuel, could you rub my aching back? Long day in the Tabernacle!” Samuel went to Eli. “Here I am.” And after a ½ hour back rub, Eli said, “Thank you, my son,” and Samuel went back to sleep. An hour later, Eli called Samuel a 3rd time. Samuel went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” “Yes, I did.  It is a chilly night.  Would you please get my slippers and put them on for me?”  Samuel did as asked.  “Thank you, my son,” said Eli, and Samuel went back to bed, not to be called again that night.

Sounds pretty nice, right? Esp. these days, any story about the younger generation serving the older does our hearts well. But compare that to the real way things went down and ask this: which is more impressive? Called directly by God and answering the call faithfully to be the leader of his people or called by an old man to get water, slippers and to give a back rub and faithfully doing it? One seems menial/simple. The other sounds impressive/honorable. No comparison! Or is there?

Surely God would be more pleased with the priest thing than doing simple tasks for an elder, right? Wrong. If the edited water, back rub, slipper text was real, wasn’t Samuel doing what was God pleasing, obeying one in authority over him? Dutifully running, respectfully speaking, and faithfully carrying out his tasks - isn’t that God pleasing? In not complaining about the lazy guy who won’t do anything for himself, and in being ready at the drop of a hat to serve Eli, was not God pleased? Before he was called as a priest, he was called by God as helper to Eli. God didn’t come to him in a vision. “Samuel, thou shalt take care of an elderly man.”  But God did give Samuel the gifts, the concern and the disposition for such a task.

But that can’t be as impressive as serving as a called priest, can it? It most certainly can/is. Yes, God used Samuel as chief judge in Israel to, more than others, share God’s will with his people. But as a boy, God used Sam to care for the man who did that until it was his turn. To faithfully carry out either task God put before him with diligence, reverence and honor – both are equally accepted by God who calls/empowers his people to serve whom/when/however. One’s as good as the other. 

The world doesn’t get that. And we can buy into it as well. When your kids are lazy at homework, what do you say? “Do you want to be a garbage man and spend your life picking up after others?” We can give the impression jobs like that are lowly tasks, yes, somebody has to do, but why can’t it be the neighbor kid? How can we incentivize kids? “Get As and be a doctor who make lots of $ and helps people!” One is seen as good/+ while the other can be looked down on and despised.

But where would we be w/o garbage men? Think about Africa and places where there’s no standards for trash disposal. Those places are breeding grounds for disease. My sis has been there and said it takes 3 days before you can breathe w/o wanting to vomit, it’s so gross. And she went as a medical professional. She, and many, are needed for a simple reason – there’s no one to take out the trash. If we, with 20/20 hindsight, could go back to when the problems started and ask people what they needed more – trash removal or doctors – we know the answer.  “We can’t live without the garbage man.”

The spiritual point in all this is? Not directly, as with Samuel, but indirectly, in different ways, God called us. He gave us gifts, gives us chances to use them in his service and strengthens us to be faithful in applying them. God has no hierarchy, no list of 100 callings where bottom ones are unimportant compared to top ones. Nowhere in Scripture does God say, “If you have the gifts to be a stay at home parent, fine. But if you can rise up to church president, or a called Gospel minster, or to a job that makes a lot of money so you can really financially support the church, that is something else!” Nowhere does God give the impression that serving in one way is better than serving him in another way.  Samuel serving Eli as a servant and Samuel serving God as a judge – both are on the same level before the Lord. In both Sam faithfully carried out his calling.

Regarding this, Luther said: “The maiden who cheerfully scrubs floors pleases God as much as I do when I give the most powerful, eloquent sermon man’s ever heard.” Think of it this way. Our SS teachers took time, prepared, and then, with love/patience taught a lesson to God’s little lambs. Let’s say the lesson was about respecting those in authority. The teacher does such a wonderful job the child gets that out of love for Jesus, she’ll want to serve him as she serves her parents. She goes home, and when mom says, “Honey, please take your plate to the dishwasher,” she does it, no ?s, no lip. Which is more God pleasing? Both are the same. Both are God’s people living up to the calling God set before them that day.

But that’s hard to grasp. We like hierarchies. We use them in business and neighborhoods. And we can easily bring them here. We can pat ourselves on the back because we, and I’m going to list random things here – take no offense – spent a morning shoveling snow while others slept. We worked for hours to find the right church music and others just sang. We spent hours to craft the right message and people just sat there. We labored, toiled, strove. And when all’s said and done, a part of us is looking for the pat on the back from God and man. “I don’t know what we’d do w/o you!” We want to be praised, we want our contributions noted and held up as the most impressive service man has ever given to God. We can scorn being man servant Sam, and want more than anything to be Judge Sam, the one with the power, the one others want to be.

See how dangerous this is? If we drink the Kool Aid, read our press clippings and think who we are and what we do is so much better, more impressive than what he can give or she can do, won’t that affect us today? Is it that much of a stretch to think that while we fluff our feathers and praise ourselves, we could easily say the words of confession and not really mean them? That we could hear a reading like the one with Sam and say, “Hey buddy, I’m right there with you - big stuff does God have planned for guys like us”?  That we could look at those next to us whose gifts and talent are not as praised by others and view ourselves as better?  If you think this can’t affect you, you are better than everyone in Scripture. Time and again people see themselves and others this way – I’m better, I can give/do more. And every time it happens in Scripture, it ends badly – people separated from God or having to be called to repent.  There is nothing that can not only rip a church apart like this attitude – the “my calling is higher” attitude. There’s also nothing that can rip God’s people apart than it as well.

We want to hear we are better, nobler, more eloquent and more important. But one word cuts us all down to size: sinner.  The externals may be different between you and your neighbor, but the base line’s the same. You both ought to be destined to an eternity apart from God and his grace.  We know those famous words, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But do you know what words precede those? “There is no difference.” Paul is saying that whoever you are, whatever you did or did not do, we are all really the same.  There is no difference.  All have sinned.  You, me, them, everyone.

There is only one who is different, and you know who. You want to talk about not working off the hierarchy? Look at Jesus.  We just were reminded about the humble conditions of his birth. What happened after that? Did Jesus say, “I, King of kings, deserve more than to live in this no name town - I want to live in Jerusalem”? Or, “I, Savior, don’t have to put up with these sinfully limited parents of mine – I know better”? Or, “I want a chariot and stallions to move me from town to town – no more walking for the Son of Man”? No, every step of the way Jesus embraced the calling his Father set before him. As a child, he pleased God as he was a faithful son to Mary/Joseph, as he carried out his daily tasks, even in a tiny berg like Nazareth.  As a man, he pleased God as was content, as he said, to be different than the foxes and birds because he has no place to lay his head at night.  He was content to carry out his calling to preach the Gospel to do so on foot with a group of local yokels tagging alone beside him.  Not once does Jesus say, “This is not what the Son of God deserves.  Am I not worthy of so much more?”  No, instead he scrubbed feet, ate week old bread, slept on a rock and stretched his aching back nightly.

And the crucifixion? No less noble of a death has ever occurred. Jesus is executed like the worst criminal of all time, and all the while he’s perfectly innocent. He never said, “I deserve better.”  What he did say is this: Father, I have come to glorify your name.  The Father’s name was glorified as Jesus lived out his calling, childhood, ministry, death and resurrection.

And because of that, there is again no difference between you and me, him and her.  Yes, all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, but do you remember how that verse ends?  There is no difference – they are justified freely by his grace.”  The result of Jesus’ humility, his faithfully calling following, is that in God’s eyes, we are not guilty of the sins we did commit, the snobbery, the self praising, the false humility.  You are a blood bought soul as is the child who can only sing Jesus Loves Me and the 90 year old who keeps slipping into saying the Lord’s Prayer in German.  Equal before God.  Equal as saints.

Doesn’t that reality help us get back on the right track?  Does that bring true humility and a true desire to serve?  And in serving, doesn’t all this make us want to do it not so we are praised and glorified but so God’s people are helped and his name is glorified?  There is no difference.  No difference in our need.  No difference in what God has done for us.  And no difference in how we serve him.  You may be called as a stay at home parent right now, or a lawyer, or a garbage man or a burger flipper or a white collar office guy.  God has given you the gifts to do these things.  And in doing them faithfully, honestly, diligently, you are living up to your calling, just as Samuel the servant did, just as Samuel the Judge did.

Over and over the Bible uses the picture of a body to describe our relationship to fellow believers.  Maybe you are a hand – your gifts are obvious to the body.  Maybe you are a knee – very valuable but often forgotten until there are problems.  Maybe you are an appendix – no one really sees or even understands the work that you do.  But we are all part of one body.  We are all called by our God into his family and we are all called to serve faithfully in whatever daily calling his gives us.  And we are all built up to carry this out as we look to our Savior, as we see the forgiveness he won, and as we see his attitude in carrying out his calling.  So whether you are the servant of Eli or Judge sent by the Almighty Lord, God help you, God help all of us live up to whatever that calling may be with our eyes of faith and ears ever tuned in to his voice, that when he calls, we may faithfully answer: “Speak, Lord, for you servant is listening.”  Amen.