To Us A Son Is Given-- Samuel

1 Samuel 1:27-28 “27 For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him. 28 Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there.”

We’ve talked about this passage a few times in the past year or so. We’ve focused on Hannah’s struggle; we’ve considered her desperate prayers that were finally answered with the birth of Samuel. Tonight, let’s look at this passage from Samuel’s perspective.

That’s a little more challenging. You can probably empathize with Hannah’s disappointment, with her frustration, with her desperation. Some of you literally experienced the same struggle with infertility that she went through. Samuel’s experience, though, of being “lent to the Lord” is not like your experience or mine. I’ve heard some of our older members share stories about boarding here in town in order to go to school because they lived far enough out. But that’s not quite the same as what Samuel experienced.

If anything, it’s more like what my late father in law lived through. Many of you met him— Glenn Erber. He served as principal down at Trinity Lutheran, Jackson, for many years. But, long before that, Glenn spent 8 years at Concordia, Seward— not because he struggled academically, but because he was there for high school and for college. He was barely a teenager when his parents put him and his suitcase on a Greyhound bus from North Dakota to Nebraska. It’s still not quite the same, but that’s a little more like what we see here for Samuel.

But for all of you who were not professional church workers— all of you who are ordinary Christians— it’s harder to imagine what Samuel went through.

Did you take offense at that? Did you take offense at the term ‘ordinary Christians’? I hope you did.

Don’t get me wrong: men and women like my father-in-law demonstrated incredible sacrifice, incredible dedication. They served Christ’s Church in amazing ways. At the same time, Glenn, himself, would be giving me a dirty look right now if he were here and heard me call you ‘ordinary Christians’. I hope you were offended by the term ‘ordinary Christians’.

So why do you look at Samuel’s life as being so foreign? …so strange? What makes you think that what he went through is so much different from your life and calling as a Christian? Glenn would not be pleased to hear you talking like that— as if Samuel or he were a different class of Christian. As if the call to serve Christ with your whole life was just for people like him and Samuel.

It’s true, you were not sent here as a child to live at the church. But, just as God commanded, you were brought here to His house where He called you by name. You see, our holy mother the Church is not able to produce children on her own. But, in obedience to the command of her bridegroom, Jesus Christ, she continually prays, “Thy Kingdom come.” She continually asks that God would cause His Kingdom to come to us and expand— that He would sustain us in the faith and bring others into the faith. Because she has found favor in His eyes, He has remembered her. He remembers her and she continually produces children of God from the holy womb of the baptismal font by the power of water combined with God’s Word. There, in the waters of baptism, He called you to be something greater than a prophet— He adopted you as His child. That wasn’t just one part of who you are, that’s the foundation of who you are. The foundation of everything you do.

And there’s the last step. When those children of God are born from the womb of the baptismal font, she gives them back to God (1 Samuel 1:11). She lends you back to God (1 Samuel 1:28). By God’s mercy in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, “You are... a royal priesthood...” (1 Peter 2:9). By faith, you minster to the Lord in the presence of your Great High Priest, Jesus Christ (1 Samuel 2:11).

But there’s more. When you gather for worship each Sunday— and any other day of the week we happen to choose— you not only gather with your brothers and sisters in Christ, you gather here in the very presence of God.

One of the greatest blasphemies of our modern age is that some have decided we need to make worship more meaningful— whatever that means. We have to change the music, we have to have different people leading, we have to have a different structure. Whatever form it takes for them, they have decided that worship needs to be “more meaningful.”

You gather with your brothers and sisters in Christ, with whom you have stronger ties than to your closest family. And, as if that weren’t enough, you gather in the presence of God. What could you or I possibly add; what could you or I possibly contribute to make that “more meaningful”?

Lord have mercy.

If that is one of the great blasphemies of our age, then one of the great tragedies of our modern age is that we miss the fact that what you receive in worship makes your entire life so much more meaningful.

As C.S. Lewis put it:

Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.... This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which [are] parodies [of] love.... Next to the Blessed Sacrament [of the Altar] itself, your neighbour is the holiest object [you have ever seen or ever will see]. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ... is truly hidden. (Lewis, C.S. “Weight of Glory”)

One of the great tragedies of our modern age is that we miss the fact that what you receive in worship makes your entire life so much more meaningful.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ— fellow children of our Holy Mother the Church, fellow priests of God— worship the Lord everywhere that you find yourself (1 Samuel 1:28b). “1 …[P]resent [yourself, body and soul,] as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). “28 [L]et us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.... 1 Let brotherly love continue. ...15 Through [Jesus, our Great High Priest,] let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (Hebrews 12:28; 13:1; 13:15-16).

“27 For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him. 28 Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there” (1 Samuel 1:27-28).

Yes, there is a lot about Samuel’s life that is foreign to you and me. But the most important part— the fact that he was given back to serve God with his whole life— that’s your story, too. Don’t ever settle for being “ordinary Christians” because to us a son is given.