This week, I ran across an interesting bit about worship in America back at the turn of the 18th century.  Back then, one of the members of the church was appointed to be what’s known as the tithingman.  Now a tithingman’s role had nothing to do with money or stewardship whatsoever.  During worship back then, the tithingman would sit at a desk right in front of the pulpit.  From there, the tithingman would stare out into the congregation, focusing on their faces, looking to make sure everyone was awake during the three plus hour sermon. 

  If his eyes should happen upon somebody drowsing off during the sermon, the tithingman would rise, grabbing hold of a large pole.  Now this large pole had two ends.  On one side it had big, hard knob on the end of it.  And so, if the tithingman saw some man or some boy nod off, he’d pick up his pole, walk down the aisle and poke the man or boy on the back of the head to wake him up.  In the case of women or girls who fell asleep, well, they got off a little bit easier.  For them tithingman used the other end of his pole, which usually had a rabbit’s foot or a fox tail or a feather on it, and he’d wave that in their face to tickle them awake.

  Now we’re all probably glad that at some point the role of the tithingman went the way of the dodo.  And I don’t really think we’d need one here.  It’s been my experience as your preacher over the last year that very seldom, if ever, have I seen anyone completely zonked out.  I’d like to take that as a credit to myself but I think it’s far more likely that you are all just a faithful group, willing to hear the word of God no matter how it’s conveyed.

  But I think we’d all agree that there’s a difference sometimes between hearing and really listening to what’s being said.  If we’re honest with ourselves, we all recognize that sometimes we may well hear things from time to time and yet still not be actively listening.  And I’m not merely applying that to church life.  I think more broadly that it’s just somehow part of our human nature to hear what we want to hear, instead of really actively, deeply listening.   

  Take for example a recent event that happened several years back in my household.  You see, even though I lived in Mount Holly for years, it took me a while to switch my voter registration from Charlotte.  Poised to vote for the first time ever in Mount Holly, I told Natalie that I was planning on stopping by our precinct.  She informed me precisely where I needed to vote.

  Ah but you know, somehow caught up in the excitement of voting for the first time here in Mount Holly, I listened to her, but I didn’t really hear what she said.  I just assumed she told me what I assumed to be true – that our precinct was the Tuckaseegee Center, located less than a mile as the crow flies from our home at the time. 

  Imagine my surprise when I got there to discover, no, I couldn’t vote there, that I needed to go to the right precinct, the very one my dear wife told me about days before.  She’d told me I needed to go to the Wesleyan church.  I’d heard her words but I really hadn’t listened.

  In today’s reading from the Old Testament, we encounter a great story about hearing that takes some time to move to active listening.  God speaks, Samuel hears, and yet it takes repetition for him to really listen to who’s speaking to him.

  I Samuel 3 begins:  “the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli.  The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”

  To be sure, these were dark days, in the land of milk and honey.  In the preceding pages of First Samuel, we’ve learned an awful lot about Hophni and Phineas, the priest Eli’s sons.   You see, Hophni and Phineas, were, like their father, priests of the one true God.  But unlike old Eli, these two had their hearts set on themselves and not the Lord.  Case in point – they wrongly took the best portions of the offerings.  One had even created a giant trident so that the first forkful of food to which the priest was entitled to wouldn’t be a dainty bite but rather a gargantuan hunk leaving nothing left for others.