It’s one of those things that seem to go without saying: that in every generation the old and the young have a mutual hostility. They don’t understand one another and they don’t need one another either. To the young, the old are fuddy‑duddy and out of touch. To the old, the young are unruly, disrespectful and down right just plain scary. However, both the old and the young seem to think that they have a mutual exclusivity on being unwanted, unloved and unvalued.

And that’s just in church.

Today our readings are about callings: the calling of Samuel, the young son of Hannah, who is barren; the calling of Eli, the old man who has been not so much in favour with God but passionate about his church life, who is, however, essential to the story of Samuel; the calling of Philip, who is impetuous and immediately goes off and tells someone else, which reminded me of a story –

Two friends have been business partners for many years. After working together all through the week, every Sunday morning they went to the gym, early in the morning, about half past seven, and had an hours workout. They did this as a regular routine and then they went their separate ways.

After these fifteen years of doing this, one of them said to the other ‘Do you fancy a game of golf?’

Oh! No I can’t possibly play golf on Sunday, No, I’m going to church’.

‘You’re going to church?’

‘Yes I’m a server, a sidesman and a reader – I’m a very important man in my church …, very, very important man’.

‘Now that’s amazing. I’ve known you fifteen years and I didn’t know that about you’.

Yes, I’m a very important man in my church’.

‘Well it can’t be that important to you’,

Yes, very, very important’,

Well if it’s that important why have you never invited me?’

… and there’s the calling of Nathaniel, whose scepticism fairly immediately turns to the naming of Jesus as the Christ.

The sceptic, the impetuous, the young and the old: a cross section of society that is mutually suspicious one of another. Each of these people though, have heard the calling of God. And the call of God is a lover’s call.

Out of the love that God has for each one of us, he calls us more fully into his life; knowing that in his life our life will find its fulfilment; knowing that in his love we will know what love really is and we shall love completely.

But what kind of calling is this calling of the lover, the lovers call to what?

The eleventh century Bavarian King, Henry VIII, got a bit bored of being a king and of all the pressures of being a monarch. So he decided to apply to the local monastery to be a monk. He decided he wanted to become a contemplative and to spend the rest of his life in the monastery. So he goes to Prior Richard and says:

‘Give me the form to fill so that I can become a monk’.

Prior Richard replies

‘Your majesty, do you understand that the pledge here is one of obedience. That will be hard because you have been a king’.

‘I understand’ said Henry. ‘And the rest of my life I will be obedient to you as Christ leads you’.

So Prior Richard says ‘You’ll be obedient to me?’

And the king says ‘Yes’.

So the Prior says

‘OK, then this is what I tell you to do: go back to your throne and serve faithfully in the place where God has put you’.

And when King Henry died a statement was written

‘The king learnt to rule by being obedient’.

The call that is laid upon us by the God who loves us is the calling to obedience.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself.

This is the call God makes on all of us: to love one another as we ourselves are loved by God.

Our Home Groups will meet again in a week’s time and will be considering the second session in our current series on Knowing God. Last week Home Group members were encouraged to think about two particular questions: Why did God make me? and, What is my life for?

Despite the mutual hostility of the old and the young, of the sceptic and of the impetuous, I think we can find the answers to those questions in the lives of the young boy Samuel and the old man Eli, of the impetuous Philip and the sceptic Nathaniel.

We are made by God as an act of love. We are loved into being and our life is for love, for God’s love, to love as he loves us.