Getting Pulled from the Game Early (1 Samuel 3:1-20)

If anyone gets paid the big bucks, it’s starting pitchers in Major League Baseball. Starters constitute seven of the top ten best paid baseball players in the league. They get the nob as the only baseball players to rank in the top 50 best paid athletes in the world. A particularly special starting pitcher just signed a nearly three quarters of a billion dollar contract. The sporting world values these guys on the level of top basketball stars, hall of fame quarterbacks, people who play alongside Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Formula 1 champions, and global soccer sensations.  That feels pretty good for a job where you spend more of your working hours resting and watching baseball rather than throwing a ball. Your average starter only does the key part of their job roughly once a week, for five to six innings (less than two hours in the pitch clock era), from April to October. I understand that they spend a lot more time than that training, researching, and rehabbing. Still, of 270 baseball players to grace the walls of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, 77 (or over a quarter) are starting pitchers, who spend most of their season not playing baseball.

The value comes from the rarity of the skill and the level of pressure that they endure. On the defensive side of the game, the whole rest of the team exists to deal with the starter’s failures. Fielders work to contain the balls that do get hit. Relief pitchers only come on when the starter exhausts himself or doesn’t have it that day. The core action of the game, and, thus, the team’s primary shot at victory, gets borne by the right or left arm of one man, per team, per game. Many starting pitchers have elaborate pregame routines for a reason. Justin Verlander, the Astros’ ace, says that no one should talk to him in the lead up to a start because he’s not fit human company. He has to psych himself up to deal with the tremendous pressure.

I love to watch, when it all goes well, but to me, one of the most affecting things in all of sports is watching a starter get pulled, when it’s all gone wrong. Their raison d’état is to carry the game, but when they give up a ton of runs early, can’t hit their marks, chuck a bunch of balls beyond the catcher’s reach, and you watch the manager make the slow walk to the mount signaling their doom, you see a human being melt. Some try to remain stoic. Others lash out with anger. Still others just dissolve into a malaise of sadness, regret, and self loathing. A few hundreds times of year, we witness a particular kind of human suffering broadcast into our homes – knowing that you’re supposed to be the guy, knowing that you failed to be the guy, and having the person that appointed you to be guy rescind their trust.

Biblical prophets carry far higher importance than starting pitchers. They hold the job of God’s voice box. Humanity needs that significantly more than hundred million dollar a year ball slingers. However, their whole concept for existing also centered on being the guy, God’s guy, on having a singular trust placed on them by God.

Usually, we focus on Samuel, in this story from 1 Samuel 3. A young man hears from God, feels confused by it, and ultimate responds, “Here, I am.” We rightly use it to talk about accepting our callings, to stand ready in our souls to say, “Here, I am.” We sing beautiful hymns to put the words in our own mouths.

Here, I am Lord.
Is it I Lords?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
(Here I Am, Lord by Dan Schutte)

This scene has a darker edge if we remember Eli in all of this. He too had been called. He too had said, “Here, I am” at some point earlier in his life. God called him to be the guy, the prophet, the carrier of the mantle. Yet, God explicit tells Samuel in his first divine message that God’s pulling Eli from the game early because he just doesn’t have it.

On that day I will fulfil against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house for ever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering for ever.’ (1 Samuel 3:12-14 NRSV)

The call has gone out the bullpen. Eli blew the start. In this case, he proved insufficiently faithful and willing to let his sons run wild. The divine-human relationship ended up in disarray because the mediator of that relationship, the prophet Eli, proved insufficient to the task.

Eli picks the stoic resignation approach to getting pulled from the game.

But Eli called Samuel and said, ‘Samuel, my son.’ He said, ‘Here I am.’ Eli said, ‘What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.’ So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, ‘It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.’ (1 Samuel 3:16-18 NRSV)

It is two distinct levels of significance, but watching a starting pitcher get pulled from a blown start gives us an emotional window into Eli. The manager has come to the mound, taken the ball from his hand, sent him to the dugout, and motioned for the next pitcher to make his march in through the outfield. God does this explicitly because Eli failed.

The scene serves as a potent reminder that calling cuts two ways. We want that moment, where we sense that God has called us to an important task, that God values us, and our skills set. With that glorious moment of calling comes an expectation of faithfulness. To have the ball placed in our hands means seeking to do that task to the best of our abilities. God’s grace means that God will always love us and always welcome us into God’s family, if we succeed or not. However, we do not live in an expectations free universe. God has a task for all of us. God equips us for that task. God expects us to take that and run with it.

In the Book of Esther, Mordecai puts it succinctly to his young niece strategically placed by God in the palace, within easy reach of the king’s ear. “For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’” (Esther 4:14 NRSV) God will accomplish what God needs to accomplish, but we can strive to be part of it.