2026.10.04 | Opening the Door: Listening at the Door
“Opening the Door: Listening at the Door”
1 Samuel 3:1-10
Revelation 3:20, 22
Preached by
Rev. Brenda Loreman
Eden United Church of Christ
Cherryland, CA
4 October 2026
This morning’s text from Revelation was likely the inspiration for a well-known painting by an artist named Werner Sallman. Now, you may not have heard of Werner Sallman, but I’d be willing to bet that many of you are familiar with his work. I wouldn’t put his work in the category of “fine art,” that you might see in a museum, but his paintings are widely known and much beloved by many.
Painted in 1940, Sallman’s most famous painting is called the “Head of Christ.” After the great success of this painting, he went on to paint many different images of Christ, including one called, “Christ at Heart’s Door.” You can see how it’s an image that echoes the line of the text where Christ says, “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me.”
Now, because it’s October, and I have a very irreverent sense of humor, I also can’t help sharing this meme version of Sallman’s painting. You never know who’ll show up at your door this Halloween!
Sallman’s title of his painting, “Christ at Heart’s Door,” makes this painting one that symbolizes personal salvation and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But if you read chapters two and three of Revelation, you know that this text is not talking to individuals. Jesus is not knocking on the door of an individual person’s heart; he’s knocking on the door of the church.
Although most people might be more familiar with the bizarre visions of the end of the world that the book of Revelation contains, the beginning of the book records letters from Jesus to the seven Christian churches of Asia Minor—what we would now call western Turkey. In these letters, Jesus—through the prophet John of Patmos—admonishes the churches to remember and practice their Christian faith and resist the worldly practices of the empire. It is in the final letter, to the church at Laodicea, that we find this image of Jesus knocking at the door, an image that resonates with the sermon series we begin today in conjunction with our church-wide strategic planning process. For the next six weeks, we’ll be pondering the theme of “Opening the Door.”
“Opening the Door” is a reference to our refreshed Eden logo, with the open door inside the “n” of “Eden.” Back in April, when we revealed the logo in a sermon, I suggested that this image of the open door gives us something to ponder: Are we standing on the outside of the door, being welcomed in? Are we standing inside the door, opening it to welcome in the stranger—or Jesus, as our scripture suggests? Or are we opening the door to the world, preparing to get up and go out there, carrying our love, justice, community, and belonging into the world? I still think, as I did then, that the answer is “yes.” Yes, to all at once.
But in order to know how best to open that door, in order to focus our gifts and resources so they have the most impact and help us build for long-term stability, we need to be in discernment together as a community. And the first step in the discernment process is listening… just as the churches were encouraged to listen for Jesus at the door, and as Samuel listened for the voice of God to speak.
As Pastor Marvin mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the first part of the strategic planning process will be about listening. A lot of that listening will be our consultants, the Ross Collective, listening to us, asking questions, recording our many varied answers, and facilitating our conversations with each other. But we will need to be good listeners, too.
Listening well during our discernment process can mean a variety of things. It might mean that we set aside our own personal agendas and the need to be “right” or the urge to push a particular outcome. It might mean deeply and prayerfully with an open heart, silently asking the Spirit “Help me understand what is being communicated here.” It might mean listening to another’s story without the urge to add to it or correct it or fix something about it. It might mean working hard to acknowledge and set aside any personal biases we bring to the table. It might be being willing to be honest, even if your opinion is unpopular. It might mean willing to be silent and allowing voices who aren’t often heard be the ones get to speak.
A simple, physical way that I've learned to remind myself to be an intentional, prayerful, and open-hearted listener is to turn my attention to the speaker and place a hand over my heart. This posture says to the speaker, "I'm here, I hear you, I’m listening with my heart.” When we practice speaking and listening in these ways, our conversations level up and become sacred conversations.
Beyond listening to each other, we also need to remember to listen for God in our discernment.
Throughout my years in the ministry, I will confess that I’ve always found it a bit problematic to talk about listening for God. We are given many examples of God speaking to individuals and communities in the Bible, but, well… I have just never had a clear encounter with God the way Samuel does in this morning’s scripture. I imagine that there might be some of you out there who’ve heard a voice as clearly as the one Samuel hears, but that just hasn’t been my experience. I’ve never heard a voice in the night call my name, but I know I’ve received messages from God in other ways. I do know that God speaks to us, but I think that most of the time—for most of us—it’s not the way God happened to speak to Samuel.
Another problem with listening for God is understanding the message. At times I’ve had a sense of deep peace wash over me just when I needed it, and I knew that to be the voice of God—and yet there wasn’t a particular message attached to that feeling.
And then there’s the question someone asked me years ago about listening for the voice of God: how do you know it’s the voice of God you’re hearing and not the crazy voice inside your head? Although I promised I’d get right on that, I haven’t come up with a good answer yet, except to say this. I believe that when we most need to hear the voice of God, we will hear it. It just may not come in the form we were expecting, and it may not be the answer we were expecting.
Sometimes listening for God means hearing something that we don’t want to hear. God might ask us to do something we think is impossible. God might require us to do something other than what others around us are doing. God might urge us to have more courage and conviction than we thought we could muster. God might, as God does when Samuel says, “Speak, for your servant is listening,” say something that will make all our ears tingle.
Whatever it is that God speaks to us in our discernment process, whatever it is that we are called to do and be in days and weeks and years to come, we do know one thing for sure. We will be doing and being it all together, as the Body of Christ here at Eden Church, and here in Cherryland.
Listen! Can you hear someone at the door? Jesus is standing at the door, knocking; if we hear his voice and open the door, he will come in and eat with us, and we with him.
And that’s what we do every time we celebrate communion, and especially today as we celebrate World Communion Sunday with Christians all around the globe. We open the door and invite Christ in. We invite him to be our host at the table—to be the unseen presence as we remember him and share in the symbolic representation of every meal he ever ate with the people of his community. And as we eat together, he asks us again and again to make that commitment to open the door wide, and wider still.
Jesus is knocking on the door, and he wants to come in and eat with us, but he doesn’t want us to stay here! He wants us to go back out into the world with him. Having shared the grace and love and companionship we have in his presence, we are then called to be his presence outside the church doors, building more love, more justice, more community, and more belonging—here in Cherryland, and beyond. May it be so. Amen.