Holy Communion for the First Sunday after Trinity: celebrant the Revd Tola Badejo. Junior Church takes place at the same time in the hall.

First reading: 1 Samuel 3: 1-10
Gospel: Mark 2: 23–3:6

Today's readings interrelate in unexpected and significant ways. The passage from 1 Samuel is set in the very heart of formal religious observance, amongst people dedicated to serving God through ritual; the account in Mark represents a contradictory principle, in that Jesus places the meeting of human need before ritual. The point is that both approaches have an important place: Christian service needs to be informed by Christian belief and observance, but religious ritual, however precious to the believer, must never become an end in itself. Secondly, it is the boy Samuel whom God calls rather than the aged priest Eli. Samuel does not understand what is happening, and the imagined portrait above by Joshua Reynolds sensitively captures the complex emotions the boy must have felt. Eli has the wisdom to tell Samuel simply that he must listen, to say 'Speak, Lord, thy servant hearest'. In the Gospel passage, the religious authorities who place religious rules before care and compassion have in effect stopped listening, pursuing their own agenda rather than God's.

The things that stop us listening are not necessarily bad things; they may well be good or even essential, but Eli's instruction is good advice for us all.