How Do You Listen for God's Voice?

The bible text for this sermon is available at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=501566410

Sermon Art by Blake Johnson

Here we are at another moment of transition...for the people called Israel, for Eli, for Samuel, for us. Actually, “transition” would be putting it nicely. It’s a word we’re all probably sick of at this point.  Everything around us and our whole selves have been described as “in transition” for the past year or two or really for the past generation. We’re told to see this moment as an opportunity but honestly living in a world where everything around us and within us is in constant transition is exhausting and it sucks. People will describe a neighborhood as “in transition” when we all know it’s just a tidy way of saying that a neighborhood is being gutted. 

This particular “transition” in the book of 1 Samuel comes at a real low spot for the people. Moses and God’s people Israel finally made it out of the wilderness and into the promised land and for a time...things seemed to be ok, even good at times. The people lifted up Judges to lead them and there were some pretty great ones...like Deborah. But eventually things broke down into violence, abuse, idolatry, and division. 

Now, it seems the voice of God is rare. The inspiration and energy of visions and dreams is faint or feels too far away to matter. God’s seems like a distant and unrecognizable idea even to those who are sleeping at the foot of God’s dwelling place, which is what the ark was understood to be. The community is pretty close to (if not circling) a place of rock bottom.

The mystic poet, St.John of the Cross, refers to such experiences as the dark night of the soul.

Indeed, this scene unfolds at night. The night is a time of shadows, when the shape of things is fuzzy and unclear. But the night is also a time where moonflowers bloom. This is where the time of prophets emerges. And this is where the voice of God echoes through the stillness. This is when something new, something rare, something we may have thought was gone entirely...is heard - in the darkness, in solitude, in rest. 

And still, when it arrives...there isn’t instantaneous clarity. Sometimes the voice of God sets a fire around us, introduces themselves by name, and sometimes…we can’t quite figure out where this sound, the sound of our own name drawing us in, is coming from. Did we even hear something? Feel something? Or is it our weary mind playing tricks on us?

I wonder…how do you listen for God’s voice? Can you think of a time when you experienced something like this? What was that experience like? Where were you? What was around you? What were you doing? How do you know the voice you hear is God’s? 

I finished watching Midnight Mass on Netflix last week, which explores this among many other questions and the dark grizzly side of sifting through mystery. The line between wondrous and woeful is sometimes hard to find, even for the town’s beloved priest, for people trying to live faithful lives, and those who want nothing more than to be done with faith at least in part because of how easily such a voice can be twisted. When I was discussing this text with other pastors, they too wrestle with this particular task of faith. How do we recognize, understand, and respond to God’s calling for us and for the world?

Samuel knows that he’s heard something calling for him, but he doesn’t recognize the voice as God’s. He turns to the most likely explanation, the thing that he knows how to make sense of. He goes to his mentor Eli, the man who has been raising and teaching him. But Eli doesn’t hold any answers or resolution either. And still the voice calls to Samuel. This voice is persistent. It doesn’t give up and move on after one or two tries, but lingers and echoes until it is recognized for what it is. 

Holiness is often like that.  We experience something, notice something, feel something in our bones that calls to us from something beyond...but we’re not sure what to call it or how to respond.  Perhaps we dismiss what we’ve heard and seen because it seems either too miraculous or more likely...too mundane. But just the sound of our name in the mouth of someone who loves us...can be holy.  The ways the light trickles through the trees can lift our hearts and speak eternal promises to us. The way the breeze catches the back of our neck to caress our soul and invite us to move along with it...these can be echoes of the divine voice too. 

I think part of our role as church is to walk beside each other during this life to help each other recognize the holy that surrounds and moves us. Sometimes we need others to say, “yes, this is real and it matters and God is in it.”  Have you done this or had someone else offer this to you?

Maybe when you’re beating yourself up for not doing “more,” a friend who truly knows you will say, “actually, you took a much-needed nap today when you never let yourself rest and that is worthy of sacred celebration.”  Maybe you noticed someone else doing something kind for themselves or others, like running after the person who just left their phone on the counter by accident, but all they see is what else they didn’t do today...remind them that God calls us to care for one another and that’s what you see happening through them. 

The voice that Samuel heard and experienced is personal, but it is also better understood and lived out in community, shared between young and old. Samuel has heard something that Eli has not, but Eli has noticed something about this voice that Samuel might otherwise have missed and offers the wisdom of ages to form a response...be present, fully deeply present and open to God’s leading. Samuel returns to the stillness and the solitude and when he is stirred again, he opens himself up by saying, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”  I’ve used these same words as a mantra in my own meditation when I don’t know what to say, but long to hear.

Samuel utters the same words as Abraham, Jacob, and Moses when standing on the edge of something new and mysterious and holy… “here I am.” These three words allow us to be seen, to be known, in vulnerability and courage, to turn toward the voice calling to our hearts.

Of course, this calling isn’t an easy one. It’s never easy to be a part of God’s liberation for ourselves and others. Samuel’s first message as a prophet is to confront his mentor with harsh reality. Nor is this calling entirely clear or certain. God does not outline what this call looks like down the road. For now the call seems to only lead as far as the next right thing. It seems the call..for now...is to bear witness. “the Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.” The call is not “go”, not “tell”, at least not yet.  The call for right now, is to be here, to watch for God, to pay attention, to listen, to notice, to recognize. God says to Samuel, “watch me do what I have promised I will do which is to set things aright.”

What will we notice, what will we hear, if we look and listen for God’s presence and voice here and now? Before we rush to getting things done, keeping up with “normal”, or pushing ourselves forward because someone told us we had to...what if we held space...in hopefulness and even fear to say, “speak, Lord, your servant is listening?” Speak, Lord, your servant is listening...