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Come and you will see… Speak your servant is listening!
The first reading and the gospel today are part of
what is known as a “call narrative,” or “vocation narrative,”
part of a genre where the prophets or the disciples
receive the call from God, and they learn to follow him.
Inside these two, one for the prophet Samuel, the last of the prophets,
and then the new disciples, Andrew and Peter.
We hear these calls, but they come in two slightly different ways,
and they raise some really good questions for us to answer.
The first question,
“Do we expect God to talk to us?
Or is that just exclusively for the disciples and prophets?”
The second question
“If we do expect God to speak to us,
who should we listen to that will help us
become a better listener to God?
Who is our mentor in listening to God?”
And then the third question
“How do we listen? What does that look like?”
Let's dive into this because I think it is going to be pretty interesting.
First, do we expect God to speak to us?
You have heard me speak to this over and over again
that is God is always in communication with us.
If we are not hearing God,
it is either that God is silently present to us,
or we are not hearing what God has to say.
God is not just for priests or prophets or kings,
he is for every single one of us.
God is calling us to newness of life,
calling us into a loving relationship,
not only with him, but with each other.
Always guiding us.
I have spoken before about what that looks like?
And that is prayer.
I will come back to that in the last question.
How do we open ourselves to that prayer?
First of all, we have to understand God is speaking to us.
We need to have that expectation
because if we do not have that expectation,
then we will not even begin to listen.
That is the premise with which we all need to operate.
I know some of us might find it harder than others, and that is okay.
We can get better at it.
But the presumption is God is always speaking to us.
So hold on to that.
The next question Who helps us?
In today's readings we have the prophet Samuel
under the apprenticeship of his master Eli.
Eli is helping him learn to listen to God's voice in his life.
And then in the gospel,
we have the disciples who are first listening to John,
and John is pointing the way to the lamb of God.
He says, “Look, there is the lamb of God. Listen to him.”
The question then for us is this and it is a really important question:
To whom do we listen to in our lives?
In other words, who do we give that extra edge of influence
with whom we are willing to listen?
I suppose with children, we expect it to be their parents,
but do they listen to them?
Do they listen to our parents?
We might presume that to be true, but in fact,
with young people today, there is a real challenge
that the temptation is to listen to social media influencers;
and they are called that for a reason
because they are there to influence.
Are they leading you to being a better person?
After watching or listening to social media
or whoever it is we listen to,
are we closer to Christ or are we further away?
Are we a better person or a lesser person?
My fear is now, and this is not only for the young people,
but that also has to be a question for us.
To whom do we listen to?
Who is our influence?
Which television shows, podcasts, books do we give our time to?
What newscasters do we listen to?
To what politicians do we listen to,
what influencers, what authors are we reading? “
Let's be very clear, they are influencing us too!
Whoever we are reading or listening,
whether that be a podcast, a YouTube, or a TikTok video,
or whether it is an author or a sophisticated politician,
they are influencing us.
The question is, are they helping us to become better humans?
And here we want to be not just better humans,
we want to be better Christians.
We have to be very careful.
I cannot answer that question for you.
You have to ask that question for yourself.
To whom and with whom am I listening?
How much influence do we give to them?
Because I think we need to curate some people in our lives
who help us listen to God in our life.
That is more than likely not going to come from television.
It is not going to come from a newscaster. Why?
Because that is not how they are.
That is not how it works.
They are from money.
It is a money proposition.
And influencers on social media are not much different.
Who do we listen to now?
We could listen to our spouse,
but do we really listen to our spouse?
Do we really listen to our children?
Do we really listen to our parents?
Do we have some person in our life who is a good soul,
who influences us to listen to God
so that we can hear that call and be Eli in our life.
Who will guide us and say,
“Ah, God is speaking to you. Just say,
‘Speak. Your servant is listening.’”
That brings me to the third and final part:
how do we listen to the voice?
First of all, the premise was that God is speaking.
Now the question is how do we listen to ourselves?
It cannot be just about influencers.
We have to be willing to do the hard work ourselves:
to learn to listen to God in our own heart,
because he is speaking to every single one of us.
Other people can influence us and help us,
but we need to own that job.
That is called prayer, my friends.
If you have not heard me talk about prayer now,
you have not been a good listener!
As I have said often prayer is critical in our lives.
There are a couple things that are going to help us here:
I said this to students on Wednesday and it is work repeating.
There are two things that are super important.
There is an interior listening or preparation,
and there is an exterior preparation.
Let’s talk about the exterior one, which is pretty easy.
If, I am in a noisy room and I am trying to listen to you,
that is pretty hard to do.
That is an exterior noise.
If we are really wanting to pray,
then we have to find a quiet place physically secluded away.
It is very hard to do with the television on,
the radio on and all those things on.
It is going to be very hard with exterior noise
to come to Lord in any serious way.
Now, where can you find that?
There are lots of places you can go.
You can have a quiet place in your garden.
A quiet place in nature, quiet place in your room.
The car without the radio is just fine.
It does not matter where,
but we need to decrease the exterior noise to help us.
The second part is the interior.
This is a little harder work and
this is where we need to put in the work.
We need to quieten our exterior
and then we need to quieten the interior.
And what are we listening for?
The premise is that we are listening for the voice of God
guiding us to our better selves,
to the better version of ourselves,
to the better Christian, to the soul that we were created to be.
This is where we need to do some work,
learning to steady and slow our soul down.
To just be with the Lord and to learn to listen for his voice.
To be able to say what Samuel says,
“Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
We have got some work to do, my friends,
because the busyness of our lives
with the number of inputs that we are getting,
it is hard to sort it all out.
But there is a framework, presume that Christ
is speaking to us in our hearts.
Look at who are our influencers
and help us become a better Christian.
Then still the exterior and the interior noise
so that we can, in fact, listen, and then make our prayer.
Come and you will see… Speak your servant is listening!
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