First reading: 1Samuel 3:1-10, 19-20
Gospel: Mark 1:29-39
Do you ever feel like you are being swamped with messages? Because of the sophisticated technology that surrounds us, we have at our fingertips many different ways to communicate with others. We have email, text messages, instant messages, face time, Skype and cell phones. When we are surrounded by all of these ways to communicate it is possible to become overwhelmed with too much information. It can be challenging to sift through it all keeping the focus on the important messages that need our attention. It seems that a constant theme throughout history has been the issues around being able to communicate with others and with God. Even though we are light years away from the story we just heard in first Samuel, the problem of recognizing the voice of God seems to be a constant. With all of our modern ways of communicating one might think it would be easier now than in Samuel's time to communicate with God. But another way of looking at this goes back to the overloaded feeling we can have in this information age. There can be too many messages and we can miss the important ones. We can even miss the messages God sends us. So we must take Eli's advice to Samuel and Say "Speak YHWH, for your servant is listening." When we truly say these words and mean them we open ourselves up for unexpected experiences of God and may even find ourselves being led in directions we never imagined.
How do we listen to God’s voice in this world of many voices. How do we discern which voice is God’s voice and which voice is leading us away from God? Have you ever found yourself in a situation that is similar to the reading we just heard in the book of first Samuel? Have you ever heard the voice of God and thought it was someone else’s voice? Or have you ever tried desperately to hear God’s voice and become confused about which voice is truly coming from YHWH.
In today’s Gospel reading we see Jesus in the midst of his ministry going from place to place spreading the good news, healing Peter’s mother-in-law, teaching his disciples, only to find himself still ministering to others after sunset as they brought people to him who were ill and possessed with demons. This story illustrates that Jesus had the potential of feeling overloaded. An important detail in this story gives us insight about being able to discern God's voice even when we feel overloaded. The story reads, “Rising early the next morning, Jesus went off to a lonely place in the desert and prayed there.” Herein lies a key to hearing the voice of God and to warding off problems that come from being overloaded. Being alone in the desert opens up a space that can connect us to God. Taking quiet time away from our responsibilities spending quiet time of prayer and reflection can be the breath of fresh air that revives us when we feel overloaded. But ready or not God speaks to us with words, symbols, with music,without words, in quiet alone times, in community gatherings, in our happiest moments and in our saddest moments and moments in between. God seeks us even more than we seek God.
What does the voice of God sound like? Is it audible? How do we distinguish God's voice from other voices? These questions can be answered in many different ways because even though God probably doesn't Skype us or email us or call us on the cell phone there are many different ways to hear God speak. Samuel heard God at night when he was awakened from sleep. Moses heard God in the burning bush. God speaks to us in dreams and visions but the culture we live in seems more interested in scientific evidence than in a spiritual realm of unknowns. It can be very risky to tell about an experience of hearing God speak. The difference between our technological, scientific world and the place where we can hear God speak is one world emphasizes being able to figure everything out logically and the other is a place that allows mystery and just being open to the experience. When we truly say the words "Speak YHWH your servant is listening," we are opening ourselves up to this other place. In this other place we learn to see and hear differently. Fr. Richard Rohr explains this well in a meditation called "Learning to See." He reflects on a verse of scripture in Genesis that says,
“God, you were here all along, and I never knew it” (Genesis 28:16), says Jacob on awakening from his stone pillow.
Fr. Rohr's meditation says,
"The essential religious experience is that you are being “known through” more than knowing anything in particular yourself. Yet despite this difference, it will feel like true knowing. This new way of knowing can be called contemplation, nondualistic thinking, or “third-eye” seeing. Such prayer, such seeing, takes away your anxiety about figuring it all out fully for yourself, or needing to be right about your formulations.
At this point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with you, and you are not so afraid of making mistakes. You know even those will be used in your favor. At that point you also have awakened from your stone pillow, and you know with a new clarity what you partly knew all along."
With this new ability to see without fully understanding it is possible to hear God in our experiences of this dance we encounter with God. We open ourselves to being able to see and hear God in a wide variety of experiences and we find ourselves on the path to fullness of life and kinship with God.
It is not always easy to hear God speak because sometimes we don't want to hear what God has to say. It can take courage to acknowledge the voice of God when this seems to be leading us into unfamiliar territory. But the rewards of liberation and life await us if we listen and follow God's call.
Have you ever tried to tell someone about a personal experience of hearing God speak? I will attempt to do that myself but with this disclaimer: it is hard to give the full picture because something seems to get lost in telling about it. And it is common to have very personal messages when God speaks. It is like you had to be there to get the full effect. We just find it hard to describe encounters with God. But I will give it a try.
I had been struggling with a situation that my son was involved in because my son's description of an incident was different than another persons description. I really wanted to believe my son's version but was unsure of who to believe. As I was driving one day the situation with my son was not in my mind at all and out of the blue came this thought that seemed very different from my own thoughts and it began with the words,"this is the boy who in second grade... "the voice continued and connected the second grade incident with the current situation. I found myself driving along with tears streaming down my face knowing that God just spoke to me and comforted me about the situation with my son. God was telling me that I could believe what my son had told me. This was a huge relief to me. And I know this was God speaking to me.
Simone Weil in her book,"Waiting for God" describes the natural longings that we all have to be in communion with God and directs our attention to God's role in this relationship dispelling the idea that encountering God is all up to us. On the contrary she illustrates beautifully that our part is small in comparison to God's. She writes
“The longing to love the beauty of the world in a human being is essentially the longing for the Incarnation,” “It is mistaken if it thinks it is anything else. The Incarnation alone can satisfy it” (109). “We do not walk vertically. We can only turn our eyes toward God. We do not have to search for God, we only have to change the direction in which we are looking. It is for [God] to search for us.”
Hopefully when we feel overwhelmed with too much information or with too much responsibility or with too much of anything or when we don't understand messages we are receiving because we are having trouble discerning whose voice we hear we will take Eli's advice to Samuel and say "Speak YHWH your servant is listening" and we will hear a message from God.
Deacon Donna with Bridget Mary on Sept. 10, 2011
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