120115 - How Will You Answer?

Yr B ~ Epiphany 2 ~ 1 Samuel 3:1-10
How will you answer? It’s a classic Christian question. How will you answer the teachings of Jesus? How will you answer the call of God? How will you answer the nudge of the Holy Spirit?
 
But there’s a huge assumption built into all those questions. An assumption that I don’t think we can make in today’s day and age – and I have my doubts if it could have been made in days past either. The assumption is that you’ve heard something that you can answer. You can’t answer a question you haven’t heard. You can’t meet a challenge you haven’t received.
 
So before we can get into how you might answer some call or message from God we need to spend some time thinking about how will you listen! I’m pretty confident that after a person hears, or awakens, to God’s presence or call that the person has a pretty healthy chance on responding positively to it – but they first have to hear it.

 
Back in November I had the pleasure of going on a four-day silent retreat (well, silent as in solitude, not as in absence of sound). It was heavenly! I was alone in a house on 10 acres of land. Houses make a certain amount of noise, and even the forest I walked wasn’t absolutely silent (or it would be dead), but it was all blissfully quiet. On my last morning I started to write in my journal that I had to go back to the real world when it struck me that I was actually in the real world already – probably more so than before I arrived. I was tuned-in to God’s frequency. I was in the groove – in the zone – in the Spirit. That’s the real world. So instead I wrote that it was time to go back to Noisy World.
 
The real world is the spiritual world. The real world is when you’re communing with God. It’s the only place where your blinders, and shoulder pads, and helmet, and fire retardant hazmat suit that you armour yourself with to face Noisy World come off. Noisy World is what we live in day by day. The rat race. The daily grind. Have you ever tried to find pure silence in your day? It’s really hard to do. Everything around us is noisy.
 
But it isn’t just audible sounds that create the noise – it’s also the ethos of the culture around us. We are inundated with the static-filled-white-noise of our modern day world. For example, the pervasive sense of greed and self-interest is upsettingly noisy. Our minds fill up with endless voices screaming ‘mine, mine, mine’ – build a higher fence, don’t raise my taxes, get out of my way.
 
There’s the frenetic noise of commercialism with sales, and markdowns, and blowouts, and bo-gos. Have you ever noticed that the commercials are louder than the programs on TV and radio? And they’re all backed by busy, raucous music and blaring sound effects.
 
There’s the noise of what passes for intellectual discourse in media or in politics where the loudest, angriest, most shocking or unpleasant voices shrilly argue and rage. When did it happen that the other side was no longer just of another opinion than you but had to be cast as evil and hell-bent for destroying all that is good in the world? The vitriol is deplorable. Think back to our recent bunch of elections – noise, noise, noise!
 
But perhaps the most insidious source of noise is the busyness of our lives. And no, I don’t mean that we sit on too many committees or help out at the church too much – I mean that we are multi-tasking ourselves to death. Work, exercise, house stuff, church. Dance class, piano lesson, hockey game, soccer practice, tai-kwon-do, girl guides, our kids can’t get a moment’s peace either. And it’s like we can’t imagine ourselves happy without a flickering TV, or computer, or video screen – that if our internet connection or satellite went out we’d go crazy – and God forbid if our cell phones seized up and we couldn’t text our BFF the life-changing-have-to-tell-you-this-very-second-message LOL, or IDK, or WT... (never mind).
 
When do we stop and breathe?
 
When do we take a time out and unplug? And how in the world can we hope to hear God’s wee small voice amid the deafening din of Noisy World? If you ever hope to hear God’s voice and learn and grow from it then you’ve got to escape from Noisy World from time to time and spend some good quality time in the Real World.
 
Noisy World prescribes Prozac – Real World prescribes prayer.
 
Think back to the bible stories you know where angels are said to have visited someone. What time of day do these usually happen? In the middle of the night – often just before dawn. In the New Testament there are numerous passages that tell of Jesus going out before dawn to pray. And young Samuel in today’s story hears God’s voice “before the lamp of God had gone out”. Samuel and Eli were responsible for keeping the Ark of the Covenant (where the 10 Commandments were stored) in perpetual light which meant lighting a lamp from sundown to sunrise every night. God calls to Samuel before that lamp had gone out – suggesting sometime just before morning.
 
Why does God seem to prefer to communicate in the middle of the night – or when you’re all alone on a long car ride without the radio on? Or when you’re out walking in the woods or sitting beside a lake? Could it be that those are the only times we’re quiet and still enough to perceive God’s voice? Could it be that God is calling all the time and we just can’t hear it because we’re distracted?
 
Hopefully those of us who’ve been on the spiritual journey for some time and are maturing have trained ourselves to carve out quiet times and discern God’s voice amid the din of Noisy World as well as in the rarefied quiet of the Real World. But when God is breaking through it seems to happen in the dead of night – when Noisy World is at its weakest. If we were another flavour of Christianity we might be tempted to call Noisy World the devil – conspiring to distract us from communing with God. (but we’re not, so I won’t suggest that!)
 
Another thing I’d like to explore before we get to “how will you answer?” is the nature of the people who hear God’s call. Who are these incredible spiritual giants who are worthy of God’s attention? Well, actually, they’re not giants at all – at least not at the start. They’re the opposite. The bible is filled with stories of unlikely people – ordinary people who rise up and do extraordinary things because they’ve felt the nudge of the Holy Spirit. In fact, I’m having a hard time thinking of a single ‘hero’ in the bible who wasn’t an unlikely person.
 
The obvious people that God should call and work through are the priests and rulers, the learned, the powerful, the influential. But no – time and time again God moves through the unlikely – the lowly – Moses the murder, Joseph the rejected daydreamer, David the little boy, fishermen, carpenters, tax collectors, poor teenaged girls like Mary, and adolescent boys like Samuel.
 
I don’t know, maybe the difference is those priests and rulers, and the learned and powerful are so busy doing their big, important things that they never rest long enough to hear God’s call? Have you ever felt that you were far too important to take an hour or a half hour for yourself and unplug every day? Do you think the world can’t function unless you’re “on”? I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating – there’s a great book by Bill Hybels (the original megachurch pastor) – the book is called Too Busy Not to Pray. You’re too busy not to pray! It’s so true – at least it is for me, and I suspect it is for you too.
 
One last thing before we address our how will you answer question. I think we romanticize what happens when God moves and speaks into your life. I think we have a picture of Touched By An Angel where the bad things in your life are suddenly all fixed as the angel choirs sing and you become all aglow with peace. That’s not God, that’s Hollywood. When God calls it’s rarely with easy news – it’s almost always with challenging news – life-changing news – because when you really encounter the holy it changes you.
 
Eli helped young Samuel realize it was God calling and opened the door for Samuel to hear and respond to God. That’s what a mentor does. What we didn’t read today was the content of the message. Samuel was tasked with telling Eli that he was finished. It was the right message (I don’t have time to get into Eli’s troubles but they were significant) and Samuel rose to become a great priest and leader in Israel following this night. It was a hard thing, but it was a good thing, because it was a God thing.
 
Ok, so far we’ve established that in order to think about how you might answer God’s call you first have to be in a position to hear it, and second that you don’t have to be a super-Christian to qualify to hear it. Everyone can feel God’s presence – everyone! The only thing standing in your way is you.
 
You’ve accepted that even someone like you could experience this and you’ve managed to get yourself some quiet time – you’ve internalized Jesus’ teaching, you’ve heard God’s call, you’ve felt the nudge of the Holy Spirit – now what?
 
Unlike Moses you’re probably not going to get tapped to lead an enslaved people out of bondage. Unlike David you’re probably not going to have to become a king. Unlike those Galilean fishermen you’re probably not going to have to leave your livelihood behind. And unlike Mary you’re not going to have to have a baby.
 
Except that you will. Actually, you’ll be just like them. Like Moses you are called to help people who are enslaved. You’ll help people enslaved by Noisy World find the Real World of God’s presence by sharing your own journey with them. Like David you are called to a position of honour and importance and leadership as you increasingly live out your life tuned into the Way of Jesus. Like the fishermen you do have to (get to!) leave your former way of seeing and understanding the world behind as you embark on a life-transforming new journey of spirituality. And like Mary (as we talked about all through Advent and Christmas) you are responsible for giving birth to the presence of God in our world.
 
God doesn’t necessarily call you to go and move a mountain like the characters in the bible. God calls you to make a difference primarily in your circles of connection and influence. If you’ve heard the teaching, felt the nudge, and sensed a call then you need to respond with one of the most humble and courageous sentences ever uttered by humans: Here am I.
 
Here am I.
 
Here I am.
 
And then you follow the nudge. You act on your spiritual experience. You give of yourself in response to God’s gift of Presence. 
 
One of the most obvious ways you can answer God’s call is to share yourself in some capacity here in this place. Simply put, God calls you to serve in church. We have dozens of opportunities for you to act on God’s nudge here at Faith.
 
We’re starting to use the language of vitality – both for the church’s vitality and your own spiritual vitality. I’m a huge proponent for prayer and the inner-journey, and faith formation – but you pray and journey and grow for something. We focus on our experience of God’s presence and listening for God’s voice so that we can be strengthened, and matured, and fuelled for living God’s way.
 
How will you answer? How will you express your growing vitality in faith? Maybe a committee? Maybe helping with Joyful Noise? Maybe joining the choir? Maybe signing any one of our hundreds of helping lists? Maybe committing to taking a Program Calendar course every season? Maybe increasing your offering? Maybe taking a week of refreshments after church? Maybe something huge? Maybe something small? Maybe all of the above!
 
God is definitely nudging you. I pray you can feel it. I pray you can escape the prison of Noisy World long enough to tap into the Real World and listen for it. I pray you can accept that you are worthy to receive it because you’re you – and God loves you, and God wants to commune with you. And I pray that as you are basking in the shalom of the Real World that you will find the faith, and strength, and courage, and joy of simply responding: Here I am, Lord. Your servant is listening.
Amen.