Epiphany 2-B 2012

LISTENING

Introduction

What keeps you up at night? I go through periods when I cannot sleep. Sometimes it is a bad dream, sometimes it is just thoughts and fears running through my mind. Sometimes I am so excited for tomorrow that I just can’t sleep.

Anyone ever told you to “sleep on it” when you have a problem? You know the opposite of being up all night worrying or wondering is to fall asleep and have life sort itself out in those hours of relaxation. 

Sometimes that happens too. I remember once, a decade ago, I wrote an entire sermon for about five hours on a Saturday night, I struggled to get everything right. Then woke up the next morning and in 20 minutes had written a completely different sermon. During my sleep my mind worked some things out.

Interestingly, a lot of the significant encounters of the Bible happen during the nighttime. Jacob has the dream of the angels and the ladder into heaven, for example. Mary is sleeping when the Angel Gabriel wakes her up. Nicodemus comes to Jesus during the night. Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion.

I could go on. It seems that a lot of the time what happens when we sleep is that dreams and visions come from God and straighten things out for us.

In today’s readings we are talking about call – about listening to the voice, the dream, the vision….

Time with the Kids – Come and See

-         Ever found anything you wanted other people to see? Sea shell, frog, etc.

-         How excited were you?

-         That is what this guy Philip was like when he first met Jesus, he was so excited he wanted to tell all his friends. Come and see.

-         We can do that to… We can say to people, come and see when they ask us about God.

Knitting it together

As a young child Samuel was just doing what was expected, he went to work in the temple because it was expected of him; he had no idea what he wanted to be when he grew up, or what life was really like.

If we fast forwarded his story, he becomes the first major prophet to preach in the nation of Israel, he changes everything and is key to the future of the nation.

But look at where it begins…

A young boy named Samuel is awoken in the middle of the night when he hears his name being called over and over again.  Each time, he hears someone say “Samuel,” he gets up out of bed and goes to Eli's room. 

He logically thinks it must be the only other person in the temple who is calling his name… but eventually, with Eli’s help, he realizes he is not hearing a human voice; but that it's God speaking to him. 

And so he finally responds by saying, “Talk to me.  I will listen to you now.”

It took a number of attempts to get through to Samuel, to make him aware of a presence that he couldn't necessarily see or understand.  Samuel couldn't hear God calling to him at first because he was in his own way – not allowing himself to think outside the box.

But let's not be too hard on Samuel for not catching in so quickly; after all he was just a child.

But even when we become adults, there are all kinds of reasons why we can't or won't hear God calling to us.

Sometimes we ignore these callings because, like a childhood nightmare, they scare us. 

Sometimes we misunderstand them and think that there something else other than God trying to get our attention.

But the thing about God's callings, those divine naggings as I like to call them,  is that they are persistent.  

They won't just go away.  God doesn't give up on us.

God knows us better than we know ourselves…

The Other Disciple

When I ask people how Jesus called the disciples and who it was that he called the answer would probably always be the same – he was walking by the seashore and saw some guys mending their nets and said, “come with me and I will make you fishers of men.”

Curious, eh? In the gospel of John it is completely different. First off, the disciples are already following someone – John the Baptist; who sort of introduces them to Jesus. Then the next person to be called, Nathaniel, someone we do not really hear about again until we are told he is at the crucifixion, was actually called by his friends, not by Jesus.

We sometimes forget that lay people are called too.

But we are realizing more and more how important it is to talk about how God calls everyone to do specific things, to share unique gifts and talents, to be active in certain communities, to speak our thoughts out loud.

That doesn’t mean we always hear it, or get it, or pay attention.

One of the best descriptions of what a call is like comes from a professor at STU, Father Dolan, who said, “A calling is like a little fly that won't stop buzzing in your ear.  It will just keep on buzzing until you finally pay attention to it and swat that sucker!”

We often resist doing the things we feel called to do.  We keep God at an arm's length. 

We say, “You want me to do, what?”  “No offence God but I have my own plans, etc. free will and all of that.” 

But if one approach fails, God will try another and another and another until we get it.

Nathaniel didn't want to follow Jesus at first. 

He tried to get out of it by making smart-aleck remarks about people from Nazareth, the place where Jesus was from. 

But Jesus convinced him to follow him not by making an argument about why it was a good idea. No.  He convinced Nathanael to follow him by not giving up on him, by keeping his eyes on him and his hopes set on him from the moment he laid eyes on him sitting under a fig tree. 

The psalmist tells us that God has searched us and knows us well.  God knows us in a deep, intimate way that began when we were knit together in our mother's wombs.  Therefore, God knows what our gifts are; God knows all about our hopes and our dreams.  Who better then to give our lives direction?

Conclusion

Whether you're a young person starting out in the world, trying to figure out which direction to go in, or someone at middle age trying to re-evaluate your life; or a senior discerning your purpose at this unique time in your life, God calls you to go this way and that.

And all the little times in between too, in decisions that might not seem so major.  If you listen you will find that God has a word for you. 

We are all called to do different and many things throughout our lifetime.  Pay attention to the things that happen around you.  Maybe they are trying to tell you something.  Keep your ears wide open to hear the voice that calls to you in the night.