Learning to hear God
It was the noon-hour rush on a steamy July day and two men were pushing
their way through the crowds in New York City's Times Square. They practically
shouted at each other as they tried to hear above the din. One man was a native
New Yorker; the other was a Native American from Oklahoma.
The Indian stopped suddenly and said to his friend, "Listen! Do you
hear the cricket?"
His friend was incredulous. "Are you kidding?" he laughed. "How
could anyone hear a cricket in this bedlam? You just think you heard it."
The Indian didn't argue. He just said, "Come over here and
look." He walked over to a planter that was holding a large shrub, and
pointed at the dead leaves in the bottom. To his amazement, the New Yorker saw
a cricket.
"You must have an extraordinary pair of ears," he exclaimed.
"No better than yours. It just depends on what you are listening
for. Watch this."
The Indian reached into his pocket and pulled out a few nickels and
dimes. Then he dropped them on the sidewalk. People all around stopped in their
tracks and turned to look where the sound came from.
"See what I mean?" he said. It all depends on for what you are
listening.
How does one learn to hear God speak? This morning’s reading from the
book of 1 Samuel offers four key insights on that subject.[1]
First, as my opening story amply illustrates, one must have a desire to
hear God speak. The boy Samuel was born to Hannah, a woman filled with a desire
to please God.[2] Samuel
was the child for whom she had long yearned and that she had promised to
dedicate to God if her desire to be a mother was fulfilled.[3]
Today I hear many saying that they would like to hear God speak. Yet I
witness few who actually invest much time and energy in the project. Actions,
not words, best measure desire. The aspiring athlete devotes countless hours to
training. The young musician virtually lives in a practice room. The one who
finds fulfillment in working with computers can lose track of time when at a
keyboard. We almost instinctively understand the importance of a desire so
strong that it pushes us to persevere until successful. Do you have that same
degree of spiritual motivation?
Second, desire to hear God must give birth to silence. The psalmist
wrote, "Be still, and know that I am God!”[4]
Samuel slept in the temple of the Lord where the ark of the Lord – the physical
symbol of God's presence[5]
– was kept.[6]
Unlike Samuel we cannot live in close proximity to such a powerful
symbol. However, some Christians, especially from the Orthodox tradition, find
the use of icons helpful in centering and quieting themselves. Other
Christians, particularly Roman Catholics, find that praying in the presence of
the consecrated host, which they believe embodies Christ's presence, helpful in
the same manner. You may find that art, spiritual music, nature, meditatively
reading Scripture or some other technique helps to quiet your mind and spirit
so that you can hear God speak. Technique is the incarnation of desire. Find a
technique helpful to you and stick with it. God is speaking. All you have to do
is learn to listen.
Third, the variety of techniques for learning silence, learning to truly
listen, makes it important that one has a spiritual guide. The young boy
Samuel’s parents sent him to live with Eli.[7]
Three times Samuel heard God speak but thought that it was Eli. On the third
occasion that this happened, Eli finally realized that God was speaking to the
boy Samuel.[8] Now
you may think Eli spiritually dense for not having recognized what was
happening sooner. But who knows how many more times God would have had to speak
before Samuel realized on his own that it was the Lord speaking. Part of the
value of religious education – Sunday school, Bible study, etc. – is helping us
learn to hear God speak.
One day, Dwight Morrow and his wife, the
parents of Anne Lindbergh, were in Rugby, England. After wandering through the
streets, they realized that they had lost their way. At this moment, an
incident occurred that entered into Morrow's philosophy and became a guiding
principle in his life. He stopped a little Rugby lad of about 12 years.
"Could you tell us the way to the station?" he asked.
"Well," the boy answered,
"You turn to the right there by the grocer's shop and then take the second
street to the left. That will bring you to a place where four streets meet. And
then, sir, you had better inquire again."[9]
Developing our ability to hear God is an
iterative, lifelong learning process. Consultation with a spiritually mature
individual or a chaplain can help you find a technique that suits your
personality and spirituality.
Fourth and finally, listening for God to speak can be dangerous. In this
morning’s reading God speaks with what Samuel considers to be a human voice. The
text also describes God standing in the temple with Samuel.[10]
Philosophers and theologians label the practice of using human imagery to
describe God as anthropomorphism. We know that God is both infinite and
spirit and cannot be accurately portrayed using finite, human terms. Our
choices are either abstract nouns such as God for which no tangible
referent exists or concrete nouns associated with finite objects such as humans
or nature. John Wesley once said, “Do not hastily ascribe things to God. Do not
easily suppose dreams, voices, impressions, visions or revelations to be from
God. They may be from Him. They may be from nature. They may be from the
Devil.”[11]
Wesley was absolutely correct: haste in ascribing things to God often leads to
error.
Several safeguards exist by which we can test what we think is God
speaking to us. Is the word we receive consistent with the God revealed through
Scripture? Is the word that we receive consistent with the God who has a human
face, the one who for love’s sake was crucified and then triumphed over evil? Is
the word we receive confirmed by those who know and love both us and God best?
Listening to God is also dangerous because very often we find ourselves opposed
to contemporary culture. Samuel was usually at odd with Israel’s kings; John the
Baptist and Jesus were at odds with the Jewish and Roman elites; and Martin Luther
King, whom we commemorate tomorrow, powerfully opposed the dominant culture of racism
and economic exploitation. Today, it appears if some of those clearly unchristian
forces are resurgent as we hear racism spoken from the White House, laws passed
that increase rather than diminish economic inequality, and the challenge of scientific
reductionism to the very possibility of God’s existence. In short, your presence
here this morning is evidence of countercultural behavior.
May we like Samuel desire, listen and learn that when God speaks we too
respond, Speak, for your servant listens.[12]
Amen.
Sermon preached the Second Sunday after Epiphany / 14 January 2018
Parish of St Clement, Honolulu, HI
[1] 1 Samuel
3:1-20.
[2] 1 Samuel
1:16.
[3] 1 Samuel
1:11, 21, 24-26.
[4] Psalm
46:10.
[5] “Ark,” The
New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Henry Snyder Gehman
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), p. 62.
[6] 1 Samuel
3:3.
[7] 1 Samuel
1:24; 3:10.
[8] 1 Samuel
3:2-9.
[9] Bits
and Pieces, December 1991, p. 14. http://www.christianglobe.com/Illustrations/theDetails.asp?whichOne=w&whichFile=will_of_God.
[10] 1
Samuel 3:10.
[11] J.K.
Johnston, John Wesley Why Christians Sin, Discovery House, 1992, p. 102.
http://www.christianglobe.com/Illustrations/theDetails.asp?whichOne=w&whichFile=will_of_God.
[12] 1
Samuel 3:10.
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