Epiphany 2B
January 18, 2015
1 Samuel 3:1-10
This week in
confirmation class, we started learning about prayer – what it is, how we do
it, what we expect to get from it, what it is like when we don’t get from it
what we had hoped. We had a brief debate as to whether prayer is a one-way
conversation with God, or two-way, or something else altogether that can’t be
defined in our human words.
Well, what
would you say? I think most of us believe intellectually that prayer ought to
be at least a two-way conversation – that is, not only do we ask God for things
and then hope to see them come to fruition in a way we can recognize, but also
sometimes God answers us in a way we can perceive. I suspect the reason the
debate arose, however, is that this is not always how we experience
prayer. I
suspect most of us have had the experience that we pray and pray for something
to happen, but it doesn’t. Or we pray and pray for answers from God, but don’t
get them. Or we pray and pray for guidance, but don’t receive it. For some of
us, it may feel like prayer is often a one-way conversation, where we plead and
plead, and God ignores and ignores.
But I’m not
so sure it is a matter of God ignoring our prayers so much as it is a matter of
us not listening for the response. Perhaps that is why one of the lines that
has grabbed hold of my heart this week is Samuel’s eventual response to the
voice he keeps hearing: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” Three times he
has heard this voice calling him in the quiet of the night. The author of
Samuel tells us that Samuel “did not yet know the Lord,” and that in fact “the
word of the Lord was rare in those days,” so naturally he did not suspect that
this voice could belong to God. But the wise
old priest Eli perceives that it
might be the Lord, and tells Samuel to respond accordingly. And so he does.
I asked our
Bible study this past week if Samuel’s response was ever their prayer – simply
to say, “Okay, God, I’m listening. What have you got for me today?” I admit it
is not often mine. I usually have a laundry list of things I need to ask God
about, things I want or need, asking for guidance, or even offering
thanksgiving or praise, but my prayers are so often a whole lot of me talking. It’s
sort of like had a sweatshirt I had when I was young that said in bright
colored letters, “I’m talking and I can’t shut up!” And while that is still
pretty true about the way I interact with people, it is especially true about
my prayer life: “I’m praying and I can’t shut up.” Perhaps the same is true for
you. For me, I think one of the primary reasons I “pray and can’t shut up” is
that if I stop and listen, I might actually hear God’s response – and sometimes
God’s response is not something that I want to hear. Sometimes it calls me to
something I don’t want to do, or suggests I accept something I don’t want to be
true. But as I long as I “pray and can’t shut up” I never have to hear an
undesirable response.
But this
innocent response from the young boy Samuel, this boy who did not yet know the
Lord but had dedicated his life to serving God, shows that “shutting up” is one
of the most important things we can do in prayer. “Speak, for your servant is listening.” My teachers in school always
said, “You can’t listen if you’re talking!” and this is true in prayer, too. Listening
is so hard to do, but it is an essential element of that two-way conversation
that prayer should be. How can you really get to know someone, after all, if
you do all the talking?
In a novel
by Czech author Milan Kundera, he tells a story about a woman who works in a
restaurant, and although the restaurant wasn't very popular, people always came
so they could talk to this woman. She always listened and said,
"Uh-huh," in the right places. What I love about the way
Kundera writes it is he says usually when people talk to other people, they
wait for a chance to jump in and say, "Yeah, for me too, except for
me..." and then talk about themselves. But this woman wasn't like
that. She never said, "Yeah that's like me." She always just
listened.
What
would prayer be like if we did as much listening as we did talking? If we just
allowed space for God to speak to us, and said, “Uh-huh” in all the right
places, and didn’t just come with a list of things we need to get off our chest,
and did all the talking? What might we learn? How might it
shape us and form
us? How might it affect our lives?
Tomorrow
is the day the nation celebrates the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. When
we think of King, we imagine this giant – a man of faith, a skilled orator, a
charismatic leader who made a huge difference in the character and direction of
our country, and someone who continues to inspire today. What we don’t imagine
is a man who would ever doubt. We hear, “I have a dream!” but we don’t hear,
“God, I quit.” But he was that man, too. In one powerful sermon, he told the
story of a night in January, 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott, when he
received a death threat on the telephone. He tried to let it go (he had
received many others like it), but he thought about his wife, and his new sleeping
baby, and he couldn’t get back to sleep. He went to the kitchen, and as he
tells it, he “took his problem to God.” He was exhausted and about to give up.
He asked God for help, and in return, he says, he “could hear the quiet
assurance of an inner voice, saying, ‘Stand up for righteousness,
stand up for
truth. God will be at your side forever.’” The inner calm that came from this
small voice gave him the courage to keep going in his work. And aren’t we glad
that he did!
Could
King have heard that voice if he was doing all the talking? Could he have been
given that gift if he hadn’t first listened to God in his moment of need? For
Martin Luther King, Jr., prayer was an essential piece of the fight for civil
rights – both the speaking and the listening. God’s voice guided him and
strengthened him. Somehow in the midst of violence and intolerance, King was
able to find a way to listen for God’s voice, to say, even in his exhaustion,
“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
It’s
not easy, though, is it? The inner dialogue that constantly goes on in our
heads poses a challenge – how do we quiet it? In addition, discerning God’s
voice from all the other voices that seem to be pulling for our attention and
telling us how to live our lives isn’t always easy. And then of course there is
the problem that when we do finally discern God’s voice speaking to us, we
don’t like what it is saying, and want to answer, “Return to sender. Try
again.” I talked last week about my star gift of acceptance, and how hard it
can be to accept what comes our way, and God’s call to us can be terribly hard
to accept. Look at the call of Martin Luther King Jr. Sure it was a call to
pursue righteousness and truth, but it also led to a lot of pain for him and
his family, and of course eventually his tragic death. The call that Jesus
issues to the disciples today in the gospel lesson – this, too, was a call into
the unknown, and who would go that way without some trepidation?
Yes,
listening to God can have some terrifying consequences. But just like Martin
Luther King trusted that even if he was too tired to go on, God would stand by
his side and never leave him, we, too, must trust in that voice that comes to
us. It comes in the quiet, when life calms down for a moment. It comes in the
dark of night, when we are overcome with sadness. It comes persistently,
tugging at us until we listen.
And listen we do:
by the grace of God, who patiently whispers to us in the night, who holds our
hand, who calls us to do God’s scary but fulfilling work. May the God who speaks
to us also give us the courage to listen.
Let us pray… Speak, Lord, for your servants are
listening… speak to us in the night… speak to us when we are tired… speak to us
in sorrow, and in joy… Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening… In the
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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