A sermon preached at Trinity-Mount Rainier on the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, January 15, 2012.
Just Listen
1 Samuel 3:1-10 & John 1:43-51
(Other Reading Appointed: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20)
There are some people who seem to believe that listening is a lost art. Now, one might argue that such a statement isn’t true. We all do a lot of listening. Hopefully it can be said that many of you are listening right now. Yet, the statement made which states that listening is a lost art is really trying to make a point. You see, what many of us call listening should really be called “just hearing”. And so, one might ask, what’s the difference? Aren’t we just somehow “splitting hairs” about this?
But stop and think about it a bit. Yes, listening is hearing. Yet, not all hearing is listening. Hearing that is not listening is something like the adult voices in the Peanuts cartoons. We know that something is being said, because we hear the “waa waa waa waa”, but we have no real idea of what was being said.
And how often do we find ourselves in our day to day living hearing a lot of things, but not really listening to anything? Yes, we hear a lot of voices and a lot of noise coming at us from every direction, clamoring for our attention. But what do we listen to? Sometimes it’s really hard to do that, so many of us simply tune out everything, wishing that we could just find a place to be quiet and not have to deal with it all. And if we do this, then what we have done is to have stopped listening.
When we don’t listen, we shut ourselves out from the world around us and from everyone around us. We might still hear things, but we fail to understand them because we take ourselves out of the dialogue that life and living provides us. Sometimes in order for us to truly understand ourselves, we must first understand others, and this only happens when we take the time to listen to those around us.
Just as it is for our lives in the “real world”, so it is as well in our lives of faith in and with our Loving God. God also wants us to learn to not only hear Him, but also to listen to Him. In todays’ Old Testament Reading, we hear the account of God’s call to Samuel to become a Prophet. Looking at the boy Samuel, we come to see the difference between hearing and listening. Three times, Samuel heard a voice calling to him, and Samuel did what he would normally do when he heard someone call—he went and sought out Eli who would have normally been the one who would ask for him. And Eli had to tell Samuel that he was not the one who called for him, until after that third time when Eli realized that it was the Lord who was seeking to speak with the boy. So Eli wisely tells Samuel, “The next time you hear the voice, don’t just jump up and think about doing what you would ordinarily do. Instead, hear the voice, and say ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’”
Samuel needed to learn to listen to the voice of God. And it’s the same way with us. In this world filled with competing voices all vying for our attention, it’s really hard to listen to and hear that “still, small voice” of God. The correction to this problem is rather simple—we just have to listen to His voice. But, how is this simple? How do we know His voice? How do we know the right voice to hear and to listen to?
We know what to do when we recognize where God’s voice is to be heard. In Samuel’s day, we hear that “the Word of the Lord was rare in those days”. Thank God that this is not true in our day, for God has given us His Word which still speaks loudly and clearly each time it is read and proclaimed. Go to the Word of God and there you will find the living and clear voice of God. His voice still rings out, speaking to us words of love, grace, and life. And we are able to hear that voice. So what do we do then?
Well, we must not only hear this voice, but we must also listen to it. You see, we can hear God speak to us, yet what marks our listening is if we are able to understand what is said to us, take it to heart, and put it into practice in our life and living with God. If we only hear the voice of God and not truly listen to His voice, we allow ourselves only to hear what we want to hear, believe what we want to believe, and simply ignore all the rest as just being nonsense. And that is not what listening to God is all about.
An example of this is in today’s Gospel. Philip hears and listens to Jesus and is so moved by it that he believes what Jesus is teaching. He is so moved that he also wants others to know of Jesus as well, so Philip goes and finds Nathaniel and lets him know that he has found the One promised by God. Nathaniel hears this message, but is not willing to listen to it. He scoffs at Philip for being so dense to believe that a prophet could come from that no good little town of Nazareth. Yet, through an amazing conversation that he has with this Teacher from Nazareth, Nathaniel changes his mind, ready not only to hear, but also to listen, to what this Man has to say.
What we learn from this is then that it is God Himself who helps us to go from just hearing Him to actually and really listening to Him. When God opens our ears, our minds, and our hearts to hear Him, it is then that He aids us in listening. It is God alone who helps us to believe in Him and His Word, for without Him, all that He has to say makes no sense to us. When God helps us to hear, we are able to truly listen—hearing every word and being led by that Word to believe and trust in the One who speaks that Word and to believe that every promise made to us in this Word is sure, certain, and true. And having heard and listened to this Word, we open our lives up to the One who speaks to us, letting His Word have its way with us as we live for the One who has spoken to us.
Our God is speaking. So, what must we do? Simple—just listen. Like Samuel, may we be able to say, “Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears,” and as we hear the voice of God speak to us in and through His Word, we may truly listen to it, taking it to heart for what it truly is: the Words of eternal life. And so we pray:
Grant, O Lord, that what we hear with our ears, we may say with our lips, believe in our hearts, and practice in our lives; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen!
