We all have ears to hear, but we don’t always hear.
Hearing, really hearing is really hard.
Sometimes we don’t know what we are hearing.
The other day our daughters were talking about a blind dance instructor. And I said, “Your dance instructor is blind?” They both looked at me and said “Blond dad, not blind, blond!”
We hear scripture lessons today about hearing God’s call.
Samuel, had no idea what or who he was hearing, he kept asking Eli if he was calling him.
It’s a funny story, imagine Abbott and Costello misunderstanding each other with their Who is on first routine, or Lucille Ball and her husband talking past each other.
Did you call me? No I didn’t. Did you call me? No I didn’t. Stop bothering me. Did you call me…
Eventually Eli caught on and told Samuel what was going on. Samuel then answers God’s call by saying, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
Calling in the night until God has Samuel’s full attention.
We hear the calling encounters of Jesus with Phillip and Nathaniel. Their lives are interrupted; their attentions are captured and held. A vision is given of angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, Jesus being the point of contact between heaven and earth.
The calling of God. Do we hear? Do we misunderstand?
How do we recognize God’s call as authentic?
One of earliest heresies in Christianity was that life in the Spirit is an escape from the world, when in fact it is just the opposite. Life in the Spirit is always about being more intensely involved and connected with the world, a deepening engagement, digging in.
Sometimes we treat the life of faith as merely the saving of souls. Getting involved in the messy stuff of human relationships and communities and politics is looked upon as somehow being tainted or a wasteful distraction from saving souls.
Jesus resurrection was not merely spiritual, it was intensely physical. Souls and bodies cannot be separated. That old heresy keeps trying to rip souls and bodies apart. We misunderstand God’s call when we do that.
Life in the Spirit is an intense way of being physical.
The calling of God, the allure of God, the disruption of God, the intimate communion of God given in Jesus always results in ministry. We are called to ministry, that is where we meet God, that is where we grow in grace. Ministry is where heaven and earth meet. Ministry is about being in the world, caring for the pain in the world.
So today we hear that call to be in the world.
Today we say, “Hear I am. Speak for your servant is listening.”