“…And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” 1 Samuel 3:10b
This reading for next Sunday got me thinking….
Have you cringed like I have when you’ve heard the various presidential candidates proclaim that God told them to run for president? At least three have made that announcement. I guess it’s just possible that God likes a lively primary season, right?
It sounds pretty much blasphemous to speak so confidently of knowing God’s opinion, but presidential candidates aren’t the only ones to talk like this, they just have a bigger audience. We church people speak regularly and confidently of just such divine election. We talk about God “calling” people to ordained ministry and of God “calling” clergy to this church or that. We talk about how God calls people to serve in the church on vestry or in other ministries. The implication is that there are particular things God wants you to do. “Pray about it,” someone will advise, with the idea that God’s opinion on a particular decision will then be known.So my question is, of course, how do we know? What does it mean to say we hear the voice of God? I know that over the years my own expectations and understandings of God’s call have changed. That’s not surprising, considering that I was twelve when I first started thinking about the priesthood!
One thing I know now is that listening to God is not a treasure hunt. There is a common, but unbiblical, idea that there is one vocation (or marriage partner, that’s part of it, too) for you to discover. God has, for some mysterious reason, hidden this magic answer from you, but through diligent prayer you can uncover this secret path. But beware: mistakes are fatal, or at least sinful. If you take the wrong job or marry the wrong person, no matter how good that decision seemed to be, you will be miserable, punished for choosing the wrong path.
A quick review of pretty much any Biblical story will demonstrate that there is no secret path of vocation. Persons who are called by God know, like Samuel in Sunday’s lesson quoted above, that they are called. People who are disobeying this call (read the story of Jonah, for example), are also aware of what they are doing. Most importantly, there is nothing in God’s story to indicate that tricking us or hiding the truth from us is something He enjoys doing. So that’s one thing that God’s call is not.
There is also the fact that often what we label as God’s call is really our own desires or fears speaking. We’ve all heard of or witnessed horrific examples of that hubris, from the suicide bombers acting in the name of God to Christians who decide that certain Commandments (usually the 5th, the one against adultery) don’t apply to them. Obviously that is not listening to God’s voice.
But if we said, like Samuel, “speak, Lord, your servant hears,” what would that be like? Is it possible to quiet all the inner voices to hear God’s voice clearly? If God spoke, what would God say?
For me, the call to be a priest continues to unfold over time. There are times when intuition or a hunch seems to be the Spirit’s urging, but not always. Anger or outrage can be a divine gift because they demand a response. On a few occasions I have been at peace with a costly decision because I knew it was absolutely the right choice. Sometimes I have been convicted of the error of my ways, sometimes through the words of other Christians. But I have to say that for me, hearing God takes place in the journey of faith, no voices. In the beginning, trying out different aspects of church life led me to see that this was where I belonged. While what I thought I was getting into and what I’m doing often bear almost no resemblance, I am also often surprised by the wisdom of my being here. I was prepared in ways I did not recognize for work I did not expect, but I’m still figuring it out. Taking a chance, learning through mistakes—those are all part of how I’ve heard God’s call. Vocation is an ongoing discovery, but not of what God has hidden, but of what I can do in God’s name and just how deep this journey of Christ can be.
I wonder if some of those Bible stories weren’t written after the fact, working a confidence into the calling that wasn’t necessarily there at the time! After all, even for Moses, the first proof God promises that he is doing the right thing will come after the fact, once he has rescued the people of Israel (Exodus 3:12).
So what are your thoughts? Has God ever spoken to you? How do we hear? How do we talk about God’s guidance without sounding like we’re nuts?