So in today’s first reading from the first Book of Samuel we
hear about a problem in communication.
The Lord God keeps calling Samuel, and Samuel keeps missing that it is
God who is calling and thinks instead it is his teacher and mentor, old
Eli. On the face of it, it appears that
Samuel is inexperienced, a bit slow on the uptake, not quite getting it that it
is the Lord who is calling him. As our
reading says, “At that time Samuel was
not familiar with the Lord, because the Lord had not revealed anything to him
as yet.” Well, that could be, but being
of a suspicious nature I wonder if there is not something else going on.
You see, I
wonder that because I know what the Lord said to Samuel. It is very interesting and even
shocking. But it is deliberately left
out of today’s reading. Samuel finally
says “Speak, for your servant is
listening.” And then we skip 8 full verses, which is the Lord’s message to
Samuel, and skip to Samuel growing up and the Lord being with him.
What was the
Lord so persistently trying to get Samuel to hear? I know because I read the 8 missing
verses. It is surprising, really. Would you like to know what the Lord was
trying so persistently to tell young Samuel?
You would? Well I will tell you.
Here is what
is left out of today’s reading: “The LORD said to Samuel: I am about to do
something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears it ring.” In other
words, here is some juicy bit of news. “On
that day I will carry out against Eli everything I have said about his house,
beginning to end. I
announce to him that I am condemning his house once and for all, because of
this crime: though he knew his sons were blaspheming God, he did not reprove
them. Therefore, I
swear to Eli’s house: No sacrifice or offering will ever expiate its crime.”
Wow! An irrevocable condemnation. Then poor Samuel had to convey this message
to his teacher and mentor, Eli. Which he
did. Yuck. I mean, how would you like it if God came to
you in the middle of the night and gave you a message: “go tell you boss that I
am going to wipe out him and his whole family because of their sin, and nothing
they can do will appease me.” You
probably would not be anxious to get that message, and neither was Samuel. So I wonder if Samuel did not have some inkling, some idea of
what was coming and so try some selective deafness, trying not to hear what the
Lord was going to say, hoping maybe God would change His mind and give up.
I can identify
with that. When I was a senior in high school
the idea of priesthood started coming to me.
I pretty much ignored it, shoved it in the background, thought about
other things, because that was not my plan for my life. I wanted to be a lawyer. Maybe even go into politics or
government. Later in college the idea of
priesthood started coming back again. I
would put it off, I’d investigate it for a while, then push it off again for a
year, and so on. Till finally as I was
getting near graduation I thought, “Look, I have spent all this time in school
with no break. I will go to the Paulist
novitiate for a year, take a break from school, get the priesthood thing out of
my system, and then go to law school.” Well
it did not work out that way. But I can
identify with Samuel in his reluctance to hear the Lord speak to him. I think many of us can. Because what God says is not always what we
want to hear. But what I heard was much
much better than what I had wanted. I
know that now. But at the time I did not
want to hear it.
Let’s
now jump to the Gospel. John the Baptist
sees Jesus and proclaims “Behold the Lamb
of God.” Intrigued, two of John’s
disciples abandon him and start following Jesus. Jesus turns to them and asks a really
important question. “What are you looking for?” The Jerusalem Bible puts this as “What do you
want?” The Orthodox Study Bible renders
this as “What do you seek?” In any form
it is a powerful question. What do you want? What are you
seeking for in life?
That
is a pretty basic question all of us have to face. Many of us are confused about what we really
want. Some of us get it wrong, at least
for a while, looking for love in all the wrong places as Johnny Lee sings on the
“Urban Cowboy” soundtrack.
What
do you want? What are you looking for in
life? What do you seek in the depth of
your heart?
Jesus
puts this question to the two ex-disciples of John the Baptist, and in today’s
Gospel Jesus puts it to all of us right now.
And Jesus, standing right there, is the answer. Right in front of them. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the fulfillment of our deepest longings
and desires and hopes.
What
do you want? Here I am!
And
He is here with us now.
Listening
deeply to God is often scary, unsettling, risky. It is all not sweetness and light. We may not hear what we want to hear. It may not fit into our plans and
desires. It may be a message of judgment
like Samuel heard. It may be a call to
something we don’t want to do, like I heard.
It may be a challenge that stretches and makes us uncomfortable and
scared. But it is really what we most
deeply want.
It
is a risk to listen and to respond. That
is what the two disciples of John the Baptist did. They sought the Lord Jesus. In the Gospel we are told: “He said to them, “Come and you will see.”
Come
to the Lord, and you will see.
AMEN.
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