Who do we listen to?
St Pauls Presbyterian Church, Napier - Sunday 18 January 2009
Who do we listen to?
Bible Reading 1 Samuel 3: 1-10
Every so often I travel to Wellington and other parts of the country by plane and as those of you who have flown recently will know, there is a bit of a ritual to go through at the start. Once everyone is on board, the count of people is done, the pilots complete their preflight checks and some paper work is finalised. The hostess will close the doors, welcome everyone on board as the pilots start the engines and the plane moves out towards the runway. It’s about now that the hostess will pick up a handset and deliver a message that goes something like “This is a safety briefing and you are asked to listen even if you are one of our most frequent fliers. In the seat pocket in front of you will find a safety card which has details of the brace position, and the emergency exits”. There are other bits about using seat cushions for flotation and turning off electronic devices like cell phones, but they don’t now days say “follow the instructions of your crew, we know what we are doing”.
If you look around as the safety message is being given, you will see that most of your fellow passengers have their noses buried in the morning newspaper, or they are gazing out the window, or they are chatting to their neighbor. No one is listening.
I’m a sucker for listening to the safety message on planes – I worry that if there is an emergency I’ll have forgotten what I’m supposed to do, and I also feel sorry for the poor person delivering the message, so I usually listen.
Of course I listen but do I hear? Like all men I am quite capable of listening but I don’t always hear.
In today’s world where words are scattered about everywhere, who do we listen to and what do we hear?
When the boy Samuel heard a noise in the night God was not the first explanation he thought of. Logically he thought of the old priest Eli. He ran to Eli. “You called me and here I am.” But it wasn’t Eli, and there was no explanation for the voice in the night.
Again it happened and then a third time. How frustrated the young boy must have been to have his sleep interrupted like that.
If it was me I’d begin to wonder if perhaps the old man’s mind was wandering, perhaps his age was affecting his memory. But Eli realised that there was another possibility. Although there were very few messages from the Lord and visions from God were quite rare in those days, Eli suggested that Samuel go back to bed and if it happened again that he, Samuel, should say “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”.
The Bible, especially in the Old Testament, has many stories about prophets and leaders talking to God and receiving clear instructions, and when we read these stories it’s easy to get the idea that, until recently, God was positively talkative and very involved in things around earth, and then for some reason God seems to have gone into retirement, so we don’t hear much from God anymore.
God wasn’t always chatty of course, as the writer of Samuel informs us: “word from the Lord was rare in those days, visions were infrequent” (verse 1). In the context of Israel’s national life at this time, this “silence” was considered a form of divine judgment, that if not broken, would prove to be Israel’s undoing. Men were not listening to God in those days, and God did not speak very often so the message God gave to Samuel was important and unless the people listened and heard God’s message, disaster would befall Israel.
Today in our society we are saturated by words. Words fill the air on radio, on television, at meetings, all around us; words that often mean nothing (I’m deliberately not mentioning politicians here); words that attempt to attract our attention (think of those advertisements that interrupt your television programme); and the words that deceive and betray; words that mean only what the speaker means and not what the hearer hears. And where would we be without the commentators who tell us what all the words mean and what we should understand, as if we weren’t capable of understanding and forming our own view. Eventually, just like the safety message on the flight to Wellington, we don’t even listen to them anymore.
One place where we can hear good words is here in this church. It’s here in this place of worship that we have the opportunity to tune into the “bandwidth of the divine”. Sometimes it’s the familiarity of the music that opens the fabric of the soul. Sometimes it’s the words or even the silence of a prayer.
Often it’s the message delivered by our minister; like last week’s thoughts about the bible and its usefulness in pointing us towards the God we seek. Or perhaps it’s the words from his previous week’s sermon – the picture of Christmas of a good man, a courageous woman and baby born in a manger, wondering shepherds, and adoring wise men.
And where did we first learn about this Christian life? No doubt it’s through stories told by parents, grandparents, and people in church. And did we listen and not hear? I suspect we’re all here today because we did listen and we did hear. And just like the safety message on the plane I need to hear it again and again. I need to hear it again so I can tune out the distracting noise of the world we live in; so I can open the inner parts of myself to the divine; I need to hear it to remind myself what it means to be Christian. Again quoting Colin who paints a picture of the Christian life we have: “to be good like Joseph, faithful like Mary, obedient like the shepherds, and both wise and worshipful like the kings who came from the East.”
At least part of the message for us is that what makes the times when God seems chatty different from the times when it seems God must have retired is not how much God speaks, but how much we listen and hear.
So fellow passengers, please listen up: you will find the instructions for life in the bible in the seat pocket in front of you. In the event of an emergency follow the instructions of our Lord Jesus Christ, he knows what to do.
Kerry Marshall
