For those of you who attend weekday mass or who reflect upon the weekday scripture readings, this is the second time in a week that we read of the call of Samuel from the first book of Samuel. And it’s such a powerful story.
First Samuel opens in a dark time in Israel's history. The twelve tribes which had settled in the promised land had ignored the warnings of Moses.
On the precipice of the promised land, God spoke to the Israelites through Moses, commanding his people to “faithfully keep and obey all these orders which I am giving you, so that you and your children after you may prosper forever, doing what is good and right in the eyes of God.” God wants his people to prosper and gives them what they need to prosper.
And yet after the twelve tribes make their way into the promised Land, the Book of Judges records the troubling statement that instead of doing right in the eyes of God everyone was doing what is "right in his own eyes". That is a way of saying—what?—they had adopted a competing morality—they had given up on the ways of God and were determining for themselves what is right.
When an individual insists on only doing what is “right in his own eyes” – scripture shows us, over and over, that the result is misery. When a whole nation is doing that, it’s so much worse. This explains a lot of the misery in our world today—when we only do what is right “in our own eyes”—turning our eyes and ears and hearts away from the Lord—failing to raise our children in the ways of the Lord—there is misery on a local, national, and global scale.
And so as a result of their unfaithfulness, the Israelites were living in a very dark time, of their own making. We even see those themes of darkness and blindness in the first reading. Samuel tells us that revelations and visions from God were uncommon and infrequent, as if there was this veil of darkness and faithlessness between God and his people. Eli’s vision was so weak he couldn’t see, and Samuel is stumbling in darkness, he’s confused, God is calling out to him, and he doesn’t even recognize God’s voice.
As the story begins, Samuel is so spiritually hard of hearing—his faith is so weak—that he is unable to recognize that it is God—the God of his ancestors—calling out to him. It’s like his faith is so weak, he can’t even fathom that God could be calling to him, he thinks it’s Eli calling to him—he keeps running back to Eli, “Here I am, what do you want?”
Anybody relate to that? In our spiritual infancy, we don’t really pray as we should, we don’t really serve as we should, but as we grow in spiritual maturity, and we begin to put more effort into our spiritual lives, we gradually come to discover God’s presence with us, we come to discover our vocation in Christ.
Like Samuel, we are often a little slow to believe, a little hard of hearing, a little unaccustomed to the sound of the voice of God. But God keeps calling out to us. And as we begin to take more seriously the call to pray, the call to serve, the call to engage in works of charity, the call to repentance, we begin to respond to God with greater and greater willingness to serve.
I bet there are people in this church who have very little idea of what God is calling you to. You are here. That’s wonderful. After all, God is calling you to go to Church every week. There are many people in our world and neighborhood who aren’t doing that. But there’s more to the Christian life than going to church once a week. Of course. God is calling, are we listening? Are we responding with the same willingness and zeal that Samuel eventually develops.
In the Gospel this week, we read from the opening chapter of the Gospel of John. And there are some parallels between our first reading and Gospel. John’s Gospel in fact begins acknowledging that prior to coming of Christ, the world was in darkness, and Christ was born as a light shining in darkness, for the darkness has not overcome the light of God.
And then as we heard today, God is so good, that amidst all of our present darkness, Jesus enters directly into our lives and draws people to himself.
Andrew, the brother of Peter, had been a follower of St. John the Baptist. So immediately you know something about Andrew. Andrew was willing to follow John the Baptist--this wild prophet, who ate locusts and wore camel hair and lived out in the desert. Andrew was willing to go to great lengths to seek God. Andrew was a man of hope. He hoped that the coming of the Messiah was right around the corner and he was doing everything he could to prepare for it.
And when John pointed Jesus out to him as the Lamb of God, Andrew immediately begins to follow Jesus. And after staying with Jesus he goes to his brother Peter and tells him the Messiah is here. It’s time.
Those beautiful attitudes that we read about in our scriptures this weekend—pf openness to God and readiness and willingness to serve God and allow God to draw us deeper—are to be cultivated in our lives. The readings challenge us, don’t they? Do I have the courage, like Samuel, to say to God, “speak Lord, your servant is listening”—I am at your complete service, I will go wherever you send me, Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will? Do I have the zeal of Andrew, to speak about Jesus and the importance of following Him to my family?
God is calling, are we listening? If you don’t hear him, you might need to listen a little harder, because he is speaking, calling us to serve, and to cultivate virtue, and to utilize our spiritual gifts for the sake of the kingdom, to bear the light of Christ amidst the darkness of the world for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
