We just heard two stories today, in that first reading and in the gospel, about God speaking to people very directly. So I think the question for today is, does God speak to people, and does he ever speak to us?
The first problem we face trying to answer that question is this. We all have seen people who seem very sure God speaks to them all the time, and is it possible they’re delusional or confused? Unfortunately the answer is yes, it is quite possible. We’re human and we can all deceive ourselves or be deceived by others. Plenty of people manage to convince themselves they’re on God’s side or God is on theirs, and unfortunately they are mistaken. But the fact that people mistake other voices for God doesn’t mean that hearing God is impossible.
But opening ourselves to God’s voice takes God’s help and our work. Look at these readings today, especially that first one. For Samuel, even for someone literally living in a temple day and night with nothing else to focus on except service to God, even for him hearing God’s voice was not simple. It took time and humility and prayer and above all it took good advice from an experienced friend who believed that just maybe the voice he was hearing was God.
Here is one thing that stands in our way of hearing God: many of us have decided that God is only very rarely and unpredictably available for communicating with us. But actually it’s more accurate to say that it’s us who are the ones who are rarely and unpredictably available. You could even say that God tries almost everything to reach us, and it’s us that fails to be open to it. God can be in a word that wakes you up in the middle of the night the way it was for Samuel, or God can be the voice that asks you, “What are you actually looking for?” the way it was for those disciples in today’s gospel. God’s word to us might come in a casual word from someone you love, pushing you in a direction you didn’t expect, or an annoying suggestion from someone you don’t love at all and you realize that it is God asking you to reconsider something in your life you thought was permanent. God can come to us in a sudden awareness that an injustice that you thought wasn’t your business to do anything about is now calling you to take a stand against anger and hatred. That is God, too. Even the times you are asking God questions and you think you are hearing nothing, those times can be all preparation, God helping you constantly with the question you are asking until you realize one day that God’s answer has arrived, that the time is right for you to understand it.
And how do you know it’s God speaking to you, that we’re not one of those people who are turning some other voice in this world into God’s voice? The answer is, we give it time, we test it against the Jesus we see in the gospel, we ask a trusted friend, we go out to a place where we think might find the openness to encounter God, above all, we keep asking God to come to us again, to be near us as we try to hear the Jesus of the gospel still with us now.
It’s a very haunting question in that gospel today when Jesus simply asks, “What are you looking for?” There’s sometimes only one answer that makes sense in response: We want to be so close to God that we can actually hear God’s voice. If that is what you’re looking for, some day you will realize it is closer than we usually think.