Hearing Voices (Epiphany 2B)

Hearing Voices
Second Sunday after Epiphany (Year B)
15 January 2011: 8 am Spoken Mass and 10:00 am Sung Mass
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20); 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.

At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. Then the LORD called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down. The LORD called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, `Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening." (1 Sam 3:1-10) 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

I had a student several years ago who shocked a French class I was teaching.  He was a well-educated Cambodian who had fled the genocide in his country in 1975, and despite his sophistication and scientific orientation, affirmed in class his belief in ghosts. He told us this story:

When the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Phenh in April, I was evacuated from the city along with everyone else.  I saw people shot on the street as class enemies simply because they were wearing glasses. I was sent to a labor camp near the Thai border.  It was very hard, but I managed relatively well until I realized that there was no hope—they people I would start becoming friends with would get into trouble with the camp leader and then be killed in a public struggle session.  I had heard that the swamp between the camp was impassable and full of quicksand, but getting across the border was my only hope. I fled in the middle of the night during a heavy downpour that limited visibility to just a foot or so.  Almost immediately I lost my sense of direction, and soon I was in water and mud almost over my head. I lost all hope.

But then I started noticing small blue lights—almost like flames—that seemed to call to me. I would follow them—first this one, then that one, and as I did, I noticed the ground under my feet would get more solid, and suck at my legs less. Soon, even though it was still raining heavily, I was following a path marked by blue flames on each side.  Gradually the rain stopped, and dawn came with me on solid ground.  Immediately soldiers surrounded me. But they were speaking Thai, not Khmer. I had successfully crossed the border. The soldiers did not believe that I had come that way through the night, because the swamp was a dumping ground where the Khmer Rouge had been dumping the bodies of those killed daily at the camp. “It’s haunted by all the dead,” they said, “and no one can get through.”

We all sat transfixed by the story. He continued:

Now I am an educated man. I have studied science and some philosophy. I know that I had low blood sugar, and was under stress. I know that I was probably suffering from hallucinations. I know also that sometimes in swamp areas the decaying vegetation can produce methane that can ignite and cause random flames. Sometimes there is bioluminescence cause by microscopic plants. I know that all of this might be the explanation of the flames. But when I think about what happened to me, I realize that the only language that can even approach describing it to say that the ghosts of those killed by the Khmer Rouge took pity on me and lead me through that swamp.

One of Cambodia's many monuments to the victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide. 

 

I have often thought of my student’s story when people ask me how it is that we Christians, living in an age of neuro-science, evolutionary biology, and particle physics, can say we believe in God, and that Jesus was God made truly human.

Most of us who show up to Church on a regular basis (or even on a not-so-regular basis) do so because at some time or another we have had an experience, an insight, a dream, or a deep feeling, where we felt, if only for a moment or if only in a glimmer, that God was speaking to us, that Jesus was embracing us in his arms.  This is true even of us Episcopalians, whom some love to make fun of as “the chosen frozen” because we tend to be suspicious of too-fervent claims of endorsement by the Almighty of any particular way of seeing things, and find it in bad taste to parade such experiences about in public.

“I heard God’s voice” is a dangerous claim. Think of the horrors that have been justified over the centuries with the words, “God commands this”: Holy wars, slavery, child abuse, assassinations, terrorism, sexual predation, the subjugation of nations, or women, or whole classes of people because of something they had no control over.  Some of these claims were cynical and others wholly sincere but deluded.   Granted, people have also cited God’s voice in arguing for good things, including the ending of many of the horrors just mentioned.  “I heard God’s voice” is a suspicious claim, if only because it has been used to argue such widely divergent things. 

On the level of observable facts, what people call “hearing the voice of God” appears to be indistinguishable from coming to a conclusion or a new insight about things through reasoning, introspection, or through states of altered consciousness or hallucinations, whether caused by ketosis and low blood sugar due to fasting, emotional distress, possible environmental hallucinogens like ergot, or just a genetic predisposition to neurological disturbances.   When people start talking about hearing the voice of God, then, we moderns are inclined to be like Ebenezer Scrooge when he first sees the ghost of Jacob Marley.  He denies what he is seeing, saying Marley is a hallucination induced by eating before going to bed, “a spot of mustard, a bit of undigested beef.” 

Yet we Christians persist in saying that we have heard God’s voice because, just like for my Cambodian student who, along with Scrooge, believed in ghosts, this is the only language we can find that adequately describes what we have experienced.   

Hearing God’s voice, hearing God’s call, is the theme shared by all of today’s scripture readings. 

In the reading from First Samuel, the boy Samuel hears the voice of God in the Temple in the night and mistakes it for the voice of his master, the prophet Eli.  This takes place in an era when “The word of the LORD was precious due to its scarcity, . . . and visions not widespread.”  Eli himself is going blind, as if to underscore that fact.  When Eli finally recognizes that it is God’s voice that is waking Samuel, he tells him, “Go, and listen with an open mind and heart.”   Note here that this is in an age like ours—not a lot of vision or hearing of God.  Samuel mistakes the voice of God for the voice of Eli, his teacher, religious leader, and surrogate father.  Samuel is inexperienced in recognizing God’s voice.  Eli, with his greater experience, helps Samuel in this.   Among the reasons we read scripture, pray, come to Church, and seek spiritual direction and religious formation is to form us so that we can better discern God’s voice and find encouragement to do what God tells us, however God might speak to us.

Similarly, the Gospel of John reading tells of Nathanael hearing Jesus’ call.  Like the voice of God in Samuel’s case, the voice of God to Nathanael moves from the small, easily explained away, to the more central, clear, obvious voice of God.  And this is so, despite Nathanael’s failings and prejudices.   The central image in Jesus’ message to Nathanael, that Jesus is the gateway to heaven, the ladder on which the angels pass between Earth and Heaven, underscores the point that God is speaking to Nathanael through the person of Jesus.  Jesus is the rule by which we must judge whether a voice is God’s voice or not.

This is also shown in the Epistle reading: St. Paul is replying a letter from the Church at Corinth where some people claim to have heard God’s voice recommending things that Paul roundly condemns.   They are incompatible with the voice he recognizes as God’s. 

There are many competing claims of God speaking here and there, and several differing views of what God’s voice says.  Learning to recognize the voice of God among such varied voices is important.   My experience is that there is one standard that is reliable and trustworthy: it is the person of Jesus himself.   In traditional Christian theology, we affirm that Jesus Christ was and is the definitive self-revelation of God.  This means that what the historical Jesus said and did is extremely important.  To be sure, this is all mediated through scripture, tradition, and reason.  The voice of Jesus in scripture itself is mediated by four very different views of Jesus found in the four Gospels.  But the ultimate standard remains Jesus himself, and getting acquainted with his voice provides us the experience that Eli had and Samuel lacked for recognizing when God is speaking. 

 

God does speak. I have heard the voice of God at times, and I believe that many of you have as well. 

“Hearing God’s voice” can only be experienced, as it were, from the inside, and does not make itself readily available for rational analysis from some theoretical objective sideline, let alone for apologetics.

We need not fear God’s voice. It is the voice of a loving savior, a dear friend.  Eli tells Samuel “Go and listen.” Phillip tells Nathanael “Come and see.” 

May we all be quick to do so. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.