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Second Sunday of ordinary time, Year B, 2015
Readings: 1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19; 1 Cor 6:13-20; John 1:35-42.
God’s Call in the Midst of Our Routines
This Sunday we enter an interlude between seasons of the church year.
Christmas with its excitement and glitter is behind us. The sober experience of
Lent followed by the glory of Easter is in the future. The church calls these days
Ordinary Time. But the readings today tell us that in very ordinary days God often
does extraordinary things. In the midst of our routines, God can CALL us, call us
to things we might at first see as extraordinary.
The theme of God’s call coming in the midst of routine is especially
powerful in the first reading. We hear how Samuel, who was to be the great
prophet who anointed David as king of Israel, is called by God three times while
he is sleeping (an encouraging note to preacher and people on a gray mid-January
Sunday). At the beginning of the chapter from which our reading has been
selected, we are told that in Samuel’s days “the word of the LORD was rare and
visions infrequent.” Like today, people did not expect to get messages directly
from God. More personally, the chapter tells us that “at that time Samuel was not
familiar with the Lord.” Samuel did not know that that God would communicate
directly to him, even in the midst of the ordinary. So when God’s call comes,
Samuel confuses God’s voice with that of the old man Eli. Three times Samuel’s
routine leads him to miss the call God is speaking to him.
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But Eli knew better, probably because of the wisdom that came with his age.
Eli told Samuel that if he heard a voice calling again he should say: "Speak, Lord
for your servant is listening." When this did happen, Samuel at last recognized that
it was truly God calling him. He realized it was -“the LORD” who had come,
“revealing his presence.” In the midst of ordinary routine, Samuel at last
recognizes he is being called by God. This call made him one of Israel’s great
prophets, whose words were never “without effect” in the life of God’s people. In
fact the chapter goes on to tell us that Samuel would pass on to the people a
message from God that “will cause the ears of everyone to ring."
What does this story of Samuel’s call have to say to us? I think it challenges
us to ask whether God may be calling to us even in the midst of our ordinary
routines. Like the people of Samuel’s time, we probably believe that calls from
God are “rare and visions infrequent.” But a wonderful novelist who is himself
also a preacher, Fredrick Buechner, thinks otherwise. Buechner has written that a
genuine call from God can come to us right in the midst of our routine, in the day
to day of “ordinary time.” He puts it this way: the essence of everything I try to
say both as a novelist and as a preacher is something like this: “Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less
than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and
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hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments [even
the moments or routine and the ordinary], and life itself is grace.”
If we are willing to say, like Samuel, “speak Lord, your servant is listening”
we may hear amazing things. If we pay attention to what happens in our lives, to
the people with whom we are closest, we may hear God calling us. In Buechner’s
words, “You never know what may” enable us to hear God’s call--“The sight of
the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen
before. …But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes,
especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.” Or if you find
deep joy rising in your heart, pay careful attention to that also. These tears and
joys not only tell you about “the secret of who you are, but more often than not
God is speaking to you through them about the mystery of where you have come
from and calling you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.”
So like Eli did with Samuel, the readings today are inviting us to pay careful
attention to what is happening right in the midst of our routines. If we do, we may
hear the voice of God. Hearing that voice can be the beginning of a new awareness
of God’s love for us. And whatever other call God may speak to us, we are called
to know how deeply God loves us and to share that love with each other. If we
hear the call that draws us into God’s love, nothing will ordinary or routine again.
David Hollenbach, S.J.
St. Ignatius Church
January 18, 2015