1 Samuel 3:1-21
I was driving home late last night from a gigging trip to Galveston, and I turned on a radio program called Coast to Coast. It comes on every night after midnight, and callers talk about aliens, government conspiracies, and other dimensions. In order to listen, I had to suspend reality for my drive, because there was no way anything would begin to make sense unless I opened myself up to the possibility that there really were giants living in mounds in Ohio, or a huge mother ship floating in orbit between us and the sun, waiting to pick us up when the "spiritual changes" happened on Earth.
I thought about the host of the program, and how crazy he must be to actually carry on meaningful dialogue with the callers. I wondered if the callers were actually serious, or if all the weirdos came out at night, if the loonies were waiting all day to have their chance to share their visions and theories. As a friend of mine once said, "There's a screw for every nut out there."
When we talk about visions from God, or revelations, or God communicating with people, my immediate retort is to think about the dialogue that happens on Coast to Coast. It seems so bizarre, so outlandish, and so unreal. Yet, there are real people communicating what they really believe. To the unfamiliar ear, it sounds like something out of Space Odyssey, but to the person speaking it's absolutely true.
In today's story, the boy Samuel keeps waking up in the middle of the night hearing a voice. The old man Eli is sleeping in the other room, so Samuel runs to his room and says, "Here I am. I heard you calling." Yet, Eli tells Samuel he in fact wasn't calling. "Go back to bed dude." Eli's a sound sleeper because he can hardly see or hear.
Samuel comes running back again. "I heard you calling again. How can I help you?"
Eli: "I didn't say anything. Go back to bed."
It happens a third time. Samuel repeats the same process, but this time Eli recognizes that Samuel is experiencing something really freakish. He tells Samuel to go back to bed, but this time to say, "Speak God. I'm your servant, and I'm ready to listen."
There's one line in this whole passage of twenty-one verses that jumps out at me. It says, "This was before Samuel knew of God for himself." Samuel didn't have his own conception of God, any knowledge of God, or any intellect about God, yet this invisible being was trying to communicate with him. Is that not Coast to Coast-ish? I want to suspend reality as if I'm listening to the radio program and talk about communication between man and God. Here we go.
Suppose I'm sleeping one night, and I hear a voice. I don't know if the voice is even real, but I get up and run to my roommate's door and start knocking. I say, "I heard you calling me. What do you need?" The roommate says he was sleeping soundly and didn't say a word. He thinks I'm dreaming or crazy and tells me to go back to bed. I repeat this process three times, and I think my roommate's playing tricks on me. Finally, the roommate gives in and says, "Okay. Don't come back here because the voice is not mine! I've got to work in three hours and you're screwing up my sleep. Leave me alone and do this: the next time you hear the voice, acknowledge it. Say something like, 'I'm here captain. I'm your assistant and I'm listening.'"
I follow my roommate's instructions and I hear the voice again. This time, I've completely suspended reality and I'm tapping into a dimension of craziness that I've never even considered. After acknowledging the voice, and calling it captain, and saying I'm ready to listen, the voice says, "You know that preacher of yours? His sons are ripping off the church, and sleeping with the girls who are working in the nursery. I'm ready to shake up the church. I'm gonna bring down the hammer and take care of business. I want you to go tell him what I've told you, word for word."
This helps me relate a little bit better to what's going on in this story, but I already have a conception of God. I already have a bunch of knowledge and preconceived notions. Samuel didn't. So, we've got to go a little deeper. Who are the prophets with a strong, unbiased word to give to the church in today's world? In this story, Eli represents the inside, intellectual, experienced voice of religious authority. Samuel represents the curious, open-minded, young, ambitious teenager searching for truth.
Is it possible that if prophets are real, we are looking in the wrong places to hear them? Is it possible that God is actually speaking to people, right here, right now, all around us, but we're heading to the wrong places to hear what they have to say?
This was before Samuel knew God for himself.
Is it possible that when it comes to prophets, their voices are coming less and less from behind the pulpit, and more and more from the normal, everyday places like work and fitness centers and grassy medians? The story of Samuel and Eli turns upside down my notions of where I go to hear a word from God. I can't hear him. I can't see him. I can't touch him.
Is it possible that I need to spend more time seeking out the voices of open-mindedness, who haven't put their beliefs into a box and taped it up, considering it done? Yes. Eli was the aged, seasoned veteran who knew what to do, knew how to follow all the rules (and still knowingly let people be taken advantage of), and knew how to check all the right boxes. It was all about the boxes. It was all about finality, a means to an end.
Samuel was young, ambitious, and had a mind that could still take in new things. He was open to suspending reality and for a moment listening to the crazy voice that woke him up at night. He was open to following through on what the crazy voice told him. Do we stay open to the crazy voice inside of us, or are we letting the prophetic voices of normality and perfect packaging persuade us that the voice isn't real?
Where are we looking to receive validation for our crazy notions and ideas? They seem crazy because, well, they are. They're there, hiding out in our hearts, waiting for something to kickstart them. Yet, we continue to let the voices of close-mindedness shut them out and discount anything that seems out of the ordinary. What about the dreams we had as children? What about the dreams we have now?
I think that when we suspend reality for just a moment, and think about our dreams, ambitions, and desires, we soon get side-tracked by the other voices. Maybe they're inside our own heads, or maybe they're coming from outside. It seems too crazy, too idealistic, too unusual to follow through. We're left with notions that tell us, This can't possibly be real. There's just no way this could happen.
Yet, we take a brief look through history and see folks like Martin Luther King, Jr and Ghandi. We see folks like Bono and Mother Teresa. We see people who gave their lives to listening and seeking out the voices that woke them up in the middle of the night. Against all odds, against tremendous opposition, and against the status quo, they sought it out and devoted their lives to it.
We all have the opportunity to listen to the crazy voice that is telling us to do crazy things. We have the choice. We have to look no further than the passion, the zeal, the ambition in our own hearts that just won't go away. We can sweep them under the rug time after time, but it just won't go away.
The greatest thing about it is, Samuel didn't yet know God for himself.
And we don't have to know God for ourselves yet, either.
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