2nd Sunday of Epiphany 18th January 2015
Seeking the still small voice
In our first reading we heard the familiar story of Samuel hearing God’s voice but misinterpreting it several times before coming to the final realisation of what he needed to listen to and for – the still small voice of God. This ties in with the vision that we have just heard at the end of the Gospel reading – that we (with Nathanael) might see heaven opened, and revealed on earth. This vision is central to Jesus’ teaching – and is passed on to us in our daily prayer where we are bid to pray that God’s will be done ‘here on earth, as it is in heaven’.
But that is all very easy to say, but less easy (perhaps) to understand, and often harder again to put into practice. Firstly, we often get stuck on what ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ might mean – particularly getting bedazzled by some of the images that are used to try and describe the indescribable in human language. So perhaps we need to go back to basics and remember that ‘heaven’ is that vision of a world that is perfected in God’s love. We need to remember that the creative act of God set the stage for a world in which good and evil could be played out with the desire that all things good would triumph. We see this in the very way that humans seem to live – we have a potential to great acts of love – but for love to mean anything there has to be a choice for there to be an absence of love, the possibility of hate. We see this again and again as we recognise in ourselves the tendency to put self before other, and not to love as we would wish to be loved.
Secondly, even if we understand something of what heaven might be, and what it might look like, it is all too possible to find this disconnected from our individual faith in God, and what we do as a Church. There is risk that the very things that should draw us closer to that vision become mere actions that we go through out of duty – making us no better than those who were criticised by Jesus for putting on the externals of religion, but not letting God dwell in their hearts. In baptism, and at the renewal of vows at Easter, we are called to take part (as individuals and a church) in a number of activities that are intended to draw us closer to God, and help us to see a little more clearly that vision of a life transformed that is heaven – we are called to join the apostles in ‘breaking bread and prayers’, to ‘resist evil and…[constantly’ return to the Lord’, to proclaim by word and example the good news of God’, to ‘love our neighbour as ourselves’ and to pray for the world’, defending the weak, seeking peace and justice’. This is a heady list of things that we are to put at the centre of our lives – but we are given some enormous riches to help us on the way:
· the unfolding human understanding of God revealed in the scriptures and crowned by Jesus teaching and example recorded in the Gospels;
· the sacraments that point beyond themselves to the deepest meaning of God’s purposes for us and all creation; and
· the fellowship of the Church of which we are part, and with whom we share our journey – not just you and me here, but all those who have followed Christ in every time and every place.
But all of this is of no se unless we let the love of God dwell in our hearts – if the Bible becomes a means for understanding God’s love revealed to man, if the sacraments become a way in which we can see beyond the immediate to the wonders of heaven, and if the Church becomes a people who are seeking to grow closer to God and let God shine in through their hearts into the world around us.
I would like to end with three short reflections on how this may be seen in the practical living of our lives.
Last Sunday evening I spoke a little of the way in which some of the reaction to the events during the week had led to some people reacting in ways that they may not have intended or understood – in condemning one act (that certainly deserved it) they implicitly commended something that the week before they may have seen as worthy of condemnation itself. as with many shocking events we (and by that I mean humanity in general) tend to react quickly and often strongly. But sometimes this leads us to do, think or say things that are not what we might truly mean if we reflected more deeply – if we took the time to listen for the still small voice of God amidst the confusion of the events going on around us.
During the last week or two I have been involved in discussions on the issues surrounding homelessness in Louth, the wider East Lindsey District and the areas beyond. This is a debate that can all to easily result in people speaking quickly and views polarising – with the effect that, rather than working together to help those who are truly in need, people fight each other. Again the small still voice of God is lost in the clamour of human reaction.
It is now more than clear that we are now in the long build up to May’s General Election and we find point-scoring and polarisation of views and people rising to the surface, when we might hope that concern for the good of all might dominate. We see people fighting for their particular problem to the solution rather than looking at how people can be drawn together to live better lives. We fall into the human temptation to see a human system (be it any form of political system) being the solution, rather than seeing that it is not good enough to just live by a set of rules – but we need to live with love in our hearts.
In all of this there is a common theme – that we are constantly tempted to be human (and for that we cannot be blamed!). We are tempted to rush into action, we are tempted to judge others, and we are tempted to seek easy solutions by going through the motions of following one set of rules or another. But our readings today – that mention of the still small voice, and the vision of heaven revealed on earth should point us to a different way of being, a way where we seek to nurture that small voice of God and where we set our sights on heaven – in what we do here in our hearts, in what we do here as a Church, and in what we do here on earth. May it be ‘as in heaven’.