We Listen to What We Like

“Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”

We tend to listen to those who we like.

Whether that is CNN or FOX News;

whether it is ABC or NBC;

whether that is President-Elect Biden or President Trump;

whether it is our Uncle Joe or Auntie Betty,

whether it is Pope Francis or Rush Limbaugh.

Whoever we like, we tend to listen to.

Here is the part that is also true,

we tend to become like them.

It makes sense, right?

Those to whom we listen and whom we spend time with

and the more time we spend with them,

the more we will become like them.

It is true for all of us.

Today’s scripture readings are about who we listen to;

and then who we follow.

They are about vocational calls.

We have this beautiful text from the first reading,

which is the call of young Samuel as a prophet and judge.

He was so young at the time,

he did not even know how to listen well.

It took the fourth time of God calling that he listened to him

but even Eli who is the old prophet misunderstood also.

We hear that it eventually dawns on Eli, he says,

“Oh the next time you hear, then just say

‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening.’”

In other words, it takes some training to listen well.

Even Eli, in the older part of his ministry

is struggling with guiding the young Samuel.

And then in today’s gospel this beautiful exchange

with the first disciple who has been called by Jesus.

Andrew is the disciple of John the Baptist and John says,

“Look. There is the lamb of God.”

In other words, follow him; listen to him. And they do.

They go and they follow him.

And Jesus says, “What do you really want?”

He drew them out of themselves.

What were they really wanting?

Were they really wanting to listen and follow?

Or just listen from a distance?

He invites them to come and to see,

so to listen, to come, to see.

And they liked what they heard.

They liked what they saw.

And they followed Jesus.

So much so that Andrew runs off and tells his brother, Peter,

who of course becomes the leader of the apostles and our first pope.

He obviously listened well.

This challenge of listening is true for all of us.

I mean, we can get caught up in lots of different things

but who we listen to,

who we spend time with

is generally who we follow.

And that is true of our faith in a profound way.

And this is the challenge sometimes.

We tend to listen to preachers,

even listening to me

or listening to someone else

and we want to make sure that

who we are listening to is doing what John the Baptist did,

which is pointing to Jesus so that we listen directly to Jesus.

And then hopefully we will like what we hear

and then follow Jesus more deeply, more profoundly.

And then do as Andrew did, which is share that message with others.

This is this beautiful virtuous circle

that we like what we hear and we share what we hear

because it is so powerful because it is so changing.

This liking and following is very much the call of every vocation

whether it is as a priest or whether it is as a lay person.

Think about when you met your spouse for the first time,

there are those people who see and fall in love at first sight.

That is true.

That does happen.

Or at first hearing, we hear what they say

and we are transfixed by what they say.

And that does happen but for most of us,

most of us we listenand then a bit like Eli

we have to listen again and listen again.

And then we like what we hear;

or we look; and then look again; and look again.

And then we like what we see.

But that is not enough for a marriage or any vocation.

We have to keep looking and keep listening until we fall in love.

Now again, I know that can happen and

what we hear today is a very dramatic story in the gospel.

It seems to be on the first hearing.

I suspect that these disciples had heard of Jesus

and had heard Jesus before

but now their hearts were open in a new way.

They move from liking what they saw

to loving what they saw and heard.

And that is how you come to follow.

Let’s face it, anyone of your marriages starts with that liking

but somewhere along the line,

you love who you see and who you hear;

and you want to be in their presence as much as possible.

That is what falling in love is all about.

And in that loving enterprise, you become more with what you see.

You become like your spouse more and more

and they become like you more and more every day.

And that is a good thing, I hope, for both of you.

But it is not magic.

It just doesn’t happen.

I mean it is a commitment to listening and

spending time with them so that you will follow.

The social media companies have figured this out.

That is why they have fed us;

that is why we are in the bit of the trouble we are in

because we like what we see or hear and

when then they feed more of us

so we have this sort of echo chamber

that we just get what we like and then that goes to an extreme.

And what happens is we hear nothing else.

Very few of us will listen to people who we do not like;

because we don’t like them

we are not going to listen to them.

That becomes this echo chamber that is really dangerous.

We have to open our hearts and our minds

to those whom we do not like and

find out what they have to say that is good.

And acknowledge the good.

And if we do not like what others have to say

then we need to be able to articulate that in a calm and civil way.

For the purposes of our discipleship, let’s be very clear:

We are called to listen to Jesus Christ.

We are called to listen to God’s Son.

That is why we call ourselves Christian

because we are Christ-followers.

Sometimes, we do not like what Jesus has to say.

And the temptation is to turn Jesus off

but then we will not become like him anymore.

Oh, we might be a Catholic.

We might be a Christian even

but that does not make us true Christ-like people.

That does not make us followers of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah.

That requires of us, like Eli and Samuel,

a deeper listening;

a willingness to spend time with him

so that we can answer God just like Samuel did: 

“Speak Lord. I am listening. I come to do your will.”

One of the challenges is that we are terrified of giving ourselves

over blindly to God’s Will.

What is God’s Will for me?

How do I even know what that is?

I received a beautiful little reading from Thomas Merton,

the great American Trappist. He says this: 

“Doing God’s Will is not giving ourselves over to some divine fate

but rather submitting ourselves to the creative action

that God and I will co-create together.”

It is a beautiful way to understand that

God does not have this destiny per se for us

but that creatively together, by agreeing and

listening to what Jesus has to say to us,

what Christ is guiding us to

we come to know God’s Will and

together creatively it comes alive in our life;

into action and into word

that is more like Christ and like God.

In short, what we are called to do is to listen to Jesus

even when we do not like what he has to say

because we are called to listen deeper.

And then when we spend time,

which of course you have heard me say 1,000 times,

spend time in prayer, listening to Jesus

but not just in the silence of our own room

but in everything that God has in our life;

to our family; to our friends;

to every good action that happens God is speaking loudly to us.

Christ helps us to understand what that is.

Then if we do that well,

we will become more of what we listen to;

we will become more like Christ.

That is the echo chamber that I want to be in.

That is the echo chamber I hope that you want to be in;

to listen to Christ well so that I can become

more like Christ better each and every day.

That is what we do when we come to the Eucharist.

We become what we receive.

The Body of Christ broken for others.

The Blood of Christ poured out for others.

“Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”