Call and Response - 1 Samuel 3:1-20, John 1:43-51
On the first morning of the New Year, I went outside in the pre-dawn dark and listened. It didn’t take long before I heard it, a melodic “chuck chuck.” It was the call of an American Robin, my first bird of the year. First birds are a tradition among birders. It can serve as an of omen, an ambiguous sign of what lies ahead. Most want to avoid the invasive and raucous European Starlings or House Sparrows, and all hope for something extraordinary, but usually the year begins with something common and loud—a crow or cardinal or robin. I was satisfied with mine, a pleasant, everyday bird that is a joy to watch all year round. For the rest of the day I kept listening and by its end I had over 30 species for my new Year List.
I’ve been training my ears since I was a child, learning to distinguish the sounds of birds from the background, separating each voice in the chorus. It takes practice, especially for the more subtle species, the differences between their songs and calls slight and subjective. But with time, I’ve become a decent “ear birder.”
My listening for birds has trained me to tune in more generally—to hear the world around me at any given moment, searching for a bird calling amid the noise. And I’m sure there are other kinds of listening attached to other kinds of practice that would reveal more sounds, more resonances in the landscape around us. Geologists, for instance, can listen to stones. They not only cry out, they also hum and sing. And what would it be like to experience the world of sound without hearing, with our bodies becoming our ears, taking in the vibrations of voice and music? There are many sounds, many ways of listening, but all of them can lead us to a common truth: at any time, in any place, there are calls going out, sounds seeking an answer.
Philosophers, from Martin Heidegger to Jean-Louis Chretien, have understood the nature of language, or even being itself, as an answer to a call. And this reflects the biblical vision, where light and land, sky and sea, animals and plants are all called into being. The German Renaissance, theologian, Nicolas of Cusa said that: “To call is…to create, to share in being through communication is to be created.” There is something, then, that is created in me as I listen to birds in the pre-dawn dark or strain in a forest to sort through the varied voices, recognizing each as they sing. There is something in each of us that is being created when we wait patiently straining to make out the words of a child or join together in making music through singing. In each act of listening, small or large, we are answering a call; joining in the great communication that is at the heart of the world.
To hear the call, though, is an active work. I stand in the forest, cupping my ears to amplify the voices around me. I hear chip notes, they all sound so similar, and yet they are different—there an Orange-crowned Warbler, here a Yellow-rumped Warbler. Whose call are we hearing, whose are we heading? That has long been a question of the spiritual life. It was the question young Samuel had to sort out at the beginning of his ministry. “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” is the response Eli taught him. Samuel says it, offering himself in response to the call. It was a response that became his whole life as entered that communication of God in which something new was created in the world.
Eli, who knew the right response, had ceased to offer it. He had let his loves become disordered, allowing his affection for his sons keep him from a proper listening to God. For this, God told Samuel, “I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.” There are many ways that our hearing can become spiritually impaired. Love for the wrong things or in the wrong order, is certainly high on the list. But in our Gospel we see another common barrier—expectation.
In listening, we always arrive at the encounter with an expectation, and yet such a prejudice can keep us from hearing. “Can anything good from Nazareth,” Nathanael scoffs. It’s like a story Will Campbell relates in Brother to a Dragon Fly in which a “progressive” Northerner told a Civil Rights activist that he’d never vote for someone with a Southern accent. It’s bigotry, plain and simple.
When we come to believe that only one kind of voice, or one kind of person can be the agent of the call in our life, then we are stopping up our ears. In doing that, we are blocking the voice of one calling us to something new, we are stepping out of the communication in which new creation comes. Thankfully, Nathanael listens, even to someone with a Nazarean accent. In doing so, his response became the ground for a shared conversation, working in call and response to create a whole new reality—a reality whose power continues to our time, whenever someone listens to God and answers.
Will Campbell worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., whose memory and testimony we especially remember this weekend. King, like Samuel, heard the call of God. At first it was a call to ministry, to be a pastor; then it was a call to lead the way to justice and love through the dismantling of Jim Crow. But as in the time of Eli, he found his way hindered, especially by ministers and good church going people whose loves had been disordered, unready to share in a new creation.
In his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King addressed these people after a group of white ministers urged him to moderate his work and slow his efforts for justice. In that letter he wrote,
“Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment… They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”
The question in King’s day, just a few decades ago, has not gone away. It is a question of call and response. Will we listen for what God is calling us toward and will we answer that call with courage? Or will we go along with the general noise of the status quo, offering a “weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound”?
The call that brings forth our being, is still at work, walking along side us, creating a new world even amid the noise, both inside and out, that makes it hard to listen. Our work is to learn to hear the call, practicing our listening, so that we can pick out the voice God from among the chatter of the world. It takes time in silence and solitude, in the quiet of the night saying like Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” But to join the communication we must also respond like King and those early Christians he cites, living with courage and boldness so that God’s song of justice can rise from the din. In that listening and responding we will join in the great communion and communication of Love that is always calling, from age to age, creating anew. Amen.