Readings (Year B)
1 Samuel 3:3b – 10, 19
Psalms 40:2, 4, 7 – 8, 8 – 9, 10
1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17 – 20
John 1:35 – 42
Reflection: “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
Calls are on my mind this morning, as my partner’s phone was just disconnected from our budget wireless plan without notice. Without her phone, she can’t reply to her coworkers’ requests during the day, can’t check our shared grocery list on her way home, and certainly can’t call our phone provider to fix the issue.
Our scriptures this morning also feature stories about calls: not phone calls but calls from God. Both our first reading and our gospel reading feature the famous call stories of Samuel and Peter, respectively. These are two stories about men who followed God’s call even while being very fuzzy on the details. Samuel did not even know God when he heard God’s call, but simply trusted Eli’s guidance. In the gospel, all Peter knew about Jesus was hearsay from his brother and from John the Baptist. Both Samuel and Peter trusted their community members who pointed them to the divine, and assented without question to lifelong relationships of service and companionship with God.
Our second reading also contains a call: a call to tend to our bodies with the respect they are due, as temples of the sacred. Many translations of this passage use the word “fornication” where our USCCB translation uses “(im)morality.” I appreciate the broadness of the word “immorality,” because it covers a wide variety of ways that we hurt ourselves. We “sin against our own bodies” when we starve them to fit into the newest fad diets, when we push them beyond their limits by overworking, and when we do not allow them time for rest when we are sick. Because God dwells within us, we are called in this passage to always treat our bodies in a way that glorifies God.
While I rarely hear calls from God which are as specific and direct as those in our scriptures today, I find guidance here for my own discernment. When I feel the nudge of the Spirit, I can look to the prompting of my community, as did Samuel and Peter. Where are my trusted mentors and friends seeing the divine in my life? Then, I can try not to let myself be overwhelmed with questions. I may not know the details of where God is calling me, but it is enough to say, “Here I am” and trust God for the rest. Lastly, I can check in with my own body. Is the call I am feeling from God allowing me to care for my body more deeply and fully as God calls me to, or is it requiring me to deny what my body needs? If I ask these questions regularly in my own prayer life, I can come closer to following God’s call as I experience it.
In these early days of the new year, I wish you many opportunities to receive and respond to calls from God. May we respond to these calls with presence and commitment, opening ourselves to faithful futures yet unknown. Speak, God, for we, your servants, are listening.
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