“So, uh… what’s next for you?”
When I got sober and realized that if I wanted to stay sober, I’d need to leave my graduate program, it felt like I was fielding this question constantly.
“What’s next?”
Filtering out the frustration-fueled profanity, I’d deflect by saying, “I don’t know. We’ll see.” Because I really didn’t know what was next. I was at a fork in the road, but I didn’t know what path to take—what path God wanted me to take. And I didn’t know how to even begin figuring that out.
Life is chock-full of those transitions—moments when we are faced with the question of what’s next. We graduate; we get laid off; we lose loved ones; we retire. And we say, “I don’t know what’s next. We’ll see.”
But how will we see? How do we figure out what we’re supposed to do; where we’re supposed to go; who we’re supposed to be? It’s not like God usually presents us with a flashing neon sign saying, “GOD’S WILL: THIS WAY.” God doesn’t seem to speak in such obvious ways. We don’t—or at least most of us don’t—get visions or hear voices or witness miraculous signs. The age of prophecy feels like it’s over, and we’re left to figure out the way forward. We want to be thoughtful as we work out our salvation and discern our place in God’s cosmic work of healing & renewing all of Creation. But when visions seem to cease and prophecy falls silent, how are we supposed to see where our path lies?
I can’t pretend to have a solution to this quandary that every one of us faces. Tragically, seminary didn’t include a secret briefing where we learned God’s will for all situations. But I can tell you that this question isn’t new—that you and I aren’t alone in wondering, “Great; so, we’ll see what’s next… but how?” Even the prophet Samuel would have recognized himself in our question.
In the very first verse of our Old Testament reading we learn that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” Samuel probably wasn’t holding his breath for God to send whatever the Bronze Age equivalent of a flashing neon sign was. Gone were the days of the prophet Moses, when God appeared in the burning bush and spoke in the shining cloud. Gone were the days of the patriarch Jacob, when God opened the heavens to him in a dream, giving him a glimpse of heavenly glory. The Israelites at that point were in a weird kind of limbo, which they would occupy many times again in history. God had acted and spoken and appeared to their forebears, but now they were left asking, “What’s next? We’ll see… But how?”
As tough as that question was, God doesn’t leave Samuel hanging there forever. Our scene opens on Samuel in the Tabernacle. He’s dwelling in the place where the Ark of God was kept. The people of Israel might not have been receiving visions or obvious echoes of God’s voice in those days, but they still had the Ark—the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark was God’s pledge of everlasting faithfulness to Israel, the sign that God would fulfill the promises made to their ancestors all those years ago—back when the word of the Lord wasn’t rare, and visions did seem widespread. The Ark was the epicenter of God’s enduring presence with Israel. It was the seat of the Creator’s glorious mercy in the midst of Creation.
And it’s there, in the presence of this visible sign of God’s invisible presence—it is there that Samuel chooses to dwell and make his resting place, during this time of God’s apparent absence and silence. It is there that the Word of the Lord, so rare in those days, broke through that silence.
God has searched Samuel out and known him. God has discerned his thoughts from afar and traced his journeys and his resting-places—from his mother Hannah’s womb all the way to his bed in the Tabernacle. And now, as Samuel dwells in God’s presence, God calls him by name. God stands before him, beckoning him down the path of becoming a prophet.
There, as he dwells with the promise of God’s presence in the midst of God’s apparent absence, Samuel finally hears the word of the Lord, and encounters the God who has made him and who guides him just like the patriarchs and prophets before him. Against all odds, Samuel sees God there with him, like Moses saw God in the burning bush, and like Jacob saw God when the heavens opened and the heavenly hosts were revealed at Bethel. There, as Samuel rests in the house of the Lord, God’s absence and silence breaks, and Samuel catches a glimpse of what’s next—of where he’s supposed to go, what he’s supposed to do, who he’s supposed to be.
“Well, bully for him,” we might reasonably say, “but naps next to the Ark of the Covenant aren’t exactly on the table for us today, are they? So how are we supposed to discern the way forward today?”
Fair! We no longer have the Ark; we no longer have the Tabernacle. But as we have been proclaiming since Christmas, God’s promise to be present to Creation did not end with that golden box in the Temple. And once again today, in the story of Philip & Nathanael, we see how Jesus—the Incarnate Word—continues to fulfill that promise of faithful presence that God made to Samuel, Moses, and Jacob. Jesus references Jacob’s vision—but with an important twist. The heavens are opened, but God’s angels aren’t on a ladder like at Bethel. Now they’re ascending and descending on the Son of Man—a phrase Jesus uses to refer to himself.
To the Israelites living in that weird limbo of waiting for God’s word and presence, this is radical news: God doesn’t just promise to be present in an abstract future; God is concretely present now in this guy named Jesus. Jesus embodies the rock at Bethel where Jacob saw heaven. He embodies the bush on Sinai where Moses heard God. He embodies the ark at Shiloh where God stood before Samuel. Jesus embodies all those places where God was present before, with Jacob and Moses and Samuel. He becomes the site where God’s glorious mercy dwells and where God’s Presence and Word become concrete—flesh and blood like one of us.
Without expecting it, Philip and Nathanael have wandered right up to the Ark where God called Samuel and showed him the way. Here they see God, standing before them in the person of Jesus. And as they stand there in God’s presence, Jesus calls them to follow him, revealing their place in God’s plan of salvation. The Word of the Lord seemed rare in those days, but then there he was, standing before them, showing them what was next, and who they were supposed to be.
God is still with us in the person of Jesus, my friends. God has transformed us, the People of God, into Christ’s Body—a living, breathing temple, filled with the Holy Spirit. In the midst of a world where God seems to be absent—where there seem to be no clear signs pointing out God’s will—this temple stands as an outward sign of God’s invisible presence. In this temple, Jesus speaks to us through Scripture—no longer just inscribed on stone tablets in a box, but now etched in our hearts and our bodies by God. And in this temple, Jesus is present in the Sacraments—not standing before us like he did with Nathanael, but now cradled in our hands and savored by our mouths, as we receive his very Body and Blood at the altar. This is where we can come when we don’t know what’s next, when we’re trying to discern where we’re supposed to go, what we’re supposed to do, and who we’re supposed to be.
We might not see a neon sign pointing out the right path. We might not see dreams or visions of God. But we do see Jesus, standing like the Ark in the midst of this temple, present to us here in Sacrament and Word. And whenever we imitate Samuel, whenever we make our resting-place in this temple of Christ’s Body, whenever we dwell with the promise of his presence, we clear the space to hear his call.
Maybe that call will be a vision like what Samuel gets. Maybe like me you’ll receive it as a simple question, posed at the right time by someone who loves you. Or maybe it’ll be as quiet as the still small voice that Elijah once heard. I can’t tell you definitively how God will speak. Discernment can unfold in myriad ways. But it all starts with following Samuel’s lead: abiding with the pledge of God’s presence with us, and waiting for Jesus to break through silence and say, “Come see what’s next.”