“LISTEN UP!”
Scripture Lesson: Matthew 17: 1-9
As a rather slow-thinking
introvert whose vocation is centered around speaking in public, I must confess
that I have always had a love/hate relationship with words. I love the sound of words well-spoken or
well-written. I love searching for that
synonym that reveals a different shade of meaning. Doesn’t ... say so much more than ...? I love words like ubiquitous and ... and ...,
and I am dulled by words like “special” and that ubiquitous interjection
“like”. “He was, like, sooo angry, and I
was, like, ‘Talk to the hand.’”
And yet, as a weak-minded
introvert, my love of words has always bumped up against my inability to utter
them meaningfully in conversation and my unhealthy fear of coming across as an
idiot. Those unctuous-tongued extroverts
in our midst may not understand, but believe it or not, there are those of us
who sit staring at a phone for prolonged periods as we rehearse over and over
what we will say, even if it is just to inquire what time a store closes. Believe it or not there are those of us
suffer immense inner agony in on-on-one conversations, whether they be with
complete strangers or those we love dearly.
“I should say something. Should I
say something? But I don’t know what to
say, and would they even want to hear what I have to say? - So,
how ya doin? - O, that was profound! How ya doin’?
I’ll bet Shakespeare’s green with envy.”
I want to be witty, I want to
be urbane, but in the fear of the moment, words so often fail me.
Yet, for all my paucity of
intelligible dialogue, we are a people awash in words, aren’t we.
With one keystroke (Do we
still use that word?) or one mash of a button I gain access to the cover of the
New York
Who would have thought thirty
years ago that basic cable meant having the choice of almost eighty television
networks? On a recent morning at
And speaking of phones, isn’t
it incredible how proficient we have become at performing most of life’s tasks
with one hand, the other being forever connected to the ear by a piece of
cellular technology so advanced it makes Dick Tracy seem like a tale of the
Dark Ages?
There is always someone
talking in our lives. Yet, isn’t it
ironic that as this swell of words overwhelms us, our attention spans have
become shorter and shorter. Believe me,
as a preacher, I’m well aware of this phenomenon. Let me let you in on a little secret before
you indulge the temptation to wish me a good afternoon with the emphasis on
after-NOON, when church lets out at
You should consider
yourselves lucky. Listen to Robert
Baillie’s description of the worship he attended at the Westminster Assembly in the mid-1640’s: “After Dr. Twisse had begun with a brief
prayer, Mr. Marshall prayed large for two hours, most divinely confessing the
sins of the members of the Assembly in a wonderfully pathetic and prudent
way. After that, Mr. Arrowsmith preached
one hour; then a psalm; thereafter Mr. Vines prayed near two hours, and Mr.
Palmer preached one hour, and Mr. Seaman prayed near two hours; then a
psalm. After that Mr. Henderson brought
them to a short, sweet conference of the heart-confessed and other seen faults
in the Assembly, to be remedied.
Dr. Twisse closed with a
short prayer and blessing.”
Twenty minutes doesn’t seem
so long now, does it?
Yet, I’ll be the first to
admit that in this world of words, my attention span is waning. Do you ever find yourselves in
mid-conversation and realize that while your friend or acquaintance has been
talking, your mind has taken a holiday and you panic at the thought of trying
to gracefully re-enter the conversation?
Barbara Brown Taylor writes
that, “the most unfortunate side-effect of all the noise is that many of us
have become hard of hearing. We learn to
filter out the words that are not necessary to our lives the same way we learn
to sleep in a house near the railroad tracks.
Our brains show that most people recall only about twenty-five percent
of what they have heard in the past few days.
We do not listen well.”
So often, when another person
is speaking, rather than listening, we are using the time to think what we want
to say. Kathy Thompson, who teaches
courses on conversation, confesses, “At our house, we warn new friends to be
careful because we treat conversation like a competitive sport. The first one to take a breath is considered
the listener.”
Though we are a busy people
who take pride in our ability to do several things at once, listening is not a
skill amenable to multi-tasking. I spend
too much of my life asking the question, “What’d he say?”
If we struggle to pay
attention to those around us, what are we missing when it comes to the One
whose voice ushered in creation itself, the One who formed us in our mother’s
womb, the One who knows our jumbled words before they reach our parched lips?
Many of us found our way to
church because at some point in our lives we felt the touch, heard the voice,
experienced the palpable presence and power of the living God. Often, we refer to these mysterious, numinous
events as “mountain-top” experiences, a term probably finding it’s origin in
the encounters between Moses and God upon those middle-eastern mountains. The Moses chronicles form the backdrop for
today’s scripture lesson in which we find three disciples traveling with Jesus (where?)
up a high mountain, and there they hear the very voice of God and see Jesus in
a whole new light. Just as in the
stories of Moses, there is a cloud, a shining face, a bright light, and talk of
tented tabernacles. The captivating
teacher and healer who called Peter, James, and John away from their fishing
boats is transfigured before them.
To help us understand what is
happening here, Tom Long suggests, “If someone stands on the bank of a lake and
gazes into the water, often the glare of sunlight on the water allows only the
surface to be seen. If a cloud passes
overhead, however, suddenly the surface is made transparent and the depths of
the lake revealed.” Here on the
mountain, in the same way, when the divine cloud comes, the disciples and the
readers are able to see past the surface identity into the depths of the full
nature of Jesus. That’s the
mountain-top, where for maybe the briefest of moments, the blurry and the
faint, become clear through the palpable presence of the light of Christ and we
are suddenly lost in wonder, love, and praise.
The promise of God given to
Moses and carried on by Elijah is fulfilled here in Jesus standing before the
disciples, and they fall on their faces and are filled with awe.
A true mountain-top
experience. I’ve heard some writers
refer to our mountain-top experiences as thin places, places where the veil
that separates earth and heaven is so thin you can almost see through it.
It doesn’t have to happen on
a mountain in some designated holy land.
It can happen in almost any place, at any time, but it is helpful to be
paying attention. The one request the
voice of heaven offered that day was that we listen to/listen for Jesus. But remember, listening is not amenable to
multi-tasking. The disciples needed time
apart from their blackberries and text-messengers and calendars and agendas and
distractions and so do we.
In this world where we are
constantly so bombarded by so many words, what can we do to listen to Jesus,
and thus recognize the thin places into which we may walk unaware?
Frederich Buechner says, “The
question is not whether the things that happen to you are chance things or
God’s things because, of course, they are both at once. There is no chance thing through which God
cannot speak - even the walk from the house to the garage that you have walked
ten thousand times before, even the moments when you cannot believe there is a
God who speaks at all anywhere. He
speaks, I believe, and the words he speaks are incarnate in the flesh and blood
of our selves and of our own footsore and sacred journeys. . . To live without listening at all is to live
deaf to the fullness of the music.”
The one who said, “I am with
you always” is with each of us on each of our journeys. Are we listening, not to all the words, but
THE Word made flesh? The mountain-top is
not so far away, indeed the presence of God is always near. Are we listening? Amen.
Resources:
Walter Lingle -
Presbyterians, Their History and Beliefs
Barbara Brown
Tom Long - Matthew
Frederich Buechner -
Listening to Your Life
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