Last Sunday After the Epiphany (Yr. A) 2014

The way we use language has, in many instances, taken the power out of our words. The same word is used to mean so many different things that it ceases to have any precision of meaning at all. Take the word “love” for example. We use it to describe our most intimate relationships with our spouse, our children or perhaps a special friend. But we also use that same word to describe our feelings about ice cream, summer time or a piece of music.

The same can be said for the word “listen”. We speak of listening to music, listening to the news, listening to a friend. Today we are told in the Gospel to listen to Jesus. But what does it mean to really listen? Is listening different than hearing? Perhaps the radio or the CD player is on and we hear it because we are not deaf. But just because we hear the sound, does not mean that we are listening to what is being broadcast or played. We miss so much in life because we do not listen. Our attention may be off in another direction all together. Most of us have had the experience of speaking to someone while fighting the feeling we were speaking to the proverbial brick wall. The person with whom we are attempting to communicate graces us from behind a newspaper with a periodic uh huh. And after the 32nd uh huh, we come to the conclusion that while they may be hearing our voice, they certainly are not listening to what we have to say.

This is a sin of which I am often guilty, so I know of what I speak.

Hearing without listening is akin to eating without tasting or staring without seeing. In many ways life takes on the character of a music video. Images and words are fired at us in rapid succession, often with little or no connection with what came before. And all of this while we are paging through a magazine without reading it or carrying on a conversation again without listening. We easily become accustomed to hearing without listening. A similar fault – of which I am also guilty – is interrupting people in conversation.

I jump ahead with my thoughts expressing the wrong conclusion to someone else’s words.

So when God invites us to listen to Jesus as we read –or dare I say, hear—in today’s Gospel, we are challenged to do something that is possibly outside of the normal course of our everyday behavior. It is an 2 invitation not to be taken lightly, but rather an invitation which demands some concentration if we are to truly accept it without insulting the giver.

Any of us who have had the opportunity of living with children know the frustration of having a child tell us that they heard every word we said, but the message seems to have stopped at their ears. “Listen to me! This is the last time I’m going to tell you to make your bed and clean up your room.” “Yes, mom, I hear you”. We all know where that goes; in one ear and out the other. Your own memory tells you that many hours later the room still resembles the aftermath of a tornado, and the child will still be insisting that he or she heard you. At least one time my younger son when he was about 7 or 8 was honest enough to respond to the frustration of his mother by saying, “My ears were resting”. We hear but we do not listen.

The question raised by the invitation in today’s Gospel to listen to Jesus may well resemble the child who insists he or she heard the message. Perhaps we too have heard the message of Jesus, but have not yet listened to it. I often wonder what condition our world would be in if we who insist that he have heard the message of Jesus really and truly listened to God speaking to our hearts.

That may be the key: the heart. One does not have to have taken biology to know that the bodily organ for hearing is the ear. It may, however, be more accurate to say that while the ear is for hearing, the heart is for listening. The child who is told to clean his room may not have clogged ears but his heart is simply not in it. Rather it is in all those places of play and fantasy that capture the hearts of children. So the message stops in the eardrum and the heart goes off in the direction of least resistance.

So what happens to us when we are invited to listen to the message of Jesus? Does it stop at the eardrum or is it listened to in the heart? Hearing is in itself a passive process. Listening however requires active participation. What would we find if we were to apply some of the listening techniques taught in psychology and communication classes to the process of listening to God’s message given through Jesus?

One of the first things talked about in those classes has to do with clearing away distractions. We all know how difficult it is to have a satisfactory conversation with anyone while the television is going full blast or while small children are playing tag in the room next door. We know how difficult it is to listen to 3 anything while our mind is busy processing a problem from another part of life. Distractions, whether around us or within us, simply do not mix well with listening. An unwillingness to put aside the distractions for a time very often sends the message, “I’m not really interested.” Some of us have sent that message, intended or not, and some of us have received that message more than once.

As ironic as it sounds, the demands of life often distract us from the author of life itself. What can easily happen is that the distractions of life become the stuff of life. It is the kind of thing that happens particularly in a marriage when the job that was meant to provide income for the future of the marriage and the ensuing family takes up so much time and energy that there is nothing left for the relationship. It then dies through lack of attention. Life will always have its distractions. It is up to the one who wants to live fully to step aside from them periodically.

Pastor and author Chuck Swindoll tells about a time when he found himself with too many commitments in too few days. In his book Stress Fractures he writes, "I was snapping at my wife and kids, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected little interruptions which happened throughout the day. Before long, things around our home started reflecting my hurry-up style. It had become unbearable. I distinctly remember after supper one evening the words of our younger daughter,

Colleen. She wanted to tell me something important that had happened to her at school that day. She began hurriedly, 'Daddy, I wanna tell you somethin' and I'll tell you real fast.' "Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, 'Honey, you can tell me -- and you don't have to tell me real fast. Say it slowly." "I'll never forget her answer: 'Then listen slowly.'"

If our spouse or best friend deserves that kind of sacrifice for the sake of the relationship, then certainly our relationship with God deserves the same. Today we see Jesus take his closest associates, Peter,

James and John, away from the distractions of life for a while so that they might experience him more fully.

Even a life of traveling around Palestine as Jesus spoke to the crowds and healed the sick could become a distraction from listening to the message that he had for their hearts. So they went up a mountain raising 4 themselves above the distractions of life. Today as we stand on the verge of the Lenten season, we too are invited to go up the mountain to listen to Jesus.

Another thing that would-be listeners are taught is to listen to more than the words that are spoken.

Yes, we have God’s words in the Scriptures, but the message of God is so much larger, so much more profound than any written words on a page. Remember how one time Jesus told his disciples to learn a lesson from the fig tree. At other times he spoke of the relationship of shepherds and sheep. He invited them to learn from little children. He pointed out lessons to be learned from people grateful for the cure of terrible diseases.

In other words the message of God is constantly being revealed in the life events that we all experience. An important part of listening to the message is to make the necessary connections. In the

Gospel which we listened to today, Jesus is described as being with Moses and Elijah. His message of God’s love for us is to be understood not apart from, but very much in connection with, what had come before and what was yet to be revealed.

In listening to Jesus we make connections between his life and his words, and between his life and ours. Listening to Jesus is to dare to apply what he taught to our attitudes toward local, national and world affairs. To listen to Jesus is to learn the truth that God loves us even with our flaws and our past refusals to pay attention to his words. To listen to him is to be willing to connect his message of self-sacrifice to those things that we as individuals, as believers, and even as a nation, must let go of so that life can happen more fully.

In other versions of this story we find Peter expressing a desire to build permanent dwellings so that they could stay on the mountain top away from the hustle and bustle of life below, but that is not what it means to listen to Jesus. Removing ourselves from the distractions of life is only one side of the listening process. For the child, listening to mother tell him to make his bed is not enough. Part of the listening process is to actually make the bed. Before today’s story ends, we see the three disciples come down from 5 the mountain. And that is what we are called to do as well: to listen closely so that we can go back and confront the distractions of everyday life and overcome them.

And from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him”—my friends, listen to him.