“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Even people with perfect hearing need hearing aids—perhaps not the kind that increases the decibels of a speaker, but the kind of aid that fulfills the first duty of love: the first duty of love is to listen.”1 The syndrome of selective hearing is perilously “high-pedestaled” in our world; its roots burrow deeply—and with our permission. Is it not a sign of success … status... and superiority to multitask impressively, to use personal listening devices in spite of the occasion, and to flash the latest version of Apple technology indiscriminately?
Selective hearing, however, is not just a syndrome of the times; listening has been a challenge to humanity for centuries.
The story is told of King Edward VII. His grandson, Prince David, and the King had a good relationship. Still, David was a child, and adults in England during that period, particularly royalty, were not known to be attentive listeners to children. At dinner one evening, Prince David tried unsuccessfully to get his grandfather's attention. The child was reprimanded immediately for interrupting the king's conversation, so the child sat in silence until eventually he was given permission to speak. When the king asked the prince what he wanted, the young boy said, “It's too late now, grandpapa. It was a caterpillar on your lettuce, but you've eaten it.”2
When I was Youth Pastor in Georgetown, MA, I was given the opportunity to preach once every other month. First Congregational Church has a large sanctuary, complete with exposed beams and upper balcony. There was a good sound system to compensate for the expanse. One summer day, in the middle of a sermon, a husband and wife got up from their pew toward the back of the room and marched forward, to the third pew from the front. Everybody noticed; I kept preaching but my eyes were focused on them. When they reseated themselves, the wife shot me a poisoned flaming arrow with both eyeballs.
After worship, she treated me to one of those exotic excursions up one side of me and down the other. “I can't hear you; you need to speak up!” Turned out, Mrs H had eaten a caterpillar. The next week she secretly, sheepishly, confessed to me that the week before, when she “persnicketedly” paraded down the aisle, the real problem turned out to be that her hearing-aid batteries had died.
When Jesus paraded Peter and James and John up a high mountain, our Lord had been telling these disciples that he would soon suffer and die yet his message was rejected by them. Such teaching was simply too painful to hear, too hard to conceive; it was unbearable news. So, Peter took him aside and began to take Jesus on one of those exotic excursions (Mk 8:32a). Peter and the brothers James and John could hear what the Lord said, yet they would not listen. They were failing at the first duty of love.
Each of us can recall a time when we were too preoccupied with our own issues to listen to someone who needed us to hear them. Listening, authentic listening, requires us to put down, tune out, move away from anything that distracts our listening to the one who desperately wants us to hear them.
Writer and preacher Charles Swindoll once found himself with too many commitments in too few days. He got nervous and tense about it.
“I was snapping at my wife and our children, choking down my food at mealtimes, and feeling irritated at those unexpected interruptions through the day....Before long, things around hour home started reflecting the patter of my hurry-up style. It was becoming 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 really fast.' Suddenly realizing her frustration, I answered, 'Honey, you can tell me, and you don't have to tell me really fast. Say it slowly.' I'll never forget her answer. 'Then listen slowly.'”3
People in general spend about 40% of our waking hours listening, yet most of the time we are listening at 25% of our actual capacity. Here are three hearing aids that will help all of us:
- Listen with your eyes. Approximately 80% of communication is nonverbal. Facial expressions and body language usually tell the real story. Look at people when you listen to them.
- Listen with your heart. Be sympathetic. Tune into the emotions behind the words.
- Listen to the people around you—your family, your friends, your coworkers, even strangers. Every moment of every day each of us wants not only to tell our story but to have our story really heard.
Listening is hard work. Peter, James and John found that out. They loved hearing what Jesus had to say until Jesus said some things that were too hard—not just to hear, but also to bear for the words filled them with fear and the meaning was not clear. No wonder they were so frightened on the Mount of Transfiguration! Enters God, in a cloud.
I was in the mountains near North Conway earlier this week. It is hard to take in the complete view when one is driving. If you get lost in the awe of God's creation, you're apt to crash right into it! Winding through a steep mountain road, I could see ahead of me the presidential range, and there was the snow I've been longing to see, shining so brightly before me even though the distance was very far.
Thing about the mountains—whether in New Hampshire's February or Montana's July—is that clouds, dark or bright, can become suspended there, along the steep peaks and hidden plateaus—so that they actually seem to lay down upon the mountains, reposing to consider their next flight.
“Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Mk 9:7). If the first duty of love is to listen, then the Christian's primary duty is to listen to Christ. To listen truly to Jesus Christ means this: to trust what he says, to use what he teaches, and to practice what he preaches. Christ is the beloved Son, the only Son, and God sent the Son to us not only to suffer and die for our sin, but after three days to rise again so that death is conquered and we who live in him also rise. God's love for us through the sacrifice of his son, the only son, must not be kept under cover, locked up in temples and tabernacles, frozen in sanctuaries and mosques.
God's message through Jesus Christ is meant to transfigure the world—to change the world in which we live so that it shines, shines, shines. Jesus is the light of the world, and his light is spread not by building booths to hold him in and keep him for our eyes and ears only, but by speaking his word in ways that the deaf may hear, the blind may see, the prisoners, freed; the sick, healed; the hungry fed; and the thirsty satisfied—beyond all measure.
To Christ, let us listen with our eyes—to see what the Lord desires to show us. Let's listen with our hearts, to receive and believe in God's Son, the beloved. Let's listen to him!”
What does Christ have to say to us that we need to hear?
Perhaps Christ wants to talk with us about how we are treating family members, co-workers or friends. Maybe he wants to talk to us about our discipleship or our faithfulness to his Church? He may want to talk with us about some undesirable behavior that has crept into our life. Or maybe, and quite likely, Christ wants to offer us encouragement as we live our lives.
The time is now for the syndrome of selective hearing to give way to the power of elective hearing. We lay ourselves down on God's mountain, we listen to the Son's teaching and desire to understand; and as clouds move out, we shine with God's great light; and we can do it with our own two hands, and our own two feet, when we listen with our own two eyes, and our own two ears, responding to the message we have heard from the one true heart that loves us all.
Friends, check your batteries. Listen slowly! To hear is to see, and to see is to know, and to know is to love, and to love is of God. If we fulfill the first duty of love and listen, we won't be eating any more caterpillars and better than that, we shall hear the voice of the Lord, for God is truly still speaking. Amen
February 19, 2012
The First Parish Federated Church of South Berwick, ME
The Reverend Donna Lee Muise, Pastor
1Paul Tillich, 1886-1965, a German-American theologian.
2John Kramp, Getting Ahead by Staying Behind (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), p 137.
3Bits & Pieces, June 24, 1993, pp. 13-14.
