Sermon from June 21, 1998

Sermon "Listening with the Ear of the Heart"
Rev. Dr. Steven A. Peay
Sunday, June 21, 1998

"Listening with the Ear of the Heart"

"When I was sixteen I thought my father the stupidest man in the world; by the time I was 21 I was amazed at how much the man had managed to learn in just five years." Those lines, attributed to Mark Twain, are often quoted to illustrate the need to grow in maturity. I think that it also offers the insight that listening is a great part of maturity. This, I believe, is the reason that the Shema, the great affirmation of faith recited daily by devout Jews. begins with the word 'hear.' "Hear O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might." (Deut 6:4-5) Hear, listen; this is what Benedict counsels in the prologue to his Rule when he writes, "listen with the ear of your heart."

It is not at all inappropriate on this day when we honor fathers to remind ourselves of the need to listen to our Heavenly Father. However, it is very difficult to listen. Communication scholars tell us that listening is perhaps the hardest part of the communication process. The classic communication model of sender-message-receiver was very soon modified to include something which altered the process: noise.

Noise can be many things; the sounds of traffic, machinery, the booming of a car radio, the television set, or stereo. Noise can also be voices, ideas, or situations; anything which gets in the way of our ability to hear. Our world has so many competing voices, so much noise, and all of it is clamoring to get our attention; to have us focus on it rather than another. Noise can also be within ourselves.

The man possessed by demons must have been suffering terribly wondering which of the voices he heard within himself could possibly be right. When one considers that a legion consisted of four to six thousand soldiers, and this demon called itself 'legion, for we are many,' it becomes difficult to imagine the inner pain of this poor man. Some would say that probably the man was suffering from some form of mental illness, perhaps schizophrenia or multiple-personality disorder. It's very difficult to come to a conclusion because our world and the world of the Bible are so very different.

What is important is to understand that the man's situation was real, was grave, and that we can learn something from it.

Both the Old and New Testaments are consistent in their treatment of demons in that they do not see them as divine beings or connected with the spirits of the dead. When one is possessed of a demon one can almost say that it's a giving over to a baser sense of nature. This idea goes along with part of the definition offered by Webster, "an undesirable emotion, trait, or state." The New Testament emphasizes two things: one, that the believer is freed from the fear of these spirits and, two, that the focus of God's people is to be on God. We can perhaps understand demons in a different way, but one consonant with the New Testament. Demons are those attitudes or things which distract us from our proper focus on God.

Thus Maximus the Confessor would talk about how the inner being of man was led to "think base thoughts" and to "sin in the mind and, when this has been done, they induce it captive as it is, to commit the sin in action." This is not the "Devil made me do it" a la Flip Wilson or the cartoon idea of an angel and devil seated on our shoulders. Rather, it is a question of orientation, of focus.

What Jesus restores in the man is his sense of holy desire, his focus on God. That's what Psalm 42, from which our call to worship is taken, talks about so beautifully. "As the deer longs for flowing waters, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Ps. 42:1-2) Sometimes the proper orientation comes quickly, as it did for the man in the Gospel. Other times it may come slowly as God's love and Word work their ways into a life, almost as a drip of water will wear away rock. One of the desert fathers, Abba Poemen said: "When a person hears the Word of God over and over, his heart is opened to fear God."

Elijah was also facing competing voices. Caught up in discouragement, chaos seemed to be all around him. Here he was the only one who had remained faithful to God -- and he was the one on the run. Elijah was so focused on himself and his problems, that he couldn't hear what God was calling him to do. He had become deaf to God.

God had to get Elijah's attention so he came to him. But he didn't come in the manner one would expect of the Creator of the Universe. It was not in a mighty wind, or an earthquake, or in raging fire, but in silence one could almost touch. To hear God, Elijah had to open himself to the silence.

If we learn to listen we can begin to hear God speaking in the most unlikely places and through the most unlikely sources. Henri Nouwen, writing about the noise in our lives, said:

...our lives have become absurd. In the word absurd we find the Latin

surdus, which means "deaf." A spiritual life requires discipline because

we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom

we seldom hear. When, however, we learn to listen, our lives become obedient lives.

The word obedient comes from the Latin word audire, which means

"listening." A spiritual discipline is necessary in order to move slowly

from an absurd to an obedient life, from a life filled with noisy worries

to a life in which there is some free inner space where we can listen to

our God and follow his guidance. [from Making All Things New]

What brings us to listen and to hear God is the new relationship we have with him. Paul describes this relationship in his letter to the Galatians. God, in Christ, has adopted us to be his children, but not as immature ones in need of a guardian. Those who have been baptized "have put-on," been clothed with, Christ and come as mature members of the family of God. So those who have been under the restraint of the Law as 'pedagogue' -- the Jews -- are so no longer. Those who have been outside the family -- the Gentiles -- are in. And all the barriers, whether of nature, or culture, or society, are broken down: all are one in Christ.

An invitation of this sort demands a response. If we are called to spiritual maturity, it means that we have to work at growing in our faith-lives. Where this growth begins is in prayer; daily taking the time to be alone with God, even if it's only five or ten minutes. And during that time we shouldn't be doing all the talking. Elijah had to enter into silence to hear what God was saying: it's no different for us. Practically, find a place apart, a quiet corner where you can be alone. Then read a Psalm or another verse of Scripture and listen to what God is saying to you there. Prayer is how we become obedient children of our Heavenly Father. As Nouwen writes:

Jesus' life was a life of obedience. He was always listening to the Father, always attentive to his voice, always alert for his directions. Jesus was "all ear." That is true prayer: being all ear for God. The core of all prayer is indeed listening, obediently standing in the presence of God. We need to listen with the ear of our heart.

We also need to listen more deeply to each other. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together, "The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them." One needn't be trained in communication studies or psychology to be an "active listener." What is needed is compassion and patience -- two virtues God has demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes we come into a conversation already knowing what we're going to say, and this can also be true of prayer. We're so focused on what we've got to say and looking for the right moment to make our point, that we've missed what the other person is saying. It well could be that if we've grown dull in listening to God we might need to listen to others in silence to see if perhaps we can hear God through them? Listen again to the wisdom of Bonhoeffer: "Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself, and for his own follies."

To listen, fully, deeply, actively can be the true beginning of our growth in the life in God and in human relationship. And once we've listened with the ear of the heart, we will hear what the man who was healed, Elijah and Paul heard: God's call to action. The man was told to "relate all that God has done for you." Elijah went off to speak the glory of God, anoint a new king and commission his successor as prophet. Paul spoke boldly of the new relationship we have in Christ, the love and tolerance that it brings. Listening leads to growth. and growth leads to action.

My father said many things I never understood...until later. Like Twain's young man, I now understand how wise he was. I wonder if, after all these years, we will ever grow to say that about our Heavenly Father? Will the Christian faith ever grow to the maturity God intended for it? Will we always live under the judgment of Mahatma Ghandi: "Christianity hasn't failed. It's just never been tried." Will we learn to listen? I hope, I pray so....and may it begin right here with us as we learn to listen with the ear of our hearts. Amen.

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