Listening is the fruit of love

A Sermon for February 10, 2013 (Last Epiphany, RCL C)

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for The Church of Saint Mary

Texts:             2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Psalm 99; Luke 9:28-36

Primary Message:              listen to Jesus, the smartest person who ever lived

Call to Action:          take up spiritual disciples, learn to love and listen

Title:               Listening is the Fruit of Love

“Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’” (Luke 9:35).

My dear friends: Who has your attention? To whose voice are you listening?

Have you noticed precisely what it is that the voice of God said at this crucial moment for Jesus and the disciples? At this moment when the full beauty and majesty of the Messiah, the Incarnate One, is on display for his friends to see, as a preparation for the very difficult days just ahead of them, what is it that the divine voice said?

Did God say, This is my Son, my Chosen; worship him? Or follow him? Or keep the commandments? Or be a good person? Or do your duty?

No. That voice emanating out of the cloud was precise and specific: listen to him.

Let’s talk about listening to Jesus. First we’ll talk about the “why”, and then we’ll move on to the “how”.

A book was published a few years ago which chronicled some of the most poignant stories of everyday, ordinary American citizens collected by the StoryCorps project (see www.storycorps.org).  

This project is still on-going, and the book is titled “Listening is an Act of Love.”

Did you hear that? Listening is an Act of Love!

Think about people in your life with whom you just enjoyed sitting and listening to them tell their stories, even if you had heard the same ones time and time again.

Listening is an act of love. From the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, the Chosen; listen to him.”

On Thursday, the Falmouth Ecumenical Clergy group met for our monthly breakfast meeting. I am still new to this group, but it seems mostly to be a social affair. A chance to talk together, to catch up with one another. As the newbie, however, I am eager to talk about new ministry ideas that we might do together. On Thursday, I asked them to consider joining me in supporting the creation of a new Young Life group here at the Falmouth High School.

For those of you who do not know, Young Life is a non-denominational, international outreach ministry to youth. It is highly effective, very specific in its goal, and it relies upon broad, ecumenical support in the community.

I am quite excited about the potential for Young Life here in Falmouth, but a few of the other clergy were not. They shared their frustration about simply trying to get teenagers to show up for confirmation meetings, or to be involved in the church, or to attend Sunday worship. Now, someone asked, are you suggesting that we try to get them out TWICE a week? Once for our own youth group, and then another time for Young Life club!

I understand the frustration, but this, my friends, is flawed thinking. This is getting the cart before the horse.

Let’s step back and reconsider: what is God’s dream for our lives? That we might love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and love all people as ourselves.  Right?

If you truly love someone, is it a struggle finding the desire to spend time with that person? When teenagers falls in love, do they or do they not want to spend all of their time together? Do I, as a parent, need to tell my son, “You know, you really should go out tonight and spend some time with your girlfriend. It’s the right thing to do.”

Is that how it works? Of course not! We all know better.

The task for us church leaders, whether we are dealing with youth or children or adults, is not to find creative ways of convincing people to attend all of our wonderful programs and small groups and worship services. It is not to cajole or manipulate or guilt people into showing up.

Our task is to help people fall in love with Jesus.

If listening is an act of love, then we might also say that listening is the fruit of love.

Who here today listens to musicians and speakers and radio stations which you enjoy? Of course you do! You love this style of music, this band, this radio host, this station – whatever it is – you love it, and so you listen.

St. Paul speaks of that fact that we, with unveiled faces, see the glory of the Lord and this leads to our transformation into that very same image.

Think about beholding. We commonly say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To behold signifies deliberate intention, purposeful choosing, a maintained and delighted gaze.

For who, I ask you, chooses to gaze upon and to behold things which they find distasteful? Who? Do we not – all of us – choose to spend our days looking at things that we love to look at?

As far as it is within our control, do we not focus our eyes upon those things which we find delightful? And do we not focus our ears, our oral attention, upon those voices which we find delightful?

So consider this, my friends: who, I ask you, will choose to gaze upon the Lord Jesus Christ, to behold him, to contemplate him regularly in the depths of the heart, if they do not love him? Who will choose to listen to him, to chew upon him words, to savor them and digest them, if they do not love him?

“This is my Son, the Chosen; listen to him.” To listen is the fruit of love.

But we need also to talk briefly about the “how” of listening to Jesus. We are not in the same position as Peter and James and John. We do not have the living and breathing Messiah right in front of us, but we can listen to him.

Now in fact is an especially proper time to discuss this. In 3 days, on Ash Wednesday, we begin our journey known as Lent. And Lent is a time of focused spiritual practice in order to prepare ourselves as a community for the great celebrations of Holy Week and our Paschal Feast.  

Over the last two millennia, a wide range of tried-and-true spiritual practices have developed within the Church which provide each one of us with clear and simple ways to listen to Jesus.

These disciplines include daily Bible reading, meditation, various forms and times of prayer, practicing silence, speaking with a spiritual guide, self-evaluations, taking retreats, fasting, regular giving to those in need, meeting weekly with a small group for support and accountability.

These and all spiritual disciplines are means by which regular Christ-followers have been able to listen to Jesus and to apply his words to their lives.

There is no great mystery here; these are well-worn paths toward spiritual growth, and the wise ones in every generation have walked upon them.

As you know, it is common for folks to think of Lent as a time to “give something up”, to abstain from something as a small act of sacrifice.

May I suggest that - this year - all of us instead consider taking up something new, trying out a spiritual discipline which will enable us to listen deeply and intently to the words of Christ.

After all, these practices are the primary ways in which we behold him, gaze upon him, and so learn to love him.  And this is the goal: in all things, to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength.

“From the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, the Chosen; listen to him.’”  May we be counted among those who love and who listen. Amen.

The Honey Pot

A Homily for Ash Wednesday 2009, offered at St. Luke's Church in Westville, NJ

There’s an old Irish story about a mother who came to visit a fat priest to ask for help.
“I am in despair”, the old woman said. “My son spends all of our money on honey, which he eats straight from the pot. We are penniless. Please come and tell him to stop.”

Weeks passed and the priest did not come. The mother thought that the priest must have forgotten her request. So she went to see him again. As soon as she came through the door, she was amazed at the sight of him.

“You are so thin!” she exclaimed. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I have given up buying honey and eating it from the pot,” the priest replied. “Now that I know that I can stop, I will come and tell your son to stop as well!”

Welcome, my friends, to a new Season of Lent! It might not seem very exciting right now, but I hope that we will all come to see this season as a time for re-birth and renewal, a time for spring cleaning of our spiritual house.

As this old Irish story suggests, it is difficult for us sinners to talk with others about sin. I myself can offer you no real insight into the process of becoming Christ-like. But by the grace of God I have been able to view a few clear glimpses of the truth of God, which I hope to pass along faithfully.

One of those is right here in Paul’s letter. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” You could spend a lifetime chewing on the deep truths of that text.

Can you imagine for a moment living a life like our Lord, without any personal experience of sin? Do you know that feeling inside, when you realize clearly that the decision you just made was the wrong decision?

If you had a chance to read the first chapter of our Lenten book by Frederica Matthewes-Green, you may remember her discussion of our common feelings of uneasiness, disappointment, loneliness.

I don’t know how anyone can live in this world without this sense of uneasiness. I mean, I think we all feel that something is wrong with the world. If you don’t, then I would be a bit worried. I would argue that it is a sign of health to recognize that something is wrong with the world and humankind as presently constituted. Because we have seen in Christ a vision of how life is meant to be, we then feel the distance between that vision and our present reality. When we draw near to God and experience God’s amazing love and goodness, then we know how weak and timid our love is by contrast.

It has always been the case that the closer to God a saint becomes, the more she is aware of her own brokenness. It is the great Saint Paul who called himself “the chief of sinners”, this coming from the one who had met Christ in person on the road to Damascus.

So that in him we might become…We might become. My friends, we have the chance to become something amazing. It will take hard work, there is no doubt. But commitment and hard work aligned with the power of the Holy Spirit is a life-changing combination.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

That’s the whole story right there in one simple sentence. That’s all of it – the whole story. In this One, in this Messiah, we have the chance to become something greater than we ever dreamed! By constantly changing our direction, and claiming this grace available in Christ, we can change, and like the fat priest who ate too much honey, we can become a lamp-post pointing the way for others.

God has opened this door for our sake. Our Lord laid down his life for this. The Holy Spirit has come upon us for this very reason. So that we might live for God.

So let us make a fresh commitment tonight to this path of love, power and goodness with God. Amen.