josephholubsermons
January 15, 2012 - 2 Epiphany
1 Samuel 3:1-10 John 1:43-51
SACRAMENTAL LISTENING
"Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."
1 Samuel 3:9
In the story of Samuel, hearing wasn't Samuel's problem.
Young Samuel wasn't hearing-impaired, he was
listening-impaired. The
boy's ears were functional, and he responded the best that he could, but
his response missed the mark simply because he was
listening-impaired. The point is, Samuel lacked the
discernment needed to
listen until old Eli helped him out. Eli
mentored him.
Hearing and listening
are not the same thing. There is an old adage that says:
“We are equipped with one mouth
and two ears so we can listen twice as hard as we talk.”
I think listening is at least twice as hard as
speaking, if not much more, maybe ten or a hundred times more!
I think listening-impairment
is a pervasive issue. It is
much easier to open our mouths than to open our ears. It takes less
effort to assert ourselves through speaking than to focus
ourselves in listening. Speaking
asserts the self –
listening affirms the other.
A favorite biblical passage of mine is Psalm 46:10,
“Be still, and know that I
am God.”
“Be still.” The psalmist didn't say,
“Preach a sermon... move your lips... get on your soap box... and
know that I am God”, but
“be still.”
I experience that
"being still"
takes a lot of focus, concentration and a great deal of energy.
My personality type is big
picture which means
I often miss the details. I
have learned that in missing the details I can miss much of life’s
richness, texture and depth – miss the Divine in the ordinary.
Marcia has taught me and continues to teach me, especially when
we are out in nature, to pay
attention to detail.
I am learning to listen: for the
various sounds that the wind
makes as it blows through different trees; for the calls, cries and
songs of wildlife, the cries of the owls, coyotes or the wild turkeys.
the rush of water on a rapids. “Be still, and know that I
am God.”
A telephone crises volunteer
was on duty one evening, and while he was waiting for calls, he was
watching TV. The phone rang. The person on the other end was desperate.
The conversation began, but the volunteer continued to watch TV out of
the corner of his eye. After a few minutes, hearing the TV in the
background, the caller asked,
“Are you watching TV?” The volunteer replied,
“The TV is on.” The
caller asked again, “Are you
watching TV?” The volunteered hesitated and then replied,
“Yes, to be honest, I am. I am
sorry” Without saying
more, the caller hung up.
Listening requires a desire and a commitment to do so. It entails focus,
patience, discipline and intentionality. You can’t fake listening very
well. Most people can sense, very
quickly, a superficial
listener.
For years I trained Stephen Ministers. Stephen Ministry is a 50 hour
training program in Christian care-giving.
Stephen ministry describes
something called “sacramental
listening.” A sacrament, generally defined, is the use of a
common thing to mediate the Divine Presence.
"Sacramental listening" is the
conviction that healing and
empowering grace flows into a person’s life through the practice
of loving, non-judgmental listening. Over
the years people have talked to me about every kind of personal issue
and problem you can imagine. It
never ceases to amaze me that the more I engage in
non-judgmental listening,
the more empowerment occurs in the life of the other.
It's been my experience that far too often people of faith
attempt to impose their
agenda on others; try to
cram their viewpoints
and beliefs onto others with little regard for the life of the other,
sometimes inflicting profound damage and harm.
“Sacramental
listening" has no such agenda.
"Sacramental listening"
trusts that God's grace flows into a person's life first through
listening.
Speaking only comes
later and always in the context of non-judgmental listening.
In the West, Christianity has historically been preoccupied with
telling people
what to know about God far more than how to
listen for the
Divine. In my own faith
journey I have moved away
from trying to define God as a noun and have
moved toward focusing
on experiencing the
Divine that most often occurs through the discipline and practice of
enhanced listening and seeing.
The mystics
have known and practiced this for centuries.
The word they use to describe their engagement of the Divine is
contemplation. For the
mystic, contemplation involves
listening and seeing in a deeper way.
It is a willingness to
remain open and vulnerable in the moment; remain open and
vulnerable to the life before me; remain open and vulnerable to the
circumstance I am in before judging
it, trying to control it, conquering it or defeating it.
In our gospel, Philip could
not contain his enthusiasm.
He runs to Nathanial to share that he had experienced something
so extraordinary in
Jesus that he really thought he could be “the Messiah.”
Nathanial throws a wet
blanket on Philip’s enthusiasm with the quip,
“Can anything good come out of
Nazareth?” Nathanial
obviously had a hang up
about “Nazareth.” The point
is, his hang-up was a road-block that would have prevented him from
engaging Jesus in a deeper way.
But Philip helped him. Philip
didn’t preach a fiery sermon or admonish him harshly.
He gently said, “Why
don’t you come and see for yourself?”
In other words, “Set
aside your prejudice; set aside your previous disappointment or whatever
it is that is hanging you up, and just come and see and be
open and vulnerable in the moment.”
We can be listening-impaired for all sorts of reasons.
We can easily get distracted by
both internal and external noise and clatter.
We can be distracted by prejudicial noise.
For Nathanial just the word
“Nazareth” set him on
edge. What word
sets you on a
judgmental edge?
Muslim? Immigrant?
Palestinian? Jew?
Conservative?
Liberal? What word?
The over-heated political environment intentionally uses “words”
to manipulate opinion and stop people from engaging issues more deeply
and thoughtfully. What are
your “Nazareth” words and experiences that instantly
close tightly your
heart and mind spaces that prevent you from seeing and listening
deeper into life. Prejudice
deafens and blinds. Prejudice is
like trying to listen to a glorious symphony with earplugs or view the
wonder of a galaxy through a five dollar part of binoculars.
We can be distracted by socio-economic noise.
If we are of a different social or economic place than the other, we may
have great difficulty connecting on the same level; truly respecting,
hearing and understanding their situation from their point of view.
Socio-economic noise can cause us
to categorize and adopt dehumanizing generalizations.
We may get distracted by
emotional noise. We may be so stressed about things in our own
lives that listening to another, at that point, may be almost
impossible, and perhaps the most loving thing we can do is to simply
acknowledge that reality and step back until we can focus again on
listening.
We may get distracted by moral
noise. We may consider ourselves to be on a higher moral plane
that others, and it can
create an internal clatter so loud we are rendered deaf.
We can be distracted by the intellectual
haughtiness that our understanding is the only and ultimate one – all
other perspectives are less or erroneous.
Both Samuel and Nathanial
needed someone, a mentor
if you will, to help them truly listen; to help them get past that which
was preventing them from experiencing the Divine
at a deeper level; to help them enter the realm of
“sacramental listening”;
to help them engage life at a deeper level.
Jesus mentors us
in “sacramental listening.”
He didn't relate to others in a
manner that marginalized, minimized or dehumanized.
When he encountered the so
called "sinner's", outcasts and those consigned by the religious
community to be second class citizens and people to be scorned, he
approached them with love, compassion, respect, dignity and an
appreciation of their circumstance.
Jesus’ sacramental listening
caused him to look deeply into the lives of others to acknowledge the
intrinsic value of each person and to
call forth from each a fuller humanity shaped by grace and
compassion.
For me, the essence of
the Christian life is
following in the way of Jesus and allowing the grace that
lives in him to flow through me - to flow through us as a community -
and in so flowing, like his, our lives life might become sacramental;
our lives might mediate God's gracious, empowering and healing presence
to others - and to the world - that we might be transformed from
listening-impaired people to
listening-enhanced-disciples.
I think young Samuel’s prayer is a good one to pray in every
circumstance of life; especially when we hit our Nazareth road-blocks:
“Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.”