Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey,
Pentecost, August 7, 2022, at 10:00 a.m.
By The Rev. Stephen Galleher
Do You Hear What I Hear?
“Do you hear what I hear, said the night wind to the little lamb?” (Christmas Song)
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
(Luke 12:32)
How you ever considered just how much listening you do in your life? However much we listen or however well we listen, we do one heck of a lot of it. It’s no wonder that we may not be too excited to listen, really listen, to the sounds and voices closest to us.
Haven’t you turned the TV off at night when the commentators go on and on and on about the events of the day? We can grow cynical about just how much wisdom or lack thereof they are giving us. Even good music, sometimes when we are listening, we just say to ourselves, “Enough already!” And we turn it off, and the music ceases. Whew!
But it’s scary what we might hear if we only listened better.
There was a man in a mental hospital. All day he would put his ear to the wall and listen. The doctor would watch the guy do this day after day for months. Finally, the doctor decided to see what this man was listening to, so one day he approached the wall and put his own ear up to the wall and listened. He heard nothing.
He turned to the mental patient and said, “I don’t hear anything!”
The mental patient replied, “Yeah, I know. It’s been like that for months!”
It’s really a shame when you think about it. Do we really listen when we’re listening? Or are we too busy framing what we are going to say in reply? That we will give advice, say something cleverer that what we have just heard and show ourselves more knowledgeable? Don’t we regret not hearing something important that said to us in the past? It could have made a huge difference to the rest of our lives.
I really enjoy the Christmas song, “Do you hear what I hear?” I like it because it calls our attention to just how much we might be missing by listening more closely to the words of scripture. We recall that listening was the original way that Christians absorbed the words of the Bible. It was not until the invention of the printing press and general literacy that folk could read what that had formerly only been hearing. It was a wonderful advancement for sure, but it also entailed a loss. For serious hearing, serious listening can have an impact that reading may not. Why do we love drama so much? The Bible is full of drama. It is primarily a book of poetry, of romance, history and ecstasy. When we listen, our heads tend to be upraised, fully attentive.
Do you hear what I hear? Do we hear what is proclaimed to us? Speaking for myself, I’d hate to confess the number of great things I miss hearing, especially in scripture. The Bible is a book of proclamation, of good news, of consolation, hope, joy. I believe if I listened more closely to the incessant drumbeat through the words of God’s love, I might just take all this glory more to heart.
Today’s Gospel, for example, sneaks in a little sentence that it would be easy to miss. It is this: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Wow! Can we hear this, really hear it? That God gives to every one of us the kingdom. You, me and everyone we know and even those we don’t know are given the freedom to walk nobly about in this beautiful land of love.
But this is just one of the lesser well-known things that God proclaims to us if we but listen.
“You are the light of the world” I will pause briefly after this familiar passages. Do you hear what I hear?
Or this: “What’s the price of a pet canary? Some loose change, right? And God cares what happens to it even more than you do. He pays even greater attention to you, down to the last detail—even numbering the hairs on your head! So don’t be intimidated by this talk about canaries. You’re worth more than a million canaries.”
Do you hear what I hear?
“Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is with us, and God will dwell with us, and we shall be God’s people. And God will wipe away every tear from our eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain.” (Revelation 21:3-4)
“Or do you not realize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Cor. 13:5)
“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:7-10)
This beautiful passage is from a translation called the Message Bible. I recommend you read it. It makes so many passages come alive that they never have before. Do you hear, really hear?
The ability to listen is one of the greatest gifts we can be given, and it is one of the greatest gifts we can give others. When we listen well, we are listening very intently with respect even reverence to those who are speaking. It’s a sacred act, to listen.
What do you do when you are listening to those who speak too much or too long? This is a complicated question, but I know people like that? Such people for me are challenges. Can I continue to listen? Can I continue to show them respect, even reverence? The challenge is for me to grow up and stop getting only what I want. Most people want to be listened to. Some very much hunger to be really listened to. Then my job is to listen, to really listen.
Isn’t the job of all of us to “listen with the ear of the heart”?
Amen.