Listening to God. Listening for God

Listening for God. Listening to God The Dover Church
July 21, 2013– 8th Sunday after Pentecost     Scripture: Luke 10:38-42

I love church in the summer, when we hear some of the most evocative Gospel lessons about coming to know God better, about growing in love for our neighbors, and looking to our personal holiness. Quite frankly, the church year from September to June always seems so busy celebrating so many holy days. What most of us need and are looking for in our faith lives comes to us during the summer.
Last week we heard the story of the Good Samaritan. You'll remember that it all started with a lawyer asking Jesus how he might inherit eternal life. Jesus knew that the lawyer already knew, just as we already know, so he returned service by asking what it said in the law, the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Upon which the lawyer correctly recited the great commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
You'll also remember that the lawyer was looking for an escape clause, and asked “who is my neighbor?” to which Jesus responded with the telling of the story of the Good Samaritan. With the story Jesus is saying “this is who your neighbor is and this is how you shall love him or her.”
This week we hear the story of Martha and Mary, which answers what is left after the Good Samaritan story, “but how shall I fulfill the first part of the Great Commandment? How do I love the Lord my God with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my strength, and with all my mind?”
How? By listening. By listening? Yes, by just listening to Jesus; by letting go of all the busy-ness we fill our lives with; by letting go of our sense of pressing responsibility; by tuning out all the other voices which are clamoring for our attention; by just sitting down at Jesus' feet and listening.
That's it? That's all there is to it? Not so fast. I think that just listening is just about the hardest thing for people like you and me, people with so many voices talking at us, telling us who we ought to be and what we ought to do and how we ought to do it, people with lives so very full or responsibility, lives that are just so very busy. I actually think that loving our neighbor as we love ourselves will come easier to people like us, if we just switch some things around in our calendar and find the time. We know what to do and we know who our neighbors are. It's really just a matter of doing it.
But listening? No, listening is not something we are trained at, not something we practice, not something we're familiar or comfortable with. What's he saying? Well, even here in the church it's very challenging. I've been here more than three and a half years and you might have noticed how I regularly try to introduce listening into our faith and fellowship. I haven't called it listening, but that's what Bible Study, sermon talk-backs, yoga classes, and prayer workshops are. Unfortunately, people have been too busy to come, had too many responsibilities.
We have so very many voices yelling or whispering in our ears, you and I. There is marketing everywhere telling us what we need to be happy, how we need to look to be happy, telling us that more is better and that we'll never have enough. I read in study last week that an American child by the age of five can readily identify 500 different brands, so don't kid yourself about the voice of consumerism in your ear. There are our TVs which bring us the lives of the rich, beautiful and famous. They help us visualize what the good life is like, what being truly happy looks like. And when we turn our sets off and look around at our own realities, how can we be anything but disappointed. And of course, there are our politicians who tell us that we have to go in this direction or that, do this or that, that we are in danger of this or that. So many voices of dissatisfaction.
Then there are the responsibilities, most of which we assumed gladly but many of which we feel burdened with, family, work, homes, even, God help us, the Church. Just think about your finances for a moment. Every month a statement comes in the mail telling you where you are, but it's also telling you where you're not and how far you have to go. After all, you saw it on Prime Time Live that you absolutely have to have this many dollars to retire and live comfortably for a reasonable amount of time at your present standard of living.
And finally, the busy-ness. From what I know of all of you, we are busy people, always doing something, rarely still. Here we were believing that we were homo sapiens human beings , when we really are a new species, Homo strenuus, human doings.
Which brings me to listening, which is really a process of conversion, of gradually tuning out those other voices, letting go, of gradually turning away from the burden of responsibility and all the busy-ness and just enjoying God, of returning to the source of true happiness.
This is something I know a lot about. When I was just a simple, single preacher with a dog and three cats, a pickup truck and a kayak, I would begin my day with morning prayer for half an hour. I would set aside 30-60 minutes every day to read my Bible. I would set aside 20-30 minutes every afternoon for silent meditation. I practiced yoga 3-4 times a week. When faced with a question, challenge or crisis, I would step back and quiet down and ask God for guidance. My meals always began with grace. I would read my Bible before turning out the light at night and say a prayer of thanksgiving before falling asleep. It was all listening for God and listening to God.
Now I am married with children. It is all good, great in fact. The very life I always wanted, but listening is hard. For one thing, just getting out of bed early enough and sneaking downstairs without the boys hearing me and coming down to turn prayer time into play time is a challenge. Meals start the moment food appears on the table. I need to have quick answers now and saying that I'm praying on it only makes Marie-Laure's eyebrows shoot up. Silent meditation requires silence, which is highly unusual in family life. So now I am working on conversion within the life I have chosen, learning how to listen for God and listen to God.
I like to go on retreats. This year it is yoga camp for a month. Usually it has been to monasteries, in Vermont and France. I know that must sound strange for a Congregational minister, being drawn to monasticism, particularly for a Congregational minister who is married with children. But I am drawn to the monks' rhythm of life, which is really a rhythm of listening for God and listening to God. The day begins with communal morning prayer at 5 AM after which we eat our breakfast in silence. Then we have an hour for personal prayer, meditation or study, followed by work until lunch. Lunch is eaten communally and in silence, while we listen to one of the monks read scripture, a saint's like, or some other likely book. Last summer it was a biography of Mark Twain. After lunch is communal worship, followed by afternoon work, a siesta, and then dinner, also eaten in silence while listening to a reader. After supper we have evening prayer, and then free time until bedtime. When I am there I am just so tuned in to God. After a day or so, all the other voices have faded and there is only one voice. I don't have any responsibilities except those assigned to me for a given time period and I am only busy when I am supposed to be.
We don't live in a monastery, you and I. We live in the world with all the voices, responsibilities and busy-ness that are both the joys and concerns that go with it. Nonetheless, I've come to realize that I have been too much of the world as your minister. I am here to help you come closer to God to listen for God and listen to God, to love your neighbor and to love yourself, not to increase your busy-ness or add something else to your list of responsibilities. I have thought about proclaiming a Sabbath year at The Dover Church, a year in which we mostly just listen for God and listen to God, and love our neighbors. I would like to spend a whole year with you just learning together how to meditate in silence, how to observe the Sabbath, how to live in a rhythm of shalom, how to read the Bible, and caring for our neighbors.
But we are Congregationalists and Congregational ministers don't have the power to do something like. “Good God! What would happen to the church after a whole year without all those important meetings? The place would fall apart. How would we get business done?” I'm sure you can hear the voices whispering or shouting in your ears. But can you hear Jesus saying, “Martha. Martha. You are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Amen, which in Hebrew means “let it be so.” Amen and Amen.