Monday, March 2, 2015

"I can't hear you, Jesus, because I'm not listening."

          In the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus, God does two amazing things: 1) He confirms Jesus' identity as the Son of God, and 2) He gives a simple command to help guide us as disciples - Listen to him.  Abraham listened to God, even when He demanded something horrific, and he was abundantly blessed for placing his trust in God.  May we use this Lent to "turn off" some of the other noises in our lives so that we might begin to hear Jesus more clearly; for when we can hear him more clearly, we'll be more disposed to listen.

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Homily: 2nd Sunday of Lent – Cycle B
          For most of us, I would guess, the word holocaust is associated with the horrific events during World War II in which an attempt was made to eradicate the entire Jewish population from the European continent.  Although, technically speaking, this was not really a holocaust, but rather an attempt at genocide (a term indicating the complete eradication of a race of people), using the term holocaust to describe it is actually quite fitting.  You see, a holocaust is a form of ritual sacrifice in which the offering is completely burned up.  In this type of sacrifice, there is nothing that is held back.  To describe the attempted genocide of the Jews in World War II as a holocaust, therefore, is to describe how thoroughly complete its perpetrators intended it to be: if all had gone according to their intentions, then there would not have been one Jewish person left in the world.  Holocaust, therefore, aptly describes the gravity of these events.
          In our first reading today from the Book of Genesis we hear how God commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac and to “offer him up as a holocaust”.  Even without knowledge of what a holocaust is, its association with those horrific events of World War II should give anyone in this church pause to think about what a horrific thing it was that God was asking Abraham to do.  Perhaps even more shocking, however, is that Abraham readily obeys this command of God, taking his son willingly to the high place that God would point out to them in order to murder him and then, essentially, to cremate him.  I mean, how was this even possible?  If I had to guess, I’d say that it was because Abraham had learned not only to hear God’s voice, but rather how to listen to him, as well.
          Although we can sometimes use these words interchangeably, I think that there is an important difference between hearing and listening.  We can hear something without necessarily listening to it.  It drives me crazy sometimes to visit my mom and dad because when they’re awake there is almost always a TV on, in spite of the fact that half of the time no one is watching it.  “I just have it on for noise”, my mom will say, “I’m not really listening to it.”  In other words, she could hear it, but she wasn’t listening. (On the flipside, one of my favorite ways to get her goat is to respond like this when she is trying to tell me something that she thinks is important, but that I don’t really want to hear: I’ll say, “What? Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t hear you because I’m not listening.”)  Hearing, it seems, is something passive: something that happens when sounds enter a properly functioning ear.  Listening, on the other hand, seems to be something active: an intentional hearing in which the sounds that one hears are consciously acknowledged.
          For Abraham to be able to respond to God’s command he had to have been listening to him.  In other words, he had to have heard God’s voice many times so as to recognize it clearly in order to have responded so readily to God when he gave him this horrific command.  And from the moment of that command, I imagine that Abraham must have been intently listening for God’s voice to come to him again, perhaps this time with a command to stop the sacrifice before it was completed.  How else could Abraham have stopped so abruptly, knife in hand and ready to slaughter his son, if he wasn’t continually listening for God’s voice?  We are quick to commend Abraham for his obedience to God by being willing to sacrifice his son at God’s command, but how often do we commend Abraham for his obedience to God when God commanded him to stop at the moment when the sacrifice was about to take place?  If he had stopped listening, Isaac would have died.  Abraham listened, however, and for that he was given abundant blessings.
          In our Gospel reading today, we heard Mark’s account of the Transfiguration, in which Jesus allowed the hidden glory of his divinity to shine forth outwardly in the presence of his “inner circle” of disciples, Peter, James and John.  Then, the cloud of God’s presence descended upon them and God’s voice was heard in the midst of the cloud saying: “This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him.”  Listen to him.  Interesting that the Father chose to use the word listen.  He could have used any number of words.  For example, he could have said: “This is my beloved Son.  Imitate him”, but he didn’t.  He said listen.  Therefore, my brothers and sisters, it is not enough for us merely to hear Jesus.  Rather, we must also listen.  It begins with hearing, of course, and so the first question that we need to ask ourselves is “Can I hear him?”  In other words, “Is my world so full of noise that I couldn’t hear Jesus’ voice, even if I wanted to?”  If the answer is “yes” then congratulations because you have an opportunity to have the most incredible Lent of your life: the only way you can go is up!  If the answer is “no” and the reality of your life is that Jesus’ voice is just one of many that you hear day in and day out, then you have to ask yourself this question: “Will I listen to him?”  Perhaps for most of us this is the question that we have to face this day.  If so, then our Lenten practices can help us say “yes” to listen to Jesus.
          By fasting, we begin to turn off the noise generated both in the world around us and in our own hearts: for when we fast from material things, we also calm the passions in our hearts that can keep us from listening.  This, of course, leads into prayer: in which we intentionally listen for God speaking to us.  Then, in giving alms, we listen for the Lord’s voice speaking to us in the voices of the “least of these”: the poor with whom he identified himself in the famous chapter from Matthew’s Gospel.
          My brothers and sisters, during Lent, God calls us to renew our commitment to make our lives a holocaust to him: a holy sacrifice in which nothing is held back for ourselves.  He is not asking for a senseless abandonment—it would have been incredibly sinful for Abraham to choose for himself to make a holocaust of his son—rather, God is asking for a trusting response from one who listens to him: a response like Abraham made when he did not withhold his son and like Jesus made when he did not withhold his own life.  Let us, therefore, pray for the faith to listen, like Abraham did, and for his courage to act, so that we, too, might see and share in the glory of God—the transfigured glory of Jesus that we will soon encounter here, veiled in the form of bread and wine.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – March 1st, 2015

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