The Case for Listening
A message delivered by Scott Cooper
at St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Prineville, Oregon
January 24, 2010
The teacher said patiently, “ Patty, you need to listen carefully. Let’s try this again: if I give you two dogs and two more dogs and another two dogs, how many dogs have you got?” Patty thought hard about this for a few seconds and replied again, “Seven!”
The teacher sighed. Obviously this wasn’t working.
She went to her desk and got six pieces of candy, and laid them down in front of little Patty, dividing them into three groups of two each. “Now Patty,” she said, “here are two pieces of candy and two more and then two more. How many pieces are there total?” Without hesitation, Patty replied, “Six!”
“Right,” said the teacher. “Now let’s try the first equation again. If I give you two dogs and two more dogs and another two dogs, how many dogs have you got?”
“Seven,” said Patty.
The teacher sighed. “Patty, how on earth do you work out that two dogs and two dogs and two dogs equals seven?”
“Because,” said little Patty quick as a wink, “I’ve already got one dog at home.”
Patty’s teacher’s failure was that she didn’t take the time to understand the context of Patty’s communication. Little Patty’s teacher was so caught up in her own paradigm of a world defined by the narrow question presented by her textbook that she couldn’t understand that the world is filled with multiple perspectives. Only by leaving yourself open to new possibilities—by listening for an alternative way of understanding—do you ever get the chance to take advantage of all your options in this world.
Our readings today also make this point.
In Nehemiah the royal governor and Ezra the priest call together in the town square all the exiles who have returned to Jerusalem from captivity. Ezra the priest has brought along the law of Moses, and he proceeds to read it to all the people. He reads for five or six hours, from early morning until midday. But he doesn’t just read the text. As he goes along, he takes time to explain it, to give the words context and to offer a sense of the meaning, and as a result, the Bible says, all the people listened attentively.
An author named Marshall Rosenberg in his book called “Nonviolent Communication” noted that studies in labor-management negotiation demonstrate that the time required to reach conflict resolution is cut in half when each negotiator agrees before responding to repeat what the previous speaker has said. Rosenberg rightly concludes from this that listening is not a passive activity. We must be active in our listening if we wish to understand either God’s word and his wishes or the words and thoughts being spoken and communicated to us by others.
Active listening must be approached in a certain way. Do any of the following modes of listening strike a chord with you?
These are the pitfalls that stand in the way of real “listening” .
The lessons today remind us to move beyond these barriers to engaging our fellow human beings and to become active listeners. Real communication begins and the possibilities of the world open up when you effectively listen.
What does that mean?
It means paying attention to what the person talking to you is saying and being prepared to verbalize back in your own words—not in a hollow paraphrase—what the other person is saying in order to check for understanding.
It means not being distracted when a person is speaking to you—not watching the person across the room, not watching the TV in the background when your spouse is trying to talk to you, not checking your watch or smoothing your clothes or checking your lipstick when someone is speaking to you.
It means watching for non-verbal clues—because we all know that words are only one form of communication and we often can learn just as much about a person’s real feelings or real intentions by simply watching where he or she puts his or her hands, looking for meaning in his or her eyes or observing his or her posture.
Finally, active listening means being empathic and nonjudgmental. It means starting out with an assumption that the speaker is has a valid point of view and has a point to convey. Only after you have truly understood the meaning of the other person talking to you should you feel free to offer your own alternative point of view.
And even if you manage to do all that, you still aren’t quite finished. Because that’s only how you are called to listen to your fellow human beings. God calls you to do something further.
God calls you to listen to that still small voice in your head—the one he gave you that tells you when your first response is unkind and unchristian.
God calls you to make time for silence in your life--even if it is only a few minutes a day which you gain by turning off the radio while you are driving or spend thinking deeply while you stand in the shower—because it is in that silence that God will find a way to speak to you.
Finally, God calls you to listen, just as the ancient Israelites did, to his Word. And when you do listen to the word, look for understanding and when you understand, greet that understanding with joy.
Now I’m going to end with just one more story.
It seems that a few years ago at a packed Easter service, a priest in this very pulpit, in the days when we were a bit more stern, took offense when two teenage girls sitting in the back of the church loudly giggled through the entire service. They were so noisy that they were a real distraction to both the priest and to the rest of the congregation. Finally, the priest had had enough, and he put down his text, looked up sternly over his glasses and said in his sternest voice, “There are two of you here today. LISTEN to the word of the Lord.”
The giggling and talked stopped and the service continued to a nice conclusion. At the end, as was his custom, the priest stood at the back of the church shaking hands with the departing parishioners, and it was only then that he realized the impact of his actions when not less than five of his adult parishioners apologized for nodding off and promised it would never happen again.
The Lord Be With You.
Our readings today also make this point.
In Nehemiah the royal governor and Ezra the priest call together in the town square all the exiles who have returned to Jerusalem from captivity. Ezra the priest has brought along the law of Moses, and he proceeds to read it to all the people. He reads for five or six hours, from early morning until midday. But he doesn’t just read the text. As he goes along, he takes time to explain it, to give the words context and to offer a sense of the meaning, and as a result, the Bible says, all the people listened attentively.
The Psalm today makes its own point about listening. In beautiful poetic language, it reads, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. One day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another. Although they have no words or language, and their voices are not heard, their sound has gone out into all lands, and their message to the ends of the world.”
This is a song written by David, who was, as you all know, a shepherd. As a shepherd, David spent his time traipsing over the Judean hills and down into valleys following his sheep as they wandered along looking for food. In the course of his travels, he undoubtedly saw amazing rock formations, lush green valleys, brilliant sunrises and astonishing sunsets. In a time when there were no outside lights to obscure the view, he gazed into the heavens and saw the number and brilliancy of the stars and planets and observed their clockwork-like movements, and he knew—he just knew without anyone having to say the words—that there must be a God who was behind all this. The psalm illustrates another kind of listening—the kind that one does when one is completely free of the noisy distractions of other people and our busy lives. It is the kind of listening of which we are all capable when we take the time to find a quiet moment to devote ourselves wholly and completely to communing with our creator God.
And finally we come to the Gospel reading today, an interesting story which appears not only in Luke but also in Matthew and Mark. You’ve heard Luke’s version this morning, but you can’t fully appreciate that version until you’ve heard the others.
In Luke, this is a very dramatic story. Luke relates all the details such as the very passage from Isaiah which Jesus reads. He inserts a pregnant pause as Jesus sits down and “all eyes are upon him.” He gives us a climatic moment when Jesus says, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." And then a few verses later—beyond where we were reading today—he tells us that the townspeople grew angry, hustled Jesus to the top of a cliff with intentions of throwing him off. Luke is like the Tom Clancy of the gospels: a gripping page-turning read with a surprise at every turn and not to be put down before you’ve finished every chapter.
By contrast, Matthew’s version in chapter 13 is a lot more plain vanilla. Let’s hear it:
Coming to his hometown, Jesus began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. 5“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.
Wow. Not gonna win any Oscars for that one. But at least we get some dialogue. Mark by contrast doesn’t even give us that much.
Mark’s version in chapter 6 is practically identical to Matthew’s except for the very end where the facts diverge. Where Matthew says Jesus did not miracles, Mark add’s an except: “Except [that he laid] his hands on a few sick people and heal[ed] them.
This passage was important enough to make it into all three gospels. But it is reported three different ways. How do we account for that?
The answer probably has to do with the motivation of the authors of each of the gospels. As we read and study the Gospels, it is important that we do so with the knowledge that the Gospels like every piece of literature are not just dry collections of facts. They are written from a point of view, and the author selects the things he wants to include and to emphasize to support that point of view. When we read and study scripture on Sunday morning or on our own we need to listen for the point of view and temper what we learn by considering the whole gospel and not quote selected passages that support a point of view that conveniently agrees with our own. The failure to view particular scriptures in the context of the underlying theme of Christ’s teachings has led many a Christian to act in a very unchristian way.
So let’s see what that looks like when we consider today’s reading in light of the three versions from the different gospels. What does this passage say, how is it reflective of different points of view and what are we to make of the passage once we have reviewed it in all its versions.
Let’s start with Matthew. The focus of Matthew’s gospel is to demonstrate continuity between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of the Old Testament. Matthew’s goals is straightforward. Matthew wants to demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah who was foretold in the Old Testament. Jesus is about continuity with the Jewish law and tradition. He is perfecting that which came before. The last thing Matthew would have wanted anyone to understand was that Jesus’s ministry was about replacing Jewish tradition. Thus, Matthew chooses to emphasize the obstinacy of the people of Nazareth in refusing to recognize Jesus’ divinity and the consequences of that failure, i.e. his refusal to offer them healing.
By contrast, Mark’s gospel is a “heroic” epic written in the tradition of Greek intellectuals. People who read Mark probably read things like the Illiad and the Odyssey as well. Throughout Marks like mystery and has a penchant for concealing Jesus’s true identity. Mark frequently emphasizes the supernatural status of Jesus’s works. Mark, alone among the gospel writers, says that the Nazarenes’ failure to recognize Jesus caused him not to forego miracles altogether but to “limit” the number he performed. You see, in Mark’s mind, Jesus was a Hero and Hero’s do heroic things. Thus, we couldn’t very well have a gospel—as Matthew did—where Jesus did nothing. That would have meant he was nothing. So Mark says he only did a few miracle—probably just enough to prove that he really was God.
The third version, the one we read today, is the richly detailed version found in Luke. When you read Luke, you must always remember that his goal was two-fold: First and foremost, he was attempting to write a gospel which was historical and theological at the same time. He wanted the “facts”—at least as he understood them—to make a compelling case for Christ’s divinity. Secondly, Luke’s primary goal was to position the emerging church as a divinely-ordained, respectable, law-abiding, and international religion. This is precisely what he does in this passage: Jesus’ dramatic reading from Isaiah and self-identification with ancient prophecy and his subsequent rejection by the Jewish community position him as divine, linked inextricably to established religious tradition and as an outsider who is more linked to the international community than to Jewish ethnic and religious heritage.
As we listen to the differing accounts of this one event in Jesus’s life as reported differently in three separate gospels, it is hard to keep from wondering what we should believe. Certainly it looks like Jesus taught in the synagogue in Nazareth. On that the accounts agree. Certainly he wasn’t well received. And certainly he said something along the lines of “a prophet is without honor in his own country.” But did they identify him as Mary’s son or Joseph’s son? The gospels disagree? Did he do miracles afterward or not. The gospels contradict. Did he directly tell the men of Nazareth that he was the fulfillment of the Old Testament? We can’t be sure.
Each Gospel writer told of this event in a way that fits his understanding of Christian theology at a time when that theology was being formed . We must not forget in dealing with scripture that the Bible was not written by Jesus. It is the best account we have of the life of Jesus and of the early church fathers and mothers’ understanding of what Jesus said and taught. But it is ultimately still a book the words of which are being filtered through human scribes, and scribes have their personal and psychological limitations.
What we do know is this: Jesus was a complex man delivering a complex message at a complex time in Jewish history. Many people desired Jesus to be many things, and on the whole, Jesus’s actions and teachings fulfill many of those desires. For traditionalists, his teachings clearly linked his ministry to the historical and long-awaited Messiah. For those needing supernatural confirmation of the arrival of a New World Order, Jesus provided in spades. And for those who needed an nice, logical and orderly theology, well, Luke fills that bill nicely.
The genius of the Christian faith and the way it has evolved over 2,000 years is its ability to speak to all manner of people in all manner of situations and deeply move them and create transforming experiences which ultimately change lives. Like little Patty’s teacher, each of us is prone to hear things only in the context in which we are asking our questions. When we encounter the Gospel we hear the words. The trick for cultivating deeper faith is to listen for the message that transcends context.
It is one thing to say that we all ought to listen better. It is another thing entirely to learn to do it.
Experts in interpersonal communication have long known this.
An author named Marshall Rosenberg in his book called “Nonviolent Communication” noted that studies in labor-management negotiation demonstrate that the time required to reach conflict resolution is cut in half when each negotiator agrees before responding to repeat what the previous speaker has said. Rosenberg rightly concludes from this that listening is not a passive activity. We must be active in our listening if we wish to understand either God’s word and his wishes or the words and thoughts being spoken and communicated to us by others.
Active listening must be approached in a certain way. Do any of the following modes of listening strike a chord with you?
·
~When others talk, do you find yourself partially listening while your mind wanders somewhere else?
~Do you ever listen impatiently waiting for an opening so that you can get the floor?
·~Do you ever listen while simultaneously forming a rebuttal in your head to what is being said?
Do you ever run a parallel commentary in your head as a speaker talks comparing and contrasting the speaker’s views to your own?
~Do you evaluate and make personal judgments and attribute motives to a speaker before you hear the entire message?
~Do you sometimes listen without fully understanding but refuse to ask for clarification out of lack of interest or fear of looking ignorant?
The lessons today remind us to move beyond these barriers to engaging our fellow human beings and to become active listeners. Real communication begins and the possibilities of the world open up when you effectively listen.
What does that mean?
It means paying attention to what the person talking to you is saying and being prepared to verbalize back in your own words—not in a hollow paraphrase—what the other person is saying in order to check for understanding.
It means not being distracted when a person is speaking to you—not watching the person across the room, not watching the TV in the background when your spouse is trying to talk to you, not checking your watch or smoothing your clothes or checking your lipstick when someone is speaking to you.
It means watching for non-verbal clues—because we all know that words are only one form of communication and we often can learn just as much about a person’s real feelings or real intentions by simply watching where he or she puts his or her hands, looking for meaning in his or her eyes or observing his or her posture.
Finally, active listening means being empathic and nonjudgmental. It means starting out with an assumption that the speaker is has a valid point of view and has a point to convey. Only after you have truly understood the meaning of the other person talking to you should you feel free to offer your own alternative point of view.
And even if you manage to do all that, you still aren’t quite finished. Because that’s only how you are called to listen to your fellow human beings. God calls you to do something further.
God calls you to listen to that still small voice in your head—the one he gave you that tells you when your first response is unkind and unchristian.
God calls you to make time for silence in your life--even if it is only a few minutes a day which you gain by turning off the radio while you are driving or spend thinking deeply while you stand in the shower—because it is in that silence that God will find a way to speak to you.
Finally, God calls you to listen, just as the ancient Israelites did, to his Word. And when you do listen to the word, look for understanding and when you understand, greet that understanding with joy.
Now I’m going to end with just one more story.
It seems that a few years ago at a packed Easter service, a priest in this very pulpit, in the days when we were a bit more stern, took offense when two teenage girls sitting in the back of the church loudly giggled through the entire service. They were so noisy that they were a real distraction to both the priest and to the rest of the congregation. Finally, the priest had had enough, and he put down his text, looked up sternly over his glasses and said in his sternest voice, “There are two of you here today. LISTEN to the word of the Lord.”
The giggling and talked stopped and the service continued to a nice conclusion. At the end, as was his custom, the priest stood at the back of the church shaking hands with the departing parishioners, and it was only then that he realized the impact of his actions when not less than five of his adult parishioners apologized for nodding off and promised it would never happen again.
The Lord Be With You.
Amen.
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