Dearest Family,
The ministrations of Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the Prophets) to Jesus on Mount Tabor, recorded in Matthew 17 and Luke 9, mark the beginning of Jesus’ final assault on the hill, Golgotha. On Sunday I drew your attention to the words that the Father spoke out of the heavens, the same word that inaugurated Jesus’ ministry at His baptism. Before the experience prophetically foreseen and described by Isaiah in his 53rd chapter, of absolute rejection and absolute despising and contempt, and absolute desertion, He needed absolute acceptance and absolute affirmation and absolute assurance.
And is that not what that voice is all about. “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. LISTEN TO HIM!” I have always been gripped by those last words. “LISTEN TO HIM!” The Father is drawing attention to the necessity not to miss, not to misunderstand, not to mistake, not to misinterpret a single word that is about to come out of his mouth in this final stretch to the cross. It should strike us as strange. Wouldn’t you expect it to have said, “Look at Him!” Think about it! They’re in the moment. There was already the “glorious splendor” of Moses and Elijah to rivet the gaze, but the text says of Jesus: “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.” It says, “they saw his glory.” Was this what John, who was there, described when he saw it again on Patmos: “His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were blazing like fire…His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.” (Rev. 1:14-16) But the voice didn’t say “Look at Him!” but “Listen to Him!” And there’s the rub. Our hearing. Our listening.
Following the Transfiguration it’s interesting to note that Jesus immediately delivers a demonized boy and everyone is wowed. “They were all amazed at the greatness of God” (Luke 9:43). Then we read this. “While everyone was marveling at what Jesus did, he said to his disciples, Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you.” Listening then becomes a repeated theme, a repeated request and encouragement. Of those who were the 72, not just the special 12, Jesus says: “He who listens to you listens to me” (Luke 10:16). It is Jesus speaking through them so it is credited by Jesus Himself as the word of the Lord. At the end of that discipleship training session, Jesus speaks privately to the 12, saying that there were many prophets and kings who wanted “to hear what you hear” (10:24). The chapter ends with the incident at Bethany with Martha clanging pots in the kitchen to get attention to how hard she is working for Jesus to serve Him supper. Mary was quietly sitting at Jesus’ feet. This is always used as a picture of devotion, and that’s true but why is that so? Just because she happened to be with Jesus, close to Him? Often the point is missed. The text says she was “listening to what He said” (Luke 10:39)
John’s narrative leading up to Palm Sunday is a little different, with a different selection of key exchanges, but interestingly enough, on His final journey to the cross, and He’s getting very close now, after His extraordinary explanation of why He is the bread of life, and why eternal life is utterly predicated on our relationship with His flesh and His blood, Jesus hears something. The text says he was “aware that His disciples were grumbling” (John 6:61). John reported earlier grumbling from the Jews as Jesus spoke. How interesting that Jesus described the experience of receiving “everlasting life” like this: “Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from Him comes to me” (6:45) Five verses after His disciples’ grumbling we read: “From this time many of His disciples March 18, 2018 turned back and no longer followed Him.” In my lifetime I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed more people doing the same thing for the same reason. “On hearing it, many of His disciples said, This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (v60)
I gave plenty of scriptural examples on Sunday of the kind of ears that the Bible say make for both good and bad hearing. The calls to hear, to listen, are the bookends of Jesus’ ministry in the New Testament, as incarnate Christ in the Gospels and glorified Christ in Revelation. The very last words addressed by the Spirit to the reader of the Bible are: “Let him who hears, come” (Revelation 22:17). But I concluded by drawing your attention to what God said through Jeremiah, describing the people’s “uncircumcised ear” that took offence at what they heard, and to Jesus’ similar response to those who could not listen to what He was saying: “Do I offend you?”
You will have to re-listen to the message to get the meat of what I shared but let me repeat this. If we are going to pursue the hard conversations, if we are going to press through despite failures and wounds in the pursuit of racial reconciliation in the church, then we have to have circumcised ears that listen, that hear then commanding voice of Jesus, that hear both the words and the hearts of others, and ears that refuse to take offence, tutoring our speech that learns not to give it – that will admit it when it happens, that will confess and forgive it when it happens, that will minister to it when it happens in the way Jesus told us to in Matthew 5:34-35 – love, bless, do good and pray. There’s going to be a lot of praying coming down. Receive this 40 days as just a warm up practice.
So COSC, how is our hearing? What would the results be of a spiritual hearing test? Is there hearing loss in our spiritual life? Is spiritual hearing blocked, injured, infected? Are we showing symptoms of hearing loss in our discipleship, avoiding the counsel of friends and family and the Lord? Do we listen? What is the Lord saying to you these days? Do you hear only what you once heard and are now living off old conversations long since over? Does the Lord speak to you? Do you expect him to? Do you really want him to? Do you invite him to? Do you need him to? Do you need a word from heaven? Is there something he has said that you have refused to hear? Is there something you have heard that you have chosen to pretend was not spoken? Is your hearing selective? Have you got good at tuning him out? Is your ear itching for something that suits your desires that will justify your choices and support your preferences? (Stop confronting us with the Holy one of Israel…tell us pleasant things!) Do you need the oil of the Holy Spirit poured in to your ears this morning to clear the passage to your heart? We hear what we want to hear. I think it was Marshall McLuhan who reminded folk that we have no ear lids yet we are practiced at selective listening. Do we need our deafness healed?
So let’s take heed to what the Bible teaches. From beginning to end, it gives reason after reason why we either don’t listen or cannot hear: pride, untruth, self-satisfaction, rebellion, disobedience, idolatry, unbelief, cynicism, shame, unconfessed and unrepented sin, unteachableness, distraction, loving the sound of our own voice more than his, unbelief, willfulness, stubbornness, offence. The Lord is telling us to hear what the Spirit says in these days, so we cannot afford to be dull of hearing for any of these reasons. A uncircumcised ear is evidence of an uncircumcised heart. Let’s put the ear back in heart!
Listening with you,
Stuart