Listening to the Strangers

Listening to the Stranger
1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43
Luke 7:1-10

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.

Our God is persistent.  God tries every means available to get God’s message across.  We are used to God using prophets and apostles to speak to people.  But God also uses dreams and visions, from Jacob and his son Joseph to Mary’s husband Joseph and the Wise Men.  God even acts in darkness, at night, when no one can see.

It is not surprising that God would send people of faith out to try and preach a word to those outside the covenant.  What is surprising is how often God speaks through people who are outside the covenant,or who have no credentials, or who would never align themselves with the people of God to speak the word that God needs spoken.

From Cyrus the Persian who ended the Babylonian exile, to the Centurions of the Gospels and Acts, God speaks through many we would otherwise dismiss.  There is an important lesson for us in this.

The reading from 1 Kings this morning begins with Solomon turning from the gathering of Israel and facing the altar of the newly built temple.  We skip over the part where Solomon proclaims that no house built by hands can contain God, but asks God to listen when the people pray.  Our reading picks back up when Solomon makes a most remarkable prayer request:

When somebody shows up, somebody not a regular church attendee ormember of our church, (and they will show up because they have heard of the great things you have done, Lord, and the great love that youhave, and the might acts of grace and liberation and forgiveness andhope that you have shown); when they show up here, Lord, listen totheir prayers.  Even if they have not ever served on a committee orprepared coffee hour or handed out bulletins or sat through budgetmeetings or rocked somebody in the nursery or taught Bible Study orSunday School, or even professed a faith in you or us or anybody,listen to their prayers.

Okay, I may have updated the language a little bit, but that is what he is saying.  Somebody not us, somebody not of the covenant, somebody who just came in because they heard something was going on here, or heard about a funeral or a wedding we did for their aunt or their cousin.  Hear their prayers, Lord.

Anthony Robinson reminds us that the idea that God would listen to strangers is not new or unique to Solomon.  It is a thread that runs from Genesis to Kings to Isaiah to Luke.  It stands over against the exclusionist claims of Ezra, Nehemiah and Jonah.

Ezra and Nehemiah cast out all the foreigners so that the nation of Israel could be pure and secure and not turn away from God (because that has always worked, hasn’t it?). Jonah thought that no prophet should go to the Gentiles, no hope for repentance should be granted outside of Israel.

Luke picks up and runs with the theme of listening to outsiders, both by God and by us.  Between Luke’s Gospel and the book of Acts (Luke 2.0), there are Ethiopian eunuchs being baptized; reminders of Elijah and Elisha healing and feeding Gentiles; and faithful Centurions.

It should not surprise us that there are Centurions in the Gospels and Acts; there were Centurions throughout Israel, they were the sergeants of the occupying pagan army. And yet our Centurion this morning, and Cornelius in the book of Acts, are each held in high regard by the church leaders of the day.  They helped build synagogues and gave alms and were generally friendly towards Israel.

The religious leaders all speak of his worthiness based on what he has done for them.  The Centurion claims otherwise.

Lord, do not trouble yourself,for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof;therefore I did not presume to come to you.But say the word, and let my servant be healed.

As humble an answer as any of the faithful might give.

This unnamed Centurion comes because he is in need.  He does not use his position to try to manipulate, coerce or coax Jesus.  He says that he understands authority, being someone who has to take orders and has to give them.  And he sees that Jesus has the authority over unclean spirits and illness and all of the powers that stand in the way of life.

But say the word, and let my servant be healed.

Jesus is astounded.  He has rarely found such faith among the faithful.

Perhaps what is wrong with the story is not that the unexpected ones can have great faith, but that we label people “unexpected ones.” There are people who are faithful even though they do not fit our categories, or our membership, or our projected view of what faithful looks like when we imagine it.  God speaks through people who have no church or religious affiliation or stated faith, and even through those we might otherwise dismiss or deny out of hand.

Perhaps the message of faithful Centurions is this: If an occupying army is a clear and visible sign of the deadly effects of empire and the ways of the world, then a less visible but more pervasive and just as deadly problem is dividing the world into us and them.  For God is still speaking: through surprising messengers and impossible voices and dreams and visions and strangers, and sometimes even, by the grace of God, through us.

Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

They Know His Voice

(preached on May 15, 2011)

Psalm 23

John 10:1-10

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and peace

…he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

This past week the choir had the opportunity to join our voices together in the concert.  Singing doesn’t begin with the mouth.  It begins with the ears, with listening.  Listening to the piano.  Listening to the director’s instructions.  Listening to the other singers and to how our voices are blending.  (Or not…)  Good singing is a product of good listening.

Listening takes practice.  Sitting with someone in a hospital waiting room, listening to their concerns about what is going on in surgery; sitting down over coffee and listening to the joys and pains that someone is experiencing; listening to families tell stories of their beloved who has died so that we can plan a funeral service: it takes practice to listen for what is said and for what is not.  It also takes a certain amount of getting out of the way.

           

There are other kinds of listening.  The first few times the fire pager went off, I would listen to the call, and the address, and head out to the call, and then have to play it back a dozen or so times until I finally was able to remember both the number and the street that I was headed to.  I took a while to get all the lingo down.  And it took a while before the adrenaline didn’t shut off my ability to listen clearly.  Listening requires a certain level of calmness.

           

I have been told that when I walk into the room and my daughter hears my voice she turns her head to see where I am.  The Mrs. said that Wednesday night during the concert, when I sang my solo, her head whipped around.  As if to say, “you can’t fool me, I know that voice!”  She has heard me talking to her since before she was born.  She heard me singing to her the night she was born.  I was crazy enough to try and sing “I Was There To Hear Your Borning Cry.”  Yeah, I got about a half measure in before I was blubbering.  But she knows my voice.

           

And I know hers.  If I am outside a roomful of children and one is crying, I can tell if it is her or another child.  And most of the time I can tell if she is hungry or sleepy or just plain fussy by her cry.

           

This is not some mystical super-daddy power.  It is practice.  It is attention. 

           

This morning’s Gospel is about Jesus calling his own, and their following.  They will know his voice.  We who seek to follow Jesus, we need to know his voice.

           

Like all listening, this requires attention.  It requires a certain amount of calmness, and a certain amount of getting out of the way.  It requires practice. 

           

Where then is the shepherd speaking?  In scripture, in worship, in nature, in prayer.  In the still, small voice that speaks amidst the shoutings and rantings of the world.  In the gut feeling that tells us something is so true, or that something else is wrong.

           

But even in scripture, we can cut off the voice of the shepherd.  “Yeah, I’ve read the 23^rd Psalm before; sure, I know what it means.”  (We’ve all heard it a little too often lately, haven’t we?)  But what if, instead of skimming it yet again and moving on, we sit with it and listen to each phrase.

            The Lord is my shepherd.

            The LORD is my shepherd.

            The Lord IS my shepherd.

            The Lord is my SHEPHERD.

            The Lord is MY shepherd.

            …

            I shall not want.

            I have all that I need.

            With God, there is nothing that I lack.

            …

           

John Robinson told the Pilgrims as they left Plymouth England:

I Charge you before God and his blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ.  If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.     

Here was a leader telling people to keep listening, even beyond his own teaching, because it is God we are all listening to.  This became a famous phrase within the Congregationalist churches:  “the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.”  It was chiseled into the stone by the entrance of Chicago Theological Seminary.  It underlies the United Church of Christ’s “God is Still Speaking Campaign.”

And it reminds us that whatever good we may do, whether it is singing, or giving, or helping, or shouldering a burden or lightening a load, or feeding, or teaching, or anything else, it begins with listening.

May we, like the prophets of old, begin with the words, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

And then let us listen, that we would know the Shepherd’s voice.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.