“This is my Son, the Beloved; Listen to him!” The great composer Igor Stravinsky once had something pretty marvelous to say about listening. In an interview, he famously said, “To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.” And so I wonder, are we ducks when it comes to listening to the voice of Jesus in our lives? I wonder, of course, because apparently we are so dreadful when it comes to listening that God has to sometimes break into our time and space, overshadow us with a cloud, and yell at us, “This is my Son, the Beloved! Listen to him!” Any good teacher knows that you don’t raise your voice like that for any old reason. You save it for when you really need to get the attention of the hopeless ducks in the room.
But why do we need to be compelled to listen to Jesus? Most of us are here at church because we think we are already listening. And what does it mean to listen to him anyway? What do we need to do in order to fulfill God’s shouted command to listen to Jesus?
As Stravinsky so memorably pointed out, listening is not a passive activity. It requires something more than simply being quiet and hearing the sounds. But I think it does start with being quiet. If we look at the context clues Mark gives us, the command to listen seems like it is a direct result of Peter’s babbling. Certainly listening starts by stopping our own babbling so that we can put aside our own wills, and perhaps more importantly, put aside our own fears. Mark says that Peter babbles because no one knew quite what to say about Jesus’ metamorphosis. They were terrified.
They may have left everything behind to follow Jesus because they really believed there was something special about him – Immediately before this passage, Peter even confesses his belief that Jesus is the Messiah, after all. Yet something about the supernatural confirmation of Jesus, not just as the Messiah, but as God’s own beloved son, has shaken them. It’s one thing to believe with the head and the heart, but quite another to be viscerally overwhelmed by an encounter with the living God on the top of a mountain in a cloud. And so they are terrified and cannot quiet themselves enough to listen to what this moment might have to teach them.
But it seems to me that being quiet is only the start. When we are quiet, we can hear, but it is still not a given that we will listen. A duck hears also, remember? To listen to someone generally means that you are at least open to considering that what they have to say may change something about your actions or beliefs. Think about the phrase, which I’ve often said about my own children, I admit – I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen. Did my child hear what I said in this case? Probably. Did my child listen enough to change his course of action? Probably not.
Here again, good ol’ Igor has some words of wisdom for us. In the same interview, Stravinsky said, “Some let the ear be present and they make no effort to understand. To receive music you have to open the ears and wait, not for Godot, but for the music; you must feel that it is something you need.” You must feel that it is something you need. Well, siblings in Christ, I am here to testify to the fact that the voice of Jesus is something we need. The world needs to listen to his voice.
But after thousands of years of pushing away the voice of Jesus in favor of our own interpretation of his words, we have become practiced at hearing, and not listening. We have gotten so used to explaining away Jesus’ words that make us uncomfortable, that we no longer listen. We babble – well, what Jesus was trying to say when he said “Go, sell what you own, and give your money to the poor” isn’t really that we should give all our money away. What he really meant was – and you can fill in the blank with whatever way you like to justify this. Or, whatever saying of Jesus you find difficult.
I don’t know about you, but deep down in my soul, I long to listen to Jesus. I know I do. Because the times when I have listened to Jesus have been times of transformation of my will and my life. Times when I have recognized the voice of Jesus speaking to me from a person I would otherwise overlook. But I don’t always listen to the voice of Jesus, probably for the very same reason. I know that if I do, it will require something of me, and the something it requires might be something I’m scared to do – a transformation of my will and my life. Uncomfortable interactions with the world. I know the voice of Jesus is something I need, as much as Stravinsky needed to listen to music, but I still turn away at times.
Stravinsky also has a solution to the problem - betcha’ didn’t know he was such a good theologian, did you? Neither did I until recently, but I’m not surprised. Music is one of God’s greatest love languages, after all, whether or not musicians are always willing to admit to it. Stravinsky gives his opinion about why modern audiences are not able to truly listen (in the deeper sense of the word) to music. He said this is because our primary way of experiencing music nowadays is passive, for us, usually through an electronic device. Stravinsky reasoned that in the past, people were better able to listen to music because more people learned to play music. He said, speaking of audiences of generations past, “They had the habit of music played with their own hands, not only by ears. Now we hear music by the gramophone. This gives maybe more people a connection with music, but the result is not the same because the passive is not the active.”
And indeed he is right – the passive is not the active. At the risk of sounding mildly evangelical, and I promise, I sympathize if you cringe at this next bit – but, the reason we can’t or won’t listen to the voice of Jesus is because we are not engaged as often as we could be in an active relationship with him. It takes time and patience to learn to listen to the voice of Jesus. If you think of a spouse or a close friend of yours, you might realize that listening to what that person is really saying gets easier over time. At first, you might hear their words, but miss the subtle cues that give you more insight into what is happening beneath the surface. A small smile or a gesture that lets you know more information than a casual passerby hearing their words would know.
Listening to Jesus is such an important and grand task that it takes a lifetime, and probably longer, to get the hang of it. And it is not a simple matter of being quiet, although that is never a bad place to start. It takes making active listening in loving relationship a priority. Considering Jesus’ words and actions on more than a surface level. What’s more, it involves taking the voice to which you have listened, and actually doing something about what you heard. Allowing his words to transfigure your own life so much that it catches the attention of others who may want to know how to listen, too.
Yes, any duck can hear the voice of Jesus, but, let’s face it, as great as ducks are, they have a limited capacity to carry out Christ’s mission in the world. I have nothing against ducks, per se. It’s just that we are called to be human beings who are living into the full stature of Christ, rather than ducks, who are presumably called to be…ducks. Perhaps I’ll learn more about duck nature and faith some day, and will have to apologize to the ducks out there, but for now, let’s go with my assumption that ducks’ ability to listen, and then to act or obey what they have heard, is limited. A duck can only be a duck, and in simply being a duck glorifies God in its own way.
Human beings, however, are called to listen, and from their listening, go forth to serve. By doing so, we move from passive recipients of God’s grace and glory into active listeners participating in the plan of salvation. I hope you are finding ways to listen to Jesus’ voice in an active way. Perhaps in your listening, you might hear Jesus invite you into service here at Saint Mark’s – by volunteering with the Saturday Soup Bowl, or if you really want to experience Jesus working in an active way, come help us out with Children’s Formation classes! Or perhaps your listening to the voice of Jesus invites you to help marginalized people in our community outside our church walls. The beginning of Lent next week seems to me an ideal time to take on a spiritual discipline of deep listening.
Whatever you hear when you listen to Jesus, you’ll know that you are a disciple (and not a duck) because the passive is not the active. You’ll listen to the voice of God’s beloved, and then act on what you have heard, opening up possibilities for transfiguration in your own life that far exceeds the glory of a duck, in my opinion.
Preached by Mtr. Meghan Mazur
11 February 2024
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia