A Reflection for Last Sunday in Epiphany All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern Shores,
NC February 26, 2017
Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Listen
To Him
Frederick Buechner, novelist and Priest once said:
“If I were called on to state in a few words everything I was trying to say
both as a novelist and preacher, it would be something like this: ‘Listen to
your Life.’”
When I was in high school, my Sunday school teacher
was an old woman named Mrs. Waters who taught about 13 of us three Sundays a
month. On the first Sunday of the month, since we had all been confirmed, we
would stay for the communion service, but on the other Sundays when we had Morning
Prayer, we would leave with the other children after the offertory, because the
adults knew that we would fidget during the sermon which usually lasted quite a
while. Once we crowded into the Rector’s office right next to the sanctuary, we
would take turns reading the lesson aloud, and then Mrs. Waters would reflect
on the passage we just read. At the turn of the 20th Century, she
had come to America from Wales as a young woman, and she still had her Welsh
accent. She was in her eighties and she loved us; the rest of the church tolerated
us, but she loved us. Because we knew she loved us, we would behave – most of
the time.
Sometimes we would snicker and jab each other surreptitiously, but
most of the time we paid attention. We listened to her because she loved us and
did not judge us and assumed, sometimes despite all evidence to the contrary,
that we were worthy of her time and love. I am now an old man, almost as old as
she was, and I cannot remember now if her name was Walters, or Waters, or
Watters; the name was less important that the love. She would tell stories
about the characters in the passage, and at times, we assumed she had known
them back in Wales. She liked Peter, and every time she mentioned him, she
would say with this laughing lilt, “Oh impetuous Peter!” Peter kept missing the
point and all of us in that room knew exactly what she was talking about for we
were adolescents, and we all demonstrated more than a little bit about
impetuosity.
In the Gospel lesson for today, “Oh impetuous Peter”
is on the mountain with Jesus, James, and John, and they have a mystical
experience of a vision of Jesus being transfigured. As Mark tells this story in the King James
Version: “And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no
fuller on earth can white them.” This tells us that we are not in Kansas
anymore or, as Bob Dylan says, “Something is happening and you don’t know what
it is, do you Mr. Jones”. On top of that, Jesus is talking with Moses, the icon
for the law, the one who spoke with God on Mount Sinai, and Elijah, the icon
for the Prophets, the one who encountered God on top of the Holy Mountain. Both of whom had been off the scene for
hundreds of years, and the legends said that they had been translated to heaven.
So what we have is a situation where all the symbols in the story are so
overdetermined that they just boggle the senses. This is beyond explanation, as
are all mystical experiences. It is not an event that we understand but rather we
“stand under”- live into rather than comprehend.
But “Oh Impetuous Peter” rushes in and tries to make
concrete the abstract by suggesting that they build a shrine of some kind to
make sure that everybody knew that Peter was part of the very select few
allowed to witness this event. “Oh
Impetuous Peter” falls into the trap of nailing down the transcendent to a
particular time and place such as his people had done with the Temple in the
Jewish tradition and what people do in most religious traditions. If “Oh Impetuous Peter” had been around in
modern day America, he might have found a way to make money and charge
admission to see the spot as they give a lecture on that which they themselves
do not understand.
One of the things that Pat and I found out when we
studied in Jerusalem was that every time you turned around there was someone
who was willing to point out a place and tell you that something special took
place there so that you could say that this place is especially holy.
Before “Oh Impetuous Peter” starts to get the
brochures printed, the story continues and a voice from the cloud into which no
one can see, says “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased;
listen to him!” That phrase may sound familiar - when we had the story about
Jesus being baptized - but there is an addition: “Listen to him”.
Listen. There
is a difference between listening and hearing. Hearing means that your brain
has isolated some noises so that it can try to make sense of those noises.
Listening means to slow down, pay attention, live with this for a while, make
it part of your being. I remember when it would become obvious to my father
that I really wasn’t getting the point and was too preoccupied with my own
agenda. He would stop, point a finger at
me, and say in a very even voice, “Listen lout!” It was at that point that I
usually got the hint.
Years ago when I was a counselor, I had to really listen
to people. I did not just want to hear them tell me about themselves or events;
I had to be still and not try to fix the
problem in order to get them out the door. I had to empty my agendas and pay
attention and see the person not as a diagnosis, not as a category, not as
member of a particular group, but as a whole complex person who I would never
fully understand but could walk with on their journey.
Jesus turns to his friends and says that it is time
for them to go down the mountain, and he will walk with them on their journey
as they are to listen to him. In his autobiography Now And Then, Frederick
Buechner wrote about listening to God:
Because the word that
God speaks to us is always an incarnate word—a word spelled out to us not
alphabetically, in syllables, but enigmatically, in events, even in the books
we read and the movies we see—the chances are we will never get it just right.
We are so used to hearing what we want to hear and remaining deaf to what it
would be well for us to hear that it is hard to break the habit. But if we keep
our hearts and minds open as well as our ears, if we listen with patience and
hope, if we remember at all deeply and honestly, then I think we come to
recognize, beyond all doubt, that, however faintly we may hear him, he is
indeed speaking to us, and that, however little we may understand of it, his
word to each of us is both recoverable and precious beyond telling. In that
sense autobiography becomes a way of praying, and a book like this, if it
matters at all, matters mostly as a call to prayer.
What does Jesus tell Peter and the boys: “Get up.
Don’t be afraid”, and then they go down the mountain to listen to the pain and fear of their
neighbors and to bring in healing. We are about to enter Lent. This is a time for listening as we
individually and corporately walk with Jesus, listening, looking at our lives
as a call to prayer.
Listen
to Him:
Hearing
is about staying on the surface
words
of once upon a time light show.
What
has that to teach as now I grow
older
having to see into mirror my face
puzzled
with how I fit this into my life?
In
earlier years I kept so busily absurd
that
I never really listened, just heard
sounds,
words that contributed strife.
Like
Peter, once felt more comfortable
jumping
to projects, things with ends
which
did seem to promise dividends
of
praises for a frantic ego vulnerable.
Quick
reaction is gulping, swallowing,
Listening
is prelude to true following.
