"LISTENING EARS"

Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21

True or false:

"Practically no one comes to church

expecting to hear something they did not already know.

The last thing they expect to come from a pulpit

is any news."

According to the late Henri Nouwen,

that's true.

Is that true for you?

While I'm willing to take PART of the responsibility

if that's the case,

I'm not going to take all of it.

Because what happens in this interchange that we call a sermon,

what happens between you and me,

actually relies on more than just the two of us.

Whatever happens and gets heard during this time

relies on the presence or the absence of Holy Spirit,

both in my preparation

and in your hearing.

But from what we know about the Spirit,

it can't be contained or controlled very well.

So sometimes it might be easier,

and maybe even safer,

if we just don't listen very carefully

or listen with any expectation

that we're going to hear something new.

If you look at a concordance,

you'll see that the words "listen"

and "hear" and their cognates

appear more than seventeen hundred times

throughout the Bible.

Seventeen hundred times.

Maybe that's because we're not very good at it!

Our lives are inundated with sound and noise.

When we first moved to Bonham,

I could hardly sleep at night because it was so quiet.

And now when I go spend the night in Austin or Chicago or Dallas,

I can hardly sleep because it's so noisy!

Sometimes we leave our TVs on,

whether we're watching anything or not,

just so the silence does not deafen us.

And it's not just the volume level.

It's the distraction level too.

We get so wrapped up in formulating what we are going to say

that we don't follow at all

what the other person wants to say to us.

We've already fast-forwarded to where we think they're going

and are working on our snappy reply.

That's not exactly listening.

Walter Brueggemann

talks about what it takes

to listen in transforming ways:

not just to hear what is being said,

but to be transformed -

made into something other -

by really listening to it.

He says that in order for listening to transform us,

we have to have three things:

a level of trust in the speaker,

a readiness to be impacted by what they have to say,

and a willingness to have newness come into our lives.

Is that why we don't expect any news from the pulpit?

I don't think it's because you and I don't trust each other.

At least I hope it's not!

It's the other two things.

Our willingness to be changed

and our acceptance of new ways of thinking

are not always what they should be.

For ANY of us, me included.

It is much easier on us

just to come and get our time cards punched

by sitting through worship,

not to expect to hear anything new,

and then to go home and get on with our lives.

Who can blame us for that?

Just going through the motions

is a LOT easier

than allowing ourselves to get on intimate terms

with a God who can overpower and overwhelm us.

In order to listen

in what Brueggemann calls a transformative way,

we have to give up control of our lives

and place that control in the hands of God.

Considering the value we place

on being in control of our lives,

that's one of the hardest things

that anyone can ask us to do.

---------------------------------------------

Fear of change

is what was at stake at theTower of Babel.

It seems like this story gets read and misread

a hundred different ways

for a hundred different reasons.

Some say that God's decision

to "confuse" the people and their languages

was the result of human pride.

Some say it's just a cute, folksy explanation

for how we came to have more than 7000 languages today.

But to borrow a phrase,

I think the story of Babel

is a story about why God decided to mix it up

because humans were choosing not to.

This story gets recorded in Genesis

just two chapters after Noah quite literally got off the boat.

One of God's first instructions to Noah and his family

was to "fill the earth."

Populate every corner.

And as they were beginning to do that,

they began to notice that there were beginning to be

people they didn't know,

or people who weren't like them.

Today we would call that "diversity."

And they were not the least bit interested in being diverse.

They wanted not to go to the four corners of the earth

but to entrench right where they were,

with people who looked and talked and thought like they did.

We're told in verse 7

that God chose to come down and confuse their languages

"so that they would not understand one another."

What's fascinating, though,

is that in Hebrew,

the word that we read as "understand"

is the very same word that is used

every time it talks about "hearing" in the Old Testament.

So could it be

that God chose to come down and confuse their languages

"so that they would not hear each other?"

That explains a lot, doesn't it.

Whether it's Christians in America and Muslims in Iraq,

or men who are from Mars and women who are from Venus,

we haven't been able to hear each other for a long time.

-----------------------------------------

Those who study these things

say that "if Babel was the curse,

Pentecost was the cure - "

that God set right at Pentecost

what was overturned at Babel.

I don't know that that's totally the case.

At the least we could say

that the stories are mirror opposites.

They are similar in two ways:

everyone is in one place,

and God acted.

But in Babel,

they were unified and then dispersed.

In Acts,

they were dispersed and then unified.

But the biggest difference?

Perhaps it's that on the day of Pentecost,

they were ready to listen.

This was a crowd

who had just experienced the Resurrection.

They had just heard Jesus promise

that they would receive power from his Holy Spirit,

and then they would go to be witnesses -

not in one designated place where they'd built a tower,

but to Jerusalem, Judea,

Samaria, and the ends of the earth.

So they knew what to listen for.

They were ready to hear a word from God.

And they got what they were expecting.

Before you knew it,

Greek speakers were understanding Swahili

and the Egyptians were understanding Chinese.

People thought they were drunk!

But they were just deliriously happy

that their ears were working again.

Because of God's gracious and extravagant outpouring,

they could be understood,

and they could understand.

-------------------------------------------

Which brings it back to us.

Do you remember what Henri Nouwen said?

Odds are

that you came to worship this morning

expecting not to hear something you didn't already know.

That the last thing you expect to hear from me today

is anything new.

Indeed you may be in that number.

But let me suggest this.

Whether or not you hear any news today

may entirely hinge on the kind of God you believe in.

Do you believe in a God

who despises uniformity and exclusion,

who chooses instead to include and unite?

Do you believe in a God

whose word can and will break through any barriers?

Do you believe in a God who can make a way out of no way?

Then listen up.

One of the gifts of Pentecost

is the renewed ability to listen,

and there's something worth listening to

that you can bet your life on.

There is news today, friends,

and it is good.

But if you can't hear it,

the problem may be with your receiver.

Are you ready to hear what God has in store for you,

and for us?

Let's listen?? 

Silently now I wait for thee,

ready my God thy will to see,

Open my ears, illumine me,

spirit divine!

Amen.