Let Anyone With Ears to Hear, Listen

When I was a student minister, my children were very small. My oldest was only three when I started and there were times when he didn’t want to leave my side. One time, a person from the congregation told me that having my son at my side while I was leading worship was distracting for people and that it would be better if I didn't allow it to happen.

Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.

In Saskatchewan, November 11th is a holiday. In most communities, a worship service is held at the local Legion. In the community I served as minister, the leaders of the four local churches were invited to plan and lead worship together. This particular year, I was not preaching. I was doing a prayer. It was the year a very bad virus was going around, and unfortunately, both of my sons came down with it at the same time. I don’t remember where my husband was, but he was away somewhere, and, with no family in the area, I needed to stay home and care for my children. I let one of the other minsters know, sent him the prayer I had written, and he announced, at the service, the reason for my absence. Later I found out that people in the community, especially those in the church I served, had not approved of my absence from the Remembrance Day service, for whatever the reason.

Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.

I have seen children criticized for being too noisy in church, people given dirty looks

for not “being appropriate” in church, strangers criticized for not coming to church, and new volunteers admonished for not doing something the way it’s always been done. All of this in a church where we are taught to be compassionate and merciful, forgiving, and to love our neighbour. Are church communities more judgmental than most? Is there some truth around the Christian stereotype of self-righteousness, condemnation, and judgment?

Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.

I was at a church this August while I was on vacation where the preacher talked on judgment and how easy it is to do. He talked about the many judgments he made just on his way there (he was a visitor to Oakville). He judged a business and its purpose, he judged other drivers, and he judged people and their cars in the church parking lot. To be clear, he wasn’t saying that all those judgments were bad. We all make judgments on a daily basis. We compare people to our own expectations, our own standards, our own ethical compass. It becomes bad when we aren’t self aware of those judgments we’re making and when we choose to use these judgments in harmful ways, hurting people with our words, or our body language, gossiping about others, making people feel small and ashamed for something they did or for even who they are.

Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.

Cary Nieuwhof is a blogger, known for the lists he creates and I happened to find one on judgment: “Five Ways JudgmentalChristians are Killing Your Church.” He writes about how some Christians will justify the judgments they make as truth telling. Who else is going to stand up and tell the truth?

Nieuwhof writes, “Yet in Jesus, grace and truth are perfectly fused. Remove grace from the truth and you don’t actually have truth at all, but a cold, steely imitation…The opposite is also true, of course. Remove truth from grace and you don’t have grace, but a spineless imitation….But when you see grace and truth fused, it takes your breath away. Why did people travel for days on foot in extreme conditions to meet Jesus? Grace fused to truth is what our hearts most deeply long for.”

So the five wonderful things, he listed, with which judgment is incompatible are:

·      Love: The presence of judgment almost always guarantees an absence of love.

·      Help: Ever notice that people who judge almost never help and people who help almost never judge?

·      Humility: Judgment is grounded in arrogance.

·      Prayer: It’s impossible to judge someone and truly pray for them at the same time.

·      Evangelism: If you want to kill evangelism at your church, fill your church with judgmental Christians. In fact, people will run from you.

Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.

In the seventh chapter of the gospel of Mark, Pharisees and scribes are gathered around Jesus, and guess what? They want to know why his disciples don’t wash their hands before they handle the food they eat. They don’t ask Jesus about his healing ministry. They don’t ask him what his disciples are learning from him. They don’t ask him to share his wisdom with them. No. They ask Jesus why he lets his disciples get away with breaking the rules, their tradition.

I can imagine Jesus shaking his head. His disciples and he are on the road, every day, announcing the arrival of God’s kingdom, healing people, teaching people, and these church leaders ask why his disciples don’t wash their hands. He tells these people who are very knowledgeable about their scripture, that the prophet Isaiah was right when he spoke for God, saying, “This people honours me with their lips but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrine.” Where are the hearts of these Pharisees and scribes? Are they really concerned with God’s kingdom and with the people of Israel or are they more concerned that people are following the rules.

Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.

I find it fascinating that this passage is immediately followed by the story of the Syrophoenician woman. You may know it. A woman, a foreigner, approaches Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus basically tells her that he is there to serve his own people and that it’s not right to give away his gifts before his own people are served. In fact, he says to her that the children need to be served before the dogs. This does not sound like the Jesus we know. Some believe he may have been testing this woman. But maybe Jesus also held some judgment. As a Jewish man, he may have balked at the idea of this foreign woman approaching him and asking for help. But he is also an enlightened man and is open to critique of his actions when the woman says that that even the dogs under the table get the crumbs of the children. Her daughter is healed.

Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.

Let anyone with ears to hear, listen. If you were to look in your bibles right now, at this passage from Mark, you might find a missing verse. If you look closely, it jumps from verse 15 to verse 17. Why? Sometimes ancient manuscripts don’t match up. So there are different versions of Mark’s gospel that have been discovered and sometimes this verse is present and sometimes its not. Some have deduced that it was added later. Remember, copies of scripture would have all been hand written until the 1600’s. Sometimes scribes made mistakes and sometimes scribes took initiative. Verse 16, “Let anyone with ears to hear, listen,” was a common phrase of the time and some think it’s possible that a scribe added it later.

But when I hear this verse, I hear the voice of Jesus. It’s reminds me of a word we use today, “Woke,” which describes people who might be waking up to the way the world works.  Jesus often talked metaphorically about one’s eyes and ears being opened.

General Council is the national body of the United Church and they meet every three years to make major decisions for the church. They met this summer in Oshawa. If you are involved with the wider church or read The Observer, I’m sure you will hear soon about the afternoon of the last day of that meeting. On this afternoon, the issue of racism in the church came up. This was followed by an invitation by the moderator, Jordan Cantwell, for people to share their stories of racism, and she asked that all white people not come to the microphone, to sit and to listen. They all sat, and for almost two hours listened to people who are a minority in our church, those who are not white. It was a powerful moment in this church and you will be hearing more about it.

Let anyone with ears to hear, listen.

In a letter from James, in our bibles, from the first chapter, you will read, “You must understand this, my beloved, let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness…Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves….If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.”

That last line feels harsh, but it’s true. If we cannot learn to be quick to listen and bridle our tongues, if we cannot open our eyes and our ears and be slow to speak, if we cannot bring truth and grace together, our religion is worthless. As a part of our religion, we, as Christians need to share love, help, humility, and prayer so that others will know that we are truly followers of Christ and will feel the love of Christ. People may not be so quick to run from us, may actually find this fusion of truth and grace, and might actually find for what their hearts are longing. May it be so. Amen.