ANYBODY LISTENING? John M. Buchanan
Mark 7:31-37 Broad Street Presbyterian Church

September 23, 1979 Columbus, Ohio

It was my grandfather's custom for many years to invite several of his friends
to his home after church on Sunday evening for a little gentlemanly conversation, a
cigar and a whiskey. Among those who came weekly was the Presbyterian clergyman who
was his minister. No one ever knew for certain what he did when it came time for
the whiskey. The fact that he was there regularly was enough to keep the story
alive in our family across the years. The important part of the story as it was
told to me, however, was the condition my grandfather attached to the invitation to
attend. Good conversation was the object but two topics were absolutely forbidden,
religion and politics. I spent the first forty years of my life thinking that his
prohibition was ill-chosen, superficial and somewhat boring. How, I have always
thought, is it possible to have a significant, or even lively discussion, and elim-
inate the two topics about which people feel most deeply?

In the recent past I have seen the light and changed my mind. My grandfather
was correct, When the topic is either religion or politics what happens between
people is rarely conversation: it is instead speech making, position taking at best;
at its more basic - it is conflict, sometimes all-out war.

The late Phyllis McGinley wrote a delightful poem about two very strong-headed
churchmen at the time of the Reformation: Huldrich Zwingli - who championed the
cause of "sprinkling" in baptism, and a man by the name of Muntzer, who advocated
"dunking";

HOW TO START A WAR

Said Zwingli to Muntzer,
"I'll have to be blunt, sir.

I don't like your version

Of Total Immersion,

And since God's on my side
And I'm on the dry side,
You'd better swing ovah

To me and Jehovah,"

Cried Muntzer, "It's schism,
Is Infant Baptism!
Since I've had a sign, sir,
That God's will is mine, sir,
Let all men agree
With Jehovah and me,
Or go to Hell, singly,"
Said Muntzer to Zwingly,

As each drew his sword.
On the side of the Lord. (Times Three).

I don't recall, frankly, anybody ever changing positions because of some
theological insight I shared in a heated argument about religion. Nor do I recall
any mutual give and take when the topic was politics. I conclude that one's con-
victions in these areas are formed somewhere else and when they emerge in conversa~
tion it is almost always in the form of an edict, a pronouncement, an eternal truth.
During an election, for instance, I find that most people simply cannot accept with
grace and charity the fact that others with equal intelligence, equal information

~ 2 «
and equal love for the country, could vote for the other candidate.

In short, nobody's Listening much. They never were. They never will ~ unless
the Kingdom of God comes and that's why we're here and that's what this sermon is
about.

Jesus healed a man once who was deaf and had a speech impediment. The incident
interests New Testament scholars for several reasons: it is mentioned only in Mark,
the first Gospel account to be written, Jesus, in the act of healing itself, uses
two folk remedies employed by other healers of the day. He placed His fingers in the
deaf man's ears and touched the man's tongue with His own saliva. One of the refer-
ences I checked notes that “psychosomatic deafness and aphonia occurring simultaneous-
ly have been reported in medical literature," (Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible,
vol, I, p. 852). That's for those who need empirical explanations for instances of
healing. What interests me about the story is the description of the crowd's re-
action which Mark adds at the end: "they were astonished beyond measure, saying, 'He
has done all things well; He even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak'." That is
a direct parallel of a prediction made in the Old Testament, The restoration of
hearing - the ability to hear ~ is one of the characteristics of the day of the Lord,
The prophet Isaiah, writing about that great future hope wrote,

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then shall the lame man leap like a hart,

and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy." (Isaiah 35:5,6),

That's a particularly beautiful vision of God's gentle, loving, restoring will
for His creation, And the author of the Gospel of Mark is suggesting, with poetic
skill and subtlety - that the promised Kingdom is now beginning. God's Kingdom is
starting to break into the life of the world, One of its signs is that people are
beginning to hear. May I suggest that the meaning is contemporary; God's Kingdom
breaks in, God's will is done, when we are able to hear, when we are given the
special gift of hearing, when we use it by beginning to listen?

The ability to communicate is essential to our humanity. "No man is an island,”
John Doone wrote several centuries ago, We are related: we are part of one another.
The Trappist Monk Thomas Morton picked up the phrase and wrote a beautiful little
book under the same title in which he proposed that our most vital humanity is
realized in relationship with other people. He wrote: "Love can only be kept by
being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.” (p.20).

But it was Episcopal priest and theologian Reuel Howe who said it best. The
Miracle of Dialogue he called it in a book published in 1963. The person emerges
in relationship, Howe taught. The human person does not exist in a vacuum, in
aloneness, but is called into being by others: initially by a mother and father,
then by significant adults, peers, friends, lovers, companions. We exist as persons
only in the matrix of relationships. We were created for one another, for community.
Relationships depend on dialogue and dialogue depends on listening: allowing the
other person to be by accepting and hearing and responding to what he or she is
saying.

Tf that is true, and I believe it is, the reverse is also true. The person
retreats and ultimately ceases to be when dialogue stops. You have had the experience,

@4.s

I am sure, of talking with someone and knowing, as you were speaking that the other
wasn't hearing, in fact wasn't even listening. Instead, he or she, was looking past
you or through you, backing away, or at least angling to interrupt with a pro-
nouncement on a different subject. You have, I am sure, felt the frustration and
humiliation of that common human experience. It is a non-violent assault on your
personhood. It says that you don't matter, don't count, in fact, for the purposes
of the other person = you don't even exist.

If God's will is that we listen; If His Kingdom comes as we hear, it might be
worth while to look a bit further and ask about and identify some of the problems
we have in hearing. A logical one is that people use unclear language. We can't
hear sometimes because the person talking can't speak - or write. The National
Council of Teachers of English Committee on Public Double-speak, blames television
and advertising for corrupting the language and observes that newspapers, Government
and Education are not without guilt, A “combat emplacement evacuator" is what the
Pentagon once tried to call a shovel.

But more often other things get in the way: like stereotypes, images and ex-
pectations. Said the Southern Baptist preacher to the Roman Catholic Monsignor, "'T
can't hear you because of what I expect you to say." The same dynamic is repeated
between teacher and student, parent and child, labor and management, husband and wife.

Sometimes - many times - dialogue doesn't happen because two parties are
really engaging in monologue. "I've told him a hundred times how I feel about that"
means that dialogue hasn't happened. Someone didn't hear, "Whatever Happened to
Dialogue?" Hugh T. Kerr asked in an essay several years ago. He observed: "Conversa-
tion, dialogue, rational discourse...are all becoming increasingly difficult." He
illustrated by citing the continuing practice of radical student groups - in the name
of freedom - simply shouting down speakers with whom they disagree. Kerr's analysis:
"The failure to communicate is not a 'problem of communication' as if it could be ‘
solved by discovering better media, We have more media than we know what to do with,
Our problem is that so many of us don't want to communicate in the first place,
partly because we have nothing to say to each other, and partly because everybody
seems so mad..."' (Qur Life In God's Light, p.137).

One of the fundamental problems with communication is that most of us don't
listen very well when the subject is something about which we have strong feelings.
Swiss physician and theologian, Paul Tournier, in a new book about violence writes,
"a person who throws himself heart and soul into an enterprise he believes to be
just and holy is not inclined to negotiate but rather to use violence for fear of
betraying his ideal..." (The Violence Within, p.28). That's why, by the way, it is
so difficult to talk about politics or religion. To listen openly somehow feels
like betrayal, It is also why zealous proponents of this religion or that - from
the Moonies to the traveling carnival on the State House lawn last week = are not
simply offensive, but potentially dangerous, Jonestown should have taught us some-
thing about that. Tournier observes: "The worst thing is not being wrong, but being
sure one is not wrong. Nothing is more dangerous for us than to believe ourselves
to be the authentic interpreters of the divine will. This is the source of all
brutal intolerance...and fanaticism," (ibid., p.29).

The saddest thing of all is that the ability to listen, to hear, to engage in
dialogue seems to exist in inverse proportion to the passion and commitment you feel
about your religion. The more pious the more pontifical. The most devout people

ss ee a

I know don't discuss, they pronounce - ex cathedra ~ infallibly, That's so sad
because the way of Jesus is the very opposite. He gave the gift of hearing,
listening, It is God's will, not that we squeeze our little bit of truth in our
clenched fists, but that we learn - from His Son - to open hands and arms to one i
another.

It begins as we learn to listen, first to ourselves, We have trouble at this
most basic level, many of us. We don't trust and don't listen to ourselves, our own
intuitions and conclusions. We yield, rather, to the external voice of authority
which tells us what is true and how we should feel and how to behave. The miracle
of dialogue begins when we learn to listen to ourselves, to trust ourselves a
little more.

It proceeds as we assume the responsibility of hearing others. It is not easy
nor simple. There are many barriers. Counselors learn something called "active
listening". That is to say, there is more involved than simple auditing and pro-
cessing information. A human being is trying to make contact and many times the
topic of discussion or the words being used have very little to do with what is
really transpiring. For instance, tortured discussions between fathers and college
sons are often full of subtle and hidden content. The words may have to do with the
oppressiveness of the free enterprise system, the ultimate importance of getting a
haircut, or the injustice of drug laws: there may be many words and much conviction.
But more often than not what is transpiring has more to do with the end of adoles-
cence, the beginning of manhood, the pain of growing and becoming - on the one hand,
and on the other, the poignancy of middle age, fear, threat and the loss of manhood,

Active listening tries to discover the full content and responds to that.
Husband and wife may be engaged in heated verbal battle - or silent sulking - about
some minor relational mishap, The miracle of dialogue will happen when one of them
hears what really is being said, and responds to that.

The church, the extension of all of us, what's good and interesting and faithful
about us, and also what's not so hot about us - the church too is called to active
listening. In mission the church has engaged in monologue. In other lands it has
assumed it knew what was best for indigenous people. It told them how to believe
and how to live and it dictated a Christian life style which was far more American
than Christian, We continue, sometimes, our arrogant pontificating. "Christ is the
answer" someone scrawled in bold letters on the subway wall, and someone wrote
under it "I forgot the question",

That's exactly what's going on in our culture today. The questions sound like
this: Will life be possible in this ecosystem much longer? Why should we get
married instead of living together? If you don't want the child in your womb shall
you get an abortion? Can homosexuzls teach school or preach the Gospel? Shall we
build bombs or plant grain? It's a noisy, unpleasant, clamoring, disturbing agenda,
And there is a lot Of religion which chooses deliberately not to hear: in fact, to
suggest that Jesus doesn't want us to hear: that His answer is a set of ear plugs.
We know that Jesus Christ is the answer to our deepest needs. We know that He is
"the way, the truth and the life", But what we know will remain totally irrelevant
until we listen, and hear the questions the world is asking, and enter into honest
dialogue around each one of them.

- 5-6

Anybody listening? To self? To others? To the world? Anybody listening to
God? In the final analysis that's why Jesus healed the deaf man: so he could hear
God, Tournier testifies that his life long discipline of inquiring after the will
of God, listening for God's word, has been the most productive and creative influence
in his life. His advice includes the warning that "God's guidance is strictly
personal. It is for each of us to receive and for no one else. I can never know what
God is expecting of someone else,"and that if comes unexpectedly and not always in
a form that is reeogwizable, (Op.cit, p.295.

The Bible is full of occasions of God speaking and people not hearing. [ft
requires discipline, love, hope and the expectation that God, in fact, doas address
us. Public worship, we believe, is a conversation between God and His church, His
people. In the best sense, that is what prayer is, as well: not monologue but
dialogue; listening for what God has to say.

Qur faith is that God has something to say to us, as we gather as church, but
also personally, as individuals. Our faith is that God's clearest word was spoken
in the life and death and resurrection of the man we know as Lord, Jesus Christ.
Plenty of people didn't hear that word because they weren't Listening. In Jesus
Christ God calls us to exercise the gracious gift of hearing, Hie will is the
miracle of dialogue - with one another and with Him,

"He has done all things well: He even makes

the deaf hear and the dumb speak."
Amen.

Father, in the middle of the noisy world, speak Your word to us, Break
down the barriers we have built; give us courage to be honest and open in our
relationships. Give us the grace to seek Your will in all things and give us
today Your good gift of hearing: through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen,