Listening
In my teens (and in a very
conservative evangelical church) I loved studying prophecy – at least I thought
at the time it was prophecy. Hal
Lindsay's "Late Great Planet Earth" was like a text book for our
youth group. We read it, discussed it,
knew it, and trusted it as the key to how to interpret and know all the signs
of the end and the promises of God about the end.
Looking back on that now, what strikes
me is how much it was really about being on the winning side – how that kind of
fundamentalism was based on the world being divided into good/bad, right/wrong,
godly/ungodly, and was about being on the good, right, godly, winning side. I’m also struck by how we never really
questioned – didn’t even seem to notice, how any fundamentalism – whether North
American Christian, Jewish, Islamic or any other fundamentalism, always is able
to interpret their Scripture to support their need, desire, longing to be on
the winning side
I wonder if that's what the
Deuteronomists were doing when they wrote the history of Moses the way they did
– including the part of Moses' great sermon today promising the rise of great
prophets like Moses to lead the people in God's way?
It was a time of political anxiety,
with a lot of political game-playing, and economic and military pundits all
giving advice about how to win, survive, compromise, and thrive. And here we have the religious leaders, not
immune to the spirit of their time, caught up in the same concerns, saying, “Oh,
if only we had someone like Moses to tell us what really to do, to guarantee our
winning and coming out okay (as though
that's what having faith and serving God is all about in the end). If only there were someone today to go up on
the mountain into the fearsome abyss and whirlwind of God like Moses did, to
tell us the will of the all-high, almighty who is surely on our side.”
Because that's where they thought God
was. In the story they were retelling
about the early days, at that early stage of their life under Moses when they
were on the run from Egypt and the army of the pharaoh, that's what they needed
– a god greater and higher and more fearsome than the gods of Egypt, or of any
other people and kingdom they might meet along the way.
And that's what Deuteronomy longs for
again – a god who will help them win, be great again. And someone who is able to go and see and
meet and talk to and bring back directions from that god.
Except, God is in the process of
showing them something else. When we
read the whole of the Old Testament and the whole of the Bible, we see that God
who Moses met on the mountain is not just their God, to help them win against
and over others, but is God of all the world / cosmos, of all people / nations. Remember what Jonah struggled with last week?
With God’s desire to save the enemies of Israel from the consequences of their
evil?
The will of God that’s slowly being
revealed is for a world and a universe in which there are not winners and
losers, but only all winners beyond any losing, and the well-being of all
together. And what slowly comes clear is
that God became Israel’s God when God did because at that time they were
oppressed and at risk of genocide – at risk of being wiped from history … and God
is likewise the God of any and all who are similarly oppressed and at risk at
any time and in any place.
Which means then, that the way to see
and meet and hear and learn the way of the true God is not so much up on the
mountain, but out on the fringe and on the bottom among the poor, the oppressed
and the at-risk.
Simon and Garfunkel caught a glimpse
of this in their song, Sounds of Silence: “the words of the prophets are
written on the subway walls, and tenement halls…”
And there are others like Wade Davis,
Canadian anthropologist and 2009 CBC Massey lecturer – one of many who sees
society and our civilization spinning out of control, with the centre no longer
holding, and who also sees that the way ahead and the answer we are looking for,
is to listen to voices at the fringe and on the edge. In his case, he tries to pay attention to the
values, the voices, and the concerns of Indigenous peoples. We have a lot to learn, he says, by attending
more carefully to the light at the edge of the world.
And isn't this what the Me Too
movement is about, and the Great Reckoning – maybe all the Great Reckonings of
our time? Isn’t it about listening to
the voices from the underside of our culture – voices that we’ve managed not to
listen to for a long time, but that now are let loose among us?
And it isn't easy. In many ways, it’s as fearsome and scary – as
much of a whirlwind and a revelation of the dark abyss, as it was for Moses to
go up on Mt Sinai and face the dark and uncontrollable glory of God. It takes as much courage really to go to the
edge, and out to the fringe, or look down to the underside, and commit time
there simply to listen, and to hear what women, the poor, the First Nations,
refugees, the unemployed and disillusioned, dishonoured veterans, and so many
others have to say.
There are so many voices. Hard and hurting voices. Angry voices.
Long-silenced voices. Challenging
and upsetting voices. Voices that raise
more hard questions than give easy answers.
But isn't this exactly what Jesus
incarnates and calls us to, if we are really to be living towards the kingdom
of God, living in the direction of God's presence and purpose? Like he does in the synagogue in Capernaum.
The synagogue in those days was a real
social gathering spot in the town or the village. It was where people went to worship and pray
and hear the Scripture read and interpreted.
But it’s also where people got caught up on news, transacted business,
made deals, saw one another, got seen by others. It’s where all the layers and levels of town
society gathered, and where in the ways they gathered and in how and with whom they
related, the layers and levels were evident for all to see, to enjoy and to
suffer.
And it’s in this society of up and
down, in and out, respected and dis-respected that Jesus is drawn precisely towards
the most broken and anguished among those there. It’s the ones on edge and the fringe, the
ones on the underside that Jesus specifically chooses to hear and to touch, to
attend to and heal, to include and raise up, and to call and treat as his brother
and a fellow-child of God.
The prophet and the prophetic
community and voice that the world really needs, that we long to hear, and that
we long and are called to be, is not the one that knows who is going to win and
come out on “the right side.” Those
kinds of prophets are actually part of the problem.
What the world needs, what we long to
hear for ourselves, and what we are called and enabled to be in the world as we
live in and with Christ, is people who have the courage and the faith to
venture into the land and the neighbourhoods of the broken and hurting, to
listen to the voices at the fringe and from the underside, and to hear there
the voice not of the God who will help us win, but the voice of the God who desires
and works for and lives and dies for the well-being of all, which is the
greatest and only real victory of all.
Not listening ??
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