Listening

Acts 12:1-16

Peter was in prison and surrounded by sixteen soldiers who were supposed to make sure he did not escape.  Asleep on one of the guards shoulders, in the middle of the night, Peter was nudged by an angel (a messenger of God).  And while Peter got up and followed, he thought it was all a dream.

Outside in the cool evening air, eventually he came to his senses.

Rhoda, who worked as a servant in Mary's house heard the knock on the door.  When she saw that it was Peter she was so overwhelmed with joy that...she forgot to open the gate.  She rushed back into the house. 

"You'll never believe who is here...Peter!"

"Nah," everyone pessimistically retorted, can't be...he was in jail.

Why is it in the Bible people so often discount the witness of women?  It happened on Easter morning when the women raced back from the empty tomb to tell the good news of great joy!  It happened in the early church.  And it still happens today. 

When might we come to our senses to listen to what people have to say?

This is not easy.  Most of us were taught to think critically in school and to point out the flaws in a person's argument, paper, and even story. 

Most of us can remember a time we got a paper back...covered in red ink (always red ink) pointing out where we'd made mistakes.

Pointing out to someone where his logic has gone astray is easy to do not only because we trained to do so.  Also, because most of our logic goes astray pretty quickly.  We may cling to an ideal that we are rational beings, but most of the time our arguments come from a deep, emotional place within us.  Beliefs and emotions are tangled in ways most of us don't always realize.  And so, while we think we are being completely rational...we miss that our stomach is churning.  And we also miss that because belief and emotion are tangled up we tend to believe that our rationality cuts through it all.

Case in point: Washington D.C.

We have two parties who have two fundamentally different belief systems.  Rather than actually examining the flaws in both sides...and they are there on both sides...what we get is petty bickering and soundbite management...and of course very little listening.  Unless, of course, you agree with what the particular party is pandering.

When might we come to our senses to listen to what people have to say?

When might the church come to our senses and model this for the world?

Too often we want the church to be a safe haven, a shelter from the weary world.  And in creating such a church, we make it difficult to have conversations that are actually worth listening to.  I can only hear so much of people complaining about the pitching of the Brewers before I tune out.  Don't get me wrong, it is a problem.  But is a problem I have very little say about.

What I do have a say in is how much I listen.  Not just to people who are on "my" side, but people who I don't always agree with.  Not just talking heads on radio, television, and blogs...but to people I actually sit next to in the pew.  That kind of listening will stretch us.  That kind of listening will not settle for just taking a vote using Robert's Rules of Order.  That kind of listening will awaken us to a different kind of world... or what I think of as "God's realm."

In God's realm we come to our senses.  We see God's presence active in our world, breaking us out of prisons of narrowly held beliefs that "we" are right and "they" are wrong.

That's the kind of realm the church should not only proclaim and celebrate on Sunday morning...it is the kind of realm God is awakening our senses to every morning when we step outside into the cool air.  We realize we are not dreaming.

God's presence is surrounding us.
God's presence is sustaining us.
God's presence is a promise we can trust.

It awakens our senses.

Grace and peace be with you.