jump to navigation

Listening for God’s voice: Sermon Jan 8, 2012 January 5, 2012

Posted by caven in News.
trackback

And God said… Listening for God’s voice

Sermon: January 8, 2012, Caven Presbyterian Church, Exeter, ON

 

Scriptures: Genesis 1:1-5; 1 Kings 19:11-13; Psalm 29; Mark 1:9-11

 

If someone were to ask you, “What does the voice of God sound like,” you might laugh and say, “Don’t be silly. Nobody knows that.” Or… you might automatically think about the old 1956 re-run movie of The Ten Commandments when Charlton Heston gets to hear God’s voice. God’s voice is, of course, a big, booming sonic voice roaring from the heavens. I wonder why the movie producer had God speak like that? In that big booming voice? Perhaps he did that because there is lots of scriptural support for God’s voice being big and powerful. In our Psalm for today, for instance, God’s voice is described as powerful, full of majesty, hovering over the water, like a strong wind, like fire. God’s voice shakes the wilderness and causes the oak trees to dance and bend.

This big booming voice may have worked well in Cecil B. DeMille’s movie epic, The Ten Commandments, but, let’s face it….how many of us have ever heard God roaring  from the clouds? In fact, our scriptures today suggest that God has a small, quiet voice.

Elijah was a Hebrew prophet on the run, hiding out and fearful for his life because the Israelites and surrounding countries were without strong leadership. In his hiding spot, Elijah really needs and wants a word from God. But God’s voice isn’t there in the wind. God’s voice isn’t there in the earthquake. God’s voice isn’t there in the fire. Finally….Elijah hears God’s voice in the silence. Although we didn’t read on far enough to discover what happens next, God tells Elijah who should be named as King of Israel, who should be appointed as King of Aram, and who should be named as Elijah’s own successor as a new prophet. Those were enormously big things to hear from God, and they came to Elijah in silence.

Our Scriptures today all tell us about God speaking…speaking at the beginnings of time when God created the most fundamental things—night and day. This voice of God was not booming either. There were no titanic clashing and smashing of rocks and tidal waves. It was as if God was brooding over the water, gently kneading and shaping as God said, “Let there be light,” and “Let there be water, divided from the land.” It is as if God is painting a picture with a soft, feathery brush.

Our scripture from Mark also tells us about God’s voice. John, the Baptist, is in the wilderness, baptizing anyone who wants to turn their life around and go a different way. When John’s own cousin, Jesus, comes to be baptized, God’s voice is heard: “You, Jesus, are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” But this is no big booming Cecil B. DeMille God-voice. God’s voice comes in the form of the most gentle of birds—a dove. When we lived in Waterloo, we used to take our children to a wonderful nature reserve near the edge of the city. In the winter, at the Interpretation Centre, the staff gave us a handful of bird seed. Then, we walked to the chickadee station and if you stood very still for about 5 minutes with the bird seed flat in your hand, a tiny chickadee would come and perch on your palm, take a seed, then fly away. You hardly felt that little bird settle on your hand. It was so soft and gentle, like a dove, like the voice of God.

Of course, when we talk about hearing God’s voice, it can worry us, for we have all heard of people who suffer from mental illness who hear voices. Maybe this fear scares us off from really trying to hear God’s voice in our lives. We hear stories of mad people who have turned guns on innocent people or asked their followers to drink poison because they believe that God’s voice told them to do that. When we lived in Newmarket, we had a number of people who attended our church from a local group home. All these people had a terrible struggle with various mental illnesses. At coffee time one morning, one man, Barry, came over to me and showed me the scars on his arms. “I’ve had a bad week,” he said. “God is telling me to hurt myself.” “Oh, Barry,” I responded. “That’s not the voice of God. God means for all of us to be happy and well. The voice you are hearing is your illness. Not God.” I think this is a good criteria for discerning the voice of God. Does the voice that comes to us speak of love and building up? Is the voice creative and for good? Is the voice thoughtful, helping, comforting, nurturing? God’s voice means us to be well and happy.

It is timely to reflect on how we hear the voice of God as we begin another new year. All these stories that we read from the Bible today—the creation story, the story about Elijah, the story of the baptism of Jesus—all these stories that tell of the voice of God—are about beginnings. The beginning of the earth, the beginning of a new rule in Israel, the beginning of Jesus’ new way of life, his new ministry.  So, it is helpful and appropriate as we begin a new year, having made…or not made…some new resolutions, that we ask ourselves: In my new beginning of another year, how will I make time and space to hear God’s voice? For it is good to be guided by God’s voice…God who made us a little higher than the animals and a little lower from God’s very self. It is good to be guided by God’s voice rather than being torn in many directions by the voices of politicians, the voices in the shopping mall, the voices of television broadcasters, the voices in the coffee shop. It is good to be guided by God’s voice.

One of the family Christmas traditions from my side of the family is to gather, as we have done for at least two decades now, at our national church’s retreat centre—Crieff, just south of Guelph. There, for 3 busy days, December 26-28, we laugh, play, eat and share life in three old farm buildings. This year there were 42 of us together and one of the things we did was offer “Crieffinars.” That was our version of family seminars. There were 9 different and varied Crieffinars one could attend. I was particularly interested in one that provided a demonstration of Reiki, offered by my niece, Dionne. If this word “Reiki” is new to you…as it was to many of us…let me describe it for you. Reiki is a spiritual healing practice which comes to us from Japan. It uses a technique commonly called palm healing and the practitioner, the person in charge of the session, transfers universal energy through the palms of hands, which allows for self-healing and a state of wellness. After Christmas was over, I e-mailed Dionne and commented on the fact that, where she used the word “energy” or “power of the universe” I would have used the word “God.” Dionne then sent back a most interesting reply about her journey down a spiritual path in the last few years. She said, “…the path seems to be the one that’s talked about in churches, whispered about by mystics, and demonstrated by Jesus….I have difficulty connecting with the word “God”, probably because it was a word I heard a lot at a time when I hadn’t yet experienced a personal connection. Funnily enough, I’ve developed a strong, personal connection to Jesus (feel free to laugh…Dionne writes…it does sound funny!)… When I’m deeper in meditation and focusing on the sensations of the heart, it is not uncommon for me to perceive someone who I know to be Jesus….it’s very interactive. He sits with me, shares meditative techniques and words of wisdom, and then [suggests to me]exercises to practice…[he]laughs…But most transformative of all, he seems to be passing along information about moving more into the heart… how to see and hear and feel with heart…as if your heart houses all your senses.’

This thoughtful response of Dionne’s leads us to this question: As we—you, me, our congregation—as we begin another new year, what kind of spiritual practices can we put into our lives so that we can learn to listen for the voice of God?

Dionne led us straight to the heart of what we believe as Christians. We get our name from “Christ”. We are followers of Jesus who we believe to be Christ, the chosen one. Even though Jesus was separate from God, we also believe that Jesus was God come to earth—Emmanuel, God with us. God came and lived in our tents, in our homes, in our lives, and, as Dionne describes it, in our hearts. And so, as we begin this new year, the most obvious place to start, if we want to hear God’s voice, is to read about, think about, ponder, meditate on the person and life of Jesus. We are literally invited to have a close relationship with Jesus, in order to hear God.

But, just as different students have different learning styles, those of us who call ourselves Christian also have a variety of ways listening for God’s voice. For instance, as we are busy with a task, a spontaneous thought which is good and positive might come into our mind, and as we continue with the tasks of the day, we may ask ourselves: Is this the voice of God to me today? Sometimes our conscience acts in this way for us, too. We don’t feel good about something we have done or said and we ask: Is God reminding me that this was just plain wrong?

Or we may be the kind of person who needs stillness, quiet, meditation, a time apart to be mindful of listening for the voice of God. Linda, a minister in our church, once told me that this is what she needed every day—a little quiet space to listen for God’s voice. The problem was—she had a big, busy church and her parishioners were always interrupting her. She only needed 15 minutes, she said, but how could she carve out this time without interruptions? Linda is a small person and she discovered that she could easily sit on the ground in the hollow of the pulpit. So, every day at 11:45, she simply disappeared into the sanctuary, crouched in behind the pulpit and had her quiet time where no one could find her.

Some people find writing and journaling a helpful way to reflect on what God might be saying to them. Some people find a group process a helpful way to discern God’s voice. You may be familiar with the Mennonite and Quaker churches which use a group discernment to make decisions. If they are asking big important questions—like who should be a new leader in the church or do we think that God would want us to add another room to our church building—as Mennonites and Quakers try to discern God’s voice they have developed a group discernment process. At every step of the decision making they keep asking: Do we hear God’s voice in this? Some years ago a writer called Chuck Olsen wrote a book called “Discerning God’s Will Together” and this book describes this process. One of the aspects that I particularly like about the group process of listening for God’s voice is the last step. Is there consolation or desolation in this decision? In the mind of people who use this process, there is only consolation, contentment, in a decision if they have truly listened for God’s voice. After the struggle of decision making, there is a time of contented resting.

Some people hear the voice of God in music. You may remember the movie Amadeus, the story of the brilliant and irratic musician, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The movie is narrated in flashbacks by a man who envied Mozart and longed to be like him, a man called Antonio Salieri. At one point in the movie, Salieri is listening to Mozart conduct Serenade No. 10 in B flat major. He says:

On the page, it looked nothing…the beginning simple, almost comical…just a pulse. And then, suddenly, high above it…an oboe…a single note hanging there unwavering…until a clarinet took it over…sweetened it into a phrase of such delight….this was music such as I had never heard before…music filled with such longing, such unfulfilled longing, it seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.

There are many ways to hear God’s voice but our final question today is this: Why would we want to hear God’s voice? The answer is simple: All of us need and want more peace, more joy, more hope in our lives and in our world. We all need to know that we are not alone. We all need to let go of guilt, fear, sadness, blame and judgement.

So, let’s enter this New Year with confidence and resolve….confident that God’s voice is but a whisper away…and resolve to take time to listen for God’s voice in our lives.



Comments

Sorry comments are closed for this entry