3rd Sunday of Easter (04.05.14)
The Quality Of Listening
How well do you listen? If you interpret the question to mean ‘how well do I hear?’ then you have missed the point! Hearing and listening are not the same. Everyone gifted with the ability to hear, listens, but much of our conscious listening is involuntary. For example, think of people who live in a conurbation area which has a neaby airport of size. They are assailed by noise levels which they don’t choose to hear but, inescapably, do! It’s the same if your bedroom in your new home has a busy bus route running directly outside. You are super conscious of the noise for the first few weeks but later, when asked about it, you say you don’t hear it anymore even though the same traffic passes under your bedroom window!
True listening requires more than having acute hearing. True listening combines the spiritual and the physical. In addition to auditory excellence it requires a sensitivity of soul. This, in turn, depends on a soul being filled with God’s holy Spirit. Such spiritual listening is a Christlike prayer, of deep communion with God, the greatest listener of all. When the motivation for our listening is spiritual, in other words something we choose to do and dedicate to God, then we are placing ourselves at the service of the Lord.
St Luke’s Gospel extract (24:13-35) for the 3rd. Sunday after Easter is commonly described as ‘The Road to Emmaus’. It tells of two of Jesus’ disciples setting out on foot from Jerusalem for Emmaus some seven miles distant through demanding terrain. They were clearly devastated by Jesus’ death on Calvary’s Cross. With Luke as the guide, we can briefly explore their mindset.
The authorities ‘success’ in having Jesus crucified would have unleashed a full-scale hunt for his accomplices. While some hid, others left. The Risen Jesus joins these two on the road. Preoccupied and fearful, they did not recognise the stranger not because Jesus was unrecognisable but because, in their state of mind, Jesus’ presence was an impossibility. He’s dead! If they notice this stranger’s wounded hands, feet and head, it doesn’t register. Many Jews, in the occupation, would have carried wounds of one sort or another.
Their busy, secretive exchanges may have stopped when Jesus joined them. Luke tells us one of the two walkers is named, Cleopas. Jesus asks what they had been discussing. Cleopas was surprised at the new arrival’s lack of awareness of what had kept Jerusalem buzzing. He gave Jesus an outline and, in so doing, gives us a major clue about the depth of their sense of loss over Jesus’ death. He says: “… our own hope had been …”. It’s a telling choice of tense. It’s called the ‘pluperfect’ tense. The ‘had been’ emphasises something so finished as to be beyond recall. It implies that a person’s hope has been utterly crushed; utterly destroyed despite all their efforts and aspirations.
Jesus’ silent spiritual sensitivity was an invitation for these two disciples to pour their hearts out. They unburden themselves of their deep pain, grateful that their fellow walker poses no threat. The hunt for disciples of Jesus of Nazareth was already days old.
A person trapped in grief needs help to vocalise her or his deeply felt emotion. Bottled-up grief impedes listening no matter how good the advice. Grief-stricken people may see a person’s lips moving and hear recognisable sounds in the form of spoken words, but little is retained. Jesus’ patient spiritual listening is the mark of his love for them.
The journey described by Luke is usually referred to as the ‘Road to Emmaus’. It would have been more akin to a dusty, unprotected, rutted track best walked in the predawn light. The land would have cooled overnight. The refreshingly moist early-morning air would have made walking less burdensome. All too soon the appearance of the rising sun would have announced the coming, searing heat. The predawn walking pace would have noticeably slowed. Through the long day Jesus would have listened. A person’s depth of grief determines how long they need to give voice to their pain. Jesus was not in a hurry with his two disciples anymore than he is with us. Eventually, silence would have announced that the two were emotionally empty.
At some point, Jesus would have begun his response recognizing that, at last, they were able to listen and that, through their listening, the truth that Jesus shared would begin their spiritual resuscitation. Absorbed by Jesus’s words they hardly noticed the time passing. Dusk came quickly, as it does in the Middle East, and with it the urgency to find shelter from muggers who moved under cover of the dark.
Travellers, then, customarily carried a flat, hard-crusted, unleavened, ‘journey bread’ normally eaten with a little water. The action of the taking, the blessing, the breaking and the sharing of bread would be common practice among poor people. Isn’t it always the poor who show the greatest hospitality! So Jesus did nothing different from other people. What made his action unique would have been the disciples’ déjà vu. Had these two been told what Jesus had said and done in the upper room; had they perhaps been present in some capacity? Unmistakably they linked Jesus’ action at their wayside inn to that upper room at the Sabbath supper!
Though Saul became Paul in, as it were, a blinding flash, the discovery and the rediscovery of faith in Jesus is a process requiring time. In the latter part of the day’s journey had these two found themselves rediscovering hope as they listened to the stranger, now become their trusted companion? The breaking of the bread was when it all came together for them! Jesus, who had died, had risen as he had foretold! Jesus was alive sitting at table with them, breaking the bread! Suddenly, his wounds would have been identifiable and equally evident was his love for them. Jesus’ was alive! They had been spiritually resuscitated.
The disciples’ proposal to walk back, through the night, would have been met with incredulity by others sharing the inn. Nevertheless, these went back to Jerusalem and the frightened, in-hiding disciples they had left hours before. The Good News is not overcome by the dark of this world.
The truth is compelling. In spiritual listening, the truth reveals itself. Spiritual listening has nothing to do with academic professional brightness and everything to do with humility. Mary, the Mother of Lord, listened to Gabriel and heard the truth because she was ‘full of grace’. Down through the Christian centuries, good people have listened to glimpses of the truth and amplified it in word and deed as well as martyrdom. St. Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes and the children at Fatima listened to the truth brought by Mary and millions have since been blessed in their own listening.
In spiritual listening a person puts his or her whole self at the service of God not for a moment, or a day but for a lifetime. At heart, the vocation of all Christians is spiritual listening. Enclosed religious live this truth in their wordlessness.
‘They Speak By Silences’ is a book from the pen of a Carthusian monk in the silence of the Charterhouse. First published in French in 1948 its purpose is to encourage and help all who seek to know and experience Carthusian wisdom and spirituality even in the noisy secular world. Few can experience the recollection that exists in a Charterhouse. But we are all invited, on our dusty, rutted track of life, to welcome the Risen Lord disguised perhaps as the unexpected traveller. We need to be open to set aside, daily, as far as possible at least some moments, however short, for recollection. In that recollection the Risen Lord speaks to us if only we would practice discerning listening.
Eli, a High Priest of the Jewish religion, was entrusted with the spiritual formation of the young prophet Samuel. When God called Samuel, the boy, not recognizing God’s, voice ran to Eli three times. (Listening to God’s voice requires patient practice) Eventually Eli told Samuel, when he next heard the mysterious voice, to say: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10)
Our world, even our Church, has inverted Eli’s wise counsel! “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening” has become, < Listen, Lord, your servant is speaking >. God asks us for silence and stillness but, too often, we insist on filling all church and prayer moment with words spoken or sung!
For a person to engage with this level of spiritual listening, she or he has to be free of all self-interest, from bias and hypocracy and prejudice. Indeed we need to free ourselves from a desire or need to judge at all. Pope Francis, when challenged by the media to rule on homosexuals said, “Who am I to judge?” In this Francis was referencing the words of Jesus: (Luke 6.37) “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” In Matthew’s Gospel 7:1-5 Jesus’ teaching is amplified:“Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For by the standard you judge you will be judged, and the measure you use will be the measure you receive. Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to see the beam of wood in your own? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye,’ while there is a beam in your own? You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Jesus, when challenged by scribes and Pharisees who had caught a woman in the act of adultery to uphold the Law of Stoning, replied: “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7)
Jesus is the perfect listener. If only we would allow ourselves to open up to him truthfully, we would find what we feared was an impossible journey, possible, a journey of abiding trust and strong hope! But to make this discovery we must first commit ourselves! When you tell someone that you love them, you are committed, you are vulnerable! When you tell God that you love him, you are committed but you do not have to fear vulnerability for God’s love is assured.
When we put into action in our own life the words of the young Samuel (1Samuel 3:10): “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”, God truly rejoices and we sense his deep joy and love.