My job, as your pastor, has become more complicated.
I want to confide in you about this.
I want you to know why the events of the last several weeks – not just in Washington DC, but here in Jaffrey too – have weighed heavily upon me.
I hope that if I am honest with you – if we are honest with each other – we will understand each other better, and we will be a stronger, more faithful community.
But it’s risky.
Though honesty and truth are among the most important things in any relationship, they are moving targets. There is no guarantee that one person’s honest concerns will be compelling to another person. My understanding of truth may or may not match with, or nourish your view of the world.
The unpredictable nature of honesty and truth is certainly not a new thing. It has always been the case that each individual has his or her own unique vision of what is honest and what is true – a vision that grows from the fertile soil of the individual’s unique experience of life.
Thankfully though, we human beings are social creatures and so even though each of us has a cherished and unique way of seeing the world, we nevertheless find ways to be together in community.
How?
I believe that there is one particular human strength, one particular skill, that makes it possible to create a community that flourishes in spite of difference.
That skill is the ability to listen.
Well that doesn’t seem like a very heavy lift. Can’t anyone who has ears and the sense of hearing listen?
Well…
I think there is a difference between hearing and listening. Yes, anyone with ears and a sense of hearing can hear. But that doesn’t mean they are listening.
To listen is to recognize that the person speaking has as much of a claim to truth and as much desire to be honest as you do.
To listen is to respect another person’s truth, even if it differs from your own.
To listen is to be able to seriously consider how another person’s truth might influence your view of the world.
You might come to value the other person’s truth and incorporate that idea into your own way of seeing the world. You might, upon reflection, reject the other person’s ideas. As long as both acceptance, and rejection are done intentionally, and with respect, then in either case listening is a door to transformation.
***
Before I got sidetracked, and wandered down these speculations about truth and honesty and the nature of listening, I began this sermon saying that my job, as your pastor, has felt more complicated lately.
I said also, that I wanted to be honest and truthful with you about what I mean by that.
Thankfully, I see now that part of what I want to say about my job being more complicated, is wrapped up with the nature of listening.
Here’s the thing.
When you think about the act of communication – an act that involves a speaker and a listener – the ministry, as a vocation, is a bit of a one way street. The job of a minister has evolved, through centuries of tradition, to give the minister a disproportionate amount of time to speak. Reverend Mark gets to talk, and talk, and talk, teach, teach, teach, interpret, speculate and pontificate. Everyone else in the church – all of you – are expected to sit quietly and listen.
This, I suppose, is the problem that I have keenly felt in recent weeks.
It’s not that I don’t like speaking or having people attend to my words. If I wasn’t motivated by a selfish desire to be the center of attention at all times, I probably would not be a minister.
But, again, if you think about an act of communication involving both speaker and listener, I have become uncomfortable, recently, with the imbalance of always being the speaker. I feel, more keenly than ever, the burden of always being the talker.
It would be wrong to ignore the influence of all of you – through whose actions and through whose commitment this community is given life, purpose and meaning. But having an almost exclusive hold of the microphone, and being given uninterrupted time, each week, to hold forth one’s ideas – this is a state of affairs that can lead to a kind of unchecked power to set the tone of the community. This is a kind of power that must be carefully reckoned with.
A few Sundays ago – on January 26th – I preached a sermon entitled The Conscience of a Nation. The sermon was written as a response to the inauguration of a new American president.
That sermon was among the most consequential sermons I have given from this, or any, pulpit.
In it, I made a point of speaking the name of the incoming President, and I articulated in clear terms my belief that that individual is a dire threat to the moral character of our nation. I proclaimed that I consider it my duty, as a follower of Jesus Christ – and as a minister – to speak out against the actions of that political figure. Finally, I also made it pretty clear that if you choose to come to the United Church of Jaffrey on Sunday morning for the next four years, the likelihood would be good that you might hear the minister delivering a righteous tirade against the immoral actions of the new administration.
Some people thanked me for giving that sermon.
Others, unsurprisingly, decided to leave our church community as a result of it.
I expected that this might happen – but when the folks told me they were going to leave, I went into a bit of a tailspin.
The reality of losing parishioners was very different in reality than it had been as a hypothetical possibility.
I remain committed to my intention of speaking out against mass deportation, against legislative control of women’s reproductive rights, against the systematic oppression of our LGBTQ plus siblings, against political retribution, and the violence of vigilante militia’s. To remain silent about these concerns would be the same as supporting them. But I am also aware that when I gave that sermon, in the manner that I gave it, I did not reckon carefully with the power given to me by the pulpit.
In retrospect, I wish I had conferred with you, and listened carefully to you before I stood in the pulpit that morning.
I did not.
When I spoke the President’s name, and I declared that the church, under my leadership, would not hesitate to condemn that person and his administration, I did so, knowing that, as I stood in the pulpit I had the floor. I could not be contradicted. In this way, I used the pulpit to set the tone for the church. It was my conviction, not your approval, that motivated me.
I still think it is important to speak out against injustice, but I acknowledge that I neglected to do something equally important.
Listen.
I forced the issue without listening first. When I did this, I caused some people to leave the church. It was not until after they declared their intention to leave, and I was left in the emotional wake of their departure, that it became clear to me that by expressing my moral conviction I had not only taken it upon myself to set the tone for the church. I had also reinforced the very division that I was speaking out against.
**
Listening.
Listening is something we do.
When we do it well, attending carefully to what is being said, we learn… we enter into the possibility of transformation.
God is there.
When transformation is possible, God is present.
Listening, then, is a spiritual act. It places sacredness in our outstretched hands, so that we can be nourished by it.
There is something else about listening.
It is also something that we give.
Listening is a gift.
When we listen attentively to another person, we give that person something of immeasurable value.
Attentive listening shows that we value the speaker’s integrity as a person.
When we listen, we acknowledge the speaker’s sacredness. We recognize that they, like us, have inherited God’s gift of a human soul – beautiful and wise.
I think of this – the gift of listening – when I attend to the words of Jesus that Rikki read for us earlier.
This was Christ’s famous sermon on the mount – also known, by tradition, as the beatitudes. The words are familiar to us:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
This is not the language of power. Jesus is not saying: “I have made a decision and now you have to go along with it.”
I think that these words are a kind of gift – a gift that he gave to a people who had been silenced.
Poor people on the edge of the Roman empire, who were accustomed to being ignored.
Accustomed to being treated, not like a sacred presence, but like so much stuff – like a resource to be exploited.
Jesus who, you will remember, has been travelling the dusty roads of Galilee healing the wretched, is speaking the word of God. He is revealing, with his words, that he has been listening attentively to their suffering.
The poor, the hungry, the ones who weep…
God listens attentively to those who have not been listened to.
**
I have been asked if the church services at the United Church of Jaffrey will, for the next four years, become just another place to be depressed about everything.
Is the United Church of Jaffrey going to become an institution dedicated to criticizing the government?
No.
Our worship service will not be like watching MSNBC.
United Church of Jaffrey will be (as we have always been) a church dedicated to the worship of God through the teachings of Jesus.
Like any Christian, I will try to copy Christ, and listen.
It is important to speak out.
But it is also important to listen.
When speaking is the result of listening – then we begin to grow into our own as a beloved faith community.
Amen.