Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; 2 Peter 1:16-19; Mark
9:2-10
"This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him"
As far
as I could find in searching through scripture, these are the last words spoken by God, the Father in the bible. In the Old
Testament God talked to people quite a bit - He spoke to Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Jonah, others, again and again. He gave them
commandments, warnings, instructions, and directions.
In the New Testament, As far as I could find, God, the Father
speaks only twice... and these are his last words.
He didn’t need to say anything else. Everything we need to
know about the spiritual life can be summed up in the words: "This is my son, the beloved. Listen to him"
So
how do we do that? Jesus doesn’t have a human voice we can hear with our ears. He doesn’t have a phone number,
a beeper or even an answering machine with a prerecorded message. How do we listen to Jesus in the 21st Century?
Listening
is a complex skill. I studied it in college and shortly afterwards, long before I had children, taught a lot of classes that
were designed to help parents listen to their children. I’d love to meet some of those people again............. I’d
ask their forgiveness.
Listening is not a mechanical process. There is no recipe and it more than just a skill that
can be taught. Real listening involves the heart - I think that’s the key to listening to Jesus.
The message Jesus
has for us can’t be written down as rules or instructions. His life was spent showing us how to love. He spoke from
the heart, acted from the heart. We need to listen to what he says from our hearts.
So how do we do that?
One
thing is to be quiet. We can’t listen when we’re talking. We can’t listen when we are thinking about what
we are going to say or do. I don’t believe Peter fully realized the full impact of the transfiguration - he was too
busy thinking about building a monument. An important step in any kind of listening is to be quiet.
I think another
step is to slow down - It’s hard to really listen and take in when we’re on the move, under pressure, in a hurry.
The language that Jesus uses to speaks to us at this time is silence -The only way we can fully grasp his message is to be
with him in silence.
I started taking piano lessons last winter and it wasn’t too bad when I was with the teacher
but when I’d practice at home it never sounded right. I was too embarrassed to have my wife hear me so I’d always
practice when she wasn’t around. Then she walked in when I was trying really hard and sounding really bad. She looked
at me and said - "That piano is really out of tune.
I had actually been hitting most of the right keys, in the
right time but the piano was out of tune.
I think the same is true is listening to Jesus - we can do all the right
things for the right reasons but if we’re not in tune with him, it just doesn’t work.
How do we get in tune?
...We hired a piano tuner - $55 - when he was done, it sounded great.
The piano tuner spent two hours listening. First
he used a tuning fork, then he listened and adjusted, listened and adjusted.
He didn’t do anything else while
he was tuning our piano - he didn’t bring a radio, didn’t have a beeper or cell phone - no Franklin planner. I
walked by to check on how it was going and he was friendly, but made it very clear there was no space for conversation. Listening
took his full attention.
This is a good time to get our spiritual pianos tuned. Jesus is like a tuning fork and we are
strings that need to be tuned on a regular basis. It is a process of slowing down, listening and adjusting with our full attention.
Remember the last words that God, the Father gave to us in the bible: "This is my son, the beloved. Listen to
him" -and, as Peter says in our second reading: We "will do well to be attentive ... as a lamp shining in a dark
place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in (our) hearts." Listening to Jesus is listening to love.
It
seems easier and easier to fill up our lives to overflowing. We get messages and pressure from all directions - listen to
this, buy this, do this, go there, get that. Life is full of hassles, frustration, and busyness - who has the time or space
for love?
Jesus does. He is the beloved son.
When we listen to him, we learn what is really important, what our
gifts are and how we are called to serve as part of the body of Christ. It doesn’t take a lot of time or a special place.
Jesus is with us all the time, but listening to him requires that we slow down and pay attention. This can happen a number
of times throughout the day: during our morning shower, while cleaning up the kitchen, driving to work, during commercials,
when mowing the lawn. When you stop and think about it there are a number of times each day when our mind and our heart can
be free to be with Jesus.
We can choose to slow down and be quiet enough to be in Jesus’ presence, to feel his
love and to get a sense of his wisdom. We can choose to listen to Jesus by reflecting on scriptures, practicing centering
prayer and by simply being with him in silence.
We went to hear the Midland Symphony Orchestra last year. All the musicians
were warming up and it sounded like chaos. Then, in a moment of silence, a man reached over and touched a single key on the
piano and all of the instruments came together on that tone and they played a wonderful symphony.
We can choose to find
a moment of silence to tune into Jesus - and when we all do this, the music will be beautiful.
.
