"If You Listen Carefully"
Preached on September 23, 2001 by
The Reverend Dr. Robert A. Colman
Text: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
As my oldest son and I, in full scuba gear,
stepped off the platform of the dive boat, the wind swept Caribbean
grasped us within its swelling waves and moved us about at will.
However, as we made our descent below the surface, we found
within five feet a significant difference. While still
experiencing a subtle movement of the waters echoing the continuing
churning on the surface, the waters no longer were able to move
us about. They were calmer. When we reached our
final depth of one hundred feet, there was but still water.
The surface had no influence there.
Almost two weeks ago now, the waves of a human
obscenity swelled up and grabbed us collectively by the throat
and began tossing us about at will - our bodies, psyches, minds,
spirits, and most especially our hearts. And however
hard we have tried, in various and sundry ways, we have found
it virtually impossible to escape the influence of this storm's
chaotic ebb and flow on our lives. It has shattered lives,
broken hearts, generated fear, numbed spirits. Even numbed,
however, we struggle to make some sense out of senselessness
in hopes that we can find some way or ways to break this terrifying
tragedy's hold on us so it won't have any more power over us.
Who of us in this moment of time can't echo
many times over Ann Weem's lament on the occasion of her son's
death, "O God, find me! I am lost in the valley of grief,
and I cannot see my way out."
James Forbes suggested that a prime question of the human heart
these past two weeks has been, "Is there a word from God?"
I want to suggest this morning that there is but we have to
be listening carefully. There is so much surface noise.
We need to get beneath and beyond the surface, descend to the
depths, where a special silence stifles the storm's sounds and
enables us to listen attentively for some other sounds.
Underneath are the everlasting arms. Is it not below the
surface where deep speaks to deep and we touch and are touched
by God; God, that elusive presence about whom and for whom we've
had so many questions these past days and even wondered on occasion
if God is around at all? Is it not in the depths, way
down deep inside, where the spirit indwells, the spirit of God
that is always trying to reconnect our hearts with God's and
God's with ours so that we can truly abide in God and God abide
in us and centered there begin to live life the way we were
created to do? Is it not in the depths where the psalmist
counsel to be still and know that I am God becomes our mantra
as we try desperately to silence the noises dancing frenetically
about in our minds and hearts in order to hear if God is saying
anything? Hildegaard of Bingen wrote, "the soul is kissed
by God in its innermost regions."
While descending to the depths carries its own
anxieties, fears, and risks, we are never asked to do such diving
alone. Those of you who scuba dive know that a basic rule
is never, never, never dive alone. My son and I were never
separated by more than several feet. It is the nature
of the church as a community to descend into the depths together,
and there to help and support one another, even share our air
when necessary. And there are tools to help us.
As there was equipment that enabled my son and me to dive and
breathe in waters deep, there are tools to help us, personally
and corporately, in this time of trying to discern God's presence
among us and hear God's word for us.
We may not think of them as tools (and indeed they are far more)
but they indeed help us move beyond the surface to the depths.
Worship, that which we do here together this morning.
Are you listening in the silences, the music, the words, and
the thoughts ascending from your hearts for a word from God?
Also, there is prayer, meditation, and the reading of scriptures.
These are the spiritual disciplines of our faith, the tools
by which a deeper and clearer sense of the presence of God with
us and love for us is engendered; they are the means of connecting
us to grace and its transforming and healing power renewing
confidence in our faith's affirmation that nothing, absolutely
nothing, not even death, in whatever proportions it confronts
us, can separate us from the love of God as we know it in Christ
Jesus; The last word over human history will not be ours, nor
that of a terrorist, but God's and God's word became flesh and
dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, a glory we have beheld,
and that is a word of love, justice, and peace, reminding us
in word, thought, and deed, that in God's kingdom "never again
will they hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain."
Going deeper to that quiet place within and
about, being still, we are counseled to listen carefully.
If we do, we just might begin to hear, well, for one, gentle
footsteps, barely audible, walking beside us, and not only us,
but the sleepless spouses pacing the floor of the family room
wondering what am I going to do now, walking beside rescuers
climbing over broken concrete blocks and melted steel girders,
beside the stunned thousands, miles removed from ground zero,
now even more stunned by a pink slip, walking beside the dazed,
the frightened be they young or old.
If you are still and carefully listen you just
might hear footsteps, sure and gentle, and sense that God is
near. And from that nearness you just might hear the almost
imperceptible sound of tears flowing down, and not just down
our cheeks, nor others, but God's; yes, God's, the God whose
own heart was shattered in thousands of pieces on that Tuesday
more than a week past. And lest I forget to say it, let
me say it now, don't ever let yourself be heard to suggest or
let anyone else say, without being challenged, that what happened
that Tuesday is God's will. It was anything but God's
will. God, by whatever named called, is a God of life,
not death. Howard Thurman wrote, "what is against life
will be destroyed by life, for what is against life is against
God."
Our God is not observing all this, as a popular
song of some years past suggested, "from a distance" but is
"closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet", is in our
midst, intimately present, and experiencing everything that
we are and more and in that more God's heart, from which all
life is birthed, is even now beginning to breathe new life and
beginnings into the crumbled ruins of lives. "The mills
of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding sure."
If you are looking to hear a word from God,
listen not on the mountaintop away from the maddening crowd,
rather listen in the ordinary, commonplace experiences, situations,
circumstances of a day where, as a poet said, "earth's crammed
with heaven and every common bush afire with God." Listen
for God's sounds coming from the depths of that concrete golgotha
where thousands of God's children are now buried; listen for
God in the young child's bewildered questions as to why isn't
mommy or daddy coming home; listen to the sounds emanating from
the blood donor and volunteer lines where selflessness for a
moment overcame concerns for self and safety; listen for God,
not on the surface but in the depths of life where human beings
are hurting, asking unanswerable questions, and wondering about
tomorrow.
Yes, there, in the depths, hear, however faintly,
footsteps drawing near, and the flowing of God's tears, mingling
with the sound of God's lament, "my joy is gone, grief is upon
me, my heart is sick for the hurt of my people I am hurt.
I mourn." More than half of all the psalms are laments.
A lament, as all laments, is born out of a loving and caring
heart. If you don't care, you don't lament. For
those however who give expression to their pain, there is in
those heart borne words the beginning of healing as they touch
God's heart.
Oh that we might begin to understand just how
deeply and passionately our God is in love with us and how many
times, time and time again, God has wanted to draw us, as a
mother hen her chicks under the protective cover of her wings,
and still so yearns.
Listen carefully, in the quiet depths, and you
just might hear God gently whispering through divine tears,
do not be afraid. There is no counsel more frequently
given in scripture than this counsel to not be afraid.
"I have called you by name, you are mine, do not be afraid,
I am with you.·" As the poet Tennyson wrote, "cast all
your cares on God; that anchor holds."
Listen carefully today and in the days ahead
and you just might hear a still small voice through all the
heartache, earthquake, thunder, and terror, say, as Jesus to
Lazarus, "Come out, come out, come out from the tomb, from all
that which entombs you, and begin to live again." "And
lo, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth."
Amen.
