LISTEN FIRST

Most of us have at least once been with that person who is sure that he/she knows what they are talking about, but they don’t.  Sometimes they give unsolicited directions to the driver of the car.  Sometimes they are the ones who show up at the doctor’s office in order to tell the doctor what is wrong with their health and what needs to be done to about it.  Sometimes it’s the alleged student in the classroom who is there to explain what the teacher and everybody else in the room ought to already know, but don’t.  Sometimes it’s the guy in church who arrives to answer everyone’s questions about Jesus – questions that nobody has asked.  Often it is the one with the computer who’s here to help you, to “help you” with their skills and your lack thereof. 

What they all have in common is that they don’t know what in the world they are talking about, and they won’t be bothered to be told so.  To know what you don’t know is a wonderful gift to yourself – and more importantly to everyone around you.  And even when you do think that you know, what a blessing it is just to keep your mouth shut. Allowing those who are actually wise to lead us is a wonderful thing.

Enter Peter, James and John.  They’re on the mountain top where they had been invited to travel with Jesus.  And no sooner have they arrived than Peter begins explaining to everyone in the group how best to proceed on the journey.  “Look,” he says, “we’ll put up 3 tents here for everyone to stay in, and there will be just us to sit around, to sit at the feet of The Master, because we all know how this mission is supposed to play out.  Or at least I do.”  As St. Luke explains, it was not the first time that we have to be reminded that Peter just somehow didn’t always get it. He didn’t know what he was talking about.  This time, God literally had to put the disciples into a trance in order for all of them simply to be quiet because the one person who actually knew what he was talking about had not yet been allowed to speak.  “This is my son; listen to him.”  Listen first, listen first and then speak if you must.  It turns out that the mission had little to do with sitting around and everything to do with heading right into the encounter with danger, with misfortune, with putting ourselves at risk by getting close to the sick, challenging the false rules that seemed to carry the day, welcoming the poor and the rejects, pointing out religious hypocrisy, ultimately being led to suffering and death.  And Peter was thinking it was about basking in the pleasures of heavenly peace. 

We let God speak first, God speaks first, and then we respond.  Even when we gather here for Eucharist, there’s a deliberate reason for the scope and shape of our liturgy; God speaks first, and then we act.  The very last thing that God and the world need are wanna-be disciples who think they know how best to carry out God’s work without first finding out what God actually thinks about all that.  It began on the top of Mt. Tabor 2000 years ago and it has continued throughout the course of Christian history and it continues still. 
That’s why Lent still is so necessary.  It’s our time to sit down and let Jesus speak his word to us, but not in order to give us permission to remain in place.  It is in order to be certain just exactly what the mission is, what it’s supposed to look like in this time and this place, in a season of racism, climate change, barbaric wars, unprecedented greed and income disparity, division in politics and religion.  These are new times requiring God’s wisdom before our attempts to fix things all by ourselves.  There’s just too much out there that we don’t know about what we need to know, and we had better begin by knowing at least that much, and keeping our mouths shut until we do. 

Sin doesn’t necessarily mean that we run around engaged in doing bad things on purpose.  Sin can mean instead a kind of darkening of the inner light that was put in to our hearts originally at the beginning by God in order to help us find our way; and it can mean the temptation to speak before we know how, and to act before we really understand what we have been asked to do. Lent is invariably a call to change as the result of having listened, truly listened, to God’s word.  May we pray today for open ears first, and only then to respond as we must and as we aught.