“Listen to Him”

February 18, 2007

Scripture Reading: Luke 9:28-36

Rev. Dr. Carol  L. Kerr

 Blue Point Congregational Church

 “This is my beloved Son – Listen to him.”  The voice of God said to the disciples.

What happened?  Jesus has taken his disciples, Peter, John and James, up to a mountain top to pray.  In this secluded spot the disciples fell asleep.  When they awoke they saw Jesus radiant with the glory of God.  His holiness was so on fire that they were almost blinded.  In the circle of light there were two others, Moses and Elijah speaking with Jesus.  The disciples could make out fragments of words – “exodus,” “the end,” “sacrifice,” “into thy hands,” “new covenant,” and “my son, my son.”   It was not a tea time conversation.  It was not a friendly catching up of events.  Were they still dreaming?  No they were awake.  But, this reality was so densely divine it made their eyes water. The light was so brilliant that it seemed to bite the inside of their lids red.  They wished for a veil to shade their face, but there was not one.  Then a self consciousness swept over them, as if we had suddenly realized that we were listening in on a meeting between Queen of England, the Pope, and the President all at once.  What to do?  They offered them a place to sit, some booths made out of shady branches.  As they set about to do this, suddenly a dense fog penetrated everything.  It was as thick as the pillar of smoke that guided the Hebrews into the wilderness.  As dense as the sheckena of God descended upon the holy of holies, and dwelling on the arc of the covenant.  They lost sight of Christ, Moses and Elijah.  They lost sight of each other.  It was as if they had been blinded by the thick presence.  Then there came a deep rumbling which made them feel these words trembling in their guts as much as hear these words with their ears.  This is my beloved Son – Listen to him.

Listen!  The voice proclaimed.  Listen!  When was the last time we really listened to anything?  Our life is so full or arbitrary and senseless sounds.  The vroom of car engines passing on the road.    The tap tapping of the keys and I type this sermon.  The sticky snap of gum being chewed.  A tinny sounding cell phone blasting rock and roll in the next room.   Moreover, we rarely listen to each other well.  It is a notorious thing for marriage counselors.  The speaker holds an object in his or her hand.  It can be a pen, a rock, a feather, anything.  It is to designate that that person has the floor and is allowed to talk as much as they want until they relinquish the object to the listener who is then allowed to respond. 

Listen the voice of God tells us.  When was the last time you really listened to anything?  For me, it was last Wednesday night when I awoke and listened to the blizzard howling outside my window.  I had my eyes closed and I truly listened without distraction focusing my every thought on the storm.  It was in the darkness house and stillness of my body that I  tried to understand the meaning of the wind howling 40-60 knots off the ocean.  Howling like a betrayed witch.  Howling like a dog that had lost his master.  Howling like a siren alarmed for the world at large.   At that point I opened my eyes to look at our digital clock.  I was reassured when I saw “3:30” in red numbers not blinking, which meant the electricity had not yet gone off.  The blizzard’s insanity had not yet extinguished the heat and lights, and snuffed out all that we depend upon.  I was thankful for this and closed my eyes again to listen.  An artic front was coming in and had dropped the temperatures to 10 degree and the wind chill incalculable.  My mind began to go to with the wind.  Blasting torrents of froth down 18 foot seas.  Rattling the weather towers at 110 knots on top of Mount Washington.  Creating twisted and perverse ice sculpture on the beaten rocks.   There was about a foot distance, and one window between me and the tortured weather outside.  And, in the old house that we live in, sometimes a cold finger would leak in and touch my forehead as I laid there listening.  I heard the sound of a snow plow going by which reassured me.  Sometime after I fell back to sleep.  How many of you listened to that storm last Wed. in the middle of the night?    How many of you listen to God like you listened to that storm?

I read this week in national geographic magazine “Adventure” about a hiker, Zac Hoyt, who went to climb a piece of mountain in Alaska called the “Devils Thumb,” a 9,078 foot fang of grant that is 26 miles off of Frederick Sound.  It was winter and he decided to be helicopter in and to ski out down Baird Glacier 32 miles back home.  He had climbed the Thumb and was almost out of the glacier field when disaster struck.  The weather was deteriorating (in fact turning into a blizzard a lot like the one on Wednesday).  He skied across a snow bridge over one of the glacier’s crevasses and it collapsed beneath him.  On the way down, he slammed against the vertical walls of the narrow slot, dislocating his shoulder and cutting his finger.  After falling 100 feet he landed flat footed on soft snow, sitting on his skis.  The sled he had been pulling came crashing down onto his pack, and then he was clobbered by blocks of snow from the broken bridge.  He had landed on a lower ice bridge like the one that had broken.  He was inside the glacier with blue ice towering on both sides like a 10 story building.  He set up his tent as night was falling.  At the edge of the tent it abruptly fell off into the bowels of the glacier.  That night he listened really listened.  Not just to the howling wind of the storm, but in the darkness he could hear the glacier’s creep slide toward the sea by an intermittent cacophony of cracks and moans – “an eerie sound of the glacier digesting its latest meal.” 

“This is my beloved son – Listen to him.”  Says God.    We need to listen to God’s son, Jesus the Christ, the way we listen to the wind howling in a blizzard, the way Zac Hoyt listened to moaning of the glacier as he sat within it waiting for the dawn, and his rescue.  We need to listen to Christ at night with our eyes closed.  We need to listen as if our life depended on it.  We need to listen in fear and trembling, haunted, and in wonder.  We need to listen and follow what we listen to out into the dark.

St. John of the Cross writes about a spiritual state he calls the “dark night of the soul”  For St. John if we want to climb the mountain of God, the way to the summit is a single minded desire of God that refuses to be delayed by any rival desire, whether for possession of worldly wealth, or any other kind of delight.  This is because the goal is not the gift it is the Giver of the gifts: 

            To reach satisfaction in all

              Desire its possession in nothing.

            To come to possess all

              Desire the possession of nothing.

            To arrive at being all

              Desire to be nothing.

A funny thing happened when I listened to the blizzard and the wind howling in the middle of the night.  At first it was scary.  At first I was so glad I was safe and warm.  But, underneath that there was another thing that happens.  As my mind followed the sound out upon the night, there was a strange freedom I feel.  As my mind abandoned all that is familiar around me, my bed, my alarm clock saying 3:30, my books, and explored the outer reaches of the night with the wind, I felt alive in the mystery.  Listening, really listening, I felt more real than I have in a long time.  Could that be what St. John was talking about.  Listening to the wind rage on I was for a moment radically detached from all things and I was open to a direct relationship its Creator.  Detached from everything I fly to God.

After the disciples, Peter, John and James were blinded by the thick presence of God.  After they heard these words.  This is my beloved son – Listen to him.  Suddenly Jesus reappeared back to his old self.  The bright light had gone.  Moses and Elijah had gone.   It was just Jesus the rabbi from Nazareth.  The man they had walked many a dusty roads with.  The man whose mother and brothers they knew.  The man they had seen as hungry and tired and as footsore as the rest of them. 

They came down from the mountain.  What did Jesus give them to listen to?  A man from the crowd cried, “I beg you, take a look at my son, my only child, and see the spirit convulses him.”  So Jesus, frustrated and the disciples inability to heal, went and healed the child himself.  Then Jesus said something to them.  He said this:  The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men.”  That is what they were to listen to.  They were not to listen to some tidbit on how to act properly religious.  They were not given a recipe on how to heal.  They didn’t get some prayer to memorize.  There was no pithy saying.  There wasn’t a sermon.  Instead, they listened to Jesus’ prediction that he was going to be given into the hands of their enemies and be killed.  How are you to listen to that?  It is a mystery and you listen to it like you listen to the howling of the wind and the low cracking booms happening in a glacier.  We are to give up everything and go out into that darkness.  It is scary but promises freedom and the way to God. 

This is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany.  Next Sunday begins the season of Lent.  Lent is a journey in which one realizes the complete gift of Jesus Christ for others.  It is a journey where we face the cross ourselves.  But, now, a few days after the blizzard, as I write the end of the sermon, I look out upon the abundant fallen snow the blizzard left behind.  I see the great drifts whipped into shape by that wind.  Right now, writing about the transfiguration of Christ, the snow is beautiful, and the sun dazzles off its’ brilliant bright white.  It is so bright it makes my eyes water.  It is a beautiful winter wonderland.