Year B

Mark 8:27-38

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Listening With “The Ears of the Heart”

The Rule of St. Benedict, a sixth century document laying out a plan for living the monastic life, begins with the word: “Listen!” The author Benedict of Nursia implores the monk to attend to “the ear of his heart.” This comes as wise advice especially when there are so many eloquent voices making claims about how to live in the real world: talk-show hosts, seminar leaders, etc. with the church but one voice among many, clamoring for the attention of the marketplace. The writer of our proverb today would have understood our challenge. “Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.” Wisdom proclaims, “Those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.

I suppose we can hope for this even though disaster can happen in anyone’s life. Yet, as Lady Wisdom raises her voice so our culture instead of listening, sometimes ignores the wisdom provided to us. Why do we resist wisdom? Well, partly because we are overwhelmed with options, choices, and advice. Yet, we need to listen for wisdom to faithfully live in the presence of God. Listening in the Proverbs is always linked to obedience, and obedience is participation in the practices that lead to wisdom: hearing and reading scripture, prayers of confession and intercession, humility before God and others. This wisdom has very little to do with knowledge and more to do with insight that comes from service of God and neighbor and is possible as we participate in the practices of God.

Wisdom helps us to know that God is with us, in all things, to know that we are not alone and if we are made to reflect God’s image into God’s world, then wisdom, the one though whom that world was created, is precisely what we need. Thus, we should choose to seek out and cling to wisdom and wisdom will be given to those who fear God so that they can understand how God’s world works and act appropriately, and indeed joyfully, within it. Those who listen Wisdom promises “I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.” Yet, to walk in the ways of Wisdom is demanding and definitely not easy. The disciples certainly understood this. Was Peter really listening to Jesus all the time he was with him?

He did not seem to be getting it. We’ve got to love Peter. On the one hand he proclaims Jesus as the Messiah and on the other he tries to rebuke Jesus for embracing his future suffering and death. Peter reacted in a truly human way to what Jesus was saying as he speaks out of his faith and out of his fear. He proclaims Jesus, and loses his direction in the same ways that we do sometimes. Yet, Peter becomes the rock upon which the church is built, the foundation. Today’s gospel reading comes at the midpoint of Mark’s gospel. Throughout the first half of the book, two narrative threads intertwine: on the one hand, there is a growing knowledge of Jesus’ gift as a teacher and healer and on the other hand, there is building tension between him and the religious authorities.

Many times in the first eight chapters of the gospel, Jesus has asked those whose lives he changed to keep it a secret just as he did in the text today. Many believe that Jesus did this because he did not want people to talk about him and his ministry until they had the complete picture. If they talked about Jesus as teacher, healer, leader and storyteller, these attributes would be true but they weren’t telling the whole story. They couldn’t know the whole story and who he is if they didn’t know about the cross or what it truly means to be a disciple. When Peter calls him the Messiah, he may have the right title but the wrong understanding of what the title means for Jesus. Jesus had been giving hints along the way but then began to teach them about a suffering Messiah and after this exchange, Jesus no longer told people to keep the good news silent.

Jesus’ question to the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” would have been an appropriate question to help identify the next steps in his ministry for following this passage, Jesus and the disciples head for Jerusalem. Peter’s confession marks the change from a ministry to the public to concentration on equipping the disciples with divine wisdom to continue the Lord’s work in the world. The true disciple Christ says must set their minds not on human wants and desires but on “divine things.” Jesus puts God’s perspective in stark terms for Peter and for us. We are to, “say no to ourselves, take up our cross” and follow him into a life of serving and giving and sacrificing.

Denying one’s self and taking up the cross is a response, as we listen with the ears of our hearts and are committed to the life of Jesus alive in us. We must be passionately committed to the life of Jesus, for we are indeed called to be prepared to share in the fate of the one we follow, and to recognize that it is there that true life is found. Yet, taking up one’s cross is not something naturally accomplished, just as our spiritual life is not something that comes easy but with work. The life we live in the community of the church is not always easy because all communities are made up of people – flawed human beings.

James, one of the more difficult letters to read really sets us straight today as he focuses on what followers of Jesus ought to be practicing. James says to those who aspire to speak while others listen, “Not many of you should become teachers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Thus begins James’ essay on right speech, giving us an overview of what true wisdom looks like: taking care in how we speak, giving care to those in distress, and being careful about what we let into our lives. James is pointing out that it is one thing to confess that Jesus is Lord and it’s another to love your neighbor, and carry that love through in everything we do. And say!

Yet, to speak in a way that always shows forth God’s love seems beyond us. Daily we confront our anger, envy, and fears, expressed though our words and deeds. James knew that left to our own devices, we go from blessing to curse and God knows this. God knows our faults and those of our neighbors and God loves us. The cure for all of these tongue toxins, James suggests is the steady practice of faith with the help of the Holy Spirit, God’s gift to the Church and its people. Without God’s love, God’s Spirit in our lives, we are subject to our own desires. It’s God’s spirit, living in us, which is our only bridle.   

James’ warnings about language seem all the more pressing today. As we move ever further into the information age, we also move ever further into the disinformation age. We hear Wisdom crying out in the streets…listen with the ears of your hearts dedicate your tongues to the language of God, for if we do, our actions will follow. The fact is that there is a lot of power in speech while listening asks us to surrender our opinions, ideas, and judgments. This quality of listening is Wisdoms first invitation: to be still and recognize the counsel that Wisdom has to offer that the way of wisdom in this world and in the next, is to love God totally and the neighbor as the self. The secret is out “Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it!