11th Sunday after Pentecost 27.7.08 Hearing the word of God
As Psalm 94 puts it: If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.
This, and countless other biblical references, exhort us to hear the word of God. Hear it and let it take root in our hearts, and then be expressed in action.
It seems, however, we are not inclined to hear the word of God.
Especially the words that tell us what to do, or not to do. We don’t like taking orders.
I heard once a member of a drug rehabilitation community explaining how his community works. One of the things this man said he enjoyed was to sit with someone at breakfast and receive any criticisms the other might have of him! I don’t think many of us would like to spend breakfast hearing our faults catalogued, but this man was humble enough and industrious enough to want to hear – so he could change.
We should all be willing to hear what God has to say about our faults, about what we could change to please Him more (breakfast or not). But this is just where we are likely to resist.
We do not hear the voice of the Lord because our fallen nature does not want to hear it.
Not at least when His voice puts demands on us (such as loving neighbour, or sharing possessions, or demanding strict chastity etc).
If we refuse to hear Him at this level we will probably fail to hear His other words to us – words of consolation and encouragement. Such as promising us eternal life, promising He will be always with us; promising He will provide for all our needs; watch over us carefully; forgive us readily of our sins... and countless other related promises.
We don’t hear these words either... well, we hear them, but they don’t sink in, because we are already too far from Him, having hidden from His commands.
We are like Adam hiding in the bush, when we should be like Zacchaeus coming down from the bush to welcome Our Lord.
Sin has made us ‘deaf’. We need the Lord to touch our ears as He did for the man in the Gospel, and open up the pipelines.
We will hear (perceive) the goodness of God, become aware of His love, and thus turn away from sin of our own accord.
It is only because we do not perceive Him clearly that we sin as it is. We turn to the false gods (the golden calves of the world) because we feel the real God has abandoned us.
But we only think that because the sin has clouded our vision (or our hearing). The problem is of our own making.
Once He touches us; once He opens up a new awareness of His presence we rise easily to a higher level of holiness.
This is what He wants to do for each one of us. The Gospel miracle symbolizes God’s desire to make it easy for us to hear Him.
What a tragedy when He has so much goodness to offer the world, yet people turn away in fear and distrust, and so much more trouble follows that.
We need not worry if He tells us our faults, or tells us we have to change some aspect of our lives. He also tells us of the rich rewards that await us if we only let Him give them to us.
What He wants to give us far exceeds what He asks from us.
Amen, amen I say unto you, that he who heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life everlasting; and cometh not into judgment, but is passed from death to life. (Jn 5,24)
So we claim that eternal life, in the process freeing ourselves from the anguish and misery of sin.
“I don’t want to hear, but make me hear. I don’t want to trust You, but make me trust!” This is our prayer. It will be heard.
