A Listening Heart

1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14; Ephesians 5:15-20

 

The story we heard from the Hebrew Scriptures today is probably one of my favorite bible stories. It works on so many levels:

For the original audience, 25 centuries ago, it explained the source of Solomon’s famous wisdom, and assured Israel that their king was supported by God.

It’s a reassuring story to hear when we’re embarking on a big project or responsibility – Solomon says he doesn’t feel ready for the huge work of being king, and God responds with all that he will need.

It’s got a moral, like a fairy tale in which the youngest son is the one who gets it right by asking for help instead of power.

But my affection for this story comes down to two words. In the translation we read today, those words are an “understanding mind.” But several scholars point out that a better translation of what Solomon asks for would be a “hearing heart;” a listening heart.

The root word that describes this heart of Solomon’s carries the sense of hearing with focused attention, a sense of immediacy, depth and responsiveness.  It’s listening, but not just the listening we do every day when we listen to the radio, the boss, the teacher, a spouse or parent.

This is the kind of listening many of us only do occasionally, when something catches our attention so profoundly that we miss the ringing phone, and forget the other people in the room.

That kind of listening can be life-changing.

This year the Vestry and I are reading a book together called Fierce Conversations.  The basic premise of the book is that we succeed or fail at life, work, and relationships “gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time.” (p1)

So the author offers excellent examples and advice on how to have conversations that allow you to confront difficulties, have a more effective meeting, and make decisions. 

It’s given us some good ideas and discussion, but a couple months ago we got to a chapter on listening called, “Be here, prepared to be nowhere else.” Almost everybody knew the misery of trying to talk to a boss or a friend who was scanning email, typing, cleaning or just watching the room throughout the conversation.

Then the atmosphere began to crackle and spark as people described the opposite experience of being absolutely listened to – even once.  We all sat up straighter that night as we remembered the powerful experience of value and relationship when a listener put aside every distraction and was utterly present.

Has that ever happened to you?

I hope so, because I want you to imagine that experience now, in Solomon’s conversation with God – a conversation that begins with God saying, “Ask for whatever you want me to give to you.”

Imagine the intensity of God’s focus, God’s listening, in that invitation.

And imagine what it takes for Solomon to ask for the ability to listen that way in every conversation: to God, to the vast multitude of God’s people, to anyone.

Imagine how it must feel, to be listening so wholly as God responds,“I will give you a hearing heart, and there will be no one like you.  And I will give you also what you did not ask: riches, and honor, and long life as you walk in my ways.”

There is a power in that kind of hearing that sends a shiver up my spine.

No wonder it’s a gift of God.

It takes wisdom to ask for that kind of wisdom, and it takes courage to ask for that gift, and to use it. But when we do, it brings gifts we never asked for.

I imagine that if you’ve had those moments of really hearing, of that kind of listening that is present, prepared to be nowhere else, you know the kinds of gifts it brings: love and inspiration, deeper relationships, new knowledge, and hope.

And if that’s not wisdom, I don’t know what is.

So listening matters.  It’s a practical, everyday, essential wisdom.

It matters at work. It matters at church.  And it matters at home – above all, this is the way we need to listen to those we love.  It makes marriages, and deepens the connection between parents and children.

In the Fierce Conversations book, Susan Scott offers concrete and practical ways to increase our wisdom, our listening and hearing.  She says that to have those fully present conversations, “you must have a fierce affection … genuine curiosity [and] an insatiable appetite for learning more every day about [the relationship]. And all of this is helped significantly by your willingness to occasionally set aside all the topics ping-ponging inside your own head and simply be with this other person, here and now.” (96)

To help with that listening, Scott suggests asking “What else?”
not once, but three times when finding out how something matters and what could be. 

And when you get to “I don’t know,” Scott offers, “What would it be if you did know?”

Those are powerful questions. I know, because people have asked me.

And it’s powerful listening.

So powerful it’s no wonder that’s where wisdom starts and grows, with a hearing heart.

That hearing heart matters tremendously as we listen to one another,

but the deepest gift of wisdom comes when we open that hearing heart to God.

Many of us already have practices that help us to listen to God: meditation, deep reading of scripture, listening to music or to dreams, going for a walk or a run. Those are valuable practices, but Susan Scott’s advice applies here, too.

The beginning of wisdom may be as simple as ending your prayers by asking God, “What else?”

And listening.

“What else?” Three times.  The silences and the answers get richer. Who knows what you’ll hear?

And when you find yourself saying, “I don’t know,” trust that God is asking you, “What would it be if you do know?”

It helps to practice those conversations with the people close to us, because as we practice, we’ll get better and better at listening to God’s people and to God.

So listen.

Listen deeply, prepared to be nowhere else,

give your heart a chance to hear,

and perhaps you, like Solomon, will hear God saying,

I will give you also all that you have not asked.

Lament

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 130

I’m something of a news junkie. On a normal day, I wake up to the every-10-minutes radio news and switch to National Public Radio while I eat breakfast and get ready for the day.  And while the national news is on the air, I skim print headlines online and find out the news from family and friends via facebook. The first 90 minutes of my day are pretty much solid information loading.

I can’t resist it. But too much of a good thing can be toxic.

Especially this year’s news.

There’s the markets – job, housing, financial.   Campaign news (which is mostly about how miserable each of them says we’ll be if the other gets elected in November).  Syria gets scarier every day.  We’re still fighting two wars, and then some.

There’s a drought. People get shot. In the streets of Chicago and the suburbs.  At the movies. And at worship.

And then there’s the news in my facebook feed and my email.  People get sick; babies go to the hospital.  Families come apart, through death or anger.

It’s not all tragedy of course.  There are unexpected Olympic medals, delightful things kids do, wonderful healing - and some of the stuff those candidates do is just plain funny.

But it’s a messy, complicated world.  It makes me mad.  There’s so much that goes wrong amid the right, so many big things that can’t be fixed, it seems. It makes me tired.

Does that ever happen to you?

If not, excellent.  You’ve mastered the spiritual exercise of detachment, and you probably sleep okay at night.

But if it bugs you; if anxiety about the fate of the world – or the fate of your children or closest friends – keeps you awake at night or distracts you during the day, then some of the David and Absalom story will sound familiar.

Not the way you heard it a couple minutes ago – the lectionary people have surpassed themselves in presenting a nonsense excerpt – but the whole story, the one hinted at this morning.

You see, after David got in trouble over Bathsheba, things just got messier and more complicated in his nation and his family.

David had a lot of kids.  More than he could really keep track of, probably. And his oldest son, Amnon, got the hots for his half-sister Tamar.  There’s a lot of plot in here that would make Days of our Lives look simple, but ultimately Amnon rapes Tamar. Tamar tells her brother Absalom – who stews over it for two years then kills Amnon – which makes David mad, and he kicks Absalom out of the country. 

Trouble in the king’s household spills over into unrest in the country, so a few years later David tries to patch it up. Absalom comes back – and becomes a celebrity.  He’s handsome, he’s the kind of guy you’d have a beer with – meanwhile David’s getting out of touch – and it’s not too long before Absalom throws his hat in the ring and announces his candidacy for king. 

Now it’s open rebellion.  People are getting killed all over again.

But when the army marches out to put down the rebellion, everyone hears David saying, “Be gentle with Absalom – he’s still my son.”

But war is war, and things happen.  Absalom gets stuck in a tree – it’s apparently some very dangerous terrain they’re fighting in – and David’s general does a very thorough job of killing him.

And when the word at last gets back to David that his troublemaking, treasonous son has died,

well, it’s the end of the world, and he pours out a bitter lament:

Absalom, my son.

If only I had died instead of you.

Oh, Absalom, my son!

It’s a time of war.  A political conflict that makes our election look like a disagreement over potatoes and potahtoes. Economic uncertainty. Violence. And family tragedy.

It’s our morning news and our inbox, piled up and topped off with the indescribably bitter grief of a parent who’s lost a child in the middle of a broken relationship.

If there’s ever been a time for lament, it’s now.

A time to weep and mourn.

To pour out grief and anger, fear and despair.

To give voice to all the pain inside that comes when we hear about another mass shooting, and the hundreds of casual drive-bys that never make headlines; that comes when cancer returns, when a child is injured, a marriage dies, and the bank account bleeds red.

Lament matters,

because God didn’t design us to suffer in silence, to smother our hearts and ignore the pain.

If we do that, you see, our hearts shrink.

So the lectionary people did one thing right today.

They gave us lament.

Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear my voice.

Listen well to my complaint.

God didn’t make us to be silent.

God made us to be fruitful. 

We should wake up in the morning ready for abundance and joy.  We should come to church celebrating, with our hearts full of gratitude and generosity, wide open for love. And we do.

But we also live in a world that is messy, and complicated, and painful.

We wake up to that world and come to church in that world, (and sometimes we skip church, in that world) and in that world, we sometimes find ourselves in the depths.

And so, along with our prayers, our celebration and praise,

there’s a time for lament.

Lament is a rich spiritual resource,

a tradition that reaches back to the early days of our history with God, when Israel lamented their slavery in Egypt, and God heard.

That’s the deep spiritual truth of lament.

It’s not just crying.

When we pour out grief and anger, fear and despair, into God’s ear, and give honest voice to the pain, when we open up those depths to God,

we come to the point where the only thing we can do is lean on God, to trust that God really, really hears us.

And listen to what happens in Psalm 130:

Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear my voice.

With all that is wrong, who can stand before you?

Your forgiveness is awe-inspiring.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for him.

In his word is my hope.

Lament creates trust.

It goes hand in hand with prayers for healing, prayers for peace, and prayers of thanks.

Lament opens up despair or even indifference,

so that in the midst of war and politics,

loss and grief, anxiety and fear,

there is living, breathing hope.

Hope enough to love the people far away in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and as close as Wisconsin, Colorado, and Chicago.

Hope enough to love through family tragedy.

Hope enough to love both candidates.

Hope enough to hear the news – David's news; our news; all the news – and still rejoice in the morning.