sermons
Love Is
Love Is Listening
Ivy Anthony
Jan 23, 2022
Good morning everyone!
I’m Ivy, a Pastor here and we are in a winter sermon series called, “Love is…”
And I want to talk this morning about how “Love is… listening.”
And maybe some of you are thinking,
“Oh, great! Another anemic word, ‘listening’.”
And I get it, “love” and “listening” are words that in many cases have been emptied of their meaning – whether it’s because of overuse or abuse.
However, I want to talk this morning about how we can revive a way of “deep listening” – regard it as one of our oldest, known technologies (technology if we think of it as a way to connect with one another) and one that is still relevant and holds the potential to not only connect us (to ourselves, God and others) but that can heal us, and the world around us.
If we are hopeful to live more full, free and loving lives with Jesus – we will need to not only aspire, but to actively cultivate this deep way of listening. Listening is the first step in communication – the very bones of how we relate to one another/community/society/our world. And if we give up on deep listening, if we think,
“aah, what does it matter anyway? It doesn’t change anything…”
Then how we communicate and the language we use to do so – will be stunted, defensive and anemic as well.
But, if we can take our lead from Jesus and see how “love is .. listening.” That listening is indistinguishable from love – and if love is knowing and being known (as Steve shared two weeks ago) and if love can help us all be some parts humble, gentle, patient (as Lydia invited us last week) … then seeking to listen, with and to, the Spirit of God – as we engage with one another, can prove to be an impactful, provocative, and subversive way of being in the world – whoever we are with, and wherever we are.
And may this way of listening be helpful for our own personal flourishing – as well as helpful for the common good.
So join me this morning in listening – not just to my words – but to the Spirit of God, the voice within you, and to scripture. I’m hopeful that we can see that listening can be a great expression of loving one another, of clarifying what we are “for” (not just against), and how listening is really the nexus for action & transformation that creates new ways forward in our public life – and Beloved Community.
Let’s take a moment now of quiet – in prayer – to “listen.” Listen to what might be stirring in you – to what you need most right now – listen for what God would love for you to know… just take a moment to prayerfully listen. Amen.
I’ve talked with so many of you over the last 20 months who are health professionals. Who have donned your stethoscopes and put them close to patient’s chests and backs in hopes of amplifying the internal movement and sounds of organs.
You’ve listened through the sounds of coughing babies and adults – you’ve listened through shallow breath, crackles and wheezes – in hopes of finding the sounds that can’t be detected from the outside of the body. The internal sound of a steady heartbeat, the small sound of a breezy breath moving through a clear lung – you’ve listened for the sound of life.
The thing about this way of ‘listening’ that I’m talking about this morning is that it helps us detect the love and presence of God – when it isn’t always apparent, isn’t always right there – on the surface of our everyday lives. It helps us press through all of the external “noise,” and find that the source of all life, all goodness, all joy (all possibility) – is still beating within us and around us.
I find that ‘listening’ is sort of God’s stethoscope. An instrument that God drapes around us, that allows us to orient to the internal sounds and movement – of God, the sound of the genuine within us – even as we are tugged and pulled by the commotion of the news, family, work you name it.
In the scripture, Mark 5 – we encounter the story of a bleeding woman and Jesus. And we witness what listening looks like in practice… And I want to invite you to notice what sounds and movement you detect as we make our way through…
Mark 5:25-34 (Common English Bible)
25 A woman was there who had been bleeding for twelve years.
26 She had suffered a lot under the care of many doctors, and had spent everything she had without getting any better. In fact, she had gotten worse.
27 Because she had heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothes.
28 She was thinking, If I can just touch his clothes, I’ll be healed.
29 Her bleeding stopped immediately, and she sensed in her body that her illness had been healed.
30 At that very moment, Jesus recognized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”
31 His disciples said to him, “Don’t you see the crowd pressing against you? Yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
32 But Jesus looked around carefully to see who had done it.
33 The woman, full of fear and trembling, came forward. Knowing what had happened to her, she fell down in front of Jesus and told him the whole truth.
34 He responded, “Daughter, your faith has healed you; go in peace, healed from your disease.”
Now, we can piece together a little bit about this woman’s reality, given the context of time and history. As a woman, with a physical, chronic affliction – she would have been pretty diminished in this society.
If not completely invisible.
There are a multitude of barriers that come against her full existence.
- Her identity as a woman.With no connection to a man… no husband/brothers/father to give her some inroad/access to resources is a barrier.
- The purity standards that were dictated under the religious system – would have deemed her impure because of her bleeding.
- The cultural norms would have seen her unfit to live within city limits.
- Her intense pain means her mental/physical/emotional state is likely depleted.
She’s nameless and voiceless.
She had never really been listened to.
The cacophony of external voices that say she doesn’t belong, she’s to be excluded, she is unworthy – are all consuming.
And as you can imagine the sound of these voices sink beneath the surface of her skin and reverberate inside of her – shaking her own sense of worth, her dignity, her value.
So she is left without a gridwork for belonging. To what? Where? To whom does she belong?
And at the heart of those questions – is a pretty universal/human one – that we might ask ourselves at any given point:
“WHO AM I?”
For this woman IT IS REALLY HARD to listen to the sound of God, the sound of love within when the context of a world around her is constantly shouting
“you don’t matter, you are not loved.”
A mentoring voice to me, the late theologian Howard Thurman says
“there is but one step from being despised to despising oneself.” (33).
Like this woman, for those who are oppressed and marginalized…it is hard to not become deaf to the true voice that calls out who you really are. He says, THIS is why it is critical to listen and to cultivate this deep interior space – to anchor to the “sound of the genuine within.”
Now the sound of the genuine is our truest selves in connection and belonging to the love of God. Thurman says there is so much traffic going on in our minds, so many different kinds of sounds and signals that float through our bodies – that in the midst of all of this – he says,
“you have got to find out what your name is. Who are you? How does the sound of the genuine come through to you… because that is the only true guide that you will ever have, and if you don’t have that – all of your life you will spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
But it’s so hard for this woman to detect the sound of the genuine. And maybe you have felt this in your own life too? Moments where you’ve wondered if you are just being pulled around by someone else’s expectations – or someone’s loud, authoritative voice? Maybe your voice has been interrupted endlessly – not listened to – to the point where you wonder
“WHO AM I?”
If your thoughts, dreams, way of seeing the world even matter.
I think this is why it takes intentionality to cultivate ‘listening’ as a way of being in the world. And what’s at stake if we don’t – is that we not only lose this grounding, within ourselves. But with that, we lose any possibility of listening to the sound of the genuine in another.…and this is the loss of connection to the source of all love and life.
*I’ve been in a three-year long “conversation.” And this conversation came to be after a moment of disruption in our relationship, where we deeply disagreed on something that had occurred.
*Part of what I’ve realized after coming back to this conversation again and again is that I for a long time, *(and maybe this is obvious)*
- a) I wasn’t really deeply listening to the other person and
- b) I wasn’t listening to this person, because I was not listening to the ‘sound of the genuine’ within me.
*I could feel that love had gotten broken in this deep part of me, I was hurt.. But I didn’t really know how to pick up that stethoscope and listen to my own heart – and listen to God say,
“I am here. Love is here, all of what you feel matters.”
And it left me feeling really unmoored.
Part of the work of picking up that stethoscope and placing it right square on your heart is that it requires “quiet.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve “shushed” my kids – who were always the loudest right when the nurse or doctor put that stethoscope up to their body…
But to really listen, is to invite quiet.
I tend to not want to embrace too much quiet. In this 3-year long conversation I did not want to embrace internal or external quiet – I was mad and angry. And to be “quiet” in either space felt like inaction to me. .. navel-gazing – a waste of time. (There’s too much at stake – too much to solve, fix).
But I’ve been reading this book called, “The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture,” by Kevin Quashie that suggests how vital “quiet” is for listening to the sound of the genuine and also for moving out in our public life. He points to how FULL of movement “quiet” is – he says,
“quiet is often interchanged with the words silence or stillness – but the notion of quiet is neither motionless nor without sound. Quiet, instead, is a metaphor for the full range of one’s inner life – one’s desires, ambitions, hungers, vulnerabilities and fears.” (6)
Quiet, some might say in our inner life, is the busiest intersection- where we get to encounter the love of God, recognize the movement of the Spirit, our own voice and others.
So much of what we do, how we interact, and how we act is shaped by this interior space.
We see Jesus with this bleeding woman move and act from this “quiet” space. It says in the scripture we just read that he
“continues to look carefully”
in the bustle and noise of the crowd, (and that’s after he’s already turned to the crowd and said, “who touched me?”). He continues to “look carefully” and “listen”. And it’s this internal hush – where Jesus detects that God was present and recognizes that someone who was longing for God’s presence – had touched his clothes. He listens to this internal space of quiet within to guide him to this woman…which ultimately guides this woman to healing. But there’s a bit of a journey in there…
We can’t too quickly link that the “quiet within” can fix all the unjust systems that this woman represents. If we do, we miss the very components that make any potential for public change possible. . . which is relationship, presence, connection.
It’s why these 1:1 Relational meetings we are encouraging are so powerful and why our community groups are so valued. Because we know, we feel, something moves within us – when we can just be listened to, not approached as a subject or a project – just as a human being, (with the divine inside).
Jesus walks across the social, cultural, and religious boundaries here. And it is a notable public expression of pushing against the dominant culture – but Jesus crosses those lines to connect with this woman, to be present to this woman and to listen not to address her as if she is a problem to be solved, or fixed.
Part of the reason – I think – that my three- year long conversation has lasted so long, is that neither of us would settle for “quick fixes,” because we realized that it didn’t heal in the long run. There’s a way that a too quick, “I’m sorry” or a “pat logical explanation” to a hurt reaches and communicates more a goal of equilibrium, to resolve and smooth a way forward … rather than listen, and to see what is opened up in that. And that’s not really “listening” – it doesn’t change, heal. It doesn’t allow my humanity – feelings, concerns, emotions to be in full view. And here there is no movement, except more distance and disconnection.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say this is akin to listening with half an ear – listening that presumes you already know what the other person has to say, you already know their position, and you already know the solution.
But this, he says,
“is an impatient, inattentive listening, that . . . is only waiting for a chance to speak, or to put your agenda forward.” AND here is where we forget that the person in front of us is always a mystery, holds the image of the Divine within them, and that that’s always worth listening to…when we don’t we start to label (the process or the person), and in that labeling … we limit.”
“Poor listening diminishes another person, but deep listening invites them to exist and matter.”
The society around this bleeding woman labeled her ‘unclean’, ‘disabled’, ‘poor,’ etc…diminished her to the brink of invisibility.
But Jesus brings this woman back into her full existence. He didn’t lecture her, try to fix her, but instead he listened. He made space for her to tell her “whole truth,” Her STORY! From her own lens, not society’s, or some external authority – but her own thoughts, her own desires and longings…unfiltered/vulnerable without a threat of judgment or a rush to “fix”. And this invited her back to herself – to detect the sound of the genuine within her.
Thurman would say that at some fundamental human level – this is what we all desire – that we could
“feel that we are so thoroughly and completely understood – listened to, that we could take our guard down and look around us, and not feel that we would be destroyed. To be able to feel completely vulnerable, completely exposed and absolutely secure – to run the risk of radical exposure and know that the (person listening), the eye that beholds our vulnerability would not step on us.” (Spellman address).
A doctor I listened to, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, backs this. She says that to be in pain is so vulnerable, and over and over again as she trains medical students she helps them understand what it is to “TREAT” those who are suffering and scared.
She says to her students
“Fixing is too small a strategy to deal with pain and suffering”
but “THE POWER of your PRESENCE” of simply being present and listening – of letting that pain/suffering/wrestling matter … time and time again is the wisdom that is needed to help heal.
It’s why in studies I’ve been reading about stethoscopes – that they are argued to still be so vital in exams. Even while we have ultrasounds and echocardiograms – because it allows the presence of the patient doctor relationship to exist… and it is to value the medicine of connection.
CONNECTION HEALS
Jesus turned to this woman and said,
“Daughter….”
Her identity, dignity, sense of worth – that sound of the genuine is revived, as Jesus calls her by name. He’s saying,
“THIS IS WHO YOU ARE, a child of God,”
and this gives her a pulse again.
Now the society around her is still fractured and stacked against her. Injustices are everywhere. But to be listened to – is to be loved.
And the internal movement that occurs for her holds the potential to disrupt and shake unjust systems. She moves from the absolute fringes of society to the very fringe of Jesus’ cloak. To the source of life and love.
What’s cultivated here is a sense of belonging. That God is with her in all of life.
This heals where love has been broken…and as Thurman says,
“this restoration – stabilizes our sense of self – with new courage, fearlessness, and power.”
This woman is seen, known and loved. This is the sound of the genuine.
This is the sound of healing.
I stayed in this three-year conversation in part because I needed to learn what listening really was – IF IT MATTERED – for myself, as well as with the other person.
I realize many of you might not have 3 years to hang with a conversation and/ – for many of you the listening you’ve done has suggested that boundaries are the best way to heal – given the dominant culture dynamics you’ve endured. I want to honor that, but maybe you find yourself in the same “types” of conversations that always feel the same and never really seem to go anywhere..
This is tiring – and it’s tiring to care and to listen when there’s no identifiable change. In a moment of overwhelm I said to this person,
“tell me the whole story again. Can you start from the beginning?”
(and this was 2.5 years in) It was a weird thing to say, I was there at the beginning of this story – I knew how it went.
But as I listened and heard the familiar recounting, I also heard something new. I heard what and why I was LISTENING. Unattached to the other person, or to the outcome. I heard the sound of my own belief in myself. In love, in the power of connection, of goodness, of humility, of patience…the belief in “possibility” …
I heard what I was “for” – not just what I was against. And that didn’t change much instantaneously – but it did fuel me to stay in it. To keep moving toward healing… and to listen for the sound of the genuine in this other person.
As this woman who Jesus calls “daughter” knew – and we know too – there is a lot to oppose in our days. So much that grieves us, harms us, so much we want to act to change, so much injustice to right. So much so, that our way of being can become primarily against, or “anti-” something. *for good reason*
But listening, cultivating this sound of the genuine – allows us to also keep ‘love’ at the forefront – to remember what we are “FOR” as well. To remember that love endures in us, and with God. And to balance our protests in the public sphere – with our inner, vulnerable life as well.
To remember as Kevin Quashie says, that
“the inner life is not apolitical or without social value, but neither is it determined entirely by publicness.” (Quashie, 6)
There is a richness to our life, that holds beauty and rest – and resistance and protest – and they are born from the same spot. Where the love of God, and our true selves connect – the foundation of listening and love – it’s how we impact all the places where we work, live and play.
As Jesus says to this woman,
”go in peace”
Go! Go change the world. Go act. go love – and may you listen to the sound of the genuine as you do – keeping your own humanity and the humanity of another on full display. May it be so -for us as well.
And still, you may have questions of – how do I actually cultivate this way of listening? We’ve been offering these Listening workshops first Sunday of every month. Next up – Feb. 6, 1 pm – 2:30 pm on Zoom.
Link to RSVP is above so check it out if you’d like.