Listen
to Him
February
9, 2021
The Scripture
quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible,
copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights
reserved.
It’s a familiar
story to most Christian churchgoers. It comes up in lectionaries every year as
the Gospel reading for the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday. It is the story we
call the Transfiguration. You’ll find the oldest version of it at Mark 9:2-9.
It goes like this. Jesus takes his three closest disciples, Peter, James, and
John, up to the top of a mountain. There he is “transfigured” before them. That
means that his appearance changed. Mark says only that his clothes became
whiter than anyone on earth could bleach them, but other versions speak of his
face becoming light as well. Moses and Elijah appear representing the law and
the prophets.[1]
Peter wants to stay up there with all three men. Jesus doesn’t even respond to Peter’s
suggestion about staying there. A cloud descends upon the mountaintop. A voice,
presumably the voice of God, says “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
Mark 9:7. Moses and Elijah disappear. Jesus and the three disciples come down
off the mountain. Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone what they had
seen until after he was raised from the dead. Whereupon the story ends. It
doesn’t expressly say that Jesus’ clothing or face returned to their natural
state, but it’s safe to assume that they did.
There are several
aspects to this story that are rich fodder for sermons. I just mentioned one
them, Moses and Elijah appearing to Jesus. Another is Peter’s desire to prolong
his mountaintop experience and Jesus not even responding but leading his
friends down off the mountain. Another might be what this story says about who
Jesus really is. Then there’s one more, and it’s the one I want to talk about
here.
The story of the
Transfiguration has a voice, surely the voice of God, say, “This is my Son, the
Beloved; listen to him!” The first part of this statement is very similar to
the first part of what a divine voice, again presumably the voice of God, says
in the story of Jesus’ baptism. In that story the voice says “You are my Son,
the Beloved.” Mark 1:11. The words are slightly different probably because the
voice is talking only to Jesus, but it definitely expresses the same message.
These two passages differ markedly in what the voice says next. At Jesus’
baptism the voice says, “with you I am well pleased.” At the Transfiguration
the voice says “listen to him!” It’s that “listen to him” that I want to talk
about here.
I’ll start by
noting what the voice does not say. It does not say “believe in him.”
Christians are so apt to say that to be a Christian is to believe in Jesus. We
take faith to be belief, and we take belief to be accepting as true certain
propositions, mostly propositions about Jesus. It certainly is true that the
New Testament admonishes us many times to believe in Jesus. Those passages are often
in the Gospel of John, and in John to believe is actually not to take certain
asserted assumptions as true, but that’s a story for another day. In the
Transfiguration story God says nothing about believing in Jesus. Instead we get
“listen to him!” God obviously makes that statement to Peter, James and John.
They’re the ones who need to listen to Jesus.
So do we. But God’s
admonition to “listen” to Jesus raises an important question. What does the
word “listen” actually mean? In its most basic sense to listen is to hear
something. It is to pay attention to a sound. We listen to music or to a
lecture. We listen to people we’re talking with (or at least we should). Hearing
what Jesus says is certainly part of what God is telling the disciples, and us,
to do here, but to listen has other deeper meanings as well. Consider this
example. A mother says to a misbehaving daughter “Now you listen to me young
lady!” The mother clearly wants the child to do more than just hear the mother’s
words. She wants the child to hear and then to change her behavior in response
to what she hears. Hear yes, but there’s more meaning in the word than that.
Several online
dictionaries include definitions of “to listen” that include this deeper
meaning of the word. One of them, merriam-webster.com, gives one definition of
to listen as “to hear something with thoughtful attention: give consideration.”
That definition is a start, but it doesn’t get us to the deeper meaning of the
word. Here are three other online definitions of “to listen.”
·
To pay attention; heed; obey (often followed by to.)”
dictionary.com.
·
To accept advise or obey instructions; to agree
or consent. yourdictionary.com.
·
To pay attention to what someone tells you and
do what they suggest. macmillandictionary.com.
·
“If you listen to someone, you do what they
advise you to do, or you believe them.” collinsdictionary.com.
The last of these definitions does
say that to listen to someone is to believe them, but even it contains another
definition that’s more in line with the others. These definitions use words
like obey, to accept advice, agree, consent, do what they suggest, and do what
they advise you to do. These words get
us to the depth of the meaning of “to listen” that we need if we are going to
understand what God says to the disciples in our story.
These definitions
tell us that when the voice of God tells Jesus’ three closest disciples, and
us, to listen to Jesus God means a lot more than just hear his words. When God
tells us to listen to Jesus, God is calling us to hear what Jesus says, then to
agree with it, consent to it, and obey it. God is telling us to do what Jesus
advises us to do. God is not calling us to passive listening. God is calling us
to hear and then to respond. To hear how Jesus tells us to live, then to live
that way. To comprehend his word, then do (and not do) what Jesus tells us to
do (and not to do). No, God is not calling us to passivity. God calls us not
just to hear but to hear and then respond. To respond with lives committed to service,
nonviolence, justice, forgiveness, compassion, inclusion, and grace. In short
God calls us to hear and to follow. To hear Jesus and to imitate him as best we
are able.
Doing what God
calls us to do here isn’t easy. After all, living the way Jesus lived got him
crucified. He said that the gospel cuts through families like a sword. Matthew
10:34-36. He said my yoke is easy and my burden is light, Matthew 11:30, but he
also said take up your cross and follow me. Matthew 16:24. He said that those
who want to save their life will lose it and those who want to lose their life
will save it. Matthew 16:25. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount he tells us
to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48. I
don’t know about you, but I know that I don’t have it in me to be perfect as
God is perfect. All I can do is try to be closer to perfect than I have been,
and that in itself is plenty hard enough. If Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden
is light it is only because he is always with us to help us do what he calls us
to do. So yes, God calls us to listen to Jesus in the deepest meaning of that
word. Listen, then act. Can we? Will we? I pray that we can and that we will.
[1]
For a discussion of what their appearance means to us see my post “On Jesus and
Scripture” that immediately precedes this post on this blog.
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