“Hearing Voices”
1 Epiphany B –
Mark 1: 4-11
Christ Lutheran Church
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
It’s not listed in your bulletin, but I titled this sermon, “Hearing Voices”. pulpit mike on Did you get that? HEARING VOICES! wireless on I see some blank stares like you couldn’t hear. “This sermon is called HEARING VOICES!”
Hearing is one of our five senses. As those of you who suffer from hearing loss know, good hearing is also very much a gift. A very great gift that is sorely missed when it begins to fade. It’s one of the things we “hear” most about as far as the worship service concern. There are times we seem unable not to hear the voices around us – and not all of them are physical.
Some hearing loss is selective. I worked for a gentleman who had spent a good part of his life in the Air Force flying C-130 Hercules transport planes. You’ve likely seen them, their wings are placed high on the fuselage, so that the propellers are outside the cockpit. After thousands of hours with that turboprop roar, this pilot discovered his hearing perfect, except at the exact frequencies of those propellers.
I’ve also noticed a different kind of selective hearing with kids. Shout down the stairs: “Jane, will you take the garbage out?” Jane? No answer. Jane. That boy Michael is at the door for you. Zoom! Bam! Up the stairs like Scotty’s just beamed her down – “Why didn’t you tell me he was here.”
And then there’s what I’ll call “poor reception”. It’s what I find happening to me more and more. You hear the person speaking but by distraction or “hearing what you want to hear” or missing garbled word or two, or somehow you substitute for a similar sounding word so that Tom hears you say: “Why, Tom, that’s not nice.” And you are surprised when he responds, “What do you mean I’ve got lice?”
And of course, we cannot hear things that are not spoken. To hear a voice, requires an act of speaking. But most troubling of all, is when we are hearing voices that only we can hear – what they used to call on Barney Miller “taking a collect call from
Strangely enough, our gospel today might be considered an example of this last kind. Mark gives no indication that John the Baptist nor the people from the whole Judean countryside were able to hear the words God spoke through the torn opening in the heavens. They did see the dove come down heaven, or surely their would have been a great reaction to such a sight.
No, this was a very special instance of hearing voices. More like a closed-circuit TV transmission, where the speaker remains off-stage, that marks the beginning of Mark’s story of Jesus as well as the beginning of Epiphany. The other example – the voice from the cloud with a similar message, but this time addressed as a command to Peter and James and John. This is my son the beloved. Listen to him.” This text marks the end of Epiphany, and shows God talking directly, not only to Jesus, but now to us.
But let’s go back to the Father’s words today. Those words coming out from heavens that had been torn apart – as the temple curtains would be torn apart at the moment of Jesus’ death. “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Note that unlike Transfiguration, which also reveals Jesus identity, the baptism of Jesus has no light, no corroborating witnesses.
The revelation at Jesus’ baptism is through water and word. John the Baptist provided the water and God himself spoke the word. And Jesus’ identity as the beloved Son of God is proclaimed to Jesus.
As I said, the scripture gives us no reason to believe others who were there heard these words. Yet the holy spirit that was set loose also guided the hand of Mark to make God’s words available to you. And so it is that, by the grace of God’s word, inspired by Holy Spirit you and I heard them this morning. We will hear them again whenever this reading comes up in the lectionary cycle. But do we really comprehend the magnitude, the mind-boggling implications of what we are being allowed to hear?
We are over hearing the most intimate declaration of the deepest love and relationship there is. The love of parent for child, but even more we are hearing the model of love for everyone – the relationship of love that exists within the three persons of the Trinity. Do you want to see God? There he is. God the Father revealing the relationship with God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
And the power of these simple words is easy to miss. What son or daughter here today has not longed to hear exactly those words from the lips of a parent? But if they are never spoken, they have no power. And the sad truth is that some wait a lifetime and never hear “You are my son,” or “You are my daughter, the beloved.” How many would give anything to hear that voice, those words spoken to them? How many desperately need to hear a voice, not from heaven, but from across the table or the room?
When the words are given voice, too often they may be heard with the varied kinds of selected hearing I mentioned earlier. When heard through the filters of abuse, dementia, a family history of lies and deception, these words may be heard to mean exactly their opposite. Instead of affirming relationship, they may remind us of its brokenness and pain and alienation.
But all of these mishearings or not hearing at all are signs of human sin, daily reminders of the fall from grace. That is why God’s proclamation of his relationship, the joy and delight he finds in that relationship is done on the occasion of the baptism of the Son..
Jesus did not need John’s water baptism of repentance but underwent it anyway. The words of the voice from heaven and the coming of the spirit, offer us forgiveness, cleansing and rebirth. This is exactly what we need to heal our faulty hearing. It is what we need to recognize the voice that offers us the grace our natures lack. And through baptism we find it possible for us to speak those words of pure gospel love, first spoken from God the father to God the son within our own families and relationships.
And indeed, we cannot help but remember that John the Baptism went on to proclaim the good news about the one whose sandal he was not fit to tie. And he did so at the cost of his life. We, too, our called, as part of our baptism, to share this good news of what God did for in our baptism.
That, indeed, is what the Alpha course that is beginning again, is all about. I was going to say Alpha’s like a big ol’ Q-Tip to get the spiritual wax out of your ears so you can hear the voice, but that’s kind of gross. And besides, you’re not supposed to put anything smaller than your elbow in your ears, though I have yet to see anybody do that.
But Alpha is led by lay people who are also living out these words of God today and indeed the words of baptism calls on the families and the congregation to “provide for . . . instruction in the Christian faith, that, living in the covenant of their Baptism and in communion with the Church, so that they may lead godly lives until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Hear the voice from heaven for you: You are God’s child.
Hear the voice of heaven for you: You are God’s beloved.
Hear the voice of heaven for you: He gave you, in your baptism, the means of grace to live in a way that is well-pleasing to him.
And now I will ask you: do you promise to fulfill these your baptismal obligations, if so say I DO! I can’t hear your voices! Again:
And by God’s grace and mercy, you will. Amen.