Don Friesen
One of the classic stories of mis-communication happened during the High Middle Ages when some of the merchants of Rome approached the Pope, requesting that he banish all Jews from the city because they were finding it difficult to compete with the Jewish merchants. "Oh," said the Holy Father, "That doesn't sound like a very Christian thing to do."
"Yes, we know," said the merchants, "but we were hoping you'd find a nice Christian way to do it!"
"I'll tell you what," said the Pope, "We'll challenge the Jewish community in Rome to a theological debate. If they win, they can stay in Rome; if they lose, they will have to leave."
Fine. So the word went out, and the Jewish community looked around for a champion who could defend them, but no one wanted to volunteer. It was too risky! In desperation, they finally identified a certain Schlomo to represent them in the debate. The Christians were represented by the Holy Father, who, as in all things, had the last word; he also appointed himself the judge of the debate, which would consist of three rounds.
The debate took place on a Vatican balcony overlooking the public square, and since many people of many different nationalities and languages attended, the debate took the form of gestures rather than words. Schlomo and the Pope sat opposite each other for a full minute before the Pope raised his arms, and waved them, back and forth. Schlomo responded by pointing down.
"You win" said the Pope.
In the second round the Pope held up three fingers; Schlomo held up one.
"You win again," said the Pope.
In the third round the Holy Father took out a silver tray holding a loaf of bread and a chalice filled with wine, and reverently moved his hand over them. Schlomo removed an apple from his pocket and put it on the tray, alongside the bread and the wine.
"You win again! You can stay," said the Pope, and that marked the end of the debate, and the Jews left to celebrate their victory.
The merchants of Rome were quick to approach the Pope to inquire as to the meaning of this debate. "Well," said the Pope, "I began by saying that God is everywhere; God has revealed Himself through all and in all. Schlomo responded, and rightly so, by pointing out that if God is anywhere He is present in the here and now."
"In the second round I pointed to the doctrine of the Trinity; Schlomo argued, on valid biblical grounds: ‘But... but... there is only one God!'"
"In the third round I brought out the elements of Holy Communion, a sign that in Christ we are saved from sin and despair. Schlomo responded with the apple, thereby saying: ‘Yes, but sin is still with us. Redemption is not yet complete, for it has not completely eradicated sin and suffering from this world.'"
Well, in another part of town Schlomo and his friends were celebrating their victory, and when his friends asked Schlomo to interpret the event, he said: "Well, the Pope began by saying that all of us are going to have to leave town. And I said: ‘We're not going anywhere; we're going to stay right here!'"
"Then the Pope told me that we have until 3 o'clock to leave town. I told him: ‘Not one of us is leaving!'"
Then, as you yourself witnessed, the Pope took out his lunch and so I took out mine.
As that story reminds us, gestures can mean different things to different people. They're open to interpretation, but so are words. Bill Janzen, who has studied and written many public documents while serving with the MCC Ottawa Office, says that he is amazed how the same words can mean different things to different people. Or, as someone once said: "We think we understand what we thought you said, but we can tell that you're not sure we are aware that what we heard is not what you meant."
Communication is a tricky thing. I think sermons are worth the best effort I can put forward, but more than one person has asked me, "What were you trying to say?" And it really was my best effort! I have found it not unusual for one person hearing a sermon to go away feeling underfed, if not spiritually malnourished, while another person walks away from the same sermon feeling encouraged. Such are the complexities of communication, and the variances in the art of listening.
The Transfiguration: A Benchmark Moment
Speaking of confusion, you may well ask: "What does communication have to do with the transfiguration? Well, one could argue that the transfiguration represents a moment of clarity in the life of Jesus and his disciples. Our Gospel reading recounts that Jesus withdrew to a mountain with three of his disciples, and while there the disciples saw Jesus transfigured. That is, there was a change in his appearance; his clothes turned intensely white, dazzling in brilliance! And then Elijah and Moses, the giants of their faith, joined them on that mountaintop, and as the disciples watched Elijah and Moses and Jesus confer with each other they were overwhelmed!
It's a story rich with image and implication. It's a story, an experience – a vision, Matthew calls it (Matthew 17:9) – that is communicated to us imaginatively precisely because there is no other way to convey the wonder of the moment. It's a moment of awe, a moment of clarity, a benchmark moment after which Jesus will head with greater determination and clarity toward Jerusalem, there to live out his destiny.
Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961), the second Secretary General of the United Nations (1953-1961), who left us with a wonderful spiritual journal, talks of a benchmark moment in his own life – a moment at which, he writes, "I did answer Yes to Someone ... and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal. From that moment I have known what it means ‘not to look back,' and ‘to take no thought for the morrow.'" ("Whitsunday, 1961," Markings, 1963, page 180)
The Transfiguration: Let's Build some Huts!
The transfiguration was such a moment for Peter, James and John, and they may have left that moment and that mountain with a greater sense of their own destiny, had it not been for Peter – Simon Peter Schlomo – who thought this a good moment to build some huts! Peter Schlomo said, "This is good! This is really cool! Let's build some dwellings, some shelters, some shrines ... anything! Such moments require monuments! These benchmark moments need markers! Let's build three! One for you, Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah!" (Mark 9:5, my loose paraphrase)
In a sense Peter was right. He recognized this as a holy moment, and in the history of his faith tradition one often marked such moments with monuments, and commemorated these moments with regular visits to those monuments. Bethel, in central Palestine, is an example. That's where Jacob had a vision of God's angels ascending and descending a ladder that reached up to heaven. (Genesis 28:10, 19) It's where God spoke to him (35:1-15), and so Jacob put up an altar to mark this holy place.
Peter rightly recognized the moment as a holy moment, but wait a minute – this is Peter! In the New Testament Peter usually doesn't get it! In fact, just before the transfiguration he completely misunderstood the purpose of Jesus' destiny and Jesus had to correct him, rather bluntly, firmly and publicly! (Mark 8:31-33) And when Peter blurted out his hut-building idea on the mount of transfiguration, the Gospel of Mark says that Peter didn't know what he was talking about. (9:6, CEV) All three of the disciples were stunned, but only Peter Schlomo tried to put his perplexity into words, and failed miserably.
Who knows what Peter was thinking? Maybe he was just trying to offer hospitality to these distinguished guests. Maybe he was trying to sustain the moment, to stretch out what was an outstanding summit meeting in the history of their faith. The word used for shelters or huts may be an allusion to the temple, and implies an effort to institutionalize this moment, to capture it in some way! Maybe Peter had some lofty ideas ... maybe ... or maybe Peter misconstrued this situation, much as he had misconstrued situations in the past, and would continue to misconstrue things, right up to the moment of Christ's crucifixion!
The Transfiguration: An Invitation to Listen
Well, if the disciples were stunned by Jesus' glistening appearance and by his distinguished guests, just then a cloud overshadowed them all, "and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!'" (Mark 9:7) And with that the lesser lights of their faith disappeared and only Jesus was left.
You can be quite certain that when a cloud appears in the Bible, and a voice comes out of the cloud, that we have a theophany on our hands. A theophany is an appearance of God, a divine disclosure, and the disclosure on the mount of transfiguration is an echo of the voice from the heavens at Jesus' baptism, saying, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." (Mark 1:11) In other words, the transfiguration is a confirmation of the blessing Jesus received at his baptism.
Peter still had his eyes on Jesus' glistening clothes! "Oh, gee! Oh, wow!" And it's as if Mark is saying to Peter, "Take the ‘g' off glisten, and you've got the real point of this story: Listen! Listen up! Forget the huts and listen up!" "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him." This is my Son who is greater than Elijah, greater than Moses, greater than all the laws of the Old Testament and the prophets of the Old Testament. This is my Son, Jesus. Listen to him. Listen to what he has to say.
To listen, in biblical parlance, has the connotation of "obey". It is to listen with a depth and quality of attentiveness such that the words spoken soak into the marrow of your bones and transform you. One of the later New Testament epistles reinforces this idea; after reminding readers of the transfiguration itself, the letter advises, "You will do well to be attentive to this, as attentive as you would be to a lamp shining in a dark place...." (2 Peter 1:19)
Biblical writers pay a lot of attention to the human ear, not because the ear is prized above other human organs, but because in Semitic usage it is a metonym for all of the ear's functions, understood in their broadest sense. The ear is closely associated with one's heart and mind. (Proverbs 2:2; 18:15). To "incline" (e.g., Psalm 31:2) the ear means to be favourably disposed toward a speaker.
Examples of Inattentiveness
The Scriptures, however, are also well aware of hearing loss, unintentional and otherwise. Those who are not receptive to the revelation of God are considered by biblical writers to have "uncircumcised ...ears" (Acts 7:51), "heavy ears" (Isaiah 6:10, RSV), "deaf ears" (Isaiah 43:8), or their "fingers in their ears". (Isaiah 6:10, The Message) In fact, there developed in the later Middle Ages an iconography of the senses in which deafness was used as a figure for "obtuseness of spirit," perhaps the same temperament Jeremiah complained about when he said of his people, "...they did not listen to me, or incline their ear, but stiffened their necks." (Jeremiah 7:26) Apparently the ear bone is connected to the neck bone!
The quality of our listening varies from one person to another. My brother used to visit an acquaintance and invariably, while my brother was talking, the other fellow would hum, audibly, at the same time drumming the fingers of both of his hands on the sides of his chair! He was what one might call a hum-drum listener.
Years ago a conscientious homeowner wrote a letter to a manufacturer of cast iron pipe, informing them that he had found it very effective to open clogged pipes with the use of hydrochloric acid, but he wanted to know if there was any way the acid might prove harmful to the pipes.
The manufacturer wrote back: "Thank you for your letter. The effect of hydrochloric acid upon ferrous-constructed materials may be deleterious. We would recommend you cease such activity in the interest of your plumbing."
The homeowner responded, thanking them for their letter, and telling them that he was relieved that he was doing the right thing!
There followed another letter from the manufacturer: "We fear that there may have been some mis-communication in our correspondence. Acid, of that density, applied to cast iron pipe, will have dubious results. Please desist from your current application."
The homeowner read the letter, wrote back, thanking the company for its response and telling them once again that he was delighted that he was doing nothing that would harm his pipes.
There followed a final letter from the exasperated manufacturer: "Do not use acid! It will bust your pipes!"
Listening is difficult for some of us. My children would find it amusing that I'm speaking about listening. My hearing impairment is often a rich source of amusement for them, for often I hear a word that has absolutely nothing to do with what they were talking about. Of course, advancing age does little to boost my confidence. As we get older our short-term memory begins to fail, more so than our long-term memory, and so while I remember all the words to Leonard Cohen's song, Suzanne (1966), when I get to Canadian Tire I can't remember what may have prompted the trip in the first place!
The Scriptures are well aware of the difficulties of listening, and counsel us to cultivate the art of listening. The New Testament James is very direct, saying,"Be quick to listen, (and) slow to speak." (James 1:19) James stressed the practical component of listening, urging us to be "...doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves." (1:22) Be sure "...that you act on the message" you hear, said James. (1:22, NEB) The Apostle Paul complained of those who have "itching ears," who will listen only to teachers who say what they want to hear and who "...turn away from listening to the truth...." (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
Jesus told many stories, but he was aware that the point might be lost on some, so he said, "Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" (Luke 8:8) In some of his stories, like those having to do with agriculture, Jesus wasn't telling the village folks anything they didn't already know – but you never know – there might be someone in the crowd dim-witted enough to miss the point of the story, so he added, "Pay attention to how you listen...." (8:18) "Consider carefully how you listen." (8:18, NIV-UK)
Listen to the Glistening One!
It's easy to get distracted on the mount of transfiguration, focussing on the dazzling light, the glistening clothes, the shimmering mystery of God's presence, but Mark focusses his Gospel on listening to the glistening One, on doing the words of our Lord. Just as the story of the transfiguration is subject to distraction and inadequate listening skills, so the voice of Jesus can be drowned out by competing voices. Sometimes we are so attentive to other voices that Jesus can't get a word in edgewise! We are bombarded by data, e-mail messages, text messages, Skype messages, commercial messages, and one sound-bite after a thousand more sound-bites, until we reach the threshold of what our ears can hear and our minds absorb.
"This is my ...Beloved; listen to him!" (Mark 9:7) It's hard to listen with an open mind and heart. Selective listening serves Christians very well, because if Jesus says something we don't want to hear, we tune him out! Jesus said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal" (Matthew 6:19), but I doubt that Jesus said what he meant. What I hear, or would like to hear, is: "You can have all your toys, your expensive cars and big TVs and big travel plans – and – still be heavenly-minded!
"This is my ...Beloved; listen to him!" (Mark 9:7) Listen to Jesus when he tells us, "Blessed are (the) poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." (Luke 6:20, NIV) That's what Jesus said, but what I hear is: "Well ... we're all poor, especially after the market's recent free fall!" I do not really want to hear about God's preferential love for the poor and my responsibility toward them! And I certainly don't want to hear his harsh words about the rich! (Luke 6:24)
"This is my ...Beloved; listen to him!" (Mark 9:7) Listen to Jesus when he tells us that "when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, ...go (and) first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift." (Matthew 5:23-24) Oh, boy. I really don't want to listen to this. I must try and find some way that this doesn't apply to me, while continuing to apply to others.
I wonder if Jesus gets exasperated with our inattentiveness. Remember those three wanna-be disciples who heard what Jesus said and appeared quite eager to serve him, but one after the other found excuses not to serve Jesus, or to delay their service. (Luke 9:57-62) One had to bury his father, another wanted to wait until after his farewell party, another had to wash his car, or go skiing, or take some silly course on tricks to teach your dog!
The moment of transfiguration on that mountain taught the disciples that Jesus is not an artifact to preserve in some museum, but someone whose words bear listening to. Jesus himself said, "Anyone who hears and obeys these teachings of mine is like a wise person who built a house on solid rock." (Matthew 7:24, CEV)
It was encouraging to me to see forty to fifty people engaged in Bible study last Saturday. As Derek Suderman led us in a study of biblical wisdom, he took us through a lot of biblical texts, where we could discover the wisdom tradition for ourselves and not have to rely on our faulty memories or our lack of biblical knowledge.
If we want to listen to Jesus we should at the very least familiarize ourselves with his material. What better place to start than with his words on another mountaintop, his Sermon on the Mount, which covers everything from blessings to the Lord's Prayer and the Golden Rule and in between his wisdom on anger, adultery, lust, divorce, oaths, revenge, murder, worry. prayer, generosity, fasting, and judging others! There's a lot there to which we could lend our listening ears.
This week we will join Jesus on his journey to the Cross, as we enter the season of Lent. And over the next six weeks we will listen to words spoken by Jesus under very difficult circumstances – words about obedience to God; words about humility and servanthood; words about giving up power, control, position, and security; words about taking up our own cross for the sake of God's kingdom. May our ears be attuned to his words and his spirit, and may we express what we hear in holy living. AMEN
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.