There is a hum in humanity — a low note that runs through our lives. From the garden of Genesis to the wilderness of Gospel of Matthew, that hum carries the strain of mistrust, hunger and longing. But in the desert, Jesus holds a truer note — and the music of the world begins to change. A reflection for the first Sunday of Lent (Year A).
There is a hum in humanity. A low note that runs through our lives.
It is there in the very beginning of the word itself, the hum as we grow up as humans, part of humanity, challenged to be humane, struggling to keep our feet on the ground – the humus, finding humility so difficult.
There is a hum in humanity. A low note that rumbles through our lives.
It is not just the hum of dust and breath – but the hum of strain.
It is the hum of a myth that resounds through all our lives, a myth that can’t be dismissed because it rings so true, so true that it becomes the earworm that casts our psyche and scripts our story.
This is the story from Genesis.
It is not a fairy tale about a perfect world once upon a time, but the beginning of difficulty.
The first mistrust. The first fracture. The first hiding. The first blaming.
And the rest, as they say, is history, herstory and ourstory.
Ever since, life has carried that note.
Work that exhausts. Relationships that bruise. Bodies that fail. Power that corrupts. Fear that whispers.
There is a hum in our ears and hearts that tells us life should be easier than this – easier than it has ever been.
A hum that suggests it was never meant to be this hard.
And yet – it has been this hard from the beginning.
And then we hear the Gospel from Matthew.
The same hum. The same strain. The same voice that once whispered in a garden now speaks in a wilderness.
“Turn these stones to bread.” Make it easier. Fix the hunger. Work a little magic.
“Throw yourself down.” Let God catch you. Prove yourself. Court admiration.
“All this can be yours.” Take control. Overrule the chaos. Dominate rather than trust.
These are not exotic temptations. They are ours.
The temptation to solve difficulty by spectacle. To escape vulnerability by popularity. To end uncertainty by control.
Jesus stands where we stand. He feels the same pull. He hears the same hum.
But he stays.
He stays with the hunger. He stays with the trust. He stays with the limits of being human.
And he answers — not with magic, not with drama, not with force —
but with Scripture, with remembered truth, with the steady note of dependence.
And that steady note sees the back of the devil.
After the discord of the devil, a new note sounds, a different music, harmonies and the ring of truth. This is the sound of angels, the sound of heaven attending earth.
This is the sound that swells our hearts as we walk our 40 days of Lent, through our temptation, through difficulty, through wilderness.
It’s not the sound of despair and desolation, nor the sound of punishment and shame, it is the note Jesus brings to the garden, the hopeful note of humankind.
This is the joy Paul conveys to us in his letter to the Romans. By the obedience of one the music of our lives has changed. Not by the brilliance of one. Not by the power of one. By the obedience of one – in the wilderness, in the difficulties, pressures and temptations of life, humanity is re-tuned.
The hum of strain is not denied. Jesus is still hungry. Jesus is always hungry. As long as anyone is hungry, Jesus is hungry.
But discord becomes fidelity.
That’s the good news.
The gospel is not that life suddenly becomes easy. The good news is that within the difficulty – the wars, the privations, the despair – a new sound has entered the world.
The hum is still there. The world is still hard.
But now – it is not the only sound.
These forty days are a gift to us – time to learn again how to listen for the music of accompaniment.
A reflection for the Sunday just before Lent, when the Church’s readings gently remind us that Lent is not about self-improvement, but about staying with the glory of God.
There is a great noise in the world just now. Nations in tumult. Rulers devising their plots. Power protecting itself. The psalmist’s question hardly feels ancient: “ Why are the nations in tumult, and why do the peoples devise a vain plot?” It is the sound of anger, of rivalry, of ambition — the sound of a world bent in on itself.
And beneath the public noise there is another noise: the private ache, the anxiety we carry, the way we can find ourselves almost doubled up with it — bent backs and bowed heads under the weight of it all.
This is how we’ve come to worship today, with our minds dripping with the headlines from the Sunday papers, the TV news and fed by the crooked algorithms of social media. This is how we began our worship, with those lines from the psalm appointed for today, Psalm 2: Why are the nations in tumult, and why do people plot so cruelly against one another?
This is the noise that we take into Lent, the noise of anger and anxiety.
And then, in today’s gospel, Jesus leads his friends away from the tumult. Up a high mountain. Not to escape the world, but to see it truly. The air is thinner there. The noise falls away. The cloud settles. The voice speaks.
And as we stand on the edge of Lent — forty days that echo Moses in the cloud — we are invited to climb with him. Not to try harder. Not to straighten ourselves by effort. But to behold a glory that does not crush us, does not dazzle us into denial, but straightens us. “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”
The mountain is not where we live. We live mostly in the valleys — in the ordinary press of work and worry, in the shadowed places Psalm 23 calls “the valley of the shadow of death,” in the deadly ways that bend our backs and narrow our vision.
But in Exodus, Moses is called up into the cloud, into fire and mystery, for forty days and forty nights — not to escape the people below, but to receive something that will sustain them in the wilderness.
And as Lent opens before us, those forty days are not an ordeal to be survived, nor a spiritual boot camp in self-improvement. They are a grace-filled ascent. An invitation to step, however falteringly, into the cloud with Christ — to let the noise fall away, to let our sight be cleared, to let our crooked wills be gently bent back toward God’s goodness and glory — to have our hearts set straight and our wills aligned with his love – so that when we walk again through the valleys, we do not walk weakened, but strengthened by the glory we have glimpsed.
So we will walk down the mountain again. We always do. The noise will still be there. The nations will still rage. The valleys will still wind their way through shadowed places. Lent will not remove us from the world’s tumult, nor from the private aches that sometimes leave us doubled over. But we will not walk alone, and we will not walk unstrengthened.
For we have heard the voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”
And if we listen — not perfectly, not heroically, but honestly — something in us begins to straighten. Not by effort, but by grace.
The glory of Christ does not crush us; it steadies us. It does not blind us; it clears our sight.
It does not demand that we prove ourselves; it bends our wills gently back toward the goodness and glory of God.
This is what these forty days are for. Not self-improvement, but reorientation. Not spiritual ambition, but deeper attention. So that when we walk through the valleys — even through the valley of the shadow of death — we are not bent by fear or twisted by the world’s rage, but strengthened by the glory we have seen, and guided by the voice we have learned to trust.
The Glory that straightens us is not found in noise or power or spectacle. It is found in the Beloved Son — and it is enough.
It’s the Canaanite woman who catches the eye of the church on the 11th Sunday after Trinity (A). “Crumbs!” was what I said when I read the story from Matthew 15 as if for the first time. So Crumbs remains the title for this reflection/sermon.
Crumbs
On the one hand there’s the bread from the feeding of the 5000 (12 baskets worth) and on the other hand there’s the bread from the feeding of the 4000 (7 baskets worth) and between there are the crumbs that are more than enough for the Canaanite woman in this morning’s gospel.
Today’s gospel, showing the growing tension between Jesus and the Pharisees and the great faith of the Canaanite woman is sandwiched between the feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the 4000.
“Woman, great is your faith” is what Jesus finally notices about the Canaanite woman the disciples wanted to silence, send away and have nothing to do with. She may have only been a dog in the pecking order but she knew that she would be satisfied with the crumbs that fell from the table. Great is her faith in any crumb that falls from the hand of Jesus.
In contrast the disciples thought that they would never have enough to feed the five thousand (as well as women and children) or the four thousand (as well as women and children). They say before the feeding of the 5000: “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish”. And before the feeding of the 4000 they want to know “where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?” Jesus had to show them. They would never have believed that there would be 12 baskets left over from feeding 5000, or 7 baskets left over from feeding 4000.
I dare say that most of us fall into the same boat as those first disciples. Common sense is enough to know that five loaves and two fish are never going to be enough for 5000, and seven loaves and few small fish are never going to be enough for 4000. Can we ever believe that so little can go so far?
We perhaps have little faith in such miracles.
In the same boat, when the storm was blowing a gale, Jesus notes the “small faith” of his disciples. “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” (Matthew 8:26). Seemingly they had such little faith in him that they thought they were all going to drown together. It almost seems as if this is what Jesus called his disciples; “You of little faith”.
In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said “if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith?” (Matthew 6:30)
When Peter realised he wasn’t walking on water Jesus reaching out to rescue him said, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
When the disciples were worried that they had forgotten to take bread with them Jesus said, “You of little faith, why are you talking about having no bread?” (Matthew 16:8)
You might expect those first disciples to have great faith but they remain the ones of little faith. They have “little faith” and are slow to understand. In today’s gospel Jesus asks Peter, “Are you still without understanding?”
As for the religious leaders, it would be reasonable to expect that they would have great faith. These are the religious leaders of Israel we are talking about. But they have no faith in Jesus at all. “Blind guides” and “hypocrites” is what Jesus calls them. Their concern was the keeping of rules – all 613 of them were to be kept at any cost. They were offended by Jesus’ attitude toward washing hands before eating and were more concerned about what came out of people’s bottoms than mouths. (If everyone had to wash their hands before eating then the 5000, the 4000 (plus women and children) would have remained starving. The feeding would have been impossible.)
The only faith the Pharisees had was in a god who demanded obedience and required people to do x, y and z and follow every letter of the law. They had no faith in a gracious God. They looked for offences. Tragically there are still religious leaders who have no faith in a gracious God and who are looking for offences. They too are blind guides and hypocrites. And they are frightening.
Jesus had to go a long way to find great faith. He had to leave Israel. He left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Tyre and Sidon are a long way out. They’re in what is now known as Lebanon. They were beyond the pale. Jesus probably went there with his disciples to get away from the pressure building from the Pharisees – he was wanting some space.
And then this Canaanite woman came to him. She knew precisely who he was and she knew exactly what he could do. He was the Lord and son of David. He was the one who would show her mercy. He was the one to help her daughter.
But she was a woman. She was a foreign woman, a despised Canaanite.
And she shouted.
The disciples wanted Jesus to send her away. They didn’t want to hear anything from her.
What a good job Jesus resisted, because otherwise he would never have discovered her great faith.
And nor would we.
It was only through what some people now call “radical listening” that Jesus found what he probably wasn’t expecting to find. Radical listening is a discipline which allows the other person their say and hearing. The discipline involves removing our personal biases which bias us to listen to the people we are most used to hearing, and like hearing from. It’s about giving the mic to those who are often silenced and taking it away from those who jealously guard it.
Jesus allowed her the mic, and Matthew’s gospel provides the amplifier, amplifying her “great faith”. This Canaanite woman was a faith leader for Jesus and for Matthew. I wonder why she hasn’t remained so. Her “great faith” is what Jesus was working towards for his disciples as he continued to teach them about the way of faith and the graciousness of God.
Her “great faith” is such a contrast to those “of little faith” and those who had no faith in Jesus. She echoes the prophetic voice which insists that no faith is to be found where it is expected – for example, in the Temple, or the religious leaders, the Pharisees and scribes and the keepers of tradition. No “great faith” is to be found in Israel. Only some “little faith” – which little faith is carefully nurtured by Jesus.
Great faith is found elsewhere, where it is not expected, beyond the pale, in foreign bodies. It is found through radical listening which shushes our biases so that we hear the voice of others (perhaps for the first time), their stories, their journeys, their faith. We might be outraged like the disciples (those of little faith). That woman did SHOUT, but people need to shout if they’re not being heard, particularly when they so need help. They often need to get their rage out, which may come across as outrageous.
At our moment in history it is refugees who are shouting and struggling to be heard. It is the planet which is shouting, struggling to be heard – their claims being too easily dismissed as outrageous, their voices being too easily silenced. We need to be disciplined to hear those made to suffer in silence.
The Canaanite woman, our great faith leader, is key to the door that opens up mission everywhere. Matthew lets his gospel rest with the great commission to go and make disciples of people everywhere, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and opening the way of faith to them.
The mission of God has always been a mission to overcome boundaries. We’ve heard that this morning from our reading from the prophet Isaiah in the promise to bring all the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to the holy mountain, to make them joyful in the house of prayer, which will be forever known as a house of prayer for all people, says the one who gathers those cast out by Israel.
The story of the Canaanite woman is sandwiched between the feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the 4000, between the feeding of the 5000 tired, radical listeners and the crowd of 4000 including the lame, maimed, blind and mute on whom Jesus had compassion. She was prepared to eat the crumbs which fell from the table. In communion we join her, her great faith. In communion we join her to the 5000 and the 4000. In communion we join her great faith even with the little faith we may have in the gracious God Jesus is showing us.
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8 Thus says the Lord: maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, And my deliverance be revealed. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant – these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. This says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.
Matthew 15:10-20, 21-28
Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and understand. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out the mouth that defiles.’ Then the disciples approached and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees took offence when they heard what you said?’ He answered, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘Explain this parable to us.’ Then he said, ‘Are you still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the mouth come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.’
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David, my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.
I don’t read that much but every now and then I come across something that takes my breath away. Julian Barnes, through his book The Noise of Time, has me intrigued with the noise of time. This is a poetic book that is well crafted and beautifully composed. It tells us the time and the time is telling. It is a short book in which a lot of time is told in a short time. It is a time of terror.
I read this book for the first time at the end of Holy Week, through the three days known as the TriDuum, Maundy Thursday through till Holy Saturday – the short time it took to tell so much of time. I was attentive to the noises of that other time told through three days: the crushing noise of religious and political authority almost overpowering a more faithful and resilient strain.
There are three main characters in The Noise of Time. There’s the “author” who is the one who remembers. There’s Shostakovich, who is the one who hears. And there is the one less than human, Power deformed. Arguably there is a cast of three in the Triduum. There’s the one who remembers (the witnesses), the one who hears (on the cross) and the ones Power deformed (who know not what they do).
Running through my mind while I read this book were lines from a poem by Anna Lightart called The Second Music:
Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other
lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.
The Noise of Time is a book full of threes – if you like, there are three hands: an hour hand, minute hand and second hand. The three chapters measure three movements: On the Landing, On the Plane and In the Car.
There are three brands of cigarettes (Kazbeks, Belamors, Herzegovinas). There are three vodka glasses for three vodka drinkers (the perfect number for vodka drinking). There are three wives (Nina, Margarita and Irina). There are three ways to destroy your soul: “by what others did to you, by what others made you do to yourself, and by what you voluntarily chose to do to yourself”. (p.181)
There are three Conversations with Power and there are three leap years twelve years apart from each other (1936, 1948 and 1960). This is the time frame of a crushing history. It is a history which crushes the human spirit and twists arts and artists to the ends of empire, turning them into cowards – which threatened to be a life’s work (being a coward, just to survive).
“It was not easy being a coward. Being a hero was much easier than being a coward. To be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment – when you took out the gun, threw the bomb, pressed the detonator, did away with the tyrant, and with yourself as well. To be a coward was to embark on a career that lasted a lifetime. You couldn’t ever relax. You had to anticipate the next occasion when you would have to make excuses for yourself, dither, cringe, reacquaint yourself with the taste of rubber boots and the state of your fallen, abject character. Being a coward required pertinacity, persistence, a refusal to change – which made it, in a way, a kind of courage. He smiled to himself and lit another cigarette. The pleasures of irony had not yet deserted him.” (p.171)
Dimitiri Shostakovich was one of the major composers of the twentieth century. I’m no musician but I do know that there are usually four movements to a symphony. That is music’s shape. In his threes, is Barnes describing the way in which totalitarianism deforms truth and beauty? There is the hint of a fourth movement in the opening and closing of the book in epigraph and coda. In these there are the three characters on stage (it’s a station platform). There’s one who remembers, there’s one who hears and there’s one who is a vulgar “half man” (reduced by the noise of time to being less than himself, a mere “technique of survival”. The one who remembered, remembers the vodka and remembers how the one who heard pricked up his ears as he heard the notes of the clinking vodka glasses.
This is what was remembered:
“They were in the middle of Russia, in the middle of a war, in the middle of all kinds of suffering within that war. There was a long station platform, on which the sun had just come up. There was a man, half a man really, wheeling himself along on a trolley, attached to it by a rope threaded through the top of his trousers. The two passengers had a bottle of vodka. They descended from the train. The beggar stopped singing his filthy song. Dimitri Dmitrievich held the bottle, he the glasses. Dimitri Dmitrievich poured vodka into each glass …
He was no barman, and the level of vodka in each glass was slightly different …
But Dimitri Dmitrievich was listening , and hearing as he always did. So when the three glasses with their different levels came together in a single chink, he had smiled, and put his head on one side so that the sunlight flashed briefly off his spectacles, and murmured, “A triad”.
And that was what the one who remembered had remembered. War, fear, poverty, typhus and filth, yet in the middle of it, above it and beneath it and through it all, Dimitri Dmitrievich had heard a perfect triad… a triad put together by three not very clean vodka glasses and their contents was a sound that rang clear of the noise of time, and would outlive everyone and everything. And perhaps, finally, this was all that mattered.” (p.196)
So the tragedy is told in The Noise of Time. There is a lot of time told in a short time. In one moment there is a note of beauty, a sound of music ringing above the noise of time, testimony to the human spirit, crushed, humiliated for so much of the time. There is the sounding of hope.
“Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it. Art no more belongs to the People and the Party than it once belonged to the aristocracy and the patron. Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.” (p.97)
Itay Talgam uses the faces of conductors to talk through different leadership styles. On one extreme is the face of Riccardo Muti. He is shown as very commanding and competent. He has the expression of one who is responsible for Mozart. He wants the music to be played his way, the proper way. As competent as he was, 700 music employees of La Scala wrote to him (2005) asking him to resign because, they felt, he was using them as instruments.
Talgam uses the expressions of Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein and Carlos Kleiber to explore other ways of leading without commanding. In those expressions there is the encouragement for the orchestra to exercise their own responsibility, to express themselves, to add interpretation, to become storytellers themselves. They are expressions that energise their fellow professionals. Kleiber is shown as rejoicing in the play, joining with the orchestra in spreading happiness. Great conductors and leaders are playmakers. Just watch from 19:27 to see leaderful joy.
This happy and blessed state is the product of hard work. There are hours of meticulous practice as the music gets under the skin of the musicians. They are led and lead each other to this ecstasy through the practice of the community, by listening to one another, by responding to each other, by loving each other. They all know their place in the social system and play their responsible part in it, with their abilities, goals and wills, according to the boundaries of the organisation. It’s hard work that works magic.
Conducting has often been used as a metaphor for leadership. The metaphor raises the importance of listening and negotiating the parts we want to play, the level which we want to work together and practice together. It shows the possibilities of engagement and empowerment which dissolves organisational boundaries as play pleases, drawing others in pleasure.
A sermon preached at Mattins at Chester Cathedral on October 13th 2013.
The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher (or, of one who is taught), that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens – wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.Isaiah 50:4f
What are the words that waken us?
What are the words that weaken us?
To what extent do the words that waken us make us?
To what extent do the words that wake us break us?
What are the words that wake us?
I asked some Fb friends, and got loads of replies:
They ranged from the relatively mundane (but still wonderful)
“Do you want a cup of tea?”
to the “This is the day that the Lord has made”
there were those who said that they woke to the sound of silence.
Anna says that it isn’t really words that wake us so much as noises, events, images, light etc. To which jenny replied that it isn’t so much the words, as the tone of voice that wakes us
My friends didn’t think anyone used Rise and Shine any more. A bit old fashioned they thought. Though it strikes me as a good Christian wake up call with its associations with the Lazarus story. Perhaps it’s too upbeat and cheerful when waking from slumber.
The words that wake us have the power to make us or break us. The words pounded through the bedroom door – “you’ve got 10 minutes to get dressed and be on that bus”. What effect do they have on the day and family relationships?
Those who are haunted by fear and those who are anxious about the future have other words that wake them up – not just at the crack of dawn, but repeatedly through the night.
Words spring to mind when we are anxious, excited or depressed.
The words that wake the mother struggling to make ends meet are words of panic. What are the words that wake the child who is being bullied.
Words have power.
Words weigh heavy.They shape the way in which we see ourselves and others. Dismissive put downs can affect us for decades. Careless labeling of others mean that we misjudge others.
Many of the words we pick up from a world that is indifferent or hostile to us are so powerful that we come to believe them.
Be careful how you speak to your children. One day it will be their inner voice . Peggy O’Mara
We have to take care about what we say. Particularly with our first words of the day, or the first words of a conversation. An email reply comes across well with an opening response of “it’s good to hear from you”. Macdonalds aren’t far off the mark when their “servers” bless those they have served with “have a good day” – to which the correct response (probably not often said) is “and also with you”.
“What if every word we say,
never ends or fades away?
What if not a word is lost,
what if every word we cast
cruel, cunning, cold accurst,
every word we cut and paste
echoes to us from the past,
fares and finds us
first and last
haunts and hunts us down?
What if each polite evasion,
every word of defamation,
insults made by implication,
querulous prevarication,
compromise in convocation,
propaganda for the nation
false or flattering persuasion,
blackmail and manipulation,
simulated desperation
grows to such reverberation
that it shakes our own foundation,
shakes and brings us down?
We must weigh our words carefully. The words that wake us are the words that make us and the words that break us.
The prophet, in our first reading, has the tongue of one who is taught. I suggest that it is not the “tongue of a teacher” as translated in our reading, but the “tongue of one who is taught” … by God – given by God so that he would know how to sustain the weary with a word. (Isaiah 50:4)
The words that wake the prophet are the words that make him. The words that wake him are the words of God.It is because God speaks and the prophet listens that the prophet becomes as one who is taught, as one who can sustain the weary with a word. The prophet says, “Morning by morning he wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.”
The Bible often refers to the voice of God not being heard. There are various reasons for God’s word not being heard. They include God’s own silence, but also there are times when God’s word is not heard because it is not listened to.
Here we meet with the prophet whose ears woke every morning to the word of God. We can perhaps feel the intimacy between God and the prophet as the prophet feels the breath of God on his ear as he whispers him awake morning by morning.
What are the words that wake us?
There is no shortage to the words that wake us. Newspaper headlines, breakfast TV, advertising – these are the hidden persuaders who know that the words that wake us are the words that shape us, and they want to shape us to their own ends.
The prophet shows us an alternative. His ears are awakened by the whispered word of God, a word which brings blessing to him and the weary.
There are many people who have this discipline of listening to God before first light. It is a discipline shared by very many faith communities.
But our prayer, whether it be morning or evening, can be full of our own words, with God not being able to get a word in edgeways. We can say our prayers without hearing a word from God.
Hearing the word of God requires discipline and attentiveness.
We can choose the words. The words of God can be words of Jesus, words of the angels, words of scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit, words spoken through the prophets. God has spoken many words. They have been repeated down the ages and brought many to life. They have wakened many morning by morning, and hearing them has signified the end of night and the break of day. We can choose the words and we can let the words choose us.
All the words of God are summed up in the one Word, Jesus. All the words of God can be translated as love. “Love is his word” is how hymnwriter Luke Connaughton puts it. All the words of God are for the weary, the lost, the last and the least. They are timed for the dead of night, the ending of darkness and the first light of day.
If it is true that the words that wake us, make us, then is it true that if we allow the words of God to waken our ears morning by morning, we too will have the tongue of one who is taught?
Do the words by which God wakes us make us a blessing to those around us who are weary and those who are oppressed and abused by words and deeds that break them?
>Spending the morning thinking what leadership is I came across some great definitions, including this from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester: leadership is “the process of influencing the behavior of other people toward group goals in a way that fully respects their freedom.” I came to the conclusion that there are as many definitions of leadership as there are leaders. And then I listened to Tom Peters highlighting the importance of listening in leadership. He says: “The single most significant strategic strength an organisation can have is not a good strategic plan, but a commitment to strategic listening on the part of every member of the organisation.” I suspect that most followers find leaders who don’t listen overpowering and insensitive – and then they find someone else to follow. To make his point he refers to the amount of data that doctors ignore because they only listen (according to his research) for 18 seconds before interrupting the patient – and suggests that that is true for 7 out of 8 “bosses”.
> Joanna Cox does a great job for us in our Adult Education Friday Mailing. She always concludes with something quotable – this week it is Jenny Rogers on Adult Learning:
Many discussions in adult, further, or higher education and training are far from being as free or equal as they need to be because tutors, often unconsciously, guide, manipulate and dominate proceedings. …….It is hard discipline as a tutor to keep you mouth shut, to listen, and to show signs of listening instead of talking. Most of us are good at talking and especially enjoy talking about our subjects. Not talking can be exquisite agony, as any experienced tutor will know.
We don’t think much about lsitening. In our churches skills are developed using mouths rather than ears. We talk about “good preaching”, “good singing”, “leading prayers” and “reading well”. We don’t talk about “listening” and we don’t bother thinking that much about how we can improve our listening (turning up the volume and installing a loop is about hearing, not listening). What can be really annoying is listening to a preacher who doesn’t listen – to God or his brothers and sisters. It seems only fair to me that if a preacher is inviting us to listen to him/her, s/he should return the favour. I came across “Nonviolent Communication” aka “Compassionate Communication Skills” the other day. Marshall Rosenberg created Nonviolent Communication and is Founder and Director of Educational Services for the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Here is a clip on nonviolent communication.
>Kirsty Young began a four-part history of the British Family from the end of WW2 to the present day last night. It’s a sign of old age when you see your own childhood as history. But that’s what it was and it was a fascinating insight into how families have changed and how my own family changed. The programme highlighted how the family was in crisis as a result of WW2 and how marriage came to be understood relationally rather than institutionally. The programme reminded me of the angst of the 50s and 60s as we discussed and argued (not very calmly because of the issues at stake). Shocking statistics revealed the amount of sexual ignorance and repression. There’s more to look forward as the series continues next week.
Running through my own mind at the same time were thoughts about how to facilitate “diversity training” – that’s part of my job. I had already read Donald Clark’s post about narrow minded (and patronising, frustrating and annoying) diversity training and was wondering what it is all about. Then, putting two and two together I realise how diversity training has developed in family life. The politics of home life has seen the emergence and emancipation of women, the development of companiable relationships between adults and a transformation in relationship with children – (or is that all still aspirational?)
And what has been the training programme? Has it been that through the developments in the media we have been able to be part of a very public debate about relationships and the family? Through the soap operas we have seen all sorts of relationships and sufferings modelled and entertained ideas about where we fit in our own behaviours. And doesn’t the training continue through “homework” and “exercises” – in which we exercise and practise love for others, including listening for their best interest and their frustrations.
Is this a clue for facilitating diversity training? What else is there?
There is also listening. Are there voices we can hear protesting their exclusion and their hurt? Hearing their cries prompts us to ask questions about how much they count as people and to challenge the systems that oppress and marginalise them. We do have a hearing problem though – because the voices of suffering are hard to hear. Their cries are muffled and smothered in so many cases. Careful listening becomes a requirement – listening that is full of care will prise off respectability’s veneer to investigate what is really happening and what people are really feeling. This is diversity training which is moved by compassion to diversify practice and thinking so that there is room for people. People suffer the world over because of their gender, their sexuality, their ethnicity, their nationality, their age, their class etc etc. They suffer personally in the details of their daily life (and often within their own living space/home) – and they suffer because of our narrow minded thinking.
But why do we need “diversity training” in the church? That’s my exercise – “to review continuing ministerial development in the area of diversity issues” – within the monochrome Diocese of Chester. For one thing we could refer to the experience of those who complain about being excluded (women clergy some of the time), or to the absence in our congregations of youngsters (and other groups) because our thinking and practice is not diverse enough to embrace them. Or we could refer to our scripture and Jesus’ ministry which has “diversity training” so much at its heart. Jesus’ life was with the marginalised. He taught us (Matthew 25) to recognise him in the prisoner, the naked, the asylum seeker, the scavenger and the homeless. He invited his followers to diversify their thinking to embrace a saviour who could be crucified as a common criminal. Those who accepted the invitation became a diverse family in which “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female”. (Galatians 3:28)
As an enabled, white, English, straight, educated, male priest in the “established” Church of England in this skewed world I should have enough power to do something to diversify our world. I know it must start from where I am. I’m just off to the Post Office. Who knows – it could just start there.
I don’t read that much but every now and then I come across something that takes my breath away. 
Grits and Grains 