Hear the Word

Grace, Mercy and Peace to you from God our Father and His only Son, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.

            “Are you listening to me?!?” My mother said to me, a young boy of 9 years of age. I realized instantly that even though I was standing directly in front of her and looking straight at her, that I was not listening to her. But to say ‘no’ would not endear me to her or quiet her wrath, so I lied and said, “Yes, I’m listening to you.”

            “Then what did I just say?”

            “Um, Not to do that anymore.”

            “Not to do what anymore?”

At this point, I had been undone by her skillful verbal parries and thrusts of the interrogation and resort to the feeble answer of, “Uh, I forgot.”

            I am sure each and every one of us has had a similar conversation with parent, spouse or friend. I am sure each and every one of us can analyze such conversations to find the cause of our inability to maintain attention.

            The subject may be one in which we do not wish to engage. Like the example of me as a young boy and my mother’s desire to correct my behavior, we may know what we have done wrong, realize the consequences and even wish it had never happened in the first place. The presentation of our wrong-doing for public examination is not a pleasant experience.

            Or, in some instances, we may be distracted by something else. I had heard the same conversation between my mother and father while he was reading the paper and she was cooking dinner. I often wondered why she would ask my father if he was listening when she could perfectly well see the daily paper opened and held closely enough that only his ears and the top of his head were visible.

            Apparently, the females of our species are able to engage in multiple tasks and are constantly frustrated with the fact that males cannot (or do not wish to). But this is natural in all of us. We process and prioritize our thoughts and actions. We learn it as young children and this process becomes transparent, as we grow older.

            We learn to put our pants on before our shoes. We learn to look both ways before crossing the street and other such acts of self-preservation. As we get older, our priorities may become more complex as we make decisions for our personal health and welfare before we consider the welfare of others.

            In some cases, we choose poorly. In some cases, we may choose to neglect our health in order to continue working to achieve another level of prosperity. We may neglect our spouses and children by putting our desires first. We have become so good at prioritizing our wants and desires that we have even developed a system of justifying our selfish actions.

            We may say to ourselves and to others, “I have to work longer hours in order to support my family.” We have developed humorous witticisms to explain away our mistakes, “When you make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.” We even deceive ourselves into justifying what is evil and calling it good, “It’s not my fault somebody left something so valuable lying around. If I don’t take it, somebody else will.”

            Are we even listening to ourselves? It shows our distraction when we don’t even realize what we are saying, when we don’t even think about the words that come out of our mouths. When we have to ask other people, “What did I just say?” we show our diminishing attentiveness.

            “He who has ears, let him hear!” Jesus says. He says that at the end of his parable about a man sowing seeds. Basically, he is saying, “Are you listening to me?” Well, are you? Are you listening to what Jesus has to say, or are you distracted by that little thing of yours you call your life?

            Where are your priorities now? Is your head buried so deep in the self-serving, pleasure-seeking desires of this world that only the top of your head is visible, if at all? Are you distracted by the thorns and briars of life and therefore tell yourself that you are too busy to pay attention?

            Jesus says, “Are you listening to me?” Jesus says, ‘I am giving you the seed of the Holy Spirit so that you may grow in faith and produce good fruit. I know your life is filled with sin. I know the works of the evil one are constantly tugging at your sleeve, dragging you down into the tangled thicket of despair, pulling you away from me.’

            We stand before our Father in heaven; our sins laid before him. The presentation of our wrong-doing for his examination is not a pleasant experience. He asks us, “Are you listening to me?”

            We answer, “Oh yes, Lord! We hear you loud and clear.”

            “Then what did I say? Is my word that goes forth from my mouth to return to me empty?”

We answer him with full knowledge of our transgressions, “You said not to do that anymore.”

            “Not to do what anymore?”

            “Um… We forgot”

            We truly did forget. We truly forget every day. We forget that we are sinful creatures. We forget that God is the one true God. We forget to love our neighbors as ourselves. But worst of all, we forget that God does not want us to be apart from him. He loves us so much that he cannot bear to see us fall into the hands of the adversary, Satan.

            As St. Paul says, we forget that:

“…we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” [Rom 8:12-14]

We forget the Son of God who came into the flesh of our flesh to die in our place. We have become distracted to the fact that Jesus Christ took our sin upon his back. He took our sin even though it tried to choke him and tear his flesh with its barbs and thorns. He took all of what the evil one had to give, even the most vile death of crucifixion on a cross.

            Our attention span is so short that we don’t remember his triumph over the grave. He has freed us from the sin filled mire of our lives to give us life eternal in our Father’s kingdom. Did you hear what I just said? Are you listening to me?

            Then hear the words of our Lord and Savior. These are not my words, empty and hollow of meaning, but the life saving words of Christ.

“Hear then the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” [Matthew 13:18–23]

            One does not have to search far to find those who hear the message but do not listen. They do not understand the grace of God or the peril of their own souls. They readily believe what they see in our culture and listen to the deceivers of our times. For them, they are robbed of the promise of the Holy Spirit.

            Even closer to home, literally, are those who received the Holy Spirit in their baptism. They became members of the body of Christ and heirs to the kingdom of God. They may even have professed their faith through confirmation, but they fell away.

            The pleasures of the world entice them to stay home away from the house of God. They eat, drink and celebrate their own demise the night before. They are too busy to read the Word of God. They find the demands of the world distracting. The commentator John Watts describes it this way:

“These [distractions] may include idolatry as such. But they may simply be chasing after shadows of pride and ambition, hoping for the return of what they believe were days of glory, or determining to satisfy a hopeless desire for vengeance for long-past wrongs.

They are guilty of resisting God. They are violent people who fancy that holding fast to their convictions is a virtue.”[1]

The thorns of self-indulgence consume their so-called lives and their faith is choked by the deceitfulness of wealth.

            Jesus Christ is speaking to you, are you listening? The person who hears the word and understands it yields thirty, sixty or a hundred times what was sown. The person who cultivates their faith by weeding out the choking habits of a sinful life and nourishes their soul with the word of God, produces the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

            We become a part of God’s kingdom in eternal life. We receive a full pardon from our sins.

As the Apostle Paul tells us Romans 8:15-17:

You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.

He who has ears, let him hear!

Amen

[1] John D. W. Watts, vol. 25, Word Biblical Commentary, 248 (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 2002)