St. Andrew’s Pictou, March 12^th 2006 Lent II

 

Not Easy to Hear

 

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Mark 8:31-38

 

There is no doubt that we human beings can agree that we just don’t want to hear what we don’t want to hear. There are things we don’t want to hear at all.

 

We are so repulsed by some of what is told to us, that we don’t even hear it:

-we may hear the opposite, or

-we may not even hear it at all.

 

Some bad things we just don’t hear; we carry on as if we never heard it, people say that we are “in denial;” we just keep on going irregardless of what we were told.

 

If you haven’t heard what frequent and prevalent denial is, let me give you the phrase:

“Da Nile doesn’t just flow through Egypt, “denial” flows everywhere.”

 

We don’t want to hear lots of things:

-we don’t want to hear that the money has run out,

-we don’t want to hear that our spouse has cheated,

-we don’t want to hear that the addict we love has relapsed,

-we don’t want to hear bad news about medical tests.

 

It seems that we have some kind of ability to shut our ears to the things that are not easy to hear.

 

The funny thing about it all is that some of us don’t even like to hear good news about life and the future.

 

More times than I could count, I have had people reject good things I tell them about themselves.

 

They don’t want to believe good things that could happen to them in the future. They want to believe that good times are over, their life is over, that things can’t get better.

 

Maybe you have had that experience yourself: you can see good things in the future for someone and you can only try to get them to see your vision of their future, but they won’t listen.

 

This is exactly the same experience that God had with Abram in the reading from Genesis.

 

Abram and Sarai had been seniors for a long time: he was 99 and she was 90. Things were bad and they were disappointed; they had no son to pass on the inheritance. Things were so disappointing that by mutual consent, Abram had fathered a child with an Egyptian slave girl by the name of Hagar at Sarai’s instigation. The child, a son called Ishmael later became considered the founder of the Moslem faith.

 

But God had big plans for Abram and Sarai in another way. God told Abram that he was going to make a covenant with him and his offspring would be immensely numerous.

 

The sign of the covenant were the words: “You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.”

 

As a further recognition of this new covenant and the child that was to be born, God renamed Abram to “Abraham” and Sarai God changed to “Sarah.” Their miraculous son born in old age, “Isaac” was next in line for their family and the Jewish race.

 

Abraham and Sarah did not find it easy to hear that they were going to have another child in their old age, when they thought that all hope had vanished, but as they were to find, “with God all things are possible.”

 

We read in the Gospels that Jesus loved and worked closely with his disciples, but he also had the experience of telling them things that were not easy to hear.

 

“…he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

 

Although Jesus was very open, it was not easy for them to hear things like this about one that they supported and loved. “…Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.”

 

They didn’t want to hear what Jesus was saying; they didn’t want to hear it at all!

 

But Jesus was determined that they were going to hear the what he had to say, and the truth about what he was going to face, so he told Peter off when he tried to make Jesus be quiet.

 

“Get behind me Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 

Then to set the record straight, Jesus went on to tell them the real truth about following him. He said:

 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For those who want to save their lives will lose it, and for those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel will save it.”

 

Jesus was positioning losing our lives or finding our lives in terms of following him. If we follow him we find our lives, if we don’t we lose it. We may not find it easy to hear, but this is what he said:

 

“For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?

Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”

 

“…what will it profit them to gain the whole world…?”

 

Consider a successful stock broker on Toronto’s Bay Street. He/she gets up in their expensive house, with high taxes and a huge mortgage, goes to work in an expensive car, sits in front of a computer playing with figures all day, doesn’t have time to go out for lunch, goes home at the end of the long day, the kids are in bed, eats, watches TV, goes to bed and gets up and does it all over. Is that person’s life better than yours?

 

Jesus says if we are going to be ashamed of him, he will be ashamed of us when we come to him.

 

It’s not easy to hear all of this, but the issue is finding our lives or not!

 

Our life will never be better by ignoring what we need to hear!

 

Biggest thing we ignore is soul care; we refuse to take care of our souls!

 

We don’t want to hear about:

Losing weight, exercise, changing our diet, reading a good book, visiting a friend in need, teaching Sunday School, asking friends to go to church, cleaning off my desk. We don’t want to hear that our child is being abused or that our spouse is abusing us.

 

Sometimes when I am conducting weddings or funerals they will ask “How long will it take?” – like receiving a massive hypodermic – “How long will it take?”

 

I always ask them, “You want it over so you can do what??”

 

They have no answer because they are used to “blank space;” (brain turned off) young people call it “hanging out.”

 

It is a dangerous thing to not hear and listen to all that you need to hear.

 

You could lose your whole life by just closing your ears.

 

In plain English, being a Christian is tough business. Only men and women on the road to maturity can handle being a Christian.

 

The rewards are great: friends where it really matters, life, eternal life.

 

You have to be present to yourself to hear those things that are not easy to hear, but we all have to do it sooner or later on the road to maturity if we plan to arrive at the destination of who and what we each are as a woman or man.

 

Jesus often said, “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.”

 

May God give us all the grace to be able to hear what our ears need to hear.

 

AMEN                                    Rev. Alan Stewart