Sermon Recording:

Sermon Text: 

Listen. Then Listen Again. And Again.

If you were to ask me what has been the overall objective of my preaching over the past ten years it would be how to read the Bible. After all, if we believe that it is the foundational document of our faith, then don’t we owe it to ourselves to read it wisely? To borrow from one of today’s parables, what’s the point of giving everything for the treasure in a field and then either neglecting it or misusing it? It does a disservice to something we say we value.

As one whose earliest experience with Scripture was a succession of Bible stories uncritically presented and uncritically heard, I knew virtually nothing about literary and historical context, nuance, metaphor, or God forbid, the idea of interrogating the motivation of the storyteller or author. “The Bible is inspired by God”, is what we were told, which I guess was one way of keeping our questions to a minimum and our curiosity on a short leash.

A popular phrase in my teen years was “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” 

What a misuse of spiritual treasure.

Thanks be to God, it is never too late to learn that it is in the questioning that we are able to plumb the riches of the living library that is the Bible; living because the inspiration—the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit– was not just in the writing, it is now in the reading, the wondering, and the wrestling. This is where we begin to truly hear the Divine Voice—or Voices—that enrich and enliven our journey of faith and our invitation and challenge to be part of the unfolding of God’s Dream. 

It is this reading, this listening for Divine Voice, that I find especially interesting in our passage from Romans, because we can tune our ears to hear it in more than one way. 

‘The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.’ 

This is absolutely one of my favorite sentences in all of Scripture. There is so much comfort in knowing that the Spirit’s sighs speak volumes on our behalf to the One who hears and knows all when I have lost the power of words for prayer. (And yes, it happens.) The Divine Voice here is a whisper of peace, a soft lament of solidarity.

This is a deeply personal way of reading/listening to the Scriptural voice.

Yes, and. 

There is more to hear, if we have ears to listen.