Have any of you ever watched Joan of Arcadia? For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, it was about a teenage girl who talks to God. Joan never knows when he is going to appear. He can show up looking like a substitute teacher or a garbage man or a cheerleader or a toddler at a day care center. And God is always asking her to do things she doesn’t want to do. And she usually doesn’t figure out why she’s supposed to be doing - whatever it is - until the end of the show. Anyway, one Friday God tells Joan to volunteer to work on the yearbook, which puts her in conflict with a control freak student editor, a former romantic rival, and her own fragile ego. At one point she is forced to choose between loyalty to her mother and following through on her assignment from God. Well, Joan finishes the assignment, with only a couple of minor rebellions along the way, and in the process gets extremely dirty and extremely confused. But it all works out in the end, and she learns something about herself, and does something good for a friend.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be equally certain of what it is God wants us to do?
But - wait a minute.
How does Joan know that it’s God who’s speaking to her? How can you tell which of the voices that clamor and jostle and compete for our attention is God’s voice?
That’s an important question, and we’ll get to it. But there’s an even more important question. Do we really want to know?
Isn’t it a whole lot easier not to listen for God’s voice, asking us to get out of our comfort zone, make changes to our lives, maybe even take a risk or two?
The surprising thing about Joan isn’t that she hears from God. It’s that she always says yes. She may fuss and fume and protest, but she always winds up saying Yes sir. Or ma’am, as the case may be.
The people who came to question Jesus, that long ago day in Jerusalem, didn’t want to know. They asked him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” But they already had enough data. Jesus has just restored the sight of the man born blind. They had heard the formerly blind man say, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing,” and “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again?” [Jn 9:32-3, 27] They had heard the words and seen the works, but they did not want to believe. Finally, Jesus does respond to their questions, saying “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” [Jn 10:37-38] But did they believe, and follow? No. Instead, they picked up stones to throw at him.
Now, it is true that some people who do not recognize Jesus’ voice simply need to learn to recognize it, and to trust it. If you don’t know what to listen for, all of the other sounds in our world just drown it out. For these people, it’s a matter of training your ear. There’s a wonderful story that illustrates what I mean.
Two men were walking along a crowded city sidewalk. Suddenly, one of the men remarked, “Listen! There’s a cricket!” But the other man couldn’t hear it. He asked his friend how he could distinguish the sound of a cricket through the roar of the traffic and the sound of the people. The first man, a zoologist, had trained himself to hear the sounds of nature no matter where he was. But instead of using words to explain how it was he could hear the cricket, the zoologist reached into his pocket, pulled out a half dollar coin, and dropped it onto the sidewalk. They watched in silence as a dozen people turned to look for the coin they had heard fall - even through the noise of the traffic and the crowd. The first man turned to his friend and said, “We hear what we listen for.”
How badly do you want to hear what God has to say to you? Are you willing to listen for his word, are you willing to train your ear to recognize and hear what he has to say even in the midst of all the chaos and confusion of ordinary life? Or are you just coasting along, telling yourself that you are doing just fine as you are and don’t need to be shaken up, thank you, by some impertinent so-and-so telling you to change your ways? It’s really easy to believe that if we’re good, decent, well-meaning people that we will naturally make the choices that please God. But as the prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse - who can understand it? [Jer 17:9] Even good, decent, well-meaning people fall into the habit of following the devices and desires of their own hearts, rather than seeking to train themselves in discipleship.
We live in a time of crisis for our society, which means, of course, a time of crisis for the church. It is no longer enough to fit church in around the edges of our lives, because things are changing too quickly, and if we are not alert to the voice of our shepherd, trained to respond and ready to follow, we will find ourselves left behind, on the sidelines, as the work of Jesus Christ goes on without us. We cannot trust to our intuition, to our habits, to our good intentions, to be effective servants of Christ in this time. Because our culture is too seductive, and too powerful.
We all know people who believe that they can be good Christians without belonging to a church, without committing to a faith community. That’s one of the messages that our culture gives us: the message that religion is private, that faith is between yourself and God, and is expressed publicly simply by being kind, and honest, and generous. But being a Christian is more than that.
Last week the church would have been virtually empty had it not been for all the guests present celebrating our new members and their baptisms. Why is it that worship seems to be optional for so many people? One of the books I am reading for my upcoming class in pastoral care says that nowadays in America people fit church in around everything else, that God gets the leftovers - both of our time and our treasure - and we expect him to be delighted that we give any of our attention to him at all. And yet Jesus says that those who belong to him hear his voice, and follow.
Yes, Jesus does call each one of us individually. He knows each one of us by name and has a unique path for each one of us to follow. But he does not call us to live out our Christianity alone. We are called to be a community, and it is as a community that we carry out his will for our lives. It is as a community that we do the work of Christ in the world, and it is in community that we learn to hear his voice and are formed into people who not only hear but reflect Jesus Christ. And it is in worship together, as we enter into the presence of God through the grace of Jesus Christ who intercedes for us, that we become that community.
The churches around us that are growing the fastest are the ones that lay down the law for their members, expecting weekly attendance at Bible study or prayer groups as well as at Sunday worship, requiring tithing as a condition of membership and refusing to marry couples who live together before marriage. A lot of people are comforted by having someone else tell them exactly what they have to do in order to be in good standing with God. But do we really have to put rules up in flashing neon signs? Does Jesus really have to shout that loudly to be heard? I don’t think so. Jesus calls, and those who belong to him hear, and follow. They don’t stand around the edges saying, “Do I really have to?”
I don’t want you to listen to MY voice. I don’t want you to follow ME. But I do want to help you hear Jesus’ voice, because hearing him and following him is the only reason we are all here. It is together that we hear, and together that we follow, and we need every person in order to become what God has called us to become.
If you are like the people in today’s Scripture, who can’t hear Jesus' voice because they don’t want to, there’s nothing much that can be done about it. Jesus didn’t waste his time with them. But if the question is how to learn to recognize his voice, the answer is, that not only do you have to tune in to the right channel. You also have to fiddle with the knobs and buttons and maybe even add an extra antenna or two, if the static is drowning out the Master’s voice.
Do any of you remember those old TV’s with rabbit ears? Do you remember having to add a coat-hanger or two to get the more distant stations to tune in? Well, that’s the kind of effort you need to stay tuned in to Jesus’ voice. Because he doesn’t shout. He doesn’t force. He doesn’t drown out the world by sheer volume. He doesn’t need to. Because his sheep want to hear his voice - and make an effort to do so - so that even in the midst of the crowd they know which way to turn.
