|
If today you hear his voice, harden, not your hearts.
“La la la la la la la la. I'm not listening, I'm not listening.
Blah. La la La la la la la la la.”
Does that sound familiar?
Some of our kids do that to us
when they do not want to hear us, right?
They may not do it out loud, but they certainly do it!
When they do not want to hear us and say,
“Mama, what? Talking to me.
What me I, what, what, what? What'd you say?”
Or maybe it is when we are watching TV and we say,
“What? Oh, me today. Oh me. Do something now?”
We block each other out all the time,
whether it is when we are on the computer or reading a newspaper.
We are very quick to come up with ways to not hear
when we do not want to hear, right?
We are pretty good at it.
If we are honest, we do it quite well, and we are not even subtle.
“What, who, who? Oh, me, you're talking to me.”
What is true with our relationships with each other,
it is particularly true with our relationship with God.
We do the exact same thing.
Maybe it is the computer that we spend so much time on,
or maybe it is television, watching sports and we say,
“I do not have time to pray.”
Yet we able to watch a three-hour football game, right?
I do not have time to go to church.
But we attend a three-hour game with lots of stuff going on, right?
We have plenty of reasons, we call them reasons,
but they really are plenty of excuses where we do not listen to God.
Yet here you are in Church on a Sunday morning.
You are the remnant, the few,
who have chosen to come and listen to God here at the Eucharist.
Or even if you are at home,
there you are sitting and watching.
Somehow something has touched you to tune in, to listen,
to what God has to say, to not harden our hearts.
Here is the part that is really tricky.
Even if we want to listen, we still find it hard.
The first thing the devil tries to get us to do is
not listen to God at all.
Busyness is our primary weapon.
The evil one will use that to get us.
Busyness becomes a great distraction.
Then he will tell us
“God has no role for us in the world.
We are left alone to do our own thing.”
Secular society tries to get us to buy into this too.
But that is the first and primary lie
that the evil one will tell us.
God has a plan and God loves us.
But even when we are a committed to listening to God,
we have to admit, it is not so easy.
Where does God speak to us?
Is it in my head is where God speaks and how does that work?
People ask me all the time,
“I do not understand.
What am I looking for?
What am I listening for?”
We have not been good at teaching people how to pray.
And that is one of the biggest struggles.
There are many ways to listen to God,
but the first place God is going to speak to us
is through his creation.
It is his first spoken word, and it came to be;
there was day and there was night on the first day,
and there were animals on the second day,
on the third day and the fourth day,
and all came through this first spoken word of creation.
God is going to speak to us through his creation.
Now, in that creation, look at the beautiful nature.
How can you not be in awe at the intricate design of a flower?
But it takes time to look at the intricate design of a flower,
or a simple fern, to realize that the fern branch,
that every leaf of a branch is the mirror of the branch,
which is the mirror of the branch,
which is mirror of the branch, all the way down to the molecular level.
That is just one plant.
How could you not look up at the mountains and the skies
and not just be in awe?
Or the beautiful animals and maybe even the creepy animals;
you have to wonder sometimes,
like when a mosquito bites a big chunk out of you
or a wasp like it did to me the other day,
took a big old chunk out of the back of my head and I said,
“What is the purpose of a wasp?”
I often think we could do without mosquitos!
And yet in God's creation, they all have a role.
And then it comes to human beings.
How about that? Marvel?
If you look around today, not one of us is the same,
not a single one of us in the entire world, in history,
have we ever had two human beings the same;
billions of people created and every one of us unique?
How can we not marvel at all of that and say,
“God is speaking to all of us.”
And we can communicate with one another.
God uses us to communicate to each other
like he is using me to communicate to you this morning.
But only some of you will get the communication.
God is speaking to us all the time, screaming
“Harden, not your hearts. Listen to his voice.”
The other way in which God speaks to us is through scripture.
And that is what we are reflecting on this morning.
This is the fulfillment of all the law, says St. Paul.
“Love one another.”
This is written by St. Paul before the gospel was written.
It is a message for every single one of us
to love every single person, even the people we do not like, right?
But then comes the gospel.
And Jesus gives us a real zinger.
How often are we called to forgive?
He wants us to forgive and be reconciled.
Before we come to the table, we ought to be reconciled.
He gives us a methodology to do it.
Go one-on-one first.
If you do not resolve one on one, take somebody with you.
If that does not resolve, then go to church.
And if not, then let them be.
You have done your work; you are off the hook.
You have done what I have asked you to do.
Like the way he talked to Ezekiel is I asked you to speak my word.
And if you do that, then you are off the hook.
But we have to do the work.
So, the question for us this morning,
as we come to the table, you are here,
and you have come to listen some way, shape, or form.
So let us not harden our hearts.
May we listen to the voice of God screaming to us
through creation, through each other
and through our call to reconciliation.
May we take seriously that job this week
and celebrate the voice of God, which is ever present among us.
The secular world will tell us that the universe does not care about you.
The universe might not, but the Creator does.
The creator knows every one of us by name
and cares deeply for every single one of us
and speaks to us through the created universe
so that we can enjoy this brief moment on earth;
so, we can enjoy even more his presence forever.
Today, harden not our hearts.
Listen to the voice of God in creation,
in each other, and
a call to love and to be reconciled with one another.
| 
