“This is my chosen Son. Listen to him.”
You all know I have my dog, Bella, who is a German Shepherd.
She is now 4 years old, but I got her when she was just 4 months old.
I remember back when I first got her.
I had forgotten how much energy a puppy dog has
and it was driving me crazy;
she saw every animal and every person
and every child as somebody to play with.
She was like running everywhere.
I asked my friend who is a German Shepherd trainer
and who has helped rescue 250 German Shepherd dogs.
She knows what she is talking about.
She said, “Well, let me just observe what she is doing.”
We did that. We went for a walk.
Walked around the office.
Then she sat me down and said,
“Well it’s clear what the problem is.
You are not listening to her.”
I go, “I’m not listening to her?”
“Yeah, she’s talking to you all the time;
you are just not listening.”
In my head I’m thinking
“She does know that this is a dog, right?”
I said, “Ahm, talking in what way?
I am not really sure what you mean?”
She said, “You know, she’s not talking in human words
but she is communicating all the time with you.
You are just not listening to her.”
I responded, “I may be missing something here
but I am not really sure what you are talking about.”
She went on to explain to me about canine body language;
how dogs are super communicative.
For example, their ears are one thing;
ears up, ears down, ears forward, ears back;
each communicates something very different.
And then their posture, especially German Shepherds.
She went on, “She is talking to you all the time.
You are just not listening.”
She told me all the signals and
gave me a big book about canine body language.
That’s the name of the book “Canine Body Language.”
It was fascinating.
Sure enough Bella was communicating
like crazy to me, all the time.
If you don’t know, here are a couple of tips.
When you come in, the dog gives you a big long stretch;
that is a “love you stretch.”
She is loving you, saying “I love you. Welcome home.”
Then ears up are inquisitive;
ears forward are super inquisitive;
ears back are playful.
The point was that she was communicating
but I didn’t know how to listen to her.
Sometimes I feel like when I tell you we need to listen to God;
you have that same look on your face as I did
when that dog trainer told me about listening to Bella.
God is communicating all the time.
We are just not really good at listening.
And I get it; in the same way there is canine language,
there is divine language too.
And the question is “Have we learned,
have we spent enough time to even study
just that part of where we are listening to God?”
Now if I am not expecting Bella to communicate
then I am not going to listen to her.
But sure enough, she is communicating before
she goes running after a squirrel;
she is telling me, “Can I go after that squirrel?”
After a while, it’s pretty evident.
What is God’s language to us?
How does God communicate to us?
Do we listen?
God’s first bible, if you would, is creation.
If you just look at all of creation,
it is screaming to us about God’s way in the world.
From the beauty of a flower or mountain to the silence of the ocean
to when nature is hurting,
screaming in sorrow with how much we are polluting the good earth.
Creation is one way in which we can always
look at how God is speaking to us.
Today, we know the written Word
is the primary way God has spoken to us
and that is what we hear in this first reading today;
this covenant that God will come through the Word
that was spoken in the commandments, the prophets, the Torah.
But in the most special way God came to us in Christ Jesus.
And he asked us to listen to him.
What did he say?
Jesus said many profound things but
fundamentally he ended up saying to us
“I will put my Spirit within you and
you will be able to listen to me inside.”
But it requires of us to slow down and to listen
and to hear that quiet, still voice within our heart.
There are other ways that Jesus pointed out to us as ways to listen.
And he showed us so that we could understand what he meant.
The poor. The disenfranchised.
The widows and orphans and children.
He said “Listen to them and my Spirit will be there.
I will speak through them.”
How could you not look at the television these days
and see the Ukrainian women and children fleeing
their country for refuge in a neighboring country,
over 2.5 million and not hear God screaming to us.
Those faces say it all.
The number of immigrants that come from the south
who are looking for a better place;
the homeless person;
the child who is looking for attention.
We just need to listen to Christ in the poor;
in those most in need;
the children and yes,
within our own hearts.
God tells us through this Transfiguration today
that he wants us to listen to his chosen Son.
So today, let us find some stillness somewhere
and slow down enough to study the language of God in nature;
in the Word of God;
most especially in the poor and the broken;
the wounded and then above all else within our own hearts.
“This is my chosen Son. Listen to him.”
