“Deep Listening”
“Deep Listening”
Job 38:1-7, 34-41 Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c Mark 10:35-45
October 20, 2024, Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Sandpoint, Idaho
On a bicycle tour, my group had an incident with a black bear. When Shawna and I were dating, we worked together for a summer leading bicycle tours for a camp. On one tour for junior high youth, our small group camped at Sullivan Lake in northeast Washington State at a public campground on the north end of the lake. It was a classic case of hypocrisy.
When black bears are in an area, it’s important to be bear aware, to practice clean camping so bears are not lured into confrontation with humans. This campground, at the time, had regular garbage cans with loose lids and the trash overflowed. The campground host was not helpful in advice on food storage.
We tucked ourselves into our tents, Shawna in the female tent and I in the boy tent, but all of us woke up sometime late in the very dark night to the crash of our bicycles as they got knocked over just a few feet from our tents. I unzipped the door, stood up and shined my flashlight over that direction and saw a bear rummaging through some of our stuff.
I zipped up the door and walked through the bushes over to the campground host and informed him that there was a bear in our site. He told me to do this, as he clapped his hands hard together, then asked me if it sounded like a gun. I walked back through the bushes not knowing if I’d come face to face with the bear.
I didn’t see it, so I got back in the tent. The three boys were very alert but still laying down in their sleeping bags. We lay there and listened, then heard one of the garbage cans get knocked over just across the road from our site. I also heard a few moments later the sound of whiz, as the bear relieved himself in our campsite. A few moments later, one of the boys said something had just bumped his head through the wall of the tent. I asked them to confirm that they hadn’t brought any food or toothpaste or anything smelly into the tent and they said they hadn’t. Then we heard the sound of dogs barking and figured out the bear was in other sites, and then got chased out of the campground by the dogs.
In the morning, we noticed the bear had accessed some hot chocolate mix and there were powdery cocoa smudges on the sides of our two tents. That would explain the boy feeling the bear’s nose through the wall of the tent. We also found a pile of evidence the bear had relieved himself in more ways than one.
Stories mingled in the campground that morning. The bear had pulled a ham out from a cooler on the tailgate of a pickup truck. Another man confronted the bear and had to use the picnic table as a barrier when the bear retaliated, then the man dashed into his camper. It was the dogs that chased the bear off.
Education knew better. The campground host didn’t know what he was doing, and the facility was not managed properly. Trash attracts bears. Food attracts bears. An attracted bear is set up for confrontation. As the saying goes, a fed bear is a dead bear, because once a pattern is established, it ends with a trap and euthanizing the creature.
Prevention and clean camping skills with equipment such as food lockers, trash containers with bear proof lids, education for the public, and enforcement of practices allow multiple species to coexist. But we didn’t have that as we camped there on our bicycle tour many years ago.
We came in, set up camp, and stayed there two nights. The second night we avoided the bear but heard more dogs in other campground loops. We didn’t ask to inherit overflowing garbage cans. We were not in on the selection or lack of training for the campground host. We didn’t manage the facility to schedule dump trucks or bring in food lockers. We did realize that things needed to change, but we not in a position to do much about it at the time, so we continued on the bicycle tour and headed down the road.
In case you haven’t noticed, much of what we experience in our world in today’s context involves dysfunctional systems. Much of what we once assumed as normal is in a period of failure as systems break down and what may have worked no longer does. Institutions, agencies, climate patterns, forest ecology, and many other aspects are under stress. We did not ask for this, we did not create these failures, but this is what we inherit, and it is our call on how to respond. We will not fix it, we cannot go back to some concept of “the good old days,” but what we can do is set a trajectory, and depending on our response, this will either help or hinder future generations and countless species on the planet.
Some people, like Cynthia Bourgeault and Jonathan Rowson, call this the “Metacrisis.” Metacrisis. Meta, as in large. Crisis, as in catastrophic emergency. Metacrisis is not a word that is known to spell-check on the computer. It’s a newer word, one that tries to capture the broad expanse of change at work in the world today, and the extent of what’s needed to address it, from policies to spiritual Wisdom.
Anxiety and political unrest lace the headline news daily as masses of people seek some sense of stability, and a feeling of belonging that brings security. The levels of noise, chatter, and confusion are high and it’s hard to clear the clutter and quiet the chaos.
The scriptures we read from Job, Psalms, and Mark, point us to a biblical witness that is no stranger to suffering. We see life’s dramas play out in the lives of the disciples, and as James and John tell Jesus they want him to do whatever they ask of him, we know that is a very prominent attitude in our world today as they seek power and prestige and position. Our culture, our economic system, is based on perpetual growth yet this is not sustainable. Even Jesus says they don’t know what they are asking as he points out those that lord over them, and how tyrants seem to be in charge.
These biblical texts remind us of deeper Wisdom, of divine creativity that’s based on broader time scales and complexities that baffle a desire for simple answers. We see a mix of transcendence over cosmic processes and the details of intimate imminence, from the formation of planetary systems to the hunger pangs of young birds. Like the psalmist declares,
O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the Earth is full of your creatures. Praise the Lord!
Jesus shows us a key on how to live in ways that honor God’s wisdom in making all things. Rather than live in ways that dishonor, to discover the heart of life’s miracle, Jesus flips conventional thinking on its head. He says,
Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.
When Jesus asks James and John if they are able to drink the cup he drinks, if they are able to be baptized with the one he is baptized with, Jesus is talking to those two disciples, but he’s talking to all of us. They are seeking glory, wanting to play by society’s rules, but he is talking suffering, taking on the path of pain and humility as a slave. He tells them that they will drink the cup and be baptized with his baptism.
When James and John want to be at the right and left of Jesus in glory, we catch a glimpse of suffering Jesus is already beginning to experience. Who is on his right and left in glory is not his to grant, but those places are prepared for others. Fast-forward to the gospel image as Jesus hangs on the cross with criminals, one on his right and one on his left, those are the ones for whom those places were prepared.
Where our world calls us to ascend, Jesus invites us to descend.
Metacrisis pushes us there and invites a question. Are you listening to God call you? Really listening? Deep listening is often compromised by selective hearing loss, like it did with James and John. If you listen deeply, you can hear the planet calling out. The path toward suffering invites us to follow Jesus deeper into the counter-intuitive Wisdom of God, who transforms suffering for the sake of the world.
Jesus frees us from fear, death, and ourselves, and helps us listen, to listen deeply, to hear God call in and through our lives. When we hear, Jesus invites us to respond with, “Yes.” May God give us the grace to see the tasks to which we are called as disciples. May spiritual Wisdom be granted as grace unfolds in the face of Metacrisis, for only spiritual healing will lead the way forward. May God give us the gifts we need to accomplish those tasks, even when we don’t know what to ask for. May we be gifted with the desire to desire, the delight in God’s will, to walk in the way of Christ, and find joy in the privilege of serving in our time and our place as part of the biblical, great cloud of witnesses. May we take courage for the journey as we continue to learn to serve to the glory of God. Amen.