Too Many Tongues, Not Enough Ears

Sunday, September 15, 2024 – Mark 8:27-38 also Isaiah 50:4-9a, Psalm 116:1-9, James 3:1-12

Our readings today – aside from the gospel – touch on the potential dangers of speaking and the value of listening. Both Isaiah and the Psalm mention our listening to God and God’s listening to us. And then James weighs in on the dangers of a fiery tongue and how such a small member of the body can set ablaze a great fire.

When I look around the U.S. today, it seems that we’re in the middle of a blazing fire that’s caused by too many tongues and not enough ears. We’ve got political candidates telling hyperbolic fish tales about their opponents. We’ve got media pundits giving us sound bites out of context to inflame fear and hatred of those not in our “tribe.” And we’ve got search engine algorithms that are feeding us only biased content to keep us uninformed and angry in our little bubble worlds.

I can hardly go on Facebook anymore without seeing people endlessly demonize their fellow Americans because of the candidate they support. The media and corporate robber barons have us at each other’s throats over an endless list of grievances when behind the curtain they’re pulling the same strings from either side of the aisle in ways that only benefit themselves and the powerful financial and military-industrial interests.

It’s enough to make you want to run away to an unoccupied island.

Are you as weary of all of it as I am?

To make matters worse, I’ve been dealing with the adverse effects of a drug that was being injected into my right eye for several months, and now I find myself in pain with a kind of chronic fatigue because I don’t sleep well. So, I pretty much wake up weary every morning.

But here I am, serving in the role of minister to this community. I’m here because several years ago I set out on the path to being a teacher of matters of faith. And there are two tidbits about teachers in our readings today. First, James tells us that “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Then to add an even greater burden, Isaiah writes that “The Lord has given me the tongue of a teacher that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.” In a sense, that’s a perfect mission statement. A teacher’s mission is to sustain the weary with their words.

But what does the teacher do when she herself is one of “the weary”?

According to today’s lessons, we might say the teacher should talk less and listen more. But we won’t help our weariness if we listen to the wrong tongues. Isaiah says that God wakens him every morning so that he can listen as those who are taught. If those who are taught are “weary,” then it seems that the weary teacher is sustained by listening to God every morning, when God wakens our ears.

Not only does God waken our ears, God also opens them. What does that mean? Our ears don’t have a flap that usually keeps them closed, so opening the ear must have something to do with allowing us to really hear what we are being told.

But to really hear, we must really listen. And I don’t see a lot of listening in America right now.

What I see, and what my friend Jay McDaniel sees, is a lot of disgust. Especially political disgust. In a recent article titled “From Disgust to Dialogue,” Jay writes,

If you’re conservative, you might feel a sense of disgust when thinking about liberals, and if you’re liberal, you might feel a similar sense of disgust when thinking about conservatives. The sight of certain politicians, and even the sound of their voices, may evoke feelings of revulsion, and you’ll feel justified in your reaction. ‘They’ are focused on the wrong things, while ‘you’ are aligned with what is right.

Whether you’re on the left or the right, you’ll likely prefer to be with your group, seeking support and validation from those who share your views. You may even post on Facebook or some other social media, seeking further support and reinforcement. The more people who agree with you, the more ‘right’ you will feel. You and your group will share a mutual disgust for them.”

We see disgust in terms like “deplorables” and “libtards.” But that disgust doesn’t lead anywhere good. When taken to extremes – as when Hitler and his minions used words like “vermin” for the Jews or when people today call their opponents “Nazis” – disgust can lead to violent conflict or war.

If we let things go too far in this country, we will tear ourselves apart and destroy everything we care about.

Jay argues that we need a “shift from a politics of mutual disgust to one of mutual familiarity, dialogue, and, where possible, friendship.” We need a new narrative, a new way of looking at the world, that “emphasizes cooperation over competition, inclusion over disgust, partnership over partisanship.”

I know he’s right. I’ve been able to maintain close friendships with people who often differ radically from me in terms of politics. But we love each other, and so we listen to each other, and sometimes we stay away from contentious topics.

A man named Marshall Rosenberg spent his life getting people to listen to each other through a technique he called “nonviolent communication.” In this practice, people on opposing sides are asked to share what their deeper needs are in the situation and then restate what they heard from the other side.

He tells the story of working with warring tribes caught in a trap of endless violence. When he brought their leaders together, there were people in the room whose child had been killed by people on the other side. As Rosenberg asked each side to share what they needed and then reflect back, they struggled. Emotional accusations – possibly fueled by disgust – were hurled back and forth, and no one seemed able to hear the others. Finally, after two hours, a chief who had not yet spoken stood up and said that his people could not learn this kind of communication in one day, but if they could know how to do it, they wouldn’t have to kill each other. The war ended that day.

The war ended because they were finally able to move out of disgust for each other by seeing their common humanity and actually hearing each other.

Our psalm says, “The cords of death entangled me; the anguish of the grave came upon me; I came to grief and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray you, save my life.” O Lord, we pray you, waken our ears. O Lord, we pray you, open our ears. O Lord, we pray you, open our hearts.

Allow us to really hear the hearts of our neighbors.