Listen, listen, love, love (Prop 17B)

Melissa Campbell-Langdell

All Saints Oxnard, 9.2.12 (Proper 17B)

(Song of Songs 2:8–13; Psalm 45:1–2, 7–10;

James 1:17–27; Mark 7:1–8, 14–15, 21–23)

I am a talker.  In high school I was voted most likely to break the Guinness world record for length of an answering machine message!  I often feel I am giving others a gift of myself when sharing my thoughts.  But talking too much keeps me from being present to others.  So one of my biggest challenges in life is being a good listener. 
In the book, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Enzo the dog, the narrator, says that he would make a good human because he would listen well:

“Here’s why I would be a good person.  Because I listen.  I cannot speak, so I listen very well.  I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own.  People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another’s conversations constantly.  … For instance, if we met at a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor’s yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story, you, hearing the words “soccer” and “neighbor” in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say Didn’t he play for the Cosmos of New York?  Did you grow up in New York?  And you might reply that, no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele, and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length.  So my initial conversational gambit—that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor’s dog—would be totally lost, and all because you had to tell me all about Pele.  Learn to listen!  I beg of you. Pretend you are dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.”[1]

Perhaps what Enzo the dog is saying here, albeit in a funny and exaggerated way, is sort of what James and Jesus are talking about in today’s passages.  There is an old Kairos Prison Ministry maxim of “Listen, listen, love, love,” a whole lot of good can result from practicing it.  Basically, the concept is, before you say anything, listen doubly hard and love doubly hard.  James says be slow to speak and quick to listen—Jesus says that what comes out of us, out of our hearts, and is often expressed by our lips—is what defiles. 

It’s not so much that following good hygiene and adhering to the Jewish traditions are not important for both James and Jesus, but if your legalism makes you a hypocrite because you don’t actually act on your faith, and you just do a good job of looking law-abiding, then you are sunk.  About both these passages, theologian Bill Countryman notes that neither is particularly focused on physical purity, but rather both focus on the purity of the heart.[2]

Why is this?  Well one of James’ goals here is to show that purity of the heart means not pressing your agenda by wrestling your way into leadership.  Countryman points out that when James defines “true religion” as looking after orphans and widows, and keeping oneself unspotted, there are often questions about what this being “unspotted” means.  We already got from Jesus that it isn’t always a literal physical cleanness that is being talked about.  In fact, we need to be more careful of the subtle ways that we can be unclean.  By looking at the context, Countryman comes to decide that the word for “filth” earlier has to do with “the efforts of angry people to assume leadership in the community while ignoring the thoughts and contributions of others.”  He says “purity is what delivers from this kind of dirt, so purity stands for gentleness.”[3] 

Now, this is in no way to dissuade those of you who would be church leaders from doing so!  To the contrary, our goal is to encourage new leadership!
But if the temptation to talk over, or push one’s agenda, in leadership, is not a big problem for some of us, it could be other things, probably something different for each one of us.  For me, sometimes this means not thinking of sticking to my daily agenda as too important to forget to be a Christian to a neighbor.  Sometimes I have to make myself switch gears when a person needing assistance comes to the door because I am focused on another task.  Or it might mean trying to “listen, listen, love, love” a bit more than usual when I am feeling rather chatty.

Why is listening so key?  Theologian Paul Tillich says that we as human beings want something called “self-integration,” a life process that goes along with “self-creativity” and “self-transformation.”  It means that “in order to for life to be actualized from its potential being, it has to unfold in a process of finding our center, moving out from it in freedom and courage, and returning to it again enriched and deepened.”[4]  A person who can truly listen to another is self-integrated because he or she does not feel the need to share information for his or her own benefit, but listens more than talks and shares when it adds to the experience of the other. 

I am not there yet, this is a part of my journey.

And, who knows?  Perhaps a person who listens well to others can listen better to God, too?

And what might we hear?  Here’s an idea, from today’s reading from Song of Songs:

“Arise, my love, my fair one,

and come away;

for now the winter is past,

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove

is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,

and the vines are in blossom;

they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one,

and come away.” (Song of Solomon 2: 10-13)

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[1] Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 101-102.

[2] Bill Countryman, Dirt Greed and Sex, Rev. Ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 82; 131.

[3] Countryman 131.

[4] Loye Bradley Ashton, “Theological Perspective: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23,” Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 4.