You can call it my Mt. Sinai moment, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call me Moses or Elijah.
Years ago, I began to identify an annual theme that would help root our worship offerings, initiatives, and church programming each year. Discerning an emphasis each November, in preparation for the new church calendar year, is a discipline I’ve clothed in prayer and faithful reflection.
Each of the themes we’ve used these last years flows from Micah 6:8:
“And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”
After getting acquainted in 2012, we emphasized “Being Church Together” the following year.
Then, it was “Do. Love. Walk with God” in 2014.
We focused our attention on “Stacking Up the Rocks” in 2015 as we sought ways to build memorials to God’s work in our lives. Also, a quick shout-out to the Balsam Range song by the same name.
And then, in 2016, we gave our attention to Paul’s letter from Colossians as we sought to be “Rooted in Christ.”
In 2017, we took a closer look at the Trinity and how God encounters, engages, and empowers us.
The following year, we emphasized walking humbly with our God on the “Path.”
In 2019, we dug deeper into God’s call that we “Have Mercy,” and in 2020, we asked for God to “Guide Our Steps in the Way of Peace” as the Good Shepherd seeks to do.
This past year, we looked at Psalm 46 and sought to memorize this truth: “God is our refuge and our strength. An ever-present help in trouble.”
And this past Sunday, I introduced our theme for 2022. It’s one word: “Listen.”
Yes, listening is what Mary was doing at Jesus’ feet while her sister Martha muttered under her breath about all the work that she still had to do. And yes, listening to Jesus is what a fed-up God demanded that Peter, James, and John do up on that mountain.
Listening is a discipline, a skill, and a healthy practice. As such, listening requires time, focus, and unwavering attention. If Peter, James, John, and Martha all struggle with listening to Jesus, how much more do we? Determining how to listen more effectively to God feels like an appropriate goal for 2022.
But what shall be listening for? To whom should we be listening?
We will strive to listen to God by going deeper in our reading and understanding of God’s Word in scripture.
-So, we’ll look at scripture that we’ve never looked at before. We’ll resist the temptation to ignore the convicting moments or gloss over the difficult passages.
We will seek to be quiet and listen more carefully to what our thoughts and feelings may be telling us.
-You’ll have the chance to be reflective and thoughtful with the help of the enneagram, a tool that helps us understand how we react and respond to the world around us.
We will recommit to listening to one another.
-Interpersonally, we may focus on being understood rather than on trying to understand one another. In asking us to listen to Jesus, God directs us to be servant-like and deferential to others.
Flowing from that, we’ll look beyond our own families, church, and community.
With a nod to missions, we’ll be reminded of our call to seek out the stranger in our world and to listen to them.
-We cannot love the one who looks nothing like us if we’re not willing to listen to them. Just as Jesus listens to us, we should listen to others, too.
Yes, we need to listen more critically to the messages that our world and culture are transmitting.
-To better grasp what’s going on beneath the surface of flash-points and the whitewater rapids of conflict, we’ve got to listen with new ears for new understanding.
And lastly, God’s creation is desperately trying to get our attention. We need to observe and consider what’s going on in the natural world so that we can be good stewards of God’s extraordinary gifts.
Just as Jesus’s closest followers, Peter, James, and John, had known Jesus for some time, they were not doing what God required—namely, “listening to Him.”
Of course, when we listen to Jesus, we change. Jesus went up on that mountain with his three friends so that his transfiguration might get their attention. It worked. But will Jesus’s presence in our lives result in our being open to what Jesus has to say?
The good news for us is that those who listen to Jesus will, in short order, look like Jesus.
That will be our goal in the weeks and months to come.