Sermon: Listening for the Bells

Within the great spiritual traditions, the big challenge for us humanoids is simply waking up. It’s as though we’re only half awake. We sort of get what’s going on in our lives, but not really. Or, to paraphrase Jesus, we see, but do not see; we hear, but do not hear or understand.
The purpose, then, of the great religious practices—like those we’ll soon undertake during Lent—is simply to help us wake up. Skip lunch. Pry loose some of your hard earned cash and give it to the poor. Set your alarm fifteen minutes earlier for some still, quiet, alone time with God. Make a pilgrimage, or simply pay attention to your breath, or listen to Bach, or do some drumming. Such practices are meant to help us wake up.

What Pisses God Off
In fact, the writer Alice Walker says this is what God is relentlessly trying to do: catch our eye, get our attention, wake us up. Like the way God will sometimes grow a bright purple flower in a field to catch your eye. She says that if you fail to notice it, God gets "pissed" because God then has to create another purple flower to catch your eye, delight your heart, wake you up.

It’s like that in the gospel story of the transfiguration. Jesus brings Peter, James, and John up a mountain to pray. As he prays, his clothes become dazzling white. Lots of symbolism here. Clothes symbolize more than just garments, outerwear. They symbolize the whole outer world where we make a living, make love or war or peace, wash the dishes, feed the cat, and run to catch the bus. What happens interiorly in Jesus’ prayer flows out into that outer world. Spirit becomes flesh here, flowing from the inner to the outer.

Next, Jesus speaks with two of his heroes, Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the prophet. Like Jesus, these two know a lot about mountains, because, when they were leading the people, they often withdrew to mountains to check in with God. In this story, they talk with Jesus about the terrible beauty about to unfold in Jerusalem where he’ll be arrested, tortured, executed, and raised up.

Not a Good Idea
In this intense and dramatic scene, Luke says that "Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him." In other words, they’re awake, but only half awake. They see what’s going on—the radiant Jesus, his conversation with Moses and Elijah—but they don’t get it.
From out of that haze, Peter tosses out the idea to build three tents, so they can all stay in that mountain bliss, far above all the craziness below. Not a good idea, as it turns out.
Peter’s words get interrupted in a spectacular way. A cloud descends and envelopes them. In this cloud, a voice speaks the words Jesus heard at his baptism: "You are my son, the beloved." But this time that voice is addressing not Jesus but the disciples. And it is not mincing words. "Listen to him," the voice tells them.
The task of discipleship is not to build tents to capture moments of grace and dwell there blissfully. Rather it is to wake up and listen.
Because if you listen to Jesus' words, meditate on the events of his life until the truth in them deepens, you will understand what you must do. This is how the voice from the cloud is obeyed. "Listen to him."

Your Own Crazy, God-Filled Life
You do not remain on the mountain, but you return to the thick of your own crazy life, but with eyes and ears and heart open in a whole new way.
The mistake Peter makes is to think the moment on the mountain is in competition with his everyday life in the world. As though you pursue one at the expense of the other. He thinks that listening means screening out the "distractions" of a full and busy life.
But if we really know how to listen, then our lives and our world, far from obscuring the divine voice, become the place where we can fully hear it. We go down the mountain, enter into life fully with all its ups and downs, and find the divine as its inner radiance.
A story...

The Legend of the Bells
An old temple had stood on an island two miles out to sea. And it held a thousand bells. Big bells, small bells, bells fashioned by the best craftsmen in the world. When the wind blew or a storm raged, all the temple bells would peal out in unison, producing a symphony that sent the heart of the hearer into raptures.
But over the centuries, the island sank into the sea and, with it, the temple and the bells. An ancient tradition said that the bells continued to peal out, ceaselessly, and could be heard by anyone who listened attentively.
Inspired by this tradition, a young man travelled thousands of miles, determined to hear those bells. He sat for days on the shore, opposite the place where the temple had once stood, and listened—listened with all his heart. But all he could hear was the sound of the waves breaking on the shore. He made every effort to push away the sound of the waves so that he could hear the bells. But to no avail; the sound of the sea seemed to flood the universe.
He kept at his task for many weeks. When he got disheartened he would listen to the words of the village pundits who spoke with unction of the legend of the temple bells and those who had heard them and proved the legend to be true. And his heart would be aflame as he heard their words...only to become discouraged again when weeks of further effort yielded no results.
Finally he decided to give up. Perhaps he was not destined to be one of those fortunate ones who heard the bells. Perhaps the legend was not true. He would return home and admit failure.
It was his final day, and he went to his favorite spot on the shore to say goodbye to the sea and the sky and the wind and the coconut trees. He lay on the sands, gazing up at the sky, listening to the sound of the sea. He did not resist that sound that day. Instead, he gave himself over to it and found it was a pleasant, soothing sound, this roar of the waves.
Soon he became so lost in the sound that he was barely conscious of himself, so deep was the silence that the sound produced in his heart.
Then, in the depth of that silence, he heard it! The tinkle of a tiny bell followed by another, and another and another...and soon everyone of the thousand temple bells was pealing out in glorious unison, and his heart was transported with wonder and joy.
To listen attentively means to hear the temple bells through the roaring of the sea, not despite it.
And as Peter discovers in today’s gospel, to listen to Jesus means recognizing the divine voice in and through the "distractions" of his own crazy life in a world broken and scarred and yet truly beautiful.

The Vulnerable God
In Christianity, we have two primary images of God: a baby in a manger and a broken man hanging from a cross—both images of profound human vulnerability, of complete immersion into the joys and struggles of this crazy world, embracing even the moment of death. (We Christians do not have a warrior god at the center of our faith.) And, we Christians believe, it is in and through that very vulnerability—not despite it—that God becomes the most present in our world.

A Life Pulsing with the Radiance of God
Can you see and hear God in that child in the manger, in that broken man? If so, then perhaps your eyes and ears can also perceive God in the very ordinary ups and downs of your life—in your relationships, your bringing home a paycheck, your sorting through the news reports of the war and deliberating how to respond to it.
Because these very moments—the child, the crucified one, your life and mine, this amazing world of brutal wars and purple flowers, and the bread and cup we will soon share— each in its own way pulses with nothing less than the radiance of God.