Not to sight, or taste, or touch be credit.
Hearing only do we trust secure;
I believe, for God the Son has said it –
Word of truth that ever shall endure.[i]
In so few words, the prophet Samuel summarizes the Christian life: “Speak, for your servant listens” (1 Sm 3:10b). Our God is a speaking God. He who spoke creation into existence through the eternal word, still desires to engage in conversation with his creatures today.
“Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). Our Lord longs to have intimate union with his people. He effects this communion by uniting us to himself in sacramental self-giving—enacted through his powerful, performative word. His word enters our broken ears to convert and correct us. His word washes away our sin and clothes us in righteousness. The incarnate Word comes bodily to feed us, establishing union with himself and all the faithful. What Christ speaks to you, defines reality. Without the passive reception of his life-giving Word, we remain out of fellowship with him.
Listening is the foundation of our relationship with God. For the wise are not marked by eloquent speech, but by hearing (Prv 1:5). Receiving God’s Word is why we come to the Divine Service each week. It is why daily Bible study is expected (Dt 6). Through these means we receive an encounter with the living Christ. In his Word, he takes residence within us, delivers the fruits of his cross, and guides our lives to conform to his. It is out of an abundance of hearing our shepherd’s voice, that we are able to follow him and witness his reality to the world (Jn 10:27).
We are often aware of the importance of listening to God’s Word as we relate to him. Drawing from his authority we are directed to speak. In Life Together, Detrich Bonhoeffer points out that we often reverse this order as we relate to other humans.
In our conversations, how often do we fight to get the final word? How frequently are we crafting a response while the other is talking? When do we illicit genuine curiosity for another’s concerns or interests?
Our ears are broken indeed. And this is most evident in our interactions with others. Most conversations in the world aim to “one-up” the other person: “You have it bad, but I have it worse!” “You are excited about that but look at this more exciting thing that happened to me!” A Christian life of listening is not so. The way we listen must be distinct from the world and informed by our Lord. Because as Jesus’s disciples, we are not of the world, as he is not of the world. Listening flows from God’s sanctifying word of truth (Jn 17:14–17).
Our relationships with one another must reflect our relationship with God. If we examine the health of our ears, it reveals the condition of our heart.
Our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them. God’s love for us is shown by the fact that God not only gives us God’s Word but also lends us God’s ear.[ii]
We love through sacrificial self-giving for another’s sake. God gives himself in his Word and it sanctifies our ears. From this, we are commanded to love others in our conversations by giving them a sanctified ear.
Such listening is still and silent before another. It listens with humility and patience. It accepts rebuke and correction. It delights in the mysterious exchange of Christ dwelling in another. It is attentive to another soul’s deficiency and consoles them with the peace that only Christ can give.
Just as silence before the word of God is necessary to properly hear the word of God, silence before another made in the image of God is necessary to speak that word into their life at the appropriate time.
Our aptitude to love others in our listening, Bonhoeffer says, is a spiritual indicator of our ability to listen and speak to God.
3rd Commandment
We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching or God’s Word but keep it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.[iii]
Luther instructs us in the Small Catechism the importance of intentional meditation and appreciation of his word. We “inwardly digest” it, by establishing healthy habits and esteeming God’s word as a treasure that makes everything holy. We follow the third commandment by allowing God to speak—finding delight in hearing and heeding his voice.
Bonhoeffer’s warning is related: when we develop bad listening habits with one another, it reveals our inadequacy to listen to God’s word.
Christians who can no longer listen to one another will soon no longer be listening to God either; they will always be talking even in the presence of God. The death of the spiritual life starts here, and in the end, there is nothing left but empty spiritual chatter and clerical condescension which chokes on pious words . . .
This sort of listening is no fulfillment of our task. And it is certain that here, too, in our attitude toward other Christians we simply see reflected our own relationship to God.[iv]
This is a hard saying, and cause for examination. Those who think their time is too precious to spend listening to their neighbor, will soon approach God in the same way. If our interactions are dominated by our own self-interest and promotion, God’s word will seem to have no value or use compared with what we have to say. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20).
Paul says to Timothy that he must devote himself to the public reading of Scripture and “. . . not neglect the gift you have” (1 Tm 4:14). Bonhoeffer makes a similar point here. We must devote ourselves to the practice of good listening habits in all facets of life. Not only because this is how we love our neighbor in conversation, but because if we fail to, it is damaging to our ability to have divine conversation.
Prayer
Listening to others is intertwined with how we hear God’s word. But it also has implications for the way we speak to God. Elsewhere, Bonhoeffer says concerning prayer:
God’s speech in Jesus Christ meets us in the Holy Scriptures. If we want to pray with assurance and joy, then the word of Holy Scripture must be the firm foundation of our prayer. Here we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, teaches us to pray. The words that come from God will be the steps on which we find our way to God.[v]
Children learn to speak by echoing back their parents’ words. We learn to pray in a similar way; by echoing back what God has spoken to us. In his word—especially the Psalms—we are given the vocabulary for prayer. Here, we are informed to speak in a way that is pleasing to God. Here, we join in the trials and joys of the saints who have gone before us. And most importantly, here, Jesus Christ promises to join us in prayer and nourish our faith. By his grace, we can be certain that he hears and intercedes (AC XXI).
Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been entrusted to them by the one who is indeed the great listener and in whose work they are to participate.[vi]
Christ not only speaks to us, but he is the greatest listener of all. Faithfully listening to your neighbor is not—as my professor would say—“sitting like a cactus in a pot.” In other words, listening is not total silence. There is an exchange that takes place. The “give” we administer ought to reflect the way we are instructed to pray.
When we listen to others, we experience them opening their hearts. And we are called to love them by giving them our ear, and in Christ’s stead, speak his words into their lives through Scripture and prayer.
The most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ and that love of the other is completely tied to the truth found in Christ.[vii]
The silence of listening is rightly broken by intersession. And faithful listening reflects a faithful life of prayer. The fruit of hearing God’s word and repeating it, is born when we meet another where they are in prayer. When our ears are full of Christ’s Word, they are also open toward those in need. And we can speak his word to them, whether their (or our) heart is empty or full. All of God’s children are invited into a life of divine conversation. By modeling a listening based on a life of listening and prayer, we are able to bear with one another patiently and attentively. And lead them to the one who never fails to take our burdens upon himself and promises to give refreshment to those who have an ear to hear.
[i] St. Thomas Aquinas, Adoro Te Devote, Stanza 2.
[ii] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 75.
[iii] Martin Luther, Small Catechism, Explanation of the 3rd Commandment.
[iv] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 75, 76.
[v] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prayerbook of the Bible, 116–117.
[vi] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 76.
[vii] Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 18.
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