What Do You Hear? -- Newspaper Column

“As a Christian leader, how can you allow that to be hanging in the window?” So began one of the most memorable conversations in my ministry career.

The question came from a member of the community who had seen the Pride flag hanging in our front window. It seems that this bothered (or angered) him because his understanding was that to be LGBTQ+ makes you unacceptable in God’s eyes. My response was and is that to be a faithful follower of Christ requires me to support full inclusion regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. The conversation quickly got very heated and I am sure neither one of us convinced the other of anything. I believe we were hearing God differently.

As a person of faith I firmly believe that God is still speaking to the world. I believe that God speaks through the words of our sacred stories. And God speaks through those who have gone before us in the faith. And God speaks new words in new ways, constantly challenging us to grow. I am reminded of Paul’s great hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13 where he says “For now we see in a mirror, dimly... Now I know only in part; then I will know fully”. God’s hope and plan is that our vision will grow less dim, that our knowledge will grow more full as the years pass. So God keeps speaking to us, challenging us to grow in faith, in hope and in love.

Because God is still speaking and calling us to grow in faith, in understanding, in love there are times when we will be confronted with a vision of the world that is different than the picture passed down to us by those who have gone before. Some times we will understand that our past practices and beliefs have been an inaccurate reflection of God’s hope for the world. If we are listening carefully those realizations will force us to change how we live as faithful followers of Christ.

Many years ago now Gracie Allen said “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.”. In the early part of the 21st century the United Church of Christ made use of that quote as a part of their “God is Still Speaking” campaign. That campaign pushed people to consider what God continues to say to God’s people. God still speaks to our hearts and souls and minds.

Admittedly it is not easy to follow when the voice of God leads us to a new place and a new way of seeing the world. I remember a story I was told that came out of the 1960’s, as the Roman Catholic church changed the rules about eating meat on Fridays. An older gentleman was trying to make sense of the change, saying “All my life they have told me God did not want us to eat meat on Fridays. Did God change his mind?”. New understandings come hard. But if we truly believe that God is still speaking, if we are intentionally trying to listen to what God is saying we need the courage to explore.

I think this is the harder path to follow. I think it would be easier to assume that God said what needed to be said long ago and all we need to do is follow the old wisdom. I think it is harder to constantly be asking ourselves if what we are hearing is God’s wisdom or just following the social trends. But we are called to the harder path of careful listening and discernment. If everything we hear confirms everything we have ever been taught, then maybe we are hearing the culture and not God. If everything we hear leads us to act just like everyone else in the world, then maybe we are hearing the culture and not God. If what we hear challenges us and makes us think seriously about how the world should or could be, then maybe we are hearing God over the culture.

God continues to speak to the world. God continues to give us a clearer vision, a fuller knowledge, of what it means to live as God’s people. Listening to God has pushed us to rethink how we live in a variety of ways. Listening to God will continue to push us to rethink how we live, will make us change our understandings of how the world works. It has been, and will continue to be, hard work but it is part of being faithful. Martin Luther King reminded us that the moral arc of the universe is long but bends toward justice. We only follow that arc if we listen carefully to the God who is still speaking. What do you hear?