Latest / St. Paul Podcast / Listen With Your Heart 9.6.26

Transcript

Listen With Your Heart 9.6.26 · St. Paul Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone and welcome to the St.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark Neethammer, Senior Pastor at St.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church, located in Davenport, Iowa, part of the Greater Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right here, each week, you will find beautiful music and a message of hope and good news to guide your life.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hopeful that this podcast can inspire you and help you on your journey of faith as you grow in love and trust in our God.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: Today, in our scripture reading, Jesus teaches us about how we navigate conflict with other people.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes the lessons we hear from Jesus seem sort of distant or antiquated.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: Things about dealing with tax collectors or shepherds drawing water from a well.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: Some things that most of us don't have to do most days, but all of us have to deal with people.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: And generally that means that there will be moments when we disagree or when we frustrate each other or when we hurt one another, even if unintentionally.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: Being human means we have to figure out how to be together, especially when things get hard.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so thankfully, we hear Jesus teach us a little bit about how we might handle our differences and navigate the conflict.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: So as you listen to these words from Matthew's gospel, pay attention to how often Jesus talks about hearing or listening in times of conflict.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it's what I'll be talking about in my sermon this week the power of listening and the gift it is to listen, to be listened to.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: So here are those words from the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, beginning with the fifteenth verse.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: If you are listened to, you have regained that one.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: And if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you lose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: Again, truly I tell you, if the two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: So now let's listen to some words about listening.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: Grace to you and peace from Christ Jesus, our Lord and our Savior.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: There's a story that goes that there's this man who feels like his wife isn't listening to him.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so one day he goes and stands right behind her and says, Are you listening to me?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: but gets no response.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: So he says it a little bit louder.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: Are you listening to me?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_03: But no response.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: And finally, a third time he nearly shouts, Are you listening to me?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: At which point the woman turns to him and says, For the third time, yes.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: What do you want?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny because it's true.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: Most of us are not quite the lesson listeners that we hope we are.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: We're not the best of listeners, even when you try to think we are, or even when we aspire to be.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not talking here about the physical ability to hear.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'm talking about the practice of paying attention, of taking in the words and the insights, the feelings and the concerns of the people around us.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: This, I think, is where we all struggle, regardless of our score on a hearing test.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm thinking about listening, because it's central to navigating conflict, at least according to Jesus.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: We just heard Jesus talking to his friends about how to respond when we hurt one another.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: Conflict is not at all new, it's part of being human.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: My friend Audrey says, where two or three are gathered, disagreement is there.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: After all, we all want different things.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: We have opposing values or we just plain misunderstand each other.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's not a single relationship that is without conflict.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: Whether it's between siblings or spouses or colleagues or neighbors, we find ourselves on different sides of things, disagreeing, frustrating each other, sometimes hurting one another or being hurt.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: But Jesus teaches us that instead of letting those conflicts simmer or explode, he offers us this way of how we can respond as individuals and as a community.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: Even as so many of us tend to avoid conflict, even when we're not the best at it.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: The truth is that arguing well, addressing our hurts with honesty and compassion actually brings us closer together.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: There is, after all, something amazing about a person who stays with you through your worst, who offers forgiveness to you and allows you to forgive them.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: Strong relationships are formed through hard and honest conversations, and yet too often we bury our frustrations or deny our hurts or lash out in ways that make moving forward difficult.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: So by teaching us to lean into conflict, Jesus invites us actually into deeper love and meaning and connection.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: As I read Jesus' lessons about reconciliation, I was struck by how often Jesus talked about listening.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: Hearing and listening is a part of each one of those steps along the way.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: And the ability or the refusal to listen shapes the outcome each time.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: There is no reconciliation, there is no healing unless there is listening.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: Listening, then, is at the heart of it all, essential to relationships, even when it is not always easy.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I was thinking about listening and what it keeps us from being good listeners.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought about four different practices that hinder us from being good listeners.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought of some themes.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: So here, bear with me.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: The first bad practice of listening, or kind of not the best habit, is what I like to call squirrel listening.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it's inspired by that movie Up.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember the movie Up with the balloons and the little dog who had the like translator box?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember this?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: And um, so the dog would be like super excited and focused and ready to play.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: But then suddenly, what happened?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: He'd see a squirrel.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: Squirrel, he'd say, and run off.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: We can't listen when we're distracted.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a lot that distracts us.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: Phones which perpetually beep, screens that seduce us, not to mention the worries and demands of this world.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: Too often we try to listen, we want to listen, but even as we're listening, squirrel, we're distracted.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_03: The next challenging practice to being good listeners is what I like to call the express train listening.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: Those of you who've ridden a subway in New York City know that there are express trains and local trains.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: The express trains go the normal route, but they don't stop at the smaller stops along the way.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's the local trains that stop and stop and stop.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: The express train has no time for interruptions, and too often we get that way too.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_03: Our busyness keeps us from really listening to each other.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: We don't let ourselves be interrupted or slow down, even for the most important people in our lives.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's the winner-winner chicken dinner kind of listeners.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you know these people.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: They're the ones who listen, not with an intention to actually hear, but are likely preparing their response to try to win the conversation.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: The goal is not to hear, but to win, to prove a point, to be right.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, sometimes we can't listen well because we're flooded by our own emotion, our own fears, our sense that we're misunderstood, or we get into this sort of protective cloud that takes over our ability to respond or to hear.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: This is what I often think of as caveman thinking.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: Because the caveman in us feels like we're being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger in our kitchen when it's really just our spouse expressing frustration that there's a pile of dishes in the sink.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: But still, we respond flooded by our emotion and react.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: There's this marriage researcher named John Gottman who studies couples, and he has this place called the marriage lab, where he observes couples in sort of ordinary interactions and moments of conflict.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a little apartment, but it has kind of those two-way mirrors where they can be watched.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: And there are heart rate monitors on the couples, and they show kind of how their heart rate is in moments of calm.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: And they found that during arguments, couples often become physiologically overwhelmed.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: They slip into sort of reactive caveman kind of state.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so they did this experiment where at the height of an argument, when those heart rates were racing and you could see the reactivity in the couples, the equipment, well, they pretended that the equipment would malfunction.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so they'd kind of interrupt the couple and say, wait, stop, pause, the equipment is broken.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: And they would have to separate the couples to fix the problem.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: But then, so they had about 15 minutes away from each other, a sort of intentional timeout.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: And they came back together.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: Their heart rates were slower.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: They were calmer, more able to listen, to respond, to speak thoughtfully and carefully intentionally.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: That timeout provided them just what they needed to be able to slow down and instead of reacting to respond thoughtfully to their partner.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: When they had a bit of time, they were able to be present with each other.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then it boils down to it.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: A good listener is someone who pays attention, who is present, who isn't distracted by something outside of themselves, nor are they pulled to the next thing, nor are they trying to win or defend.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_03: All of those ineffective listening practices can be redeemed when the hearer decides intentionally to be present to and with and for the person right in front of them.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: And as you know, there's something so powerfully healing and transformative in being heard that listening to someone may in fact be the greatest gift that we can give someone, whether or not we're in conflict with them.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: Really listening is a sign of love, an act of care, a declaration that someone matters.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: There's this organization that brings together young women from Palestine and Israel and American women together at this camp in rural New Jersey.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: The goal is to build bridges between these communities, to be a foundation to build a just and lasting peace.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: And as these groups come together every summer, initially they are so distrustful of each other.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the first things they learn is to how to listen, how to do sort of basic listening practices, looking people in the eye, being patient, allowing for silence, and then this practice of repeating back what you heard as someone shares that thing, to check your understanding, to share, to communicate that you really heard the other person.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Something as simple as I heard you say this experience.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_03: I heard you say this.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, in their time together, there is a Palestinian girl who told the rest of the campers about how there are these Israeli soldiers who barged into her family's house, beat up everyone, and left without apology after finding out he was in the wrong house.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so the facilitator asks this Israeli teen to repeat the story back to her, including telling about the girl's anger and sadness and fear.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: And then after listening to the Israeli girl retell her story, the Palestinian girl began to cry.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, My enemy has heard me.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: The girls cried together and shared more of their stories and eventually became friends.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Powerful things can happen when we listen, really listen to each other.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: Something changes in us when we trust that we are heard.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I love that these in the Jesus in this lesson about reconciliation and teaching, about listening, by talking about whenever two of three of God's people are gathered, Jesus will be there among them.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: Part of this, of course, feels a little bit like accountability.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: That Jesus is with us when we interact with each other, watching as we succeed or fail at our compassionate listening, as we care for each other, which might hopefully keep us being a little bit more intentional about the ways we listen to one another.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: But it's more.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because when we trust that Jesus is really present among us, we can trust that Jesus is really present in the people we are with, which shifts our ability to listen.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: Our squirrel listening becomes one of attention when the person in front of us is the one who bears the image of Christ.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: And we can slow down, maybe even stop instead of needing to rush off, trusting that Jesus is really there in that interruption.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: And instead of trying to winner winner chicken dinner, the conversation, we can choose to open ourselves up to maybe even being changed by the person in front of us.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, when Christ is present, we can be at peace and lean into the hard conversations, even when we know they might be challenging, even when we know they are hard.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: Mostly though, Jesus reminds us that we've got this gracious Savior who's present with us, this Savior who knows how to listen.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus is never distracted, never too busy.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus doesn't need to win, but just simply loves us.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: Promis to show up, to hear whatever we have to bring to him.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: Whether it's those hurts we don't yet know how to name aloud, or our failures when we haven't listened as we know we should.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus promises to be with us, paying attention and always listening.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: Give us today our daily bread, forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: And now receive this blessing.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: Where two or three are gathered, Jesus is with us, and all the time, no matter what, Jesus is ready to listen, to hear the joys and sighs of your heart.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: So trusting this, may the God of hope grant you strength and joy in all circumstances.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: May the God of peace give you courage to listen with your whole heart to others.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: And may the God of grace bless you now and forever.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Our commitment to endeavors that lend hope to other people stretches across the country and around the world.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that in a good way you feel a part of that reach.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tune in next Thursday for another edition of the St.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.