Listening To The Voice Of The Stronger One

The words from Jeremiah today tell us, “This is what I commanded my people: Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people. [Go] in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper.”

When I read passages like this, I often find myself saying, “Absolutely, God. I love the sentiment. But HOW do I listen to your voice? HOW do I know what ways you have commanded?”

So I just go and read my horoscope and do what that tells me…

But seriously, how do we discern the voice of God in our lives and know God’s ways?

If we were together in person, we’d make a collective list, and my guess is that some patterns would emerge. We’d all be saying things like meditate or pray, spend time outdoors, talk to a spiritual director, etc. But our relationship with God, like any other relationship, takes time and dedicated practice.

In past years, we have hosted Fr. James Martin, SJ at Spiritus to talk about prayer and listening to God. I’d recommend his article on the subject as a great intro.

He asks a series of questions that help us “know” if it is God’s voice: Does it make sense? Does it lead to an increase in love and charity? Is it a distraction? Is it wish fulfillment? Is it important? Does it fit with what I know about God?

None of these, he says, is a guarantee that we will know for sure. But patterns emerge and we learn to recognize them.

In the gospel today, Jesus is being accused of being able to drive out demons because he himself is aligned with demonic forces. Jesus says, “Rubbish! Why would Satan’s forces be fighting each other!” He goes on to tell them that the problem is that they can’t recognize that something stronger than the forces of evil has arrived in their midst.  He then says, “When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied and distributes the spoils.”

Ched Myers calls this passage (also found in Mark) the “master metaphor” for God’s kin-dom. God is, in fact, the “stronger one” who will disarm the guards and redistribute the spoils.

Just let this image sit for a minute. What does it bring up for you? Does it feel hopeful? Or threatening?

And if we think of the powers of this world as the current strong man that Jesus is working to overthrow, who then are the “guards” who are protecting the status quo? Where did these “spoils” come from? Who or what would the stronger one look like these days? And to whom will the spoils be redistributed? 

When I think about one of Fr. Martin’s questions, “Does it fit with what I know about God?” I find myself challenged by the words of Jesus today.

Growing up, I was not taught about God being the strongman who subverts, disarms and overthrows the forces of this world even though it is in plain sight in the Christian scriptures. For example, in Luke 1 Mary “sings” the Magnificat and says, “God has scattered the proud in their conceit…and has cast down the mighty from their thrones. God has lifted up the lowly and has filled the hungry with good things. The rich God has sent away empty.”

Or how in Luke 4 when Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because God has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of jubilee” (Note: The jubilee is the biblical tradition by which land is returned to rightful owners, enslaved people are set free and debts forgiven)

Part of the Lenten journey is to break open what we know about God and begin to experience God in ways that our social location, experience, privilege, wealth, status, position and power may never have prepared us for. God’s voice may be one that we do not easily recognize because it may be speaking in a way, a tone, or with a message that is unfamilar to us.

The God we meet in our scriptures is a wild, undomesticated, subversive, juicy, impolite, sensual, barge-in and take things over kind of God. The God we meet in our scriptures is a bondage-breaking, binary-defying, shape-shifting, leper-healing, side-taking, ever-caring kind of God. 

To listen to this God’s voice and go in the ways that this God commands will require constant attunement and attention, and it will not take much for us to stray from the path. Furthermore, listening to this God’s voice will put us on a collision course with the armed strong-ones of this world. The voice will ask us to disarm them and redistribute what they (and we) have taken.

This is no easy task. And if we’re honest, this may be a voice we’d prefer sometimes NOT to hear!