Hearing the Voice of God

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Jeff Jenkins, Guest Preacher – July 9, 2023

Hearing the Voice of God – John 12: 20-30

About 10 years ago I had the opportunity to meet Jennifer Knapp. If you are not familiar with that name, let me give you some background. She was kind of a big deal in the world of contemporary Christian music. Knapp started her career in 1994, selling over a million records between 1998 and 2002, but then in 2010 she came out as a gay woman and many fans shunned her. Christian music stations stopped playing her music. Christian bookstores took her albums off the shelves.

I was not familiar with Jennifer or her story until one of the younger members of the congregation where I was serving asked if I would go with her and another friend to the concert. She was in her late 20s at the time and had been impacted by Jennifer and her music. The concert was sponsored by a local UCC church.

Now remember, this was an artist who routinely sold out 3,000 seat venues, but when we saw her she was playing a concert for about 15 people. After the show we had a chance to talk to her and asked her why after all of the hurt and damage that the church had done to her, why she continued to identify as a Christian and perform in churches. Her answer was very revealing and has stuck with me until this day.

She said that although she doesn’t like hanging around in churches or with most Christians, she still identifies with Christianity and has a relationship with God, because when she was a teenager, she had an encounter with God and heard God speaking to her. She can’t deny that. She can’t explain it away, and it changed her life forever. Now she didn’t give us a lot of the details about what this encounter was like, but on some level it involved someone that she identified as Jesus giving her a message that she was loved and accepted by God.

And here is what I took away from that. Jennifer’s youth group leader or her pastor or her many adoring fans, could have all told her that she was loved and accepted by God, and that may have made her feel good, but it would have all collapsed and become just so much cheap talk the moment she revealed her sexual identity and these same people turned their backs on her. But hearing that directly from God made all the difference. It became real and true and something she could build her life around.

And that’s the point. Hearing the voice of God, in whatever shape or form that comes in for you as an individual, changes everything. It gives us confidence – freedom – power to make a difference in our lives and to make a difference in the lives of people around us.

God is still speaking to us today. I believe that or I wouldn’t be standing here today, but it’s tricky, right? We are not always sure of what we’ve heard and don’t always do a good job of discerning the message we think we are hearing. So I have some thoughts on how we can do a better job, but first let’s talk about the scripture.

We know from the 3 synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that even for Jesus hearing the voice of God was important. It happens twice in the synoptic gospels, at his baptism and at the transfiguration, and both times it confirms Jesus’ identity as the son of God, and that he is beloved of God.

But in John we only get one account of God speaking, and it’s a little different. It’s the Passover, and all of the Jews from around the Mediterranean have come into Jerusalem. And we have some in from Greece, and they tap Phillip, probably because Phillip is a Greek name, and say “Hey, can you get us in to see this Jesus guy?” “They wanted to see Jesus.”

And when they get there, instead of what we might expect as a normal greeting or conversation, Jesus goes off about how he is going to die and then prays to God about glorifying his name. Then God speaks. It’s an Odd passage and John has a certain agenda he wants to pursue with all of that, so I am not going to try an unpack what that may all mean. Instead it’s these last 2 verses that interest me and where I want to land:

29 When the crowd heard the voice, some thought it was thunder, while others declared an angel had spoken to him. 30 Then Jesus told them, “The voice was for your benefit, not mine.”

Here’s my first take-away from this: right from the beginning people had a hard time discerning the voice of God. “I thought I heard this.” “Well, that’s interesting. I thought I heard this.” “No, I am sure it was this.” And while they are debating, Jesus says, “Yeah, it was the voice of God, and it was for your benefit. You were meant to hear this so that it could be a blessing to your life.”

The second thing that I am seeing in this is that the crowd was falling into the same trap that we do today. We try to divide the world into the sacred and the secular. We say that here is God’s domain (maybe the church, mission work, classic hymns), and over here is the secular world (fashion, science, politics, and rock and roll). Listen. If the incarnation of Jesus shows us nothing else, it tells me that this sacred/secular divide is a man-made construct. God inhabits creation. God speaks to us through creation, through art, science, politics, maybe even through rock and roll. But like I said earlier, it’s tricky. We second-guess what we experience.

“What did I just hear. What did I just feel? Was that the universe trying to send me a message? Was it a reaction to my childhood trauma, or was it just my imagination?”

How do we know when God is speaking to us and how do we correctly discern the message?

So that brings me to my main point this morning, that the best way to hear the voice of God is in community.

Our scriptures are the record of how people struggled over the course of 2,000 years to figure out what they think God was saying to them. So how did they do it? They did it in community. They wrestled together, over time, with what they thought the message was. And even after a consensus was reached, and it was written down as “The Word of God”, guess what? The next generation comes along and says “You know, I kind of read this a little bit differently. How about you?”

Let’s be honest here. There are things that you know, that I don’t know. And there are things that I know things, that you don’t know. And there are things that neither one of us knows, and the only way we can get any clarity or understanding is to work through it together, in love, in community, and with patience and grace.

Listen. I say this in all humility, that I feel as if I have heard God speaking to me on many occasions. And I bet you have too, but... none of those messages – none – zero – ever made sense until I worked them out in community. I had to talk to other people about what I thought I had heard. I had to work closely with other people to test whether there was truth there, or whether it was my own ego speaking.

So how does this apply to us today? And I am thinking specifically in the next couple of months to a year.

As a pastor and a prison minister I used to mentor new Christians, and when I met with them, I always asked “Do you feel like you’ve heard from God since the last time we talked?” This is a great question to start conversations, but more importantly for me, if someone knows they are going to be asked, they start to listen more closely for God’s voice.

I think this is a question we need to ask each other more often. And then, not be afraid to wrestle with the answers that we hear. And we need to listen to each other and ask ourselves, “Do I hear God speaking through that conversation, or that artwork, or the tree in my backyard?” God has no limits or boundaries so let’s not limit the ways that God can speak to us.

So in the spirit of “Physician, heal thyself,” I decided to try and experiment with this idea a few Sundays ago when Ralph preached. I tried to be open to what God was saying through Ralph. Here’s what I did: I prepared my heart to listen. I sat in a different pew. I wore sandals. Hey, it worked for Jesus! I thought. And Ralph said 2 things that resonated with me. The first I still haven’t fully processed yet, so I’ll set it aside, but the other gave clarity to something I had already been thinking about.

Here is what I heard:

“How will we prepare to live faithfully and courageously in the future in light of an ever-expanding understanding of who God is? (Repeat) How will we prepare to live faithfully and courageously in the future in light of an ever-expanding understanding of who God is?”

I thought to myself that even if I have nothing else to add, I still need to include it in this sermon today because I truly felt that it was something important, a question that God wanted me to answer and more importantly maybe wants all of us to answer. So now I am throwing it out there to you. How do you hear that? Does it sound to you like a question that God may be asking you or maybe this congregation as a whole?

Three weeks later that question still resonates with me. And I think the answer to that question is important, especially as it concerns what the kingdom of God looks like in this community. Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren has a unique role to play in building the kingdom of God. God’s beautiful and beloved community here on earth and each of us has a role to play in that, and maybe in that question God is asking us to prepare for the next act.

So let me close with a shameless plug for some work that your church board is trying to do this summer. During our Restorative Conversation with the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center last February, the board heard stories of isolation, loss, and sadness as our congregation emerges from the pandemic. The congregation seemed to hunger for more connection and a return to normal. So the consensus was that we need to hear more about this from each other. We need to know where you sense God is calling our congregation.

Several focus groups will be held in July and August to which you are invited to share your input on where we go from here. Please give some serious thought to how you can be a part of these focus groups. Be in prayer. Be listening. Be fearless. And be blessed to know that you are part of a community that values your unique place and perspective within the body of Christ.

I’ll be praying for you all this week, that you will consider being a part of these focus groups and that you will be hearing the voice of God in some way that is unique and meaningful to you. And if you think that maybe God is speaking to you, don’t write it off as an angel or thunder or that spicy pizza you had last night. Write it down, tell a friend,  talk to your family about it, or call the church office and set up an appointment. We want to know what you heard. Because maybe someone else heard the same thing, too.

Amen? Amen.