How to overcome the obstacles to hearing God’s words

We must overcome the obstacles to hearing God’s words from Scripture. How can we solve this problem? The researcher will now enter into details about relevant methods.

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On shifting to a modern way of women’s knowing, Mathews (2003:86) declares: “Women learn formulas in algebra or geometry that allow them to move through a process to the right answer. In literature courses, they learn procedures for analyzing a poem or a play. Professors insist that there are proper ways or methods for thinking things through, and both men and women must learn them. In seminaries, they learn the process of exegesis in order to grasp the central idea of a biblical text, and they may also learn a process of hermeneutics for interpreting that text.”

149 _{Wilson (1995:69) comments on the educational problem of some theological seminaries as follows: “We}

have assumed a minimal distance between the pulpit and systematic class. The rhetorical gap between classroom and pulpit is no small furrow in a wheatfield that students might hop. When we get close, we discover a sizable fissure, deep and wide. Too often in the past, the gap that students need to jump has been underestimated, with unfortunate consequences.”

5.1.2.1 A wide-awake ear

We need to restore hearing rather than sight, as our perception can be restricted to remain within the written text; so we could lose our faithful hearing of God’s living voice. As regards the importance of the recovery of an oral medium for hearing God’s words, Peterson (2006:85-87) remarks as follows:

Words are first of all an oral/aural phenomenon. Most of the words in our Scriptures were not formed first in writing – they were spoken and heard. … We need to be repeatedly reminded of this lest we lose touch with the basic orality of God’s word in our lives ... Speaking comes first. Writing is derivative from speaking. And if we are to get the full force of the word, God’s word, we need to recover its atmosphere of spokenness.

As mentioned above, we need to recover the basic orality of God’s Word. In other words, we need “a wide-awake ear” (Cilliers 2006:79) to receive the entire and exact Word of God. How can we attain such an ear to hear his living voice?

5.1.2.1.1 Theological training for hearing

Preachers need to be trained theologically to hear a text of Scripture to attain a wide-awake ear. This theological training can start with an understanding of the problem of the print culture.

According to Table 11 in Chapter 3, the characteristics of the print-media era are a “literate way of thinking” and that “thought relates to sight and space.” In short, intellectual knowledge and visualization are extremely important in the print culture. However, this knowledge and visualization can make it difficult to hear the words of God.

Calvin (1960:62) points out the danger of overemphasizing intellectual knowledge for preachers:

Consequently, we know the most perfect way of seeking God, and the most suitable order is not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of his essence, which we ought more to adore than meticulously to search out, but for us to contemplate him in his works whereby he renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates himself.

According to Parker (1992:39), “The knowledge of the Bible, so necessary in a preacher, is not a purely intellectual knowledge; it is, as Calvin was never tired of saying, ‘a knowledge of the heart’. The preacher studies the Bible because he loves the Bible, and he loves the Bible because he studies the Bible.”

As mentioned above, preachers cannot hear God’s words from the Bible by means of only intellectual knowledge (cf. Abbey 1967:64; Danne 1980:61). Contemporary preachers need training for the knowledge of the heart and for loving the Bible more, because of a gap between the print culture and the secondary orality culture. On knowledge of God, Calvin (1960:61-62) comments: “Not that knowledge which, content with empty speculation, merely flits in the brain, but that which will be sound and fruitful if we duly perceive it, and if it takes root in the heart.”

Knowledge of the heart is the relation of the love between the preacher and the Bible. Preachers can hear God’s words through the relation of love, like a child recognizes his/her own mother’s voice (cf. Cowley 2000:13). Preachers’ capacity to hear the words of God is grounded in their relationship with Him; and the relation between a preacher and the Bible is more important than intellectual knowledge of the Bible. Thus, contemporary preachers must be equipped with intellectual knowledge and need to receive training regarding their relationship with God for a hermeneutics of hearing. For example, we cannot understand Mark 2:14 by means of only intellectual knowledge:

As Jesus was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him” (Mark 2:14). The call goes out, and without any further ado the obedient deed of the one called follows. The disciple’s answer is not a spoken confession of faith in Jesus. Instead, it is the obedient deed. How is this direct relation between call and obedience possible? It is quite offensive to natural reason. Reason is impelled to reject the abruptness of the response. It seeks something to mediate it; it seeks an explanation … But the text is stubbornly silent on this point; in it, everything depends on call and deed directly facing each other. The text is not interested in psychological explanations for the faithful decisions of a person. Why not? Because there is only one good reason for the proximity of call and deed: Jesus Christ himself. It is he who calls. That is why the tax collector follows. This encounter gives witness to Jesus’ unconditional, immediate, and inexplicable authority (Bonhoeffer 2001:57).

As Bonhoeffer believes, this obedient deed was possible because the tax collector met Jesus Christ, like a sheep meets its shepherd. We cannot rely on only intellectual knowledge and reasonable explanations of the print culture to hear the words of God from the text.150 We need knowledge of the heart as well as theological training for a relationship with God and also people.

150 _{According to Tables 11 and 12, the communication system of the secondary orality era is distinguished, not}

by scholarly training, but by local involvement and training linked to action and life, associated with trainers and/or spiritual families. Greater importance is given to creativity, self-sufficiency, participation, intuition, commitment, and group relations, but not intellect and reason.

We cannot see the heart and a relationship. However, the print culture, in which many preachers grew up and studied, focused on visualization. Ellul (1985:191) comments on the danger of visualization as follows:

The spread of images that the modern world has experienced began in the Church. Its source was in the ‘enthusiasm’ for images in the Church that is the precise counterpart of the abandonment of revealed truth, of the meaning of the word, of the humility of the Incarnation, of the discretion of revelation, and of the uncertain openness to the beyond and to the echo. The Church opted for what is visible, and with it, for power, authority, efficacy, and the agglomeration of crowds around a reality that was at last seen and grasped. This was a radical choice of what would be shown; it involved showing and demonstration. But the Word was no longer present. This was because the conflict between sight and language and between idols and the word is essentially a religious conflict, when a rupture occurs between reality and truth.

Visualization weakens our ears so that we do not hear, and do not hear God’s words, because of sight and idols. To have wide-awake ears, preachers need to concentrate on what is not visible, like the heart and relationships. Because of power, authority, efficacy, the agglomeration of crowds, organi- zation, institutions,151 etc., preachers cannot concentrate on hearing the Word, which is not seen; instead, they are absorbed in visible things. According to Van Harn (1992:19), Peter made the same mistake:

Peter had to learn to listen before speaking. He is exposed in the Gospels as a disciple whose speaking Jesus frequently rebuked. The experience on the mount of transfiguration was stunning in its beauty and uniqueness for Peter. The three of them – Peter, James, and John – saw Jesus’ glory unveiled before their eyes as he spoke with Moses and Elijah. Peter loved the experience and wanted to make it permanent. He offered to make three booths, one each for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. But while Peter was still speaking, a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son ... listen to him” (Matt. 17:5).

As Peter had to learn to listen, contemporary preachers need to be trained to hear God’s words. If one has learnt to concentrate on what is invisible, one will have a wide-awake ear to hear his words.

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On the connection between institutes and visualization, Ellul (1985:189-190) comments: “Institutionalization and visualization – the two reinforce each other. The institution arises from visualization and from the invasion of images, and also reproduces this invasion. The power of images is established on the very foundation of the institution. We must have something to show. Only institutions fill this need. We must have something spectacular and flamboyant, and the institution allows us to have popular celebrations and fireworks. Liturgy becomes sumptuous, and the Church becomes the showing Church because the institution organizes things and manifests itself.”

5.1.2.1.2 Listening to the community: The role of the community and laity in hearing

To hear God’s words, we need to listen to the community while concentrating on the invisible. Preachers should listen to Christ and the church - the body of believers - because God hears his people before speaking to them. Schlafer (1992:23) comments on the need to listen to people as follows:

The speaking of a sermon arises from listening to all kinds of voices … In and through, beneath and beyond all these voices, preachers are listening for the voice of God. But the God whom the preacher is attempting to hear is not simply a talking God. We worship a God who listens as well. ‘I have heard the cry of my people in Egypt,’ God tells Moses. If God listens before speaking, and then listens for a response as well, surely preachers can do no less.

Preachers need to move from speaking to people, to listening to them. Van Harn (1992:16) expresses this as the need to shift from pulpit right to pew right:152

Faith comes from what is heard. That is why St. Paul’s mission order includes a church order and a salvation order: Sending – Preaching – Hearing – Believing – Calling on the name of the Lord. That order has survived waves of persecution and prosperity alike. But when children of the Reformation shift the center of the church’s mission order from hearing to preaching, we miss Calvin and Luther’s intent and leave some Reformation business unfinished.

We need to place hearing at the centre of the church’s mission order, as the Reformers intended. As regards hearing, preachers are listeners who first listen. Van Harn (1992:23) observes that preachers are pioneer listeners who “… need to listen, to listen to the congregation and with the congregation in order to listen for the congregation. Only then will they be able to speak to, with, and for them with grace and truth.”

According to Davis (2008:112), Calvin emphasises the importance of community in preaching:

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According to Van Harn (1992:13-14), children of the Reformation changed “faith comes from hearing” to “faith comes from preaching”: “When John Calvin commented on Romans 10:17 (‘Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the preaching of Christ’), he wrote about preaching but not about hearing. He exalted the human voice as a marvelous instrument of God but said nothing about the ear. In his commentary on this text, he wrote that ‘this is a remarkable passage with regard to the efficacy of preaching; for he testifies that by it faith is produced.’ But, Calvin did not intend thereby to remove hearing from its central place. Indeed, when he set forth the marks of the church, he began by saying, ‘wherever we see the words of God purely preached and heard …’ (Institutes, 4.1.9) ... A subtle shift takes place when children of the Reformation allow the Reformers’ emphasis on preaching to displace St. Paul’s ‘faith comes from hearing’ with ‘faith comes from preaching.’ This shift from hearing to preaching may seem insignificant, but in fact it can change the character of the church, change the way we view what happens in Christian worship.”

Calvin preached to a community. What is more, he preached to a community with the understanding that, through the instrument of preaching, Christ himself would be present and, as present, would serve as the head of the body. Christ is not so much the saviour of individuals as he is the saviour of the church, to which individuals are joined by the Holy Spirit as members of one body. Christian faith for Calvin was personal and experiential, but it was not individualistic.

This confirms that preachers are also members of the one body. Preachers, as well as parishioners, must listen to the words of God, who speaks through the community. As “Christian experience by nature is always experience within the context of the church as the body of believers” (Davis 2008:113), so preachers’ experience is also experience within the community. Without the church, as the body of believers, preachers cannot hear the Word (cf. Long 1989b:56). Thus, preachers must hear the members of the community before they preach.

There is another reason for hearing from the community. According to Long (2007:175), “Listening is at the heart of God for he is not one but three, a Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit.” There is “a mutual listening,” “loving self-giving” and “ceaseless communication” in the Trinity. The Triune God asks us to hear each other: “The God who listens in infinite compassion is the God who creates in each of us the desire to listen to him, to his world, to each other, to ourselves so that, filled with his Spirit, we might continue his work here on earth” (Long 2007:179).

Therefore, preachers should listen to the community and the laity, as members of one body. The community and the laity are a part of the source - the body of Christ - for preachers’ hearing, as the target of preaching. Preachers need to change their views regarding the laity and the community, so that they may have a wide-awake ear attuned to the words of God. Schlafer (1992:48) proposes the following concrete method of listening to the laity:

A preacher does not listen to parishioners in order to seek out foibles against which to rail, anonymously and in the abstract. Rather, in regular parish activities, casual conversations, and formal appointments, preachers listen for the heartbeat of the parish – its fears, hopes, joys, stresses, blind spots; its rough and cutting edges. If this listening is intent and ongoing, a preacher will be able to draw attention to subtle shifts in parish mood and direction that need to be encouraged or held up to scrutiny.

The method of listening to the community and laypeople is to have a heart of listening, like the heart of God; a wide-awake ear stems from his heart. Thus, preachers need to have God’s heart.

5.1.2.2 A wide-awake eye: The renovation of imagination through multisensory perception

Another problem, namely a lack of imagination, characterises the print culture. According to Quicke (Quicke 2003:81), print culture is closer to concept and explanation than imaginative faculty and

imagination. Thus, preachers who are educated in the print culture, could be unaccustomed to imaginative faculty or imagination (cf. Babin 1991:66-67). As the visualization of print culture weakens our ears so that we do not hear the words of God (cf. Chapter 5.1.2.1.1), so the visualization weakens our imaginative faculty so that we do not see the invisible world. A lack of imagination could cause preachers to have blind spots and misinterpretation in terms of hermeneutics. On the need for imagination as the solution to this problem, Cilliers (2006:79-80) remarks as follows:

Therefore, one of the main tasks of homiletics is to change the innocent eye into a wide-awake eye, an eye that observes and investigates the shadowy depths of our mythological worlds, and simultaneously is aware of its own distortions and blind spots … Such a hermeneutic cannot function with a one-eyed glassy stare, but with imagination and fantasy.

As mentioned above, preachers need a wide-awake eye - an imagination - to search shadowy depths. The wide-awake eye is not for “the lust of the eyes” (1John 2:16) and for “delight to the eyes” (Gen. 3:6), but for the revelation and vision of God. In other words, preachers need a wide-awake eye for his words. Paradoxically speaking, we need a wide-awake eye to hear the Bible.153 In terms of an understanding of the Bible, Peterson (2006:67-68) emphasises the importance of imagination as follows:

As we cultivate a participatory mind-set in relation to our Bibles, we need a complete renovation of our imaginations. We are accustomed to thinking of the biblical world as smaller than the secular world ... Our imaginations have to be revamped to take in this large, immense world of God’s revelation in contrast to the small, cramped world of human ‘figuring out.’ We learn to live, imagine, believe, love, converse in this immense and richly organic and detailed world to which we are given access by our Old and New Testaments. ‘Biblical’ does not mean cobbling texts together to prove or substantiate some dogma or practice that we have landed on. Rather, it signals an opening up into what ‘no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, (but) what God … has revealed to us through the spirit’ (1Cor.2:9-10).

The above comment shows that our ears could be plugged by a fixed imagination or visualization154 in respect of the Bible’s revelation. Our plugged ears need to be unplugged to hear God’s Word. A wide-awake eye can unplug our plugged ears.

According to Jones (2009:20, 29-28), a traumatic event, such as the terrorist attack of 9/11, reconfigures a collective international experience, as many could see the moment of its occurrence

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Ellul (1985:27) notes that, although there is a fundamental difference between seeing and hearing, the two are inseparable and complementary; “Nothing in human affairs can be done without their joint involvement.”

through “our current telecommunications technology.” As a result, one’s imagination can be changed into “disordered imagination.” A “healing imagination” can restore a “disordered imagination” (Jones 2009:21). If so, how can we revamp our imagination?