The voice of God—Who is speaking? Who do we hear?

The voice of God—Who is speaking? Who do we hear?

“However much of My law

I write for him,

Ephraim regards it as alien...”

(Hosea 8:12)

This reading from Hosea gives me comfort and gives me a question.  It gives me comfort in the assurance that God writes His law not against us, but for us.  God’s law is not a barrier or a constraint (a wall) set up against us, created to keep us from having too much fun or make sure we don’t stray into the deep end of the pool.  God’s law is written for us, to aide us and guide us (like an owner’s manual) as we learn how to live and become the best us we can be.  God made each and every one of us to be gifts, to be blessings for the world.  To be fruitful and multiply. We are all beloved children of God—all of us.  And God wants only the best and the fullest lives for us, that we might each express the giftedness of who we are fully in the world, share the blessing of who we are fully with the world, and so God writes laws that set us free to live fully; never shackling us to rules and regulations, but always opening doors and windows of grace that we might see more clearly and live more wholly (and Holy) the life we have been given.

But, like Ephraim, we too often regard the law of God as alien. As a barrier to experience and pleasure and fulfillment.  I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with our ability to see.  When I first come out of the house to go for a walk on a bright sunny afternoon, I often find myself squinting into the glare of the light. The brilliance of it is almost blinding.  Even the reflection from the driveway and the street is too much. Just out of instinct, I close my eyes, perhaps turn away. There is a temptation to even retreat back into the shadows of the house (or porch).  I could tell myself, it’s too sunny to go for a walk. Too bright and too hot! But, if I pause for a moment, let my eyes adjust, become accustomed to the light and the warmth of the concrete, I soon find that I am quite comfortable. And after a half mile or so, I don’t even notice it anymore. It’s just part of my walk, part of my quiet, peaceful afternoon.  I quickly come to love the sunlight and even the heat. I don’t think of it as “sacrifice” or effort or work –in fact, very quickly I find that I don’t even think about it at all.  Stepping out of the cool airconditioned shade of my house, the sunlight feels alien at first, but with little effort it soon it becomes so natural I don’t notice it.

All right, so that was my little insight; here’s my question:  Whose speaking?  It seems pretty clear to me that the voice we are supposedly hearing is God’s.  But isn’t that pretty amazing? Audacious, I would say!  Quite audacious. That a writer (or prophet, anyone...) would stand up in front of people and say: This is the Word of God. This is what God said! God is speaking through me! These are HIS words.  Not: this is what I think God wants us to believe, this is what I THINK God wants us to do. This is what I THINK God is thinking.  No. He just speaks in the voice of God and says things like:

I shall slaughter the darlings of their wombs! (9:16)

And says it without any hemming or hawing. Look at the prophets and how often they speak in the voice of God, without any hesitation or literary equivocations. And often it will come in the middle of a prophecy that seems to be in the voice of the prophet but suddenly changes to the voice of God without explanation.  For instance, the line I just quoted, transitions immediately back to the voice of Hosea after this monstrous vision.

“I shall slaughter the darlings of their womb.  Because they
have not listened to Him, my God will cut them off…”   (9:16-17)

And we are left to ponder: who is speaking? When God speaks in scripture, what did that mean to the human author?

Here is an example from my own life.  The other morning, as I walked, I saw some birds darting in and out of the branches of an oak. Watching them, I remembered that my father used to tell me stories about how I was raised by blue jays. And in my head I heard a poem forming:

My father spoke to me

of blue jays

of how they cared for me

when I was young

Like you were one of their own

he said

The year your mother left us

for Tulsa

with that shoe man
she couldn’t stand…

I heard a voice speaking these words to me. In my head I actually heard these words. And I had a desperate urge to get home to my notebook and write them down.  Was I experiencing something like a prophetic moment?  I certainly don’t think I was hearing God.  Heck, I wasn’t even hearing my actual father!
Clearly it was my imagination. I was contemplating the blue jays and remembering my father’s stories— and my imagination became untethered and began to play and suddenly this voice was there.  But was it just play?  I can assure you, my mother never left us. And (as far as I know) none of us ever lived in Tulsa.  Though my dad (and I) used to sell shoes. But... was it just play?  And whose voice was I hearing? My own? My father's? The muse? Who was speaking this to me?

And so, coming back to Hosea and the prophets, I am pondering: Whose speaking? Hosea or God? And how do we know? In fact, when he heard the voice, how did Hosea even know?

Could it have something to do with how we see the law? How we listen to God’s word? Do we regard it as alien, as the voice of rules imposed from the outside? Or do we regard it as a light to help us find our way? Do we hear it as an angry voice of judgment? Or do we hear a still quiet voice calling us. Saying: I know you. I made you.  You are my beloved child.  Come, let us go for a walk in the quiet of the day and let me tell you something new. A blessing unto the world.  I will speak your name.

Please see me--Some thoughts on Lamentations 1:12

“All you who pass this way,

look and see

is any sorrow like the sorrow

inflicted on me…”

--Lamentations 1:12

Is this not the cry of all who are in pain?  Look!  Look at this!  Have you ever seen anything like this?  See!  See my pain. See me.  Please look and see me, see what has happened to me. Has anyone ever like this before? 

See! See what happened!  Please.  Think of the child with her first skinned knee rushing to her mother; is she not calling out for more than healing or medical attention?  Think of the drama of that cry, those tears.  Isn’t her cry also a cry pleading for attention. A cry demanding to be seen.  See!  See what has happened to me.  Has anything like this ever happened before?

And, isn’t it true? Isn’t every pain the first of its kind? Each of us is an individual, unlike any other person ever made.  I cannot feel your pain, no matter how empathetic I am.  You cannot feel my pain. I cannot know what it means to you to be hurt, to be lonely, to be broken hearted or broken armed?  In Merchant of Venice, Shylock famously proclaims a universal connection through suffering: If you prick us, do we not bleed?  And yes, there are universal aspects, we do all bleed when pricked, or when we stumble and skin our knees…

But, my skinned knee is not yours.  And that is the point. I still remember that desperate cry of as my children ran toward me or my wife calling, Mommy!  And wanting only to be held, kissed, comforted, acknowledged.  Even after the ointments and bandages were applied, they still wanted to retell the story of their fall, of their pain. Wanted to know that someone had seen their suffering, their sorrow.

We all want to be seen, individually; not as a member of a group, an ethnic identity, an orientation, a gender.  Not even just as people.  What is Shylock’s demand but a cry that he too is human! That isn’t enough.  Deep down inside, we want to be seen as individuals, as one of a kind creations—because that is what we each and everyone one of us are.  We are each of us one of a kind creations, and the world would not, and will not be the same without us. Without our lives, our joys, our struggles, our sorrows.

Every time someone cries out for rights, for equality, for justice, they are crying out—look at me! Look and see, I am alive. I am real.  And no one has ever suffered like this, ever loved like this, ever felt like this before, because no one has ever been ME before…

That is the lesson I hear in the cry of the author of lamentations. A call to wake up. A call to open my eyes and see, to look around and realize each day that –as it says in Revelations-- God truly does “make all things new.” (21:5) Open your eyes and see.

The importance of walking with a friend (thoughts on Nebuchadnezzar on the rooftop)

“…while strolling on the roof of

the royal palace in Babylon, the king

was saying: Great Babylon! Was it not

built by me… and for the majesty of

my glory?”  (Daniel 4: 26-27)

I am a walker.  I love to get up early and go for walks alone through the neighborhood, down to the park, saying hi to the neighbors who are also early birds.  Over the year we have become a little sunrise community. And we notice when someone is missing. For instance, I had been sleeping in for a few days recently and when I got back out at my normal time, a man I see most mornings greeted me with an enthusiastic: Hola, mi amigo.

His voice was so full of cheer and welcome that I was practically walking on air most of the day.  Hola, mi amigo.  Not only was it nice to feel noticed, and greeted with such friendliness, but I have to say I was also struck by the words, the sound of the phrase: mi amigo.  My friend is what it means, but the sound of it says something more; that interior rhyme –the two “mi” sounds—gives this greeting a kind of warmth and lightness that the English phrase: my friend lacks.  There is a kind of delight in this phrase that endears it to me and endears that speaker to me.  He is someone whose name I don’t know.  Before now, I have always greeted him with a smile and a friendly, “Good morning.” But now, I think I can’t stop thinking about his smile, his slightly leaning gait, and that delightful greeting. And now, I want to say something more to “mi amigo.”

As I was saying, for most of the day I was delighted by the memory of that greeting echoing in my ear.  It gave an incomprehensible sense of peace and joy.  I felt not only noticed, but somehow, I felt loved because of the gentle and sweet words of a stranger. 

The next time you see a neighbor on the street, remember that.  A simple, sincere greeting can mean so much.

Back to my other point: Because I am a walker, I think I probably pick up on that image when it shows up in books and poems and movies. I feel a kinship with the “walkers” of the world.   And here I was reading about the king of Babylon strolling on his rooftop, surveying his own glorious kingdom and giving thanks to the one who built it: himself! For his own majesty and glory.  Nebuchadnezzar goes for a walk on his palace rooftop and gazing at his own splendid kingdom begins to sing his own praises, his own glory.  Life is pretty good when you are the king of Babylon.  He’s conquered most of the known world, has enslaved the people of Israel and now has a moment to rest and reflect and what does he see, what does he reflect on but his own power and glory and majesty. He is –as far as he can tell—the king of the world and he deserves all the credit, all the praise, all the glory. Because he did it all! And –as Frank Sinatra used to sing—he “did it, MY way……”

I have read the book of Daniel several times, and this is the first time I noticed that Nebuchadnezzar’s walking on the palace rooftop comes right after three other characters go for a walk in a very different setting.  And both times, in both strolls, the characters are singing someone’s praises.  In chapter 3 we have the famous story of the fiery furnace and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. In that story three young men (Israelites) are thrown into a fiery furnace because they refuse to honor Nebuchadnezzar’s decree and worship his golden statue (another sign of his splendor). He has them thrown into the furnace to be burned alive, only to see them walking unharmed among the flames, “praising God and blessing the Lord” (3:24)[1].   And when the king calls them out of the flames, he discovers they are unharmed, not even the smell of smoke on their clothes or in their hair.  Even in their suffering they gave thanks to God and were delivered unharmed for the glory of God.  That is one way of walking through life. To give thanks to God for whatever we have, good or bad, to receive it and be grateful –if not for the flame itself, for the fact that God’s presence is there every day walking our path with us. Our amigo.

Another way is Nebuchadnezzar’s approach, to give thanks for his own glory, his own ingenuity, his own success, to give thanks to himself for all the great things he has achieved! Thinking only of himself, and his abilities, his awesomeness.  And what happens to Nebuchadnezzar after he goes for his walk alone (his solo stroll)?  He ends up going mad. He goes into a kind of frenzy and starts living out in the fields like a beast, eating grass like an oxen, sleeping on the cold damp ground, wet with dew, his fingernails become like talons and his hair like a bird’s feathers (4:30).  Placing ourselves at the center of our universe, building up our own egos with golden statues and mighty palaces, kingdoms of our own glory, leads to madness. Turns us into animals, or something worse: a self-destructive beast.  But, when we are willing to see that we are not in charge, that the world, the fates, God in all His glory, is actually in charge—then we can find peace even when we walk through flames. Even when the world seeks to destroy us, we can find peace and even a kind of joy that comes from knowing, we aren’t in charge. The world does not depend on us.  We are here because God wants us here, we are seeds He has planted and we are called to grow and bloom right there --wherever we are planted.  

I tend to like to walk alone. To get out by myself and wander.  But walking alone can become a habit, or even what we used to call a near occasion of sin. I could be tempted to become like King Nebuchadnezzar, walking alone and thinking only of myself and my importance, my independence and solitude, my worries and my concerns.  I can become overly isolated and "independent" in the worst of all possible ways.

To find joy and delight even in the hardships, even in the fiery furnace, even in this time of social distancing and quarantines, we must walk with others. We must share our gifts, share our joys, the peace, the delight that God plants within us. We must share it with anyone (and everyone) we meet. Because whether we are walking on the rooftop of a palace or amid the flames of a fiery furnace, we are never truly alone. There is another who walks with us. A friend.  A savior.  Someone we might even call--mi amigo.  We are communal creatures, made to be in relationship with others. Literally made for others.  Don't hide from it, and please don't hide your lamp under a basket. We need every light shining, especially now. Go out into the world and be light, be a friend, be an amigo.

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[1] This part of the story comes from the Greek text of the OT and is usually included in the Apocrypha in most Protestant Bibles.  But it is considered canonical by all the Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholic church and is therefore included in the Book of Daniel in these versions. If it isn’t in your Bible, here is a link to it.