Listen.

Editor’s note: Sermons are published unedited. Only grammar corrections are made.

Preached at BPFNA/Bautistas por la Paz Summer Camp 2024.
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Mark 4:9: “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Theodosia Williams was called Dosia by her friends and Ma by her grandchildren, including my husband, Tom. When she really wanted your attention, she started by saying, “LISTEN.” It wasn’t a listening of simply hearing her words that she was seeking; it was a listening of action.

One of our favorite stories about Ma happened when we were visiting her as part of our annual Christmas visit to Tom’s family. Soon after we arrived in her little apartment, she announced, “I don’t know what I am going to eat for breakfast. I’m out of that cereal I like, and Patsy (that Tom’s mom, Ma’s daughter) won’t take me to the one store where I can get it because she doesn’t like their parking lot.”

By this point in the story, Tom and I are standing and putting on our coats. And Ma says, “What are you doing?” We say, “We’re taking you to the store,” To which she replies, “Oh, you don’t have to do that.” But even as she’s saying that she is standing and putting on her own coat.

I expect that when Jesus starts and ends this parable saying, “LISTEN,” – he doesn’t mean, “Hey, here’s an interesting story!” He means – “I’m putting on my coat, and you had better as well.”

So as we hear his words, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear,” on this last full day of Peace Camp, as we reenter a tumultuous world and all it holds, what might Jesus want us to hear? Which is another way of saying; “What does Jesus want us to do in this world in which so much is rocky, shallow, scorching, withered – in which so much cries out for healing?”

I recently came across an image that is helping me listen to this story in new ways in an interview with Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. In her book, Benyus develops the basic thesis that human beings should consciously emulate nature's genius in their designs. She encourages people to ask, "What would Nature do?" and to look at natural forms, processes, and ecosystems in nature to see what works and what lasts. (From Wikipedia)

In the interview, Benyus speaks to how healing actually comes after utter destruction. It’s lovely and informative, so I will share her words at some length:

So say a landslide has come through, or there’s been a clear-cut or whatever. So there’s this beautiful succession that happens where, at first, the type one species comes in, and we call them weed species. They’re annual plants, and they come in, and what they’re doing is basically spreading out as quickly as they can — cover that ground. Because healing, the first thing is, don’t let the good stuff go. . .  They come in, and then they put all of their energy into creating pretty small bodies and seeds, not a lot of roots. And those seeds then blow off to the next opening that needs healing.

What they’ve done, though, is start to soften up the soil and put nutrients in, and the next group is the shrubs and the berries. And they start to put down roots. They’re going to stay for a while, and then they start what’s called facilitating. They start shading little seedlings, keeping the wind away so some species that are a little more tender can get started.

And then in the shade and the windshields of these trees, of these shrubs, little seedlings start, and then those seedlings become the overstory that we know about. So literally, it is a progression of making way, making things more and more fertile for the next cohort to come.

But what’s really interesting, the thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about [is] bringing all these different circles of different places that we’re working in the world, and we may not know each other, but bringing us all together to know each other’s work. (That sounds a lot like Peace Camp to me, y’all!)

If a rainforest gets cut down, the way it starts is that there might be a stick or a little rise, and a bird lands, and it poops something out. Then, that seed takes over and starts to become the facilitator of this succession in a sort of circular way. And it’s also happening over there in the field, and it’s happening over there in the field, and in between, there are empty spaces.

And when people ask me, how are things going? I’m like, well, I think the circles of healing are starting to grow, and they’re starting to grow towards each other. And if we were to reach out our hand in the dark at this point, we might find another hand.

And they can do it with 16, which is only 16 percent of the field. So when we talk about all the healing we have to do, it’s really nice that you don’t have to cover the whole field like you do in a cornfield. What you do is you put welcoming islands.

As I thought about this sermon, I was drawn to Benyus’ image of the healing circles or welcoming islands. It seems to me like such a good analogy of what this organization has been like for 40 years now – little circles, little islands, sometimes quite isolated from one another, coming together, communicating with one another. And not just BPFNA ~ Bautistas por la Paz itself, of course, but all the churches, organizations, or even just tiny collections of people, perhaps two or three or some places who find one another – and then reach out in the darkness toward one another, and so often, so often finding another hand to hold onto.   

And that image has reminded me of the brilliant Native scientist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of Braiding Sweetgrass and many other deeply wise and scientifically grounded works that demonstrate that plants and trees, even molds and mosses, communicate with one another over gaps once thought impossible to cross – communication that for many years was missed by biologists because it was different than the forms of communication used by people and animals. Through hormones carried on the wind and vibrations shared through roots and no doubt many other forms of “talking” that we do not yet recognize, they share about threats from gypsy moths and bark beetles to drought as well as possibilities for new sources of food and water, enabling one another to prepare and adapt. And that, too, seems like a potent image for what we’ve been doing for 40 years.

As some of you know, Tom and I woke up yesterday morning in Dublin, Ireland – and while many people told me it was “less than a good idea” to make the trek here and try to say something worth hearing given that timing – I accepted because I have longed to be with you again, to experience again the healing of this circle, or these interconnected circles.

That’s the image that drew me to listen again to the interview with Janine Benyus, but I want to close on another note. When I went back to the interview, I began to notice things I had not on the first hearing, things that actually make me rethink the parable and what it might say to us right now:

Listen again to her explanation of how healing happens in nature and hold these ideas up against the parable:

The way it starts is that there might be a stick or a little rise, and a bird lands and it poops something out. Then, that seed takes over and starts to become the facilitator of this succession in a sort of circular way.

So there’s this beautiful succession that happens where at first come in the weed species. They come in, and what they’re doing is spreading out as quickly as they can — cover that ground. Because healing, the first thing is, don’t let the good stuff go

They come in, and then they put all of their energy into creating pretty small bodies and seeds, not a lot of roots. And those seeds then blow off to the next opening that needs healing.

What they’ve done, though, is start to soften up the soil and put nutrients in, and the next group is the shrubs and the berries. And they start to put down roots. They’re going to stay for a while, and then they start what’s called facilitating.

Maybe the most hopeful images in the story for this moment are not the yields of thirty and sixty and a hundred-fold – but instead in the things we’ve so often skipped over on our reading – the birds eating up the seed – the plants that spring up quickly and die just as quickly – even the thorns that hold onto the soil. Perhaps there is deep wisdom in this story, in our stories, that calls for us to listen in new ways to what we’ve missed before.

I was asked this afternoon to offer you a blessing as you return to your various places and to the commitments, tasks, people, and actions to which you are particularly called.

Beloved friends, as you return home – LISTEN.  

Benediction:

So, I will close with this understanding of our task in the world right now, as shared recently by Krista Tippet as Kelly Corrigan interviewed her:

I think it's very hard to be hopeful in this world with the way information comes at us unless you very intentionally orient to be seeing and hearing other things that make up the fuller picture. And so, you know, I look for goodness, everyday, ordinary goodness, people, and beautiful social creativity that's happening that is good, that is life-giving. And if you look for that, if that's how you train your eyes, it's everywhere, it's all around us. It's in all kinds of lives, it's in all kinds of places. Hope is a both-and approach to life, It's not about wishful thinking. It's not about having any kind of squishy certainty that things will turn out to be all right. It is about seeing what is dysfunctional, what is death-dealing, and insisting that the world doesn't have to be that way. Hope is kind of opening your eyes to what else is true and also just saying, I won't live in a world in which those are the only data points. It's like a leap of the imagination that then has real world consequences. It says, this too is true. This is as serious, as true. It's not a denial of those things that are going wrong. But this is an orientation that says, I am going to keep looking for and taking seriously and seeing the truth and doing what I can to nurture that truth, robustness in the world.”

And let it activate you. You have to let those extra truths that you are seeking out activate you.