From the bright cloud of the Holy Spirit, the sacred creative Voice –– the Voice who is “Our Father in heaven” –– proclaims a simple prescription for Christian spirituality: Listen to Jesus!

To listen to Jesus –– not just to hear words repeated out of the Bible, but to listen deeply as the gospel of Jesus continues to be inspired among us for the sake of grace, mercy, peace, justice, hope, etc –– is an aspirational discipline. I’m sure I hear the buzz of good news more often than I stop, intentionally and mindfully, to listen to it. I fear I hear Jesus — speaking to me through his body, the church; communing with me through his body and blood and the Word he makes flesh in the promise of his sacraments –– more often than I stop, faithfully and trustingly, to listen to him. I know I listen to me –– to my self’s best intuition and understanding –– more often than I listen to anything or anyone else.

Intuition is not bad. Self-understanding is helpful. We need to understand ourselves (and it is good to be able to trust our made-in-the-image-of-God-given intuition) in order to understand and to trust what God is saying to us in Jesus. It is this person, this soul that I am, whom God directs to listen to Jesus: we’re in this together.

Something I know about myself: it’s easier for me to list what I consider faults than to brag about my skills. I struggle with anger over injustices I see in and around me (and sadly, my short fuse for righteous indignation seems to trick my temper also to be short in less righteous moments). I am impatient for life the way I want it to be (often focused on controlling my level of comfort). I juggle worries and anxieties for much that is beyond my control. I am quick to recall my hurts and slow to offer my thanks. I wrestle with a nagging sense of inadequacy and a paranoia that the world is aware that it could find someone better than me for whatever role I think I play here.

I hear this internal monologue: it knocks me down, slays my spirit, pushes me to fear the worst. I hope I’m alone in this because I don’t wish to share my most painful personality traits with you—yet human experience informs me that I’m not so unique. We tend to hear such deathly messaging, and it seems to deeply affect how we understand our position as people of God, children of God, saints of God. So it is in these moments, for these moments, that our merciful Maker reforms us to hear something else, to listen to someone else: Jesus.

Called to listen to Jesus, Jesus begins to speak like this: firstly, Jesus tells us to rise. Secondly, Jesus tells us to be unafraid. Thirdly, Jesus tells us to frame everything only in the resurrection we meet in the Son of Man, the Child of Human Hope, the Heir of all Humanity. God (who is, per the New Testament, fundamentally the fullness of Love) says “Listen to Jesus!” And so for our human spirituality, as we listen to Jesus, suddenly our rising and our (en)courage(ment) –– in the context of Easter Morning –– gains holy power to drown out any damning or damaging message that threatens to undermine or to undervalue who we are by God’s grace, mercy and peace.

Whatever hell we hear around or within us, may we “give it up for Lent” as we listen to Jesus for an enduring life that values, not only ours, but all our neighboring lives in (and all the fullness of) creation.

God calls us to the resurrection dawn where Christ will speak our names with love: in peace, let us listen to him! –Pastor Joel