In Mark 6, the narrative takes a quick departure from the life and acts of Jesus to tell the rather sad ending of one of the story’s earlier players. Mark tells us that by this time John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and earliest supporter of his ministry, has been thrown in prison by Herod. He’s in prison because he didn’t shy away from telling Herod that his marriage was sinful. Interestingly, the arrest was less of Herod’s making and more his wife’s. I guess she didn’t take kindly to the idea that she was problematic. But trying to keep his wife happy, Herod arrests John but does little else to him at first, reluctant to do anything more.
The result is John the Baptist spends months languishing in prison with no real hope of relief. Now, if I were thrown in prison, I would be a mess. At the best of times, I don’t do well stuck alone, and I haven’t even been imprisoned. But John, despite all the despair and suffering he must have been feeling, stays the course.
He takes advantage of his location and Herod’s curious it’s about him. It’s indicated that Herod comes to him repeatedly and John preaches the gospel. And yet before long, the vain, jealous women in Herod’s life exact their revenge and Herod reluctantly puts John the Baptist to death. It’s a tragic ending, but I’m struck by the tragedy in addition to John’s death.
Herod still didn’t understand and believe. He missed it. People were believing in Jesus and leaving everything to follow him from single encounters and interactions. Herod had John the Baptist, the leading expert on Jesus Christ and his ministry, in his custody for months and spent time talking with him and gained nothing.
I’m horrified by and fascinated with Herod’s stupidity. How did he not get it? Reading it just as a story, it’s easy to shake our heads at Herod and his foolish blindness, but we’re nowhere near as far removed from his foolishness as we’d like to believe.
How often do we read scripture, listen to a sermon, or talk to another believer and let it be nothing more than reading, listening, or talking? I squirm at how often I spend time in my Bible and wouldn’t be able to tell you just two minutes later what it was I was just reading. It is an almost daily occurrence that I am no better than Herod in my ability to soak up God’s word.
It’s never fun to be compared to Herod of all people, but all too often we act just like him. We have all the resources and all the means, but we don’t let anything sink in deeper than the surface. We let the goodness of God simply bounce off of us with no real impact.
It is entirely possible for us to listen to what God is saying and not hear him.
We have to do the hard work to actually engage with what God is telling us. We have recognize that if Jesus really is who he says he is, everything about our world is different. It’s not enough for us just to hear. We have to listen.
What’s the difference between the two? Simply put, it’s the difference between only hearing God’s message conceptually, and sitting with its implications for us. The difference is the impact on you. If you listen to the gospel, even as a seasoned believer, but only listen for the bullet points you will find yourself in the same camp as Herod’s understanding. Whereas if you listen to the gospel while consider what the message means for you and others, the meaning and impact will explode out and change you.
I’m not advocating for emotionalism here. I don’t want to suggest that if you’re not having some big emotional reaction to God’s word you’re not listening. Some people aren’t wired for big reactions, some are. That’s not the point I’m driving at here. What I’m driving at is our ability to internalize what we’re hearing and wrestle with what it means. Because if we’re actually listening we’ll find it’s pretty hard to do so. Truly listening is hard work and can quite frankly be messy to do. But it matters that we try to listen over just hearing.
Your imperfect listening will always be a thousand times better than your perfect hearing.
God isn’t looking for some grand performance from you. He just wants you, and if we don’t get out of our own way we run the risk of missing Him. We run the risk of whittling God’s glorious message of love and redemption down to intellectual, empty philosophy. Something we can hem and ha at and then move on to the next new interesting idea. We can miss the whole point even as we hear it.
God makes himself totally and completely discoverable to everyone. He doesn’t hide himself away or bury himself in intellectual puzzles that are impossible to solve. He makes himself so easy to access but we can still miss him if we don’t get out of our own way. We have to guard ourselves against this. God is here for us and speaking loudly, but it’s up to us to truly listen instead of just hear.
Let’s find some joy,
A
Avalon Robinson Author 