To Whom do we Listen?
Sermon by The Very Revd Nick Papadopulos, on Sunday 29 December 2024
1 Samuel 2: 18–20
26 • Luke 2: 41–end
‘After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions’
In his Christmas Day broadcast, King Charles observed that listening is a recurrent theme of the Nativity story. Mary listens to the angel and embraces the news he brings; Joseph listens to the angel and takes Mary to be his wife; Zechariah fails to listen to the angel and loses the power of speech. Now we hear of Jesus, at twelve years old, listening to the teachers.
This has been a terrible year for the Church of England. Many of us have been hurt and bewildered by what has been revealed about an institution that we love and serve. And as we look towards 2025 the question that we must all face is this: to whom do we listen?
Justin Welby was enthroned as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013 on 21 March – the feast day of St Benedict. Benedict is honoured as the father of Western Monasticism and is the author of a Rule which is still followed today, and to mark his feast and to celebrate their son’s enthronement the new Archbishop’s mother and stepfather commissioned an anthem from the composer Michael Berkeley. It was a setting of the opening words of the Rule:
‘Listen, listen, o my child,
Listen carefully to your teacher’s guidance.
Incline the ear of your heart,
Receive willingly and carry out effectively
your loving Father’s advice.’
The Choir of Canterbury Cathedral sang it beautifully. ‘Listen, listen, o my child’. I remembered those words on 12 November as the ministry which began on the feast of St Benedict more than eleven years ago came to its abrupt and sorry end. I remembered them again on 5 December, when the Archbishop bade the House of Lords farewell. As I remembered them I found myself wondering: to whom did he listen? When he was interviewed on the day the Makin Review was published, he said he would not resign. He had listened to his senior colleagues, and he would remain in post until his retirement.
When Joseph and Mary return to Jerusalem we are told that they spend three days searching for Jesus. The temple is the focal point of the city. It is to the temple that they have come to celebrate the festival. Yet three days elapse before they find Jesus there. What were they doing, and to whom were they listening during those three days? To the advice of passers-by, perhaps; to their own fears, almost certainly. But not to the angel voices of twelve years earlier, and to the prophetic acclamations that surrounded Jesus’s birth. That’s why Jesus reproaches them. ‘Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ They had been told, after all. Faced with a crisis, Mary and Joseph failed to listen to the truth that had been pressed upon them from before their son’s birth.
‘Listen, listen, o my child,
Listen carefully to your teacher’s guidance.
Incline the ear of your heart,
Receive willingly and carry out effectively
your loving Father’s advice.’
To whom do we listen? St Benedict insists that his monks listen to their loving Father, receive his advice, and put it into effect. That’s what his Rule is – it’s a framework for training those who follow it in the art of listening. Through the daily pattern of worship; through the hours of prayer and study; through the times dedicated to work; above all, through the silence that fills the monastery the monks are trained to listen
On 29 December 1170 one of Archbishop Justin’s predecessors refused to listen to his colleagues. His refusal changed the course of history. Thomas Becket had returned to Canterbury from exile in France. He had celebrated Christmas with the Benedictine community of his Cathedral. On the fifth day of the Feast he was confronted by four knights who believed they had come to Canterbury at the King’s direction. As night fell Thomas went to join the monks in the Cathedral for Vespers. The knights were arming themselves. Thomas’s colleagues – his chaplains and attendants – barred the doors to prevent their entry. Thomas refused to listen and had the doors opened. The knights entered the Cathedral and, when Thomas refused to leave, they murdered him. The clang of their swords reverberated around the medieval world for 400 years.
To whom did Thomas listen? We cannot know, but in his play, Murder in the Cathedral, TS Eliot reimagines the sermon he preached on Christmas night 1170. In it the Archbishop ponders the nature of martyrdom. ‘It is always the design of God’ he states. ‘It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr’.
‘Martyr’ means nothing more than ‘witness’. Each of us is called to be a witness to the love of God for the world made known in Jesus Christ. Each of us is called to lose our will in the will of God. It’s the work of a lifetime, but it’s the work to which you and I are called – the work of learning to listen. Most of us are not monks, but in the rhythm of the week; in the rhythm of the seasons; in the rhythm of the year, you and I say our prayers; we hear the Scriptures; we receive the sacraments. We are fed by God; we are formed by God; slowly, slowly, we learn to incline the ear of our hearts to God.
Most of us are like Mary and Joseph: we listen to the advice of passers-by, and to our own fears and anxieties. Most of us listen to our senior colleagues – or our loved ones or our neighbours – to anyone or anything rather than listen to the stark truth that is forcing itself upon us, the stark truth that Thomas could not avoid 854 years ago, and that we cannot avoid today.
John Smyth administered vicious beatings to dozens of vulnerable young men. For years our Church’s leaders did not listen to their cries or to the cries of countless others. For years our Church’s leaders at worst preferred to defend their tribe or at best failed to create a culture in which their cries could be heard. We have not followed St Benedict’s advice, and we have not listened to the voice of God. Christmas teaches us nothing if it does not teach us that in Jesus God makes himself defenceless before the world. Jesus is beaten; Jesus is bloodied; Jesus is a victim – and Jesus is a survivor. If the voice of the voiceless does not command our attention – if the voices of passers-by or the voices of our fears drown it out – then the voice of God does not command our attention.
‘Listen, listen, o my child…
Incline the ear of your heart,
Receive willingly and carry out effectively
your loving Father’s advice.’
In 2025, let it be so for us.