If you stop for just a moment and close your eyes, you might find yourself hearing things that you didn’t initially realize were there. Maybe it’s a song bird in the background. Maybe it’s how loud that bass line sounds when you listen to it on those speakers or head phones. Maybe it’s being able to tell the tiny vocal tick of an emotion to her performance in that movie. Whatever it is, you find that when you stop to listen, you often find something there.
That notion is what drives our next sermon series at University Lutheran: Listening for Hope.
Listening for Hope is going to a a short sermon series that spans just three Sundays: Pentecost, Trinity, and then the 2nd Sunday of Pentecost and the baptism of Naomi Chi. During these Sundays, we will focus our ears on the sounds from the readings: the rattling bones of Ezekiel’s great army, the angelic host of Isaiah’s encounter with YHWH in the temple, and then finally, the sound of God in the Garden of Eden.
At some level, all of these sounds are the sounds of the Law. The rattling bones of Ezekiel point out the spiritual death of God’s people, the sound of the angelic host causes Isaiah to cry out in terror that he is unclean, and the sound of God walking the Garden of Eden causes Adam and Eve to flee for their shame. All of those things are the effect of the law on us.
But in response to the sounds of the Law, we will meet with sounds of the Gospel. The rattling bones don’t rattle forever because God orders Ezekiel to prophesy over them. The angelic host sizzles Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal and makes him clean. And the words of Holy Baptism will be spoken over Naomi, reminding us as well that we no longer need to flee God, for we have been Baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
I’m looking forward to listening for the hope that these messages bring you as we continue to listen to God’s work in our lives.