Listen | Mark 10:46-50

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Good morning friends. Morning in the room. Morning to you. Crowd online. Again, my name is still Alex just like it was a few minutes ago. And I’m still one of the pastors here from what I’m told. And and so we’re gonna continue our journey today, though we began last week. Looking at what it is to be a neighbor to do one of the things that Jesus said was most central to living in his way, in his heart.

When you walked in, you walked past the big sign on the wall that says, living in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus, the thing that we are always trying to do together as a community. Last week we began with beginning with prayer that’s the thing we’re invited into, that we get to pray for those around us even when we don’t know the.

Names And this week we’re gonna begin a conversation on what it takes to listen. So for a moment, picture that neighbor that you don’t like, the one that always talks to you. And it’s the most inconvenient time. And imagine being called into listening to that person. ’cause I believe that you might be. So I thought we’d start here.

How many of you guys have had an experience where you’re listening to something on the radio and you hear a lyric and you’re convinced, oh, that’s what they said. And then you find out years later that actually you got it completely wrong. A couple of examples here for you. First one by the brilliant Credence Clearwater Revival.

Now, the lyrics on the screen said a bad moon on the rise, and pretty convinced and have been for years that they actually say there’s a bathroom on the right now. It’s a weird thing to sing about. But it’s an important piece of information to know at certain points. How about this one from TA Taylor Swift, all the lonely Starbucks lovers, any Starbucks lovers in the hands, any lonely Starbucks lovers?

How many of you, if you’re honest, heard Starbucks lovers? Yes. The rest of you’re just lying. ’cause that’s what she says. It’s in fact, it’s so clear. This is what Taylor Swift’s mom thought the lyric was. There’s a way that we hear things that maybe you’re just off, maybe you’ve said a cliche, something famous.

One of those famous things people say and you’ve just found out over the years you’re getting it wrong. Like the TV character in the show, friends, the famous Joey Tribiani who says, this is all a mo. Point when he finds out that it’s moot point, he’s convinced he’s, now it’s moo. It’s like it’s a cow’s opinion.

It doesn’t matter. It’s moo. Most of the time these things end up in funny kind of examples but occasionally they end up in situations that could get dangerous. In 1931, a doctor had to do a blood transfusion for a young woman. And so he called a consultant just wanting to make sure he was correct, and the consultant on the line said to him, use her parents’ blood.

Use her parent’s blood makes sense, right? To those of you in the medical field. But the doctor who was making the call thought that he said, use her parrot’s blood. And so they went and took a transfusion from the parrot and gave it to the woman. And everyone was quite baffled when the person got way better than they expected her to get from any kind of transfusion.

Maybe there’s a new medical way that we can do things based on that but this happened in history and. It could have been quite a risky situation. I wonder if the doctor thought, wow, this consultant really knows everything. He even knows that the family have a parrot. He’s got everything covered.

The writer, GK Chesterton said this. There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing. Have you ever thought about that? There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing. Hearing is something that you can’t help doing. If you have hearing. But actually listening, that’s something else altogether.

You might say this way. Listen, hearing is easy. Listening actually is quite hard. Takes quite a lot. Some research done a couple of years ago said this due to internal chatter. You know the thing in your brain that da goes on. People are only fully engaged in the message about 25% of the time, meaning 75% of messages are overshadowed by inner.

Monologue the thing you’re thinking, what are you supposed to be listening? Have you ever maybe experienced some of that? It’s why. My kids, one of whom is probably somewhere in the room whenever they think I’m busy, whenever they think I am doing something important, perhaps writing something, perhaps playing music, just that look of absence on my face that appears they sneak past their mom.

Pass someone who could reasonably be expected to give them a proper answer and ask me questions. They know the answer should be no to, but I in my state of just distraction, whatever I’m more likely to say yes to, can I have ice cream be a good example most of the time. And my wife is the one that’s cleaning up the conversation that in the moment when I say yes, she’s he means no.

It’s a no. You can’t have it. What I love about the passage we’re gonna read together today is the way Jesus surprisingly to me, without mentioning listening. Models it for us perfectly. Jesus is actually an incredible listener and he models listening for us today. Before we get too far, let me make sure.

If you weren’t here last week, you get caught up on where we went in this series. We looked at this idea that surprisingly to all the people listening to him in a culture that had said for years, your neighbor is the person who’s like you, who’s similar to you. Jesus is actually your neighbor is the person who is near you.

That means if you have a roommate, that person is now your neighbor. If you live in an apartment and the person upstairs who makes all the noise or the person downstairs that makes more noise, they’re your neighbor. The person you meet that you don’t care for, neighbor, the person that lives in the house that keeps their yard messy, that doesn’t seem to obey any of the HOA rules.

Neighbor. Were that neighbor, I think. But that’s your neighbor. Now, in Jesus language, the neighbor is someone who’s near you. And so last week I invited you to begin with prayer, to, to take seriously this fact that we get to pray for those people around us to pray that God blesses them, encourages them, shows those himself to them, that there’s some kind of thing that happens and you can do that whether this person or not? Here’s what I think about prayer. This is the funny thing about prayer as a thing that we can do. One, everyone can do it. And so on one hand it’s the easiest, the least we can do for anyone. But because of the way prayer works, it’s also the most that we can do. I have a friend back at home who says this, when I pray coincidences happen and when I don’t.

They don’t, it’s a beautiful gift that God has given us a way to enter in. So we begin with prayer, but the second thing is I think we’re called to listen to those around us and let’s watch Jesus model that. If you have a copy of the scriptures turn with me to Lou. Matt, mark, chapter 10, verse 46.

Second book in the New Testament, mark is one of the biographers of Jesus’ life. A lot of people think he’s the earliest one. He’s definitely the shortest one. With Mark, you have this pace that’s just going all the time. He uses the word immediately. So it’s like immediately Jesus did this. He’s also terrible at punctuation, and so the sentences just feel like they run on, Jesus went here and then he did this, and then.

And so you get the different feel of the writer as you read the book. Mark chapter 10, verse 46. Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples together with a large crowd, were leaving the city a blind man. Bartimaeus, which means son of TEUs, was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

Jesus stopped and said, call him. So they called to the blind Man, cheer up on your feet. He’s calling you. Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. What do you want me to do for you? Jesus asked him. The blind man said, rabbi, I want to see Ghost said, Jesus, your faith is healed. You immediately, he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

Like all the stories in scripture, there’s a context there that we have to catch up on. Jesus is making this movement. In his story, in Mark, the first half, the action all takes place in a town called Galilee. Jesus is there and he’s teaching. He’s healing, and then he makes this movement towards Jerusalem, where eventually he’ll die and rise again.

They were on their way up to Jerusalem with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished. While those who followed were afraid. The emotions are a little different, but everyone is aware that something in the story is about to happen. There’s this waiting, watching to see what will take place.

That’s the context of verse per 46, where we begin. Then they came to Jericho. Remember Flannelgraph, when you grew up, if you’re in Sunday school, you got the wars of Jericho. They all fall down. When people march around, its seven times. As Jesus and his disciples together with a large crowd, were leaving the city a blind man.

Bartimaeus, which means son of TEUs, was sitting by the roadside. Begging sitting in the place probably is sat every day of his life, at least every day that he’s been blind, waiting for someone to drop by, give him some money so he can continue to do what he does every single day of his life where he’s sat in the same place.

There’s this moment where Jesus walks past and Jesus is leaving the city. He’s not entering. Maybe Bar Maeu has had multiple chances to see Jesus, or at least to hear Jesus. Maybe he’s waiting and waiting for this opportunity, and now you get this feeling in the story. This is the last possibility, last chance that anything can happen.

If this thing doesn’t happen, then Bar Maus will spend the rest of his life doing exactly what he’s done before it. And so in that moment, he cries out in a louder voice as he can master. Son of David have mercy on me. Barima is sitting on the side of the road, and when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

Perhaps he’s heard about Jesus from different people. Maybe this is a story that’s gone round all sorts of towns, but Jesus is known for doing the sort of things that nobody else can do, but whatever he believes about Jesus, nothing can restrain him from crying out loudly in this voice, this prayer. That has become a well-known short prayer that people cry in moments of desperation, moments of great need.

Jesus have mercy on me. It’s prayer. I prayed last summer. I told you this story when my family was stuck on a boat the boat had no gas because somebody, me had not put any gas in it. There was a thunderstorm coming in and I watched as this thunderstorm came towards the boat and that was the deep gutter or prayer.

And maybe you’ve prayed a prayer like that at different points in deep need, and Jesus have mercy on me. Do something in this situation. You might translate that prayer. And that’s what Bar Maeu sprays in this moment, verse 38 48. Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet. It’s in this beggar, Bartimaeus every day of their lives, perhaps always doing the same thing, always wanting money.

And now he’s interrupting what feels like a sacred. There’s a moment where it feels like something is going to happen. Significant. They’re part of this moment. They’re in this crowd, this procession, and now here’s Bartimaeus crying out as he always does, perhaps always needing money as he does, perhaps crying out, ruining the thing that Jesus is doing, the thing that you are part of.

Jesus is walking out of Jericho when a man cries out to him for help and many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but this doesn’t stop. Barima, he cries out all the more. Jesus son of David have mercy on me. And miraculously it might seem to bar to Bartimaeus. Jesus doesn’t continue the journey but stops.

And says, call him. And so the crowd called to the blind man, cheer up on your feet. He’s calling you that word there. Cheer up. It doesn’t really mean turn that frown upside down or something like that in. It means be of good heart. Take courage. Something is about to happen. Let that kind of hope, that faith, let it well up in you.

That’s what the crowd invites bar may us take courage. Be of good cheera. May your heart. Be warmed for any of you that are fans of the CS Lewis Chronicles of NAIA series. There’s this moment in the fifth book where the group of children the heroes of the story are on a boat and they’re on a dark island where the worst of nightmares comes true.

And they’re waiting for something to happen, hoping against hope that they’ll be rescued. And in that moment, this eagle swoops down. And in the voice of Alan, the great lion yells out, courage. Dear Heart. That’s this kind of moment, this moment where hope appears, where there was no hope. A moment where the story looks like it will just continue to go one way, and surprisingly it turns and goes a different way.

And throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. In that day, people who were begging would lay a cloak over their lap on the road, and people who drop coins would leave it on the cloak. In this moment that Emmaus is unconcern about the cloak and concerned about the money, only concerned with how he can get to Jesus, and he’s led perhaps.

Or perhaps finds his own way. He jumps to his feet and he comes and stands in front of Jesus Bartimaeus. This blind man finds himself standing in front of the one man who walks the earth in this day who can possibly help him. And Jesus asks a question, what do you want me to do for you? A question to us that might seem surprising.

Does he really need to ask? Isn’t it obvious? He’s a blind man who sat on the side of the road every day of his life, perhaps, and Jesus asks this question, a question that isn’t as redundant as we might think. I grew up in a church that loved to pray for the sick, that experienced many people being healed.

There’s a reason that I, whenever I pray for someone, and always who knows what God might do, but occasionally you run into people who, if they’re honest, would say, I actually don’t want to be healed. I met people just like that, who would say, if I’m healed, everything has to change. It’s easier to continue the life.

I know where people do things for me. I get to live this way, and I know this way. What happens if I’m healed and everything has to change, or I have to start doing all of this stuff for myself? Bar Mayers could easily be that person. He could just simply think Jesus has the resources to give him more income so he can continue to do what he’s always done.

But when Jesus asked the question, AB EU responds this way, rabbi, I want to see, and in a moment that grabs our attention in the story as he should, and Jesus replies, go, your faith has healed you. And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. But notice what happens before the healing.

Notice that Jesus is intently interested in this person. This one person, there’s a crowd. Jesus is surrounded, and yet one person manages to grab his attention. Jesus, in modern terms is what’s called an active listener. Someone who listens in such a way that it’s as if everybody disappears in the room and that you are the one person that has their attention.

We saw that of Jesus all the way through John, right? This book that we just studied as a community, all the scenes in which it seemed like everyone else faded out and there’s Jesus and one person, and the story begins to change. Growing up in England, I knew a guy who used to drive the famous speaker evangelist Billy Graham, around whenever he came to England.

And when Billy Graham went round and met people after an event, after a service, this man would follow him and meet them afterwards. And he said to me, once 90 to 95% of people would say, of Billy Graham, it was like I was the only person in the room. He just seemed intently focused on me. It’s a little window into I think, what people experienced of Jesus, an active listener.

William Lane, great writer on the book of Mark Commentators, says this, E, even on the way to Jerusalem, Jesus had time for a man who asked for his help. Think about that scenario for a moment, and Jesus is the man who has the most right in the history of the world to claim he’s busy, and what he does is important.

Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem to die to be resurrected. He is on mission, and yet Jesus is an active listener, an engaged person, a caring neighbor, even when he’s on mission, that he’s deeply focused on this person, this one person in the midst of this crowd, the only person. Out of all of the people surrounding Barde Maeu that he is interested, is Jesus the busiest, most important person ever to live?

Japanese writer Kaki Chiama, years ago in 1970s, wrote a book called Three Mile an Agar. And he said this, love has its speed. It’s a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. He wrote this in the seventies. He may feel something about the technological speed of 2026.

It goes on in the depth of our lives, whether we notice it or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed, the love of God walks. He says, Jesus could have been born at any time in history, the jet age, where he could get to as many countries as possible any time. But he chose to be born at a time where a human being was limited to step, step one step at a time.

His reach was limited to as far as he could walk in a day. That’s how Jesus lived his life. Slow. Steady engaging with one person after another. This friends is who Jesus is. This is what we saw all the way through John, that Jesus that is engaged with people that he passes on the side of the road, engaged with those that are collecting water, engaged in those in their times of deep need.

But it’s not just who Jesus is, it’s who his father is. It’s who God as Trinity is. God is throughout history in the scriptures. This is back in Genesis 16. Early on in the Book of Scriptures, we read a woman called Rahab, a nobody, a servant suffering under two masters that have not treated her well. And in her moment of desperation, she experiences God.

And she says this, she gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees me. Because she said, I have now seen the one who sees me expecting nothing. She experiences the God of the universe and he’s even given the privilege of giving a new name to God. The God who sees me a few verses later, verse 15.

So HaBO Abraham, a son, and Abraham gave the name Ishmael to the son she had born, which simply means God hears. God hears. This is who God has been. In our story, the crowd wants to move on. They wanna move where the action is. They want to follow the story to see where it will end up, and Jesus asks them to pause and to wait.

To live in this moment with this person in great need, William Lane, again, those in the crowd who rebuked the beggar undoubtedly regarded his shouting as a nuisance and resented the thought of any possible delay. They had probably become quite hazard hardened to seeing beggars along the roadside. I dunno about you, but I resonate with the craft.

I resonate with the fact that I’m busy, that things are happening and there’s just enough normalness to seeing people suffer suffering, struggling for me to easily at times just pass by, continue the important things they think I’m doing. And Jesus invites this crowd to pause, and he actually watched this.

I love this part about Jesus. He invites them into the story. Notice what happens. Jesus tells the crowd, call the man. He doesn’t call him. He asks the crowd to go call him. So the crowd called to the man, cheer up on your feet, he’s calling you. The crowd, helps the man to Jesus. The crowd are the ones that facilitate.

He’s getting to Jesus, experiencing what he experiences. Here’s my suggestion, here’s what I think. When we think about neighboring I, I think actually Jesus at times hard but brilliant invite to us is the same. He invites you and me to do the same, to be slow enough to greet those who need us, who need someone to listen.

He invites us into that relationship that just like the crowd has this brilliant possibility of bringing people to Jesus, he says, maybe the same gets to be true of you, that because they meet you, they meet Jesus as well. So if that’s that great calling, if that’s the beautiful thing, I have this other question.

Why do we, especially me, why do I, if I’m honest, find listening so difficult? I know in the room we have people that are brilliant at listening that do it regularly and often. Why is it that, if I’m honest, I find to listen to maybe hard to listen to may maybe you feel the same. Why is it that there are some people that I’m like, I just have other things to do.

Why is it that for a season whenever I walked outside, I would see my elderly neighbor sat outside and knew she would wanna have a long conversation with me, and I would feel this urge to just do anything else. Then listen, why is it that listening, if we’re honest at times, is a little bit hard?

And I think we could go into all sorts of reasons. Maybe it’s a western thing. In the Western world, the burden of communication is on the speaker. That’s why when you go home today, you’ll say, man, Alex wasn’t as clear as I’d like. He wasn’t as interesting as I’d like. That’s all Alex’s fault. If we were living in the Eastern world, you would say that, and I would say the burden is aren’t the listener.

And so it’s your fault for not listening well enough for Alex to be clear and not finding him interesting. And so you would go home with all of that kind of guilt, but that’s not where really what I want us to focus on. I suspect that at hard, the reason that we find it hard to listen is we are simply too rushed to listen.

We’re simply too rushed. There’s too many things going on. We are too busy to listen. Couple of people that are brilliant on this subject that I wanna share with you, Rosaria Butterfield, if you want to enter into this neighboring series in New Ways. Rosaria Butterfield wrote a book called The Gospel, comes with a House Key, all about hospitality and how she welcomes people in.

She says, this practicing radical. Ordinary hospitality necessitates building margin time into the day time where regular routines can be disrupted but not destroyed. There’s somewhere, there has to be the flex to be able to do this kind of thing. James, the brother of Jesus in the New Testament.

Imagine being Jesus’ brother and seeing him do everything perfectly. Listen incredibly well, care for people spectacularly. It must have been intolerable until he realized who Jesus was. My dear brothers and sisters take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

It’s the verse that began or nudged us towards the parable You were given two ears and one mouth. Listen accordingly. You are supposed to listen twice as much as you speak. That’s James’ thoughts on the subject. Dallas Willard in this now legendary conversation was asked by a wise Christian leader, how do I become more like Jesus?

What’s missing in my life? What? What do I need to get better at this? And Dallas Willard famously replied, hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life of aade. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. These are wise people that have said at some point the speed at which we move is the thing that stops us living.

Like Jesus. Ronald Roll Heiser great Catholic writer. We, for every kind of reason, good and bad, are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion. It’s not that we have anything against God depth and spirit. We would like these. It’s just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens.

One more. Ruth Haley Barton, who created a list of nine ways to tell if you’re just simply too busy to live the Jesus life. One on her list was hoarding energy and she said, when we are running on empty, we can have the inner experience always feeling threatened as though exposing ourselves to additional people or situations would drain the last of our energy or the energy we are trying to conserve for what we think is important.

And isn’t that last line, if I’m honest, revealing sometimes it’s not that I’m really busy doing important things, it’s just that I’m passionately addicted to some completely unimportant things that give me the reward system at Grateful. Maybe you’re passionately interested in reading news articles from people that agree with you on everything.

Maybe you’re passionately addicted to going on social media and finding all sorts of short form video that gives you all the dopamine hits that you hope for. Maybe you simply love to shop on Facebook marketplace and find everything that you don’t need. Maybe there’s things that, if we’re honest, we would say it’s not.

That I want to get back to what I’m doing that’s valuable. We might say, I want to get back to what I wasn’t doing. I want to get back to the thing that costs me nothing that’s constantly rewarding and easy to engage with. That welcomes me back with open arms and allows me to spend slow hours just pondering different things that happen to somebody else.

I think that’s the risk if we’re honest. To listening. It’s not that back in history, people did less, more, less important stuff than us. They were doing equally important things, but they had more space, more time. And if we’re honest, I at least tend to use time on the least important things when we do that.

When we live a cycle where dopamine hits can one after another, we’re always trying to fit those kind of things around the work that we’re doing. And that work tends to take up more time because of the other things that we’re trying to fit in. I think the image we get is this, it’s the world spinning ever faster and ever faster.

There used to be a ride when I grew up at the fairgrounds toward the, called the teacups. This is probably called something else here. ’cause teacups is the most English name for a fairground ride. And what would happen is the ride would spin and then you would sit in a teacup that also span. And then on the ride there’d be a guy that span that teacup faster and faster and faster.

And so the experience was the outside spinning, the inside spinning you, spinning and eventually you get to this point where you were desperately crying. Something like, stop the ride. I want to get off. And at times I wonder whether the thing that we’re crying as we continue to busy ourselves with everything is simply stop the world.

I want to get off This thing feels like it’s running out of control. Feels like it doesn’t continue to work as it should work, and I have no time for the people that I sense I should have time for. The good news is in the midst of this busyness, I would suggest Jesus has this beautiful calling for us, has this beautiful invite to play the part he invites the crowd to play.

I love this quote from David Augsburg being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable. That the moment someone finds themselves listened to, valued it experiences an experience for them of just deep caring, deep kindness, and deep love. A love about South.

That over the years it’s been a community where all sorts of people have come in with stories that they might put their hands up and say, the story is broken and I don’t know what to do with it. In that moment, my need, my temptation is to say, let’s hear that story right now. But that’s not how that works.

What actually happens is people get to come and stay, and the story doesn’t always heal right away, but they get heard. Get listened to by people just like some of you in the room and have this suspicion. And I have council of friends in the room who will probably correct me if I’m wrong, and that’s okay.

But I have this suspicion that a story heard is the first step to a story healed. That’s what Jesus does for people or through the New Testament, and I think he invites us into the same. This thing is our calling to listen to care. To value those that we come across on the highway of life. And yet when we’re honest, we often find ourselves too busy to do that thing that Jesus called us to.

What do we do? How do we change that? How do we create space for that? And the first invite that I would have for us is this, is to remind ourselves that God is deeply compassionate towards us. The first time I heard these following verses, they were spoken by an Anglican priest, and I never heard anything quite as gentle as this.

In the world of spirituality, I grew up in a Pentecostal church that demanded success, demanded holiness now, and when I heard these words, it reminded me of how God sees me as a father has compassion on his children. So the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.

I forget that. I forget that I’m human. Forget that my capacity is limited. Forget that I get pulled in all sorts of directions. God doesn’t forget that of us. He knows that we are dust. We come and we say, I feel like something is missing. And he says, I know, but you are loved. You’re welcome. Get involved in the story.

That’s the first thing to know that God compassionately leads us into being a better version of ourselves, a better version of living in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus. But two other invites that I hope help you the first is to create margin. To create space. To know that you cannot fill every moment of every day with something.

There’s one wise person sat in the sound desk right now, who was the first person when I was running too hard, so hard that I made myself sick. When I first came to Denver, that sat me down and said, why are you running life like a sprint when life is a marathon? Why aren’t you taking time? Another wise person who pastors a church down the road grabbed me and said, always run at 90%.

’cause if you run at a hundred, when the crisis comes, there’s no 10% left to deal with it. It fine margin to leave it open for possibilities. And I’ve said that before and it’s a dangerous thing to say to a church because when you say things like that, people are like I’m too busy to serve and to do anything.

’cause there’s another thing that I want to add. Choose what’s important. I think the temptation when we’re told to create margin is to say no to the people that will be most forgiving of us. Most gentle with us. To say no to, the easy things to say no to, but I don’t think that’s the calling. In fact, I think we’re called to say, what is important to me?

What’s my value? And that if God calls you to be a listener, and maybe you’re called to be a listener at our food bank, to the hundreds of people that come in every week with all sorts of incredible stories, some of them really broken, some of them really incredibly wonderful. Maybe a call is to listen to those in our kids’ ministry.

The chatter and chatter and chatter, but to whom you get to bring life. We recent, recently said goodbye to one of our dear friends in this church, Terry. Terry Bode. Terry had served at South for years, and when my kids found out yesterday that Terry had passed away, they were heartbroken.

My son Jude, kept talking about it this morning. But he was the fun one. He was the one with the energy, the life. Imagine having a kid talk about you like that. We’re called to create margin. Yes. But called to find what’s important to us to serve where we find real value. I wanted to give you a picture of why I think neighboring and listening work so well together.

This is a pool back in New York. We lived in New York for a couple of years and the first week we arrived, our neighbor next to us walked over to the house and said, Hey, I want you to know when it gets to spring, come use the pool. So when spring came, we wandered over to his house and I knocked on the door and said, gingerly, Hey, you mentioned using the pool.

He said, the gate’s there. I’ll meet you around the other side and I’ll show you around. And so we went round with my two kids in bathing suits. And we got to the pool and the kids jumped in and my neighbor said to me, Hey, just so you know, I don’t want you bothering me every time you want to use the pool, the gates there, make yourself at home.

And we did shamelessly every day. But I found something out about Bruce. It wasn’t that he didn’t wanna be bothered, he actually just wanted someone to listen to him. And so that became the deal, the silent, unspoken deal. We would swim and I would listen. And Bruce would talk. He would talk about Vietnam, talk about who he lost in Vietnam, the pain of it, the awfulness of it would talk about his sicknesses that he got from being in Vietnam, the pain he experienced every single day.

He would talk and he would talk and he would talk, and I would listen. And I would listen. I would listen. So Bruce didn’t want to be unbothered. He just wanted someone that would listen to him, that would hear his story. And I don’t know where his story is right now, but I hope that was a first step to a story that could be healed.

So that’s what we do. We invite people towards Jesus. Aaron’s gonna lead us in a song. It reflects the invite to you from Jesus. A reminder that you are loved deeply, beloved is the word. But this song is also true of everybody that you know in the world, that they are deeply loved by the God of the universe, who’s constantly inviting them towards him.

And if we’re on a, sometimes with a crowd who says, we’re simply too busy. Let’s continue with what we were doing. And I think Jesus nudged to us. He’s called him, listen. Play the middle ground, the intermediary. That’s what you’re made for. Would you stand with me whether this prayer is true for you or not?

I’m gonna invite us to say it together. It’s a prayer that reminds us that sometimes we get too busy, not just for people, but even for God. Holy one. There is something I wanted to tell you, but there have been errands to run. Bills to pay, arraignments to make meetings to attend, friends to entertain, washing, to do.

And I forgot what it is I wanted to say to you, and mostly I forgot what I’m about or why. Oh God, don’t forget me. Please, for the sake of Jesus Christ, God does not forget. In fact, he runs towards us ’cause we are his beloved. Amen.