My wife and I share a family physician. Sharing one common physician has its up sides, and its down sides. One of the down sides is that your spouse can rat you out to your physician. She can call ahead before your annual physical and tell your physician things that she thinks need to be investigated. That happened to me this year.

 

So I walked into my annual physical in May and discovered that my spouse had called ahead and reported that she thought I was having trouble hearing. Particularly, trouble hearing her. This had been going on for some time, and she had noticed that again and again, she was having to say, “Do you hear me?”

 

“I don’t think he is hearing me,” she told the doctor.

 

So I found myself leaving the physical, referred to a hearing specialist to get an evaluation. I went to the appointment and went in and met with the doctor and then the technician. The technician took me back to a room where there was a metal booth, that looked to me like the kind of chamber that I imagine they put deep sea divers in when they are bringing them up out of the bends, because of nitrogen poisoning. But it wasn’t painful like that at all. You went in the room and they locked the door. There is a glass window in it, and it’s soundproof. The technician sat on the other side of the glass, and she said, “Now I’m going to play for you a series of sounds, and every time you hear the sound, raise your hand. And there is not point,” she said, “in just raising your hand every three seconds, because I’m going to skip intervals to fool you, so you won't know when it’s playing or not. And,” she said, “after about fifteen minutes of that, I’m going to give you a series of phrases that I want you to repeat. And then a series of words. If you hear them, respond by saying them to me.”

 

So we went through the exercise. After twenty-five minutes, I came out and she said, “Well I have an evaluation for you.” She had printed a graph, and she said, “Look. Really, your hearing is very much the norm for a fifty-year-old male. Here’s the normal range, and you follow the normal range almost exactly, a little up in fact here, but almost exactly the normal range all the way across, except for this relatively small group of frequencies right here. It’s really not a very large group of frequencies,” she says. “They’re right together. And see how your graph dips down there and then suddenly it dips back up?”

 

I said, “That’s interesting. Why is that? Why one short range right there? What does that sound like?”

 

She said, “Well, it’s a moderately high range. I don’t know. I’ve never heard her speak.” This is the truth. “But if I had to guess,” she said, “I’m guessing that that’s precisely the frequency of your spouse’s voice.”

 

I said, “How can that be? How can that happen?” She said, “We don’t know. From time to time we see it, and we don’t really have a scientific explanation for it. Some have conjectured that there may be some desensitizing that occurs after twenty-nine years of marriage.”

 

I asked her, “Well what can we do to correct it?” She said, “It really isn’t significant or acute enough for us to prescribe a hearing aid for it, but I will give you a prescription.” She took out a piece of paper and she wrote on it: “Listen more intentionally.”

 

Ouch.

 

The Bible is telling us a story about a time when Moses was listening very intentionally. It wasn’t like the normal listening he did. He was listening now in a way that perhaps he had never heard before. It’s a holy conversation. A holy conversation is a time when you are listening, or speaking (but I’m stressing listening), and you realize that you are hearing God speaking. That you’re hearing the voice of the Spirit speaking to you.

 

Moses heard the Lord, and he put down his staff and took off his shoes, because he knew that it was holy ground. Again and again, the scriptures tell us stories of times when people hear the Spirit of the Living God speaking to them. It’s always a kind of a holy conversation.

 

The gospel of Luke that Nicole read tells the story of two people walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, about a seven-mile journey, on a post-Easter evening. As they walked, a third came and joined with them. They shared in conversation with this man along the road. It wasn’t until that night when they sat down for dinner together, and he picked up a loaf of bread and he broke it with a familiarity that caused their eyes to open, and maybe their ears, and they realized that it was Jesus who had been walking and talking with them all those seven miles. There, the conversation became holy in reflection. It was as they remembered the conversation that they discerned that it was the voice of God that had been speaking to them along the road.

 

Sometimes your holy conversations are like that. It’s in reflection, in retrospect, that you realize that it was a holy moment.

 

What I’m hoping you’ll leave the service seeking to do this week is to listen, whether with your eyes or your ears. To listen to see if you can discern where the Spirit of God is speaking to you in the week ahead. Or where the Spirit may be calling on you to listen. Perhaps as a means of God’s compassion. Perhaps the Spirit is trying to use you as a means of God’s care in the hearing of someone else.

 

In the service in a moment, we are going to commission the Stephen Ministers, who are a ministry team in our congregation, who take upon themselves the particular work of listening intentionally to others. It’s a national program which we have been involved in for a number of years. It trains volunteers for a kind of careful, compassionate listening, as a way of reaching out in God’s care. The Stephens ministers are available for people who are going through a tough time, or who may feel in a lonely place. Who may just feel that they need somebody who is willing to pray with them and listen to them, in a kind of intimacy. So we make those assignments, and the relationships continue in confidence for some period of time. Over the years, again and again, we receive reports back from those who have had a Stephens minister (we call them care receivers), that indeed they have experienced that listening as a sign of God’s grace in their lives.

 

Those holy conversations are not just between people, but like the two on the road to Emmaus, like Moses there in the desert, they realized that the Spirit of the living God was present there amongst them.

 

You can listen as a whole body. You can listen as a family. At the end of October, the session is going to ask all of us to have a holy conversation together. The session’s planning committee, on that last Sunday in October (and there will be an alternate date for those who can't be there then), the planning committee is asking everybody in the congregation that day to be a part of a small group. A small group that will sit and talk together in what we hope and pray will be a holy conversation for a bit, about where the Spirit is at work in the life of this church. Our hope is that a recorder in each group will be able to hear you talk about where you have sensed the Spirit doing something good or valuable or faithful in our life together. And that from those holy conversations, we will be able to discern what our gifts are, what our strengths are, and what the Spirit’s particular call to us is, as a community. How we might play to our strengths. How we might move forward in obedience.

 

I hope you’ll look for that opportunity. I hope you’ll be a part of it, because we need you to be a part of our holy conversation. You are one of the discerners. And we need you not only to speak, but to hear, as others share where the Spirit has been at work with them.

 

What I’m hoping you’ll do in the week ahead is to leave the sermon listening, and looking, to see where the Spirit is speaking to you or calling on you to listen. Perhaps in a conversation with a colleague at work. Perhaps in a talk with someone as the day comes to an end. Perhaps in a bush, the sunset shining on it in a certain way that it seems like it is suddenly ablaze. I’m hoping in the week ahead you’ll discern where in conversation the moment is holy. There, the living God is speaking to you and calling you to listen to others.

 

I had a holy conversation about a week ago. Last Friday week, I was in the Port au Prince Airport. With the Medical Mission Team, I had been in Mombin Crochu all week. It was a very rewarding trip. Over the course of eight days, the Medical Mission Team, on your behalf, supported by you and prayed for by you, equipped by you, had seen about a hundred and forty different patients and had performed thirty-five surgical procedures. It was good work, but it was draining work. It’s a terribly impoverished, hurting place. At the end of eight days, we were all ready to come home.

 

But the little Cessna plane that brings us from Mombin Crochu in the north central part of the state back to Port au Prince, was delayed coming back. So only the first five on our team actually got to the Port au Prince airport in time to make the American Airlines flight that we had reservations on. The other three (of which I was one) had to take the next flight with that Cessna plane. It had to come back and get us, and as a result, we missed that American Airlines flight back. That meant that we had to try and fly standby on the last American Airlines flight out of Port au Prince on a Friday evening.

 

I sat in that primitive airport waiting room, with the fan turning. It began to fill up more and more with Haitians. It became a crowded place, and I began to be discouraged. I realized that everybody in Port au Prince who possibly could get out of the city that night was trying to get on that plane to get to the United States. And I didn’t want to spend the night in the Port au Prince airport. It’s kind of a scary place.

 

Then I began to pray. I began to feel discouraged, and prayed, “O Lord, Thy will be done. But if it’s within Thy will, we sure want to be on that plane.”

 

What if they called one standby, and not two? Could you be a faithful preacher and say, “I’m going. I’ll see you all later”?

 

The time came for the airline to board, and the Haitian clerk at the counter came forward in her American Airlines uniform, and she began, indeed, to call for a few standbys. She called one Haitian name, and then another, and it seemed to me like she must have called nine different Haitian names. And I thought, Oh, if there were any standby seats on that plane, as big as it is, they’ve got to all be filled now. I began to despair, thinking We’re going to be here ‘til Saturday, and we’ll have to fly standby on that, and there’s no guarantee that that one isn’t going to be just as full. We could be here a long time, waiting for a flight to open up.

 

I tried to prepare myself emotionally for doing that. And finally, after everybody else is on the plane, she came up to the counter and she said, “And now, (with her French-Creole accent) Mr. John DeBevoise, Sylvia Campbell, and Patricia Bousey.” We jumped up and ran to the counter, so grateful that there was going to be room for us. As I ran up to give her my passport, I looked at the young Haitian woman and I said to her, “Mademoiselle, you are an answer to prayer!”

 

She looked at me and did a charming kind of rebuke. She said, “But Monsieur, it is God who answers prayer.” I put my staff down and took my shoes off, because I knew it was a holy moment.

 

Sometime in the week ahead, God may be speaking to you. Or calling you to listen on God’s behalf. It will be a holy conversation. And if you can discern it, if you can find the faithfulness to be aware of it, you may sense Jesus Christ there in the midst of the conversation with you.

 

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006