Let Anyone With Ears to Hear...

Pastor Anthony preaching on “Let Anyone With Ears to Hear...” Scripture focus is Luke 8:4-8, 11-15. Preached on September 12, 2021.

This is the first sermon of a five-part series on: “Growing Healthy Christian Friendships & Relationships.”

Copyright 2021 by Rev. Anthony J. Tang and Desert Mission United Methodist Church.

 In 1992 and 1993, the FBI hostage negotiators did not have a good track record. A couple of terrible incidents led to the FBI being involved in gun fights and lengthy sieges that led to loss of life.

But then, something started to change in the ‘90s when the FBI began utilizing new skills in negotiations with kidnappers and hostage takers. Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator and author of the book Never Split the Difference – Negotiating As If Your Life Depended on It tells a story of a bank robbery in New York.

In September of 1993, two masked bank robbers stormed into a bank in Brooklyn, which had three employees at the time, a security guard and two tellers.

Using this cutting edge hostage negotiation technique, the FBI discovered that one of the two robbers had been lied to. He thought they were going to rob an ATM machine and only when they arrived did he learn that the mastermind of this robbery intended to stage an armed robbery. Their new technique helped them to learn that the robbers had a getaway driver who fled the scene, which led to the driver’s arrest. Eventually, all three hostages were released and even the two bank robbers were arrested, without even one shot fired.

So, what’s this amazingly effective technique that the FBI has been developing for the last 28 years?

It’s called listening.

In Voss’s book, he says:

We are easily distracted. We engage in selective listening, hearing only what we want to hear, our minds acting on a cognitive bias for consistency rather than truth. And that’s just the start.

Most people approach a negotiation so preoccupied by the arguments that support their position that they are unable to listen attentively. In one of the most cited research papers in psychology, George A. Miller persuasively put forth the idea that we can process only about seven pieces of information in our conscious mind at any given moment. (see George A. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” Psychological Review 63, no. 2 (1956): 81-97.) In other words, we are easily overwhelmed.

For those people who view negotiation as a battle of arguments, it’s the voices in their own head that are overwhelming them. When they’re not talking, they’re thinking about their arguments, and when they are talking, they’re making their arguments. Often those on both sides of the table are doing the same thing, so you have what I call a state of schizophrenia: everyone just listening to the voice in their head (and not well, because they’re doing seven or eight other things at the same time.) It may look like there are only two people in a conversation, but really it’s more like four people all talking at once.

There’s one powerful way to quiet the voice in your head and the voice in their head at the same time… make your sole and all-encompassing focus the other person and what they have to say. (Voss, Chris and Tahl Raz. Never Split the Difference – Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2016. pp. 27-8.)

In complex situations, they listen with several people (four, five, or six agents), they ask clarifying questions, they paraphrase back to see if they understand.

Prior to this time, the FBI often resorted to using violent force that led to the loss of lives on both sides of the negotiation table. By listening, they have saved lives.

With this sermon, we are starting a five part sermon to give all of us five tools that will help us to grow healthy, Christian friendships and relationships. And one of the best resources to give a relationship a super boost is through shared listening.

The reason is because whenever a person feels listened to, it gives a temporary relief from both loneliness and helplessness. Being listened to helps a person to feel they exist, that they are important, and that they matter.

The problem, though, is that if we feel lonely or helpless, or if we are afraid we may not exist, or that we are unimportant, or that we don’t matter, then we will talk in order to be listened to. If a lonely person sits with a helpless person, both of them will be talking and neither will be listening, leaving both persons to leave the moment feeling empty inside.

To make matters worse, another problem is that we tend to categorize people (including ourselves) as being good listeners or bad listeners, but when we do that, it becomes a fixed label and fixed labels are hard to change.

Take our scripture for example.

Our scripture is a parable of Jesus, a story intended to teach us a Truth about life, of a sower, a farmer, who scatters seeds—perhaps not very efficiently or productively, but definitely with generosity. Jesus tells us that the seed is the word of God and this farmer (God) tosses seeds everywhere. Some fall on the path where they are trampled and eaten up, like those who hear, but the Word is snatched away before it ever takes root. Some seeds fall on the rocks where it is received with joy, but without the ability to put down deep roots, they wither and die. Some seeds fall amidst the thorns, the thorns represent the temptations of the world and those temptations choke the word of God. And some fall on good soil, where people receive the Word of God and it bears fruit.

I’ve heard others interpret this scripture as if these are four different types of people and the question posed is: are you like the path, the rocks, the thorns, or the good soil? And when posed with a question like that, wouldn’t we all want to be good soil?

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think about myself and my listening skills, I want to be like the good soil, but I spend more time than not like the first three types of soil. Here’s how I interpret this story from Jesus.

When I am thinking more about what I’m going to say next than what the other person is saying, I’m like the pathway. The other person’s words go right into one ear and right out the other and I’m acting like such a poor listener, I’d have no ability to even tell you what they actually said.

Other times, when I’m trying to listen, I’ll hear someone say something that gets me really excited, but my enthusiasm overwhelms me and I stop listening and I’m just feeling in the moment. When that happens, the impact of their words will only last as long as I’m excited, like the seeds on the rocky ground.

You can also see this play out in the opposite. There are times that someone will say something and I will become completely offended and will stop listening to them. The problem is that I may have misunderstood them and had I thoroughly listened, then I would have found myself learning a lot, but I let my emotions get in the way instead.

When it comes to the seeds among the thorns, these are moments when I hear the technical parts or the details of what someone wants me to do, but I didn’t listen for the values or principles or the big picture. For example, many of you know that I hurt my knee recently and I’ve just started going to physical therapy. They have been giving me a variety of different exercises to do at home to strengthen my knees and to be honest, I’ve been having a hard time doing my exercises at home and throughout the day. But as I was writing this sermon, I realized that I’m listening like the thorny ground. I’m not going to get better by just doing the exercises, because I have too much temptation to sit at my desk all day. If I’m going to get better, then I need to consider a change in my lifestyle, which is what they’re really trying to communicate to me. The exercises are helpful. Me not living a sedentary life is what will really make a difference.

I am like all three of these different types of soil, especially after 18 months of a pandemic, 18 months of sitting in my house alone, 18 months of cabin fever, 18 months of wondering if I still exist and if I really matter. I think I’ve been getting worse at being a good listener.

This reminds me that being a good listener is not about being good or being bad. It’s more like a muscle. The more we use our listening skills, the stronger we get. But it’s also true that the listening muscle can get exhausted. When I’ve spent a couple hours of having to listen intensely to what other people are saying, my ears will be exhausted and I’ll won’t be able to listen.

The truth for me (and I suspect that the truth for you too) is that I am not only like the three poor types of soil, but I can also be like the good soil too. I am able to listen deeply, receive the words of God and others, and allow those words to flourish within me. This most often happens when I prepare to listen.

When I prepare to listen, I remind myself to ask the other person how they’re doing today. When I prepare to listen, I remind myself what they told me in our last conversation so that I can bring up that topic and ask them how things went. When I prepare to listen, I remind myself to ask questions. When I prepare to listen, I remind myself of how important it is to paraphrase what they say to find out if I understood what they said correctly.

Again, this can be exhausting and the more we practice it, the stronger we get at it. I suppose it’s a bit like physical therapy. These aren’t just the things to do, but the big picture is to embrace the truth of the gospel and to use listening to help others embrace the truth of the gospel as well.

What I mean is this. I mentioned earlier in this sermon that whenever a person feels listened to, it gives a temporary relief from both loneliness and helplessness. Being listened helps a person to feel they exist, that they are important, and that they matter.

The reason listening only gives a temporary relief from loneliness and helplessness is because our true value does not come from others, but from who God has created us to be. We were not created to be lonely or helpless. We are created good.

With that as our foundation, then we can share that good news with others by listening to the stories they have to share with us.