The Power of Listening - SHEMA
by Pastor Moh | April 7, 2015
Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:26-29 ESV)Jesus’ answer to Thomas is that God is found, first and foremost, not in the blinding light of the sun, nor in the majesty of mountains. He is not in the almost infinitely vast spaces of the universe, with its hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. Indeed the mistake we making consists in the very fact that we are deeply involved in the things we look at all the time. God is to be found not by looking but by listening. He lives in words – the words He spoke to the patriarchs and matriarchs, prophets and priests of Israel; ultimately in the words of the Christ Himself – the words though which we are to interpret all other words.
Rabbi Jacob Leiner (1814-1878), a leader of the Hassidic community in Radzyn, Poland wrote a Biblical commentary called Bet Yaakov in which he makes a profound point about the spiritual differences between the sense of sight and the sense of listening: “From a human perspective it often seems as if seeing is a more precise form of knowledge than hearing. In fact, however, hearing has a greater power than seeing. Sight discloses the external aspect of things, but hearing reveals their inwardness. The aspect of God which prevails is haskes u-shema Yisrael hayom, ‘Be silent, O Israel, and listen’. The idea of haskes is that the person practices a self-imposed limitation on his senses, no longer looking at the events in this world and he is then able clearly to understand that ‘You have now become the people of the Lord your God’ – something one can hear during this month.”
Rabbi Leiner states that when God cannot be seen He can still be heard.Hearing represents a depth-encounter more intimate and transformational than seeing. Perhaps without intending to, the Rabbi Leiner has provided us with a point of entry into one of the most important and least understood differences between the two great civilizations of the West. Matthew Arnold, in his Culture and Anarchy, called them Hellenism and Hebraism. The political philosopher Leo Strauss spoke of Athens and Jerusalem. We know them best as ancient Greece and ancient Israel. Greece of the Fifth to Third centuries, BCE, was in many respects the greatest culture of antiquity. It excelled in art, architecture, sculpture and the theatre – the visual arts. In these it achieved a greatness never surpassed. The most glittering subsequent artistic flowering of Europe, in Renaissance Italy, was essentially a rediscovery of the world and skills of ancient Greece. Jews excelled at none of these things, yet their contribution to the West was no less great. The reason is that their interest lay altogether elsewhere, not in sight but in sound, not in seeing but hearing. Judaism is the supreme example of a culture not of the eye but of the ear. A great nineteenth century Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz explained the difference: The pagan perceives the Divine in nature through the medium of the eye, and he becomes conscious of it as something to be looked at. On the other hand, to the Jew who conceives God as being outside of nature and prior to it, the Divine manifests itself through the will and through the medium of the ear. He becomes conscious of it as something to be heeded and listened to. The pagan beholds his God, the Jew hears Him, that is, apprehends His will.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that Jewish thought and Greek words came together in the New Testament. This brought many Jewish ideas to the non-Jewish world. However, the deepest Jewish concepts were untranslatable into Greek. For almost two thousand years, Judaism has been known to the West through the filter of languages and cultures, Greek (Hellenistic) in inspiration, which simply could not express its message in its pristine form. However, we continue to learn more from modern biblical archeology and linguistic research, and we continue to grow in our understanding of the culture and community in which Jesus lived and served.
Rabbi Sacks argues, "Even to this day, when we speak about knowledge, we use metaphors overwhelmingly drawn from the world of the eye. We talk of insight, foresight and hindsight; of making an observation; of people of vision. When we understand something we say, “I see”. The very word “idea” comes from the same Latin root as the word “video”. These are linguistic vestiges of a culture essentially Greek. In the Hebrew Bible, by contrast, instead of saying that someone thinks, the verse will say that he “said in his or her heart.” Thought is not a form of sight but of speech. In rabbinic Hebrew, when we say that a certain conclusion can be drawn, we say mashma or shema mina or ta shema. When we want to say that we understand, we use the phrase shomea ani, and when someone did not accept an idea, we say lo shemia leh. Tradition is called mipi hashemua. All of these are verbs of hearing. For the Greeks, truth is what we see. For Jews, it is what we hear. Seeing, in Judaism, is ultimately about hearing. Israel is the people called on to reject images in favor of words; to discard appearances and follow, instead, the commanding Voice of the Lord."
No concept has proved more difficult to explain in modern times than the doctrine of Torah min hashamayim, “Torah from heaven.” The reason is that it has not been understood in the depth it demands. It is not simply about (though it includes) the Divine authorship of the Bible, nor is it merely (though it is also) a statement about its authority. First and foremost it is an answer to the ultimate human question: Where do we find God?
Judeo-Christianity's answer is that God is found, first and foremost, not in the blinding light of the sun, nor in the majesty of mountains. He is not in the almost infinitely vast spaces of the universe, with its hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. He is not even in the letters of the genetic code that give all life its structure and diversity. If this is where you seek God, says the Bible, you are looking in the wrong place. Indeed the mistake you are making consists in the very fact that you are looking at all. God is to be found not by looking but by listening. He lives in words – the words He spoke to the patriarchs and matriarchs, prophets and priests; ultimately in the words of Christ Himself – the words though which we are to interpret all other words.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1
Why is God revealed in words? Because words are what makes us persons. Language makes homo sapiens unique. Because we have language, we can think. We can stand back, reflectively, from the data provided by our senses. We can ask questions. Human beings are the only species known to us in the universe capable of asking the question, Why?
Because we can speak as well as see, we can imagine a universe unlike the one we have seen every day until now. We can dream dreams, imagine alternatives, sketch utopias, formulate plans, construct intentions. Because of language – and only because of language – we are free and therefore morally responsible agents.
Judeo-Christianity is the single greatest statement in the history of civilization that personhood is at the heart of being – that it is not random, accidental, or peripheral that we are persons; that we can speak and listen; that we can communicate and be communicated with. Only human beings can grasp the concept of the holy, that which is defined in and through a relationship with God. Our relationship with God is personal, therefore verbal, a matter of speech. God as He is in Himself is beyond us; but God in relationship with humanity goes to the core of our humanity and is therefore expressed in words. Thus, in John 20:26-29, the Lord Jesus encourages us to seek God, and turn our attention to language of the Word and Spirit – not to places or objects. The hidden presence of Christ is everywhere. But the revealed presence of God is in the words He gave to humanity on the basis of which He made a series of covenants, first with Noah, then with Abraham, then with the Israelites at Mount Sinai, and finally in the New Covenant (John 13). Hence the philosophy of Israel in Christ – so different from that of ancient Greece, the European Enlightenment and contemporary science: To meet God is to listen to God, understand His Word, and walk in His Way. Just like our human words make reveal our invisble thoughts, an invisble God reveals Himself to us through His Spoken Word - the Bible. To see God is to live by faith in His Word and NOT by sight on the temporal objects and places of our age (2 Cor.5:7).
Adapted from the following Sources:
- http://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-5768-reeh-seeing-and-hearing/
- http://www.rabbisacks.org/vaetchanan-5767-listen-o-israel/