What does God’s voice sound like?
In each of this morning’slesson’s, there is mention made of hearing the voice of God or “many angels” or Jesus. Even the Psalm asks God to “hear and have mercy.”
In the book of Acts, Paul heard the voice which identified itself as Jesus ask, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And, the disciple Ananias heard the voice telling him to go and lay his hands on Paul so that he might regain his sight.
There are “myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands” of “angels and the elders singing with a full voice” in the book of Revelation.
And, in the Gospel of John, the resurrected Jesus visits “Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples” and speaks with them. Scripture tells us, “Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord.”
So, how did they know? What does God’s voice sound like? If God or Jesus spoke to you – either directly or through someone – how would you know?
I’m pretty sure we all know what God’s voice DOESN’T sound like. I don’t think God’s voice sounds like that hokey voiceover who talks from the burning bush to Charlton Heston’s character Moses. I also don’t think it sounds like the voiceover at the end of the Radio City Music Hall Annual Rockettes Christmas Show.
Is God’s voice an actual sound or might it be the feeling you get when you know you are in the presence of something pure, something holy? Something that is filled with joy and excitement? Something that is so emotional it sounds like words are not enough to contain or transmit it? Or is it something that sounds and feels like more like love?
I want to give you three examples of times when I felt in the near presence of the voice of God. I want to assure you that what I heard, what I felt, is nothing like what we heard in this morning’s lessons.
The first is a short videoclip that was taken off the camera of a RING doorbell. Perhaps you’ve seen it. It was originally posted on Instagram but it’s been making the rounds of social media.
A young boy – no more than 5 or 6 years old – is coming home from having spent a weekend with his grandparents. He’s telling his dad that he had a good time but that he missed him. As the dad is about to open the door, the little boy says, “Oh, wait dad! I have something for you.” He puts down his backpack and starts unzipping the various compartments, excitedly looking for his present.
Finally, he unzips the right zipper and, barely containing his excitement, he exerts some energy in pulling out a large bottle of brown liquid. “Look,” he shouts excitedly. “Wait. What? What is that?” his father asks.
Seeing the surprise on his father’s face, the little boy is beyond excited now
and shouts, “Bourbon! It’s bourbon, daddy!” His father is stunned speechless
which makes the little boy excited and thrilled with happiness.
“Where did you get this?” asks the father. “I took it because I know you love bourbon, daddy!” The father lovingly puts his hand on his son’s head and says, “Oh, buddy, you and I have gotta have a little talk, okay?” The little boy, still excited says, “Sure, dad! But you like your surprise, right?”
The second example happened just yesterday afternoon. It was my real privilege to preside at the funeral service of a hospice patient. He and his wife had four children and 10 grandchildren. There was so much love in that chapel it was pretty overwhelming. The 10 grandchildren stood up and each took a turn at the microphone, each one sharing a brief memory of their grandfather and what they loved most about him.
The first one up at the mic was one of his grandsons. He looked like he had just entered adolescence – his arms and legs too long for his body, his face bumpy with adolescent acne, and his hair in that messy, too long for his face style that was meant as a statement about his individuality and uniqueness that, ironically, all adolescent boys wear. (You know the look.)
He got up to the mic and cleared his throat. Then, he sighed and cleared his throat again. I thought I heard him squeak out, “My pop-pop,” but then he cleared his throat again and his hand went up to his eyes to try to stop the tears.
As I got up to comfort him, his mother called out his name and said, “It’s okay. You got this.”. He looked at me, pointed to his throat and whispered hoarsely, “It won’t come out.” And then he fell into my arms and sobbed.
I whispered to him that it was okay and to let one of the others go first and then had him sit down next to me. I whispered to him that his tears and his croaking voice were the best present he could have given his pop-pop and that he didn’t need to say anything more. He seemed relieved by that and was able to get up and stand in the line of grandchildren who were taking their turn at the mic. What a beautiful soul lies hidden in that gawky, adolescent body.
Finally, I want to tell you about the first time I heard God’s voice. I was very little – probably three or four years old. Ever since I could remember, my night time routine was to sit on my father’s lap in the rocking chair as he read me a bedtime story.
There was this one time when I was particularly tired. I placed my head on his chest as he read me the story and suddenly, with my ear pressed against my father’s chest, I heard his voice from inside his body. It sounded other-worldly and supernatural. The closer my ear got to my father’s chest, the farther away the voice sounded.
I was convinced that this – THIS – was the sound of God’s voice. I believed that truth with all my heart. God’s voice didn’t sound like male or female. It sounded far away, as if it were coming to my ear through oceans of time and thick veils of different reality. I loved to listen to stories on my father’s lap because it brought me closer to the sound that I knew was God.
If you want to know the sound of God’s voice, you don’t have to have a mystical or religious experience before you can hear it. You don’t have to have been like Paul who was persecuting people or doing other bad or evil things before God steps in and knocks you off your high horse and strikes you blind so that you can take a better look at your life.
God does not have a human mouth and breath: the mouth of God is Jesus, and the breath of God is the Holy Spirit. The psalmist says that at times God’s speech is like a powerful “thunder” that “breaks the cedars of Lebanon” (Ps 29:5). At other times God’s voice seems like “the sound of a gentle whisper” (see 1 Kgs 19:12). God’s voice knows all the tonalities of human speech.
The nature of God’s speech changes radically at the moment in which we read in Scripture, “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). Let me say that again: The Word became flesh.
St. Teresa of Avila once said, "Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which to look out."
The Word became flesh.
If you look for God with the ancient mystics called “eyes of your heart” and listen for the sound of God with the “ears of your soul”, you might just be amazed by how often God is speaking to us today in the voices of our lives.
Sometimes, God’s voice sounds like that of a little boy, excited and happy that he “found” (ahem) a bottle of his father’s favorite beverage which he took to him as a present to express how much he loved and missed his dad.
Sometimes, God’s voice sounds like words of love that are so entangled with grief and sorrow that they just can’t make it out of your throat.
And, sometimes, God’s voice sounds like that of a father, reading to his daughter. That daughter would later in discover that her father had been taken out of school at the end of the sixth grade because it was The Depression and his father needed him to work on the farm. She learned that, while she listened to her father’s voice with her ear pressed up against his chest, thinking it was the voice of God, it was, in reality, the voice of a man who would never be able to read the books she would be privileged to read.
Even so, he was laying the foundation for her to receive the gift of the love of reading and the gift of the love of stories, both of which would bring her closer to knowing the unconditional love God has for all of God’s children. And that would lead her to want to tell the story of that love to anyone who would listen. Even if she had to wear a white robe and stand in a pulpit in a church in order to do it.
What does God’s voice sound like?
It sounds like excitement. It sounds like heartbreak. It sounds like laughter. It sounds like grief. It sounds like a door opening to learn new lessons about what it takes to be a good human being. It sounds like possibility. It sounds like hope. It sounds like love.
The old rabbis have said that before every human being go thousands and thousands, and myriad of myriad of angels, all ringing bells and calling out, “Make way! Make way! Make way for the image of God!”
If you listen with the ears of your soul, you’ll hear it, too. And then, in the voices of others – seeking and serving the Christ in others – you will hear the voice of God.
Amen.
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