The communication gap

Listening to someone is not easy. To really listen to someone is actually a lot of hard work.

Most of the time, when we’re in conversation with another, we are not really listening. I’ll tell you what we’re doing most of the time when we’re having a conversation with someone. We listen to a bit of their content, and while we’re listening, our brain is racing around our hundred billion brain cells, finding stories and ideas and things to say about ourselves. So while we’re supposedly listening, we’re mostly racking our brain for what we’re going to say about ourselves.

I know, that’s what conversation is: we listen a little to them, and then we share stuff about ourselves with them. But that’s different from really listening to a person. If you’re a trained listener — a professional listener, a counsellor, someone like that who’s trained to really listen — you don’t spend the time thinking about what you’re going to say about yourself. You really spend the time listening, and trying to understand where that person is at.

A good listener listens to the content of what the person says. A good listener also listens to the voice inflection, how it is said. A good listener also observes and listens to the body language, which often tells the truth more than the words do. A good listener listens to the feelings in the person as they say something; supposing the person is angry, maybe you would reflect back, “I get the impression you’re really furious about this,” to check out that emotion.

A good listener listens for free information. Maybe the person during the conversation says, “Well, there are a few things that trouble me,” and later on the listener might respond, “What are those things that trouble you?”

A good listener listens to the deep metaphors of the story someone tells. I remember one time I was talking to a young woman who was in university, and she was telling a story about when a wall fell on her and she was trapped. Just a few minutes earlier she’d been talking about how she felt a little trapped in life, and didn’t know what she was going to do after she finished university. So you can listen for the story metaphors in a person’s conversation.

A good listener listens not only to what is said, but also to what is not said. I listened one time to somebody who was talking all about their family, but they didn’t talk about one particular member of their family; they left them out. So that’s a clue that something’s going on, when they don’t talk about something that is obvious.

And what’s significant about listening, I learned, for the church, is that the research shows that people who used to attend church faithfully, and give money to the church, and participate quite a bit in the church, and who no longer go to church — who’ve dropped out — usually do so for a reason, even if they don’t understand the reason themselves. And that reason usually is that they’ve had several events in their lives that caused them a great deal of pain or anxiety, and when they were at the church, they didn’t feel listened to.

Listening is very important. We believe that’s one of Jesus’ greatest skills: he could really listen, and understand what a person was going through. He understood their deepest needs.

Listening is important because we often misunderstand what the other intends. We misunderstand not because we don’t understand the content of the words, but because we don’t understand the intention of what the other says. When I studied listening skills, this was called the communication gap. Let me explain.

When we convey a message to someone, or say something, there are various intentions a message could have. Let’s just pick a message: “Would you like to go for a drink with me?”

You hear the words, and you understand the content: that person wants you to go for a drink with them. But what is the intention of that person? The person who says that to you might be intending, “I would like to get to know you better; I would like our friendship to deepen.” Or that person may be saying, “I am troubled inside. I have things to share with you. I’d like to unburden myself to you; let’s go for a drink so that I can.” That person also may be saying, “Let’s go for a drink,” because they have romantic intentions: they want you to be their boyfriend or girlfriend. In fact, it could even be more than that; there could be sexual intentions, because they hope for some kind of sexual encounter. The person might be very lonely, and just want someone to fill that need. Or sometimes people say, “Would you like to go for a drink?” and they have no idea in their head why they’re actually saying it. They may have a subconscious intention, but they don’t have a conscious one.

So, hearing that, you might reply in various ways, depending on what you think the intent is. You might say, “No, I don’t want to go for a drink,” because you’re not interested in some kind of romantic or sexual liaison. Or you might say, “Yes, I want to go for a drink,” because you want to get to know this person better; you might want to be friends.

One way to alleviate the potential for a communication gap is to check it out: “Are you asking me to go for a drink because you just want to be friends, or is there something going on? You’d like this to be something romantic?” It’s helpful to check out the intention of the other. Of course, sometimes the other will hide their true feelings: of course, it’s all just friends, when secretly they’re wanting it to be romantic.

So communication gaps happen all the time. They happen when you say something to someone and they interpret it differently from what you intend, or when you misinterpret what somebody else is saying to you. Even though you understand the content, you’re not sure of their intention.

And maybe, like me, you’ve been in a situation where it doesn’t seem to matter what you do; they’re going to misinterpret the intention. As a minister, I’ve been criticized for visiting somebody when I shouldn’t have visited them, and for not visiting when I should have. There are times I’ve been criticized for praying when the family didn’t want a prayer, and for not praying when the family wanted a prayer. Sometimes it seems that when a person doesn’t like you, they automatically interpret whatever you’re doing as having some kind of malevolent or evil purpose, even though you’re trying your best to do something kind or nice.

If you think communication gaps are difficult in real life and hard to avoid, just think how difficult it is for us to understand scripture, and understand the intentions of people telling a story two thousand, or three thousand, or four thousand, or five thousand years ago: people who lived in a completely different historical era, in a completely different culture; who were very pre-science; who spoke a different language and wrote in different ways from the way we write today. In other words, to write a story five thousand years ago was different from writing a story today. It’s a different genre. To write history five thousand years ago is different from the way people write history today.

And I find that’s one of the things that makes the resurrection stories in particular some of the hardest to understand.

As you may know, if you’ve grown up in the church, there can often be confusion about the resurrection stories and what they mean. The confusion is in part because the actual witness accounts don’t always line up with each other. For instance, each of the four gospels has a different account of who went to the tomb on Easter Sunday. Each of them has a different group of people, or person, who goes to the tomb; they don’t all exactly align.

And sometimes the resurrected Jesus has a very real physical body. You can touch the body, the scars and wounds; Jesus eats; the body is really a human body. But other accounts are more mysterious. The disciples on the road to Emmaus don’t recognize Jesus, and then he vanishes from their sight at supper. Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus, and he says to her, “Don’t touch me.” And then Jesus seems to walk through walls at times to visit the disciples, and seems like a ghost to some of them.

It is mysterious and different, and maybe a bit hard to understand, and sometimes it leads to people having different interpretations of the resurrection. For some, the whole point is that there is a bodily resurrection, and the bodily resurrection is literally true. And there are others who seem to understand the resurrection more metaphorically: as victory over death, the triumph of good over evil, or the ongoing presence of Jesus.

I understand that many people have struggled with the resurrection and what it means. And I think it’s important for me to say that I can say what it means to me, but I’m not sure that I should say to you what it has to mean for you. To a certain extent it grieves me at times that we argue too much about it, and say, “Well, you’re not a Christian if you don’t understand the resurrection the way I understand the resurrection.”

I think it would be much better, when we share about the resurrection, that we really listen to one another and their understanding of the resurrection. Because when you listen to someone’s story and witness, it shares a lot about their needs, their feelings and their own spiritual stage in life. So we’d be better to listen to them, rather than to tell them, “You have to believe it this way.”

Could we as a church really, deeply listen to one another? That itself, I think, would be a resurrection moment. Could we communicate, and understand the intentions, rather than have a communication gap? Because a communication gap is when someone says or does something and the other interprets it differently from what was intended.

And that actually is what good scriptural interpretation, or good Bible study, is all about. The goal of understanding scripture, the goal of interpreting scripture, the goal of studying scripture, is not primarily “What does it mean for me?” The goal of good interpretation, of good Bible study, is “What did the writers intend?” When Luke was writing the gospel, what was he trying to say to his people at that time? That’s the goal of good Bible study. After we understand that, then we make the next step: what does it now mean for me?

So Luke wrote his gospel to a particular group of people, in a particular time — a different time, with a different language, in a different culture. What was Luke trying to say? That’s what good biblical interpretation is trying to get at. And today, as we look at our gospel lesson, I see three things that Luke is trying to convey or intend or communicate to us.

The first is the emphasis on Jesus’ body.

Jesus comes among his disciples in Luke’s gospel, and he says to the disciples: “Look at me. Touch me. A ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones.” I don’t know who was brave enough to actually touch him. I’m assuming somebody like Peter probably reached out, or a couple of the others actually went forward and touched him to make sure that he was real. And then Jesus says he’s hungry: “Give me something to eat.” Well, ghosts don’t eat fish. Only a real body can eat fish.

And so what Luke is saying and intending is that the resurrection is not some disembodied spirit, like a ghost. It’s the very same Jesus that they know: the Jesus who was born of his mother’s womb, and grew up as a little boy, and used to like to eat dinner, and when he was older liked to drink wine. That same Jesus who was tempted in the wilderness, and touched lepers and the blind and the lame and healed them. That Jesus who touched a dead girl’s body and brought her back to life. That Jesus who was beaten and scourged and tormented and killed. That Jesus who said on the cross that he was thirsty. That’s the same Jesus, in his entirety; that’s the one who’s back. Not some ghost, not a spirit, not a feeling.

You see, I think it was all too easy for people like the disciples, and maybe even for us, to accept the Greek understanding of the resurrection: that we have an eternal spirit; the body’s not a big deal; this world’s not a big deal; the world and our bodies are just temporary, not important; and the real deal is this eternal spirit that goes off to heaven after we die. That’s the real goal of life.

But for Luke, and I think for Jesus, this earthly place and this earthly body are very important. Because real resurrection is not just something that happens after you die. Real resurrection is something that can happen here and now. In John’s gospel it’s called being born again. It’s not just about heaven, but about the kingdom of God, alive here and now. We don’t have to wait till we die to experience the risen Christ and to know Jesus. We can be born again now, and know Jesus now, and Jesus can live in us now, and live in our bodies. Our bodies are good. Jesus lives in frail, fragile human bodies — our bodies. Jesus lives in us.

And the other thing that this real body, this real resurrection, says is this. The powers of evil — the powers who dominate, the powers who oppress, the powers who are prejudiced, the powers that kill, whether it’s government, or the criminal element, or religious authorities gone wrong, or a prejudiced police force, or a trigger-happy military, or an abusive teacher, parent or religious leader, or whoever; they who sometimes sacrifice the little person, they who sometimes kill to keep the status quo and to maintain power; those who killed Jesus, who think that dead bodies stay dead — are confounded by the resurrection.

You see, they think they’re in control, and that they can create dead bodies that stay dead. But Jesus in his resurrection says: there’s another force in this world. It’s me. It’s life. It’s love. It’s forgiveness. It’s resurrection. And it’s much stronger than they think — so strong that long after whatever despot, dictator or political power broker is dead, Jesus will still be alive, and love will still be here, and Jesus will still be living wherever there’s love.

Let me quote a line from a sermon by an Episcopal lay preacher: “A resurrected body claims that the last word is not left to death, nor to the powers that use the threat of death for their purposes.” And I believe all that is contained in the intent of Luke, when he makes it very clear that Jesus’ body is not some ghost. It’s real.

But another thing I think Luke intends in his gospel is that the resurrection is not only Jesus rising from the dead and his body being here. It’s the interpretive principle by which we should understand scripture. When Jesus appears to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, he goes through all the scriptures and teaches them about the Messiah: that this was the plan, for Jesus to rise from the dead. And in today’s gospel lesson we read:

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.”

Luke 24:45–47

You see, you can’t understand the scriptures without understanding the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the interpretive principle, because it is the clearest evidence we have of what God is all about, and what God’s plan is for us: love for you, forgiveness for you. Jesus will die on the cross to prove how much he loves you.

You can kill Jesus. We humans can kill Jesus. God’s children, even, can kill Jesus. And yet Jesus forgives us, and loves us, and doesn’t give up on us. Jesus is very much the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, because no matter how much we hurt Jesus, how much we sin against Jesus — even if we kill Jesus — Jesus absorbs it, takes it away, and doesn’t hurt us back or give it back to us.

And so when I read about wars and violence in the Old Testament, or phrases that talk about people going to hell, or that God killed these people, or the lake of fire in the book of Revelation, I don’t read it literally or plainly. I read it through the interpretive principle of the resurrection: the unconditional love and forgiveness of Jesus, as demonstrated on the cross and proved by the resurrection.

If Jesus had not been resurrected, maybe you could have said, “Wow, his sacrifice for us was a noble effort.” But the resurrection is the proof of the pudding: that he really does love us unconditionally and forever, and will never let us go; that he really does forgive us, and will never leave us or forsake us; that he really is the Lord, and we should obey Jesus and follow Jesus; that his way is the way to be in this world.

I think it’s sad that there has at times been an incredible communication gap between what God intends and what people who read the scriptures interpret. The late Robert Hamerton-Kelly, in a sermon entitled “All the Scriptures,” was pretty blunt in his assessment of what I call the communication gap. He talked about the task of getting rid of bad interpretation; specifically, he talked about the three major Abrahamic religions, in which messianic utopian visions are misinterpreted to mean that believers are rewarded and non-believers horribly punished. To Hamerton-Kelly, getting rid of this bad theology is akin to Hercules cleaning out the Augean stables.

Yes, God doesn’t like evil. God is against evil. God wants you to repent of doing evil. But God is not going to do evil to you to get you to love. God is going to love you, and show you another way. God opposes evil, but not with evil and violence and hurt, but with love that overcomes death.

And the third thing I believe Luke intends is that we be witnesses to the risen Lord today.

I believe in the resurrection not specifically because it’s intellectually credible to do so; not because I have to; not because I’m scared of hell; not because I need or want a miracle or some other wonderful thing to happen, and I think God just might be able to pull it off if I believe in the resurrection; and not because it’s my job as the preacher to preach the resurrection. I believe in the resurrection because I believe I have encountered Jesus. I see Jesus. I feel Jesus. I hear Jesus. Even, I might say, I embody Jesus. This frail, sinful human, who has a body that should have been seven inches taller and a few pounds lighter, is a place, believe it or not, where Jesus lives.

Now, I know some people tell me all kinds of incredible things that I find hard to believe, but it’s their truth. And I’ve learned that I should listen deeply to their truth, even when I have doubts about it or I’m skeptical about it. Because when you really listen to someone’s truth, there’s often a deeper truth beneath their superficial story: a story they need to tell, something they need to get out, something about themselves that they need others to hear. And so it’s important to listen to people.

My truth is: Jesus is alive.

My truth is that Jesus lives in nature and art and music and literature; in animals; in acts of loving kindness; in babies and children and elderly people and adults; in good stories and good movies; in you and me; in places of human need; in loving friends and family; and in a myriad of places I haven’t yet encountered him, and don’t even understand. I cannot begin to tell you all the places and all the ways people have experienced Christ and found him alive.

But I believe I’ve experienced Jesus, and his every message and his every intention, at least as much as I can glean, is this: that Jesus loves you; that Jesus cares for you; that Jesus wants to heal you, help you, live in you, transform you, so that you become a place of grace and love — a home for Jesus, and a welcoming, safe, healing place for all whom you meet.

Amen.