Sermons for the Month
The Eli Implant
DATE: January 16, 2000
SERVICE: Epiphany II
TEXT: 1 Samuel 3:1-10“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
To talk about implants is to risk being risqué. You know what I'm talking about. Thirty million women in this country alone who want to be drop-dead gorgeous have them --silicone enhancements, augmentations, enlargements. Some, notably Pamela Anderson Lee, in extraordinary moments of sanity, have them removed. Not all implants, however, are purely cosmetic. Today, biomedical technology can provide retinal implants, artificial corneas, vocal implants, not to speak of entire organ implants -- not transplants, but artificial implants -- the heart, for example. One of the most successful implants is the controversial cochlear implant -- a device which, when implanted inside the human skull, connected with tiny wires to the cochlear canal in the inner ear, then fastened to an externally placed microphone, allows a sort of hearing for the hearing-impaired. The cochlear implant literally gives the deaf ears to hear, but with it comes a problem. Can they listen? That's the question asked about the controversial implant, especially when used on children and profoundly deaf adults. Omer Zak, who is deaf, posted his views on the Web. He writes that cochlear implants do not differentiate between sounds, but instead amplify ALL sounds -- and this is not always helpful. Think of a crowded, noisy restaurant, into which you take a tape recorder to record the sounds around you. While the recorder is taping, you hear several conversations, and instinctively you listen to some, filtering out others. But then when you go home and listen to the tape, what you hear is nothing like what you heard in the restaurant -- it is raw, unfiltered noise. The tape has picked up indiscriminately every noise in the room. Machines, you see, do not have the capacity to filter sounds. Cochlear implants provide this sort of hearing for those who avail themselves of it, but it often takes up to 12 years of intensive and regular therapy to make some sense of the noise picked up using the implants (www.weizmannac.il/deaf-info/ci-opinions). In other words, the cochlear implant might help the deaf to hear by creating sensation, but it may not improve their ability to listen. Sensation is not perception. Hearing is not listening. But what if ... what if ... what if ... as technology advances, the cochlear implant develops into a device that cannot only receive sensation and allow hearing, but provide perception and listening as well? What if it made real listening possible? Might that not be helpful? And what if a similarly advanced device existed for the SPIRITUALLY listening-impaired? Guess what? It does. In today's first reading, hearing isn't Samuel's problem -- listening is. He can hear, but he can't listen. He can sense, but he can't perceive. The boy hears and responds the best that he can, but he responds wrongly -- not because he hears wrongly, but because he doesn't listen, and can't listen, because he doesn't know how to listen, because he lacks the tools to listen. So instead of a futuristic, high- tech cochlear implant to help him, all he needs is a no-tech device called "the Eli Implant"! At the end of the story, dim-sighted Eli says in effect to the boy, "It must be God calling you!" On account of that insight, old Eli reaches down within himself and pulls out the Eli Implant, explaining it to the boy as a small device, a helpful tool, a holy gadget absolutely guaranteed to broaden his bandwidth, to tune his soul's holy ear right into the Divine sound wave. As a sort of fine-tuned frequency adjuster, the Eli Implant provides the essential spiritual reception for everybody, anybody -- even young Samuel -- not just to hear God's voice but to distinguish it from among all the background noises, all the honks and busy shouts of life so that he, so that we, might listen to God's voice spoken to him, to us. Often we hear well enough, but there's too much of life's hullabaloo, too much internal cerebral or external doings, to listen carefully. Communication specialists call this cacophony of sound that impairs our ability to hear the message, "noise," and it comes in a variety of forms. Perhaps we do not hear what someone is saying to us because of cultural noise. We can't relate to someone's cultural background, and we are irritated at the heavily inflected accent that makes it difficult to understand him or her, so we shut the person off completely. Perhaps we turn a deaf ear to people because of environmental noise. The room is so hot and stuffy, it is difficult to keep listening. Soon we give up and allow our minds to wander off. We may turn off because of sociological noise. We are in a different social place than our speaker, and we have difficulty connecting with him or her on the same level. We may turn off because of emotional noise. We are so stressed that there is no point in even attempting to listen or be in conversation. We may turn off because of intellectual noise. We so strongly disagree with what the speaker is saying that we simply shut down and refuse to listen further. The point is that there is nothing wrong with the physiological hearing apparatus, but there is often psychological noise that prevents us from hearing. We let other things or other interests or other concerns become louder and louder. Nor is there anything wrong with the spiritual inner ear which God has given us, but there is a problem with our ability to filter out the worldly, secular and selfish noise that prevents us from hearing the Spirit of God. Lucy, of the Peanuts comic strip, tells Charlie Brown that she has to read a book but doesn't want to. Would he please read it to her? "Read it yourself," he says. She replies that reading takes effort and she hates anything that takes effort. Charlie wisely says that listening takes effort, too. But Lucy retorts, "What did you say? I wasn't listening. How often we are like Lucy. Where we find God speaking most often is in the reading of his Word. But many don't want to listen so they at best skim it or read it not at all. Others want the Bible taught, but not at a level that will provoke thought, action, or change. That's bad but what is worse yet is to want it taught but to sit and not really obey. Those are the people who come to me and say, "I know that Jesus said that but its just not practical." Jesus left no doubt. Only those who listen to the Word, obey what they hear, and produce its fruit are acceptable to him. Careful and attentive listening to the Good News of God, to the voice of God spoken to us, is what Jesus had in mind when asks us, "Do you have ears [to hear], and fail to [listen]?" (Mark 8:18). Paying attention to God's voice, really listening to what is being said, is difficult when our ears and minds are cluttered with the screams, noise and the bothers of life. In the spring of 1995 congressional Democrats and Republicans were battling over the national budget. According to Reuters, one portion of a tax-cut bill stirred up a storm of controversy. The debated provision was designed to crack down on wealthy Americans who renounced U.S. citizenship to avoid paying taxes. That's right. Some American billionaires actually move their citizenship to another country to save money. They have ears to hear but the have failed to listen to the call of God. Instead they have heard only the noise and shouts of the world's wisdom. Perhaps these "Benedict Arnold billionaires" are also good candidates for the Eli implant. But what is the Eli Implant? It's seven simple words of prayer, "Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening." It's a request that God help you to hear what he has to say -- hear his still, small voice among the many other competing voices in a sound-saturated society. It's a conscious and concerted effort to tune out the distracting babble of billions of fellow beings, and tune in the divine voice of Almighty God. It's a prayer that you and your fellow believers -- like dim-sighted Eli -- will be able really to listen to the Lord, and determine together what he is calling his people to do and to be today. Charles Swindoll recalls his sense of freedom he had as a teenager the day he received his driver's license. Hid dad rewarded him. "Tell you what son.you can have the car for two hours, all on your own." His pulse rate shot up to 180 as he backed out of the driveway and roared off. While cruising along "all on his own," thoughts came to his mind: "I bet this car could do 100 miles per hour. I could go to Galveston and back twice if I averaged 100 miles per hour. I can fly down the freeway and even run a few lights. After all, nobody's here to say, "Don't." But Charles didn't do any of that. In fact, he drove back into the driveway early. He writes, "I had by dad's car all to myself with a full gas tank in a context of totally privacy and freedom, but I didn't go crazy. Why? My relationship with my dad and my granddad was so strong that I couldn't, even though I had a license and nobody was in the car to restrain me. Over a period of time, there had developed a sense of trust, a deep love relationship that held me in restraint." In the same way, listening to Jesus keeps us from abusing the freedom he gives us. Virtually everybody and anybody can hear God's voice, but few choose to listen. After all, who has the time? Who has the temperament? Who has the tools? You do. AMEN