One of the most persistent puzzles of cognitive science is what’s called the “cocktail party effect,” which for us could just as well be called the coffee hour effect. It’s the ability we human beings have to single out and listen to a particular voice in a room buzzing with many voices, and its actually one of the more complex tasks our beautifully designed brains do. While most of us do that kind of noise filtering unconsciously, that’s not true for everyone. A defining characteristic of autism-spectrum disorders, for example, is a difficulty in filtering and prioritizing sensory information.
Having raised a child with some autism-like sensory issues,I understand the problem. When Aaron was little, he was utterly overwhelmed in crowded and noisy spaces. Sowhen he might have an extended tantrum at a noisy store or a crowded park, it was helpful to have a neurological explanation rather than just feel like a total disciplinary failure as a mom.
But honestly, I felt great sympathy for my son as well. Places like those are overwhelming. And I have my own sensory challenges. I can usually follow a conversation in a crowded room, but I have trouble remembering faces and names, and I have a persistent bad habit of working with so many digital devices pulling information off the internet at the same time that I hardly know what to pay attention to.
We live in a world so dense with distractions, I consider it something of a miracle we can ever filter out the background noise and focus on anything. And evidently, we’re not the only people in history with this challenge, because our first lesson today begins with the unequivocal command to… listen. Listen to me… give heed to me… lift up your eyes to the heavens, the prophet says on God’s behalf. Ignore the rest of the cocktail party; pay attention to my voice, to what I am telling you and showing you.
In exhorting the people to listen, the 6th century BCE prophet, who was writing under the name Isaiah, had a particular lesson to impart. As they were laboring under the many distractions of the Babylonian exile, he called the Israelites to remember the stories of their ancestors and reclaim their identity as God’s holy people.
For we who seek to listen to God in our own time, that’s still pretty good advice. Do we know our spiritual ancestors? Who have been the exemplars of faith and the bearers of holy wisdom for us? Reconnecting with them and the lessons they teach us can help us to filter through the many other messages that come our way, thereby reminding us of what’s really worth paying attention to.
As I myself listen for a common thread in our lessons for today, I’m wondering if it isn’t about claiming our own identity as holy people. Now in a sense all of our scriptural lessons are always about that, because that’s what God liberated and called the children of Israel and all their descendants for. To be a light for the nations, as the Bible says: a theme which is repeated throughout Isaiah, and also a metaphor which comes up again when the elderly Simeon first lays eyes on Jesus. Holy people—which we are called to be in our baptism—light the way for others, just as our own faith heroes have lit the way for us.
Light enables us to see clearly just as careful listening allows us to hear clearly. So when Simon Peter makes his definitive confession as we heard him do in today’s Gospel, saying to Jesus “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” did he know this because of what he had heard from Jesus or because of what he had seen in Jesus? Yes and yes. I would suggest that all his senses were so tuned to God in that moment that all the possible distractions—his own fears and doubts, the speculations of other people—simply faded into the background. He was able to listen to and identify the one true thing. I think of Peter’s confession as a kind of sacred cocktail party effect.
I’m tempted at this point to say that Peter was no saint. You all know what he was like: impetuous, full of bluster and bad ideas, capable of denying the very same person he just confessed to be the messiah. His failings are laid bare in excruciating details in the gospels. But of course Peter was and is a saint—which if you remove the institutional trappings simply means a holy person—because he chose to hear and see and tell the truth of God with us.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” When Paul speaks of sacrifice, he was referring to a giving up of something, but he meant it in a way that’s closer to its Latin etymological roots. Sacri-fice, whose meaning is to make something holy. To be a living sacrifice is to be a people made holy, and making things holy.
When we give up something dear to us in order to make it available to God, we make it holy. This sense of sacrifice might apply to our possessions, to our tithes and offerings, to our worldview and dearly held beliefs, to our actions and even to our very lives. And, might I add, it can include giving up listening to whatever background noise distracts us from hearing God. Our living sacrifice might be our consciousness to attuned to God’s voice so that we can hear our real names like Peter did, or recognize our gifts and calling as Paul invites us to do.
Sometimes we have to sacrifice even the privilege of despair. There’s a lot of noisiness in the world right now, and some of the loudest voices—those of war and racism and urban violence—are clearly not of God. Frankly, its kind of overwhelming at times, and having a tantrum like my son Aaron used to do might seem like a logical response. Lord fix this mess, I cry out. I suspect that some of my recent prayers actually may have sounded rather like a tantrum to God.
But you and I have a choice about how we will navigate through the noise of the world. Our beautiful brains are designed to focus our hearing, and prayer attunes the ears of our hearts to God. So by the mercies of God, let us present ourselves as a living sacrifice, letting go of whatever distracts us from God’s purposes. Let us listen deeply. Let us confess the truth that Jesus is Lord. Let us hear our own names and recognize and respond to our calling. In the midst of a noisy world, let us be the people who make the sacred audible and visible through the witness of our own holy lives.
I like the etymology of sacri-fice meaning to be made holy, and Paul’s call to sacrifice our entire lives, that’s good. The chorus is singing a couple.of songs in.latin for the Christmas/holidays, cant hurt, I actually enjoy those a lot. Speaking of sacrifice and holiness, I read Paul Jeffrey’s notice that the vatican is now clearing the way for oscar Romero’s beatification, he was a martyr’s martyr, if there could ne such a thing.