Do You Hear What I Hear?

I know I’m getting older – and, with age, one expects some “issues.” I’m reluctant to own up to many of those issues, but one I can’t deny involves the issue of hearing. I’m not losing my hearing completely, but as recently as lunch today, I had trouble hearing in a restaurant. It’s the background noise. It makes me think, “I’m going deaf,” only to realize, when outside the restaurant door, my hearing isn’t all that bad!

That reminds me of a story I heard my mother tell with glee occasionally.  According to her, her “perfect” son didn’t always respond appropriately to her instructions. She would say to me, “Did you hear what I asked you to do?” According to her, my reply often would be, “I heard you, but not so good.” Honestly, that is exactly how I feel in places where there is lots of conversation going on and hard surfaces that make sound bounce around the room. “I hear you, but not so good.”

That makes me think of Paul’s words in Romans 10, when he says “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing the word of Christ.” The “hearing” word there is the semantic family from which our English word acoustics comes. If you had the opportunity to hear the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra play a Christmas concert in either Mercedes-Benz Stadium or Symphony Hall at the Woodruff Arts Center, you should choose Symphony Hall. Why? Acoustics. Hearing. Symphony Hall was designed to take the noise out of sound so we can hear clearly. Or, to adapt my childhood response to my mother, so you can “hear good.”

Metamorphically speaking, there is a lot of background noise in the world daily – and even, maybe especially, as we celebrate the coming of a newborn king, to borrow from a well-known Christmas carol. 

At the church where I’m a member, Legacy Christian Church in Senoia, Georgia, our December worship has revolved around looking at Christmas carols in the context of biblical testimony about the birth of Jesus. The two gospels – Matthew and Luke – tell different versions (different doesn’t mean contradictory) of the birth of Jesus. Matthew has Magi from the East coming, Luke has marginalized shepherds coming. Christmas carols have attempted to recognize both story motifs, but haven’t always gotten it exactly right. 

In October 1962, the Christmas song “Do You Hear What I Hear?” was released. In 1963, Bing Crosby made it a popular Christmas song that is still being sung.  I’m intrigued by the words of this stanza:

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy
Do you hear what I hear?
(Do you hear what I hear?)
Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy
Do you hear what I hear?
(Do you hear what I hear?)

A song, a song high above the trees
With a voice as big as the sea
With a voice as big as the sea

The refrain of the song gives a hint of what the lamb hopes the shepherd boy has heard: 

A Child, a Child shivers in the cold
Let us bring him silver and gold
Let us bring him silver and gold

Well, obviously, there is more to what happened on that first Christmas night than “a Child shivers in the cold,” but that is a start in the right direction.

Do you hear what I hear?

One of my favorite worship choruses is “I Called, You Answered.” Christmas may be the ultimate affirmation of that reality.

But the great prophet Isaiah – the Bible is speaking here – has this rather sobering phrase, “because, when I called, no one answered, when I spoke, they did not listen, but they did what was evil in my sight and chose what did not please me.” (Isaiah 66:4)

The beauty of Christmas that we see all around us this time of year may very well be “an echo of a voice,” as N.T. Wright writes about beauty in Chapter Four of Simply Christian. That voice may – I think is – calling to me to respond to Him in transformative ways when it comes to the person I am and the call that God has on my life.

Here’s the question: How “good” are you hearing God’s call this Christmas?

There’s a lot of noise in our culture. You don’t have to be 72 years old, like me, to have a hard time hearing the real story in the midst of that noise.

But the opportunity of celebrating the birth of Jesus is that we hear the good news – a story that, despite all of our weaknesses and failures, all the times we have wandered off the path or Exodus God has set before us – His voice still cries in the shivering cold of Christmas night. “For unto you a Savior is born” or “they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, ‘God with us.’” At least, that seems to be what Luke and Matthew heard.

May this glorious season of celebration of the fact that God invaded human history with a Savior for all of humankind be a time when we hear what God has spoken. His coming takes the “noise” out of the universe and allows me – Gentile that I am – to hear the voice behind the echo. 

And, unlike in the days of Isaiah 66, may it be that when He calls, we answer!

I don’t want to say to God, “I heard you, but not so good.”

^{Image by Pat from Pixabay}