Incline My Ear

I have embarked on a new scripture reading project in 2012, reading with antennae up for the themes of listening, hearing, and the sounds of God's voice and ours. I'm glad about what I've already learned. Today the connection between the Psalm and the New Testament portion was humming with sympathetic resonance.

The psalmist prays for God to hear his just cause and attend to his cry, confident that He will: “Incline your ear to me, hear my words.” (Psalm 17:6) Isn't that a beautiful phrase: incline your ear? Active listening, like a plant reaching for the sun.

Jesus closed his parables often with “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” His parable in Matthew 13 is the definitive parable in a sense for his disciples to learn to understand how to hear, and explains why he spoke to the crowds in parables, “because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not understand.” He spoke in terms of these people fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah, which seems to me to indicate that the struggle for humans to hear is the same as it has always been post Eden. “For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear.”

Boy, is that ever true! I am teaching a class for non music majors called The Art of Listening, and Jesus’ parable describes the same four kinds of students I see in my classes two millennia later: the tough ones by the path, for whom nothing I could do would make them care about music or the importance of learning to listen; the ones on rocky soil, who are quick to think various musics are cool, but who “have no root within themselves” so their likes are as quick to change as the wind and they ultimately don’t seem to learn anything; the ones among thorns, who only enjoy learning to listen if they feel good at it or if it requires no work from them, who shrink from any music that is slightly more demanding than their intellects can provide while answering their incessant text messages; and the ones in good soil, of which I am fortunate to have several, who are careful and attentive listeners, ask questions, and are willing to articulate what they hear so it can grow into something others will benefit from.

I find myself praying, “Incline my ear to hear and to attend,” in the face of the ever present danger of my own heart growing dull and unable to hear. I doubt I shall be able to sharpen dull ears if my own are dull, to awaken sleepy students if I myself am dozing off. My confidence rests in His inclining ear.