Assemble and listen
Jacob called his sons and said to them, “Assemble and listen.” – From Genesis 49
“We need to talk.” When those words scar the silence between us, we haven’t been talking. Not about the right things. Not in the right way. When Jacob called his sons for this final meeting, they came, and sat, and listened.
The rules have changed, I think. Good family meetings are frequent and not intimidating. Family therapist Virginia Satir wants them guided with three freedoms: we all have 1) the freedom to think what we think and say it, 2) to feel what we feel and say it, and 3) to want what we want and say it.
Everyone feels safe to speak. On the best of days, everyone speaks for themselves and not others, with intention but without judgment. Then our language is full of “I-statements.” No one feels accused, we all feel equal.
This gets easier in the Garden of Eden, I hope. It’s not always the way of all our flesh. Jacob “blessed” all his twelve sons in this meeting before he died. They became the twelve tribes of Israel. In twenty-five very expressive verses, Jacob pulls no punches and vividly describes their strengths and weaknesses, their success and failure.
Perhaps they know each other better after this meeting. And they might know what to expect from each other in the future. But their pride and resentment also quiets them again. So much goes on inside you and I that we mostly cannot speak.
Karl Barth remembered Zechariah, and how his lips were sealed after his moment with the Lord in his sanctuary. “I have so often climbed up into the pulpit. I once thought it so easy to preach, but now it strikes me as harder and harder to say what needs to be said.” And he is not alone. None of us can quite say what God puts within us. “O, our closed lips! Who can finally open them for us!”
This current of silence flows through Advent. The candles are lit, the songs are sung. But the days get shorter, the nights are darker, and the words … well, the words grow few. Like falling leaves, they grow brown, they wither. We cannot say what we want to say. No, not yet.
God does not allow us to wither and die. Like Zechariah waiting, Barth says, “every one of us is secretly in close connection with the eternal truth and love, even if we ourselves are not aware of it. And from this hidden side of our being resounds a voice that is actually speaking to us constantly.”
At our family meetings, some is said, much is left unsaid. Both resound within us, and afterward we know ourselves a little better than we did before. It’s up to me, though, to decide how to hear what I hear. Barth says, “What we listen to, we can listen to as God’s speech. What causes me worry, that is God’s worry, what gives me joy is God’s joy, what I hope for is God’s hope.
“It is not I but rather God, who is important.”
While we wait, God acts. “God does not stand still when we come to a standstill, but precedes us with his deeds and only waits so that we can follow.”
In the short sunshine stillness of today, Father, in these days rising up toward Jesus, we can listen and know that it’s you who is speaking. You are teaching us how to hear, and how to be with you, and then be with each other. Thank you.
 Karl Barth, “Lukas 1:5-23,” from Predigten (Sermons), 1917, pp. 423-431, translated by Robert J. Sherman. Included as entry for December 13, in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, 2001, Plough Publishing House
 http://www.davesandel.net/category/advent-and-christmas-devotions-2018/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archive.php?year=2018
