Stethoscope Plus
I Peter 2:1-10
It was one of those ingenious YouTube videos that you just want to share with friends. Entitled
Stethoscope, the video depicts a young, tall man with a shaved head eating a cookie. As he walks
along, he sees a stethoscope on the sidewalk. He picks it up, and puts the earpieces in his ears. Just
for fun, he puts the stethoscope the cookie he is eating and hears the song, “Sugar, ah, honey,
honey.”
He is startled but curious. So he tries it again on the lamppost upon which he is leaning and the
song, “Lean on Me” comes through the earpieces. This is getting fun, so he puts the stethoscope
on a bed of rocks and hears “I Am a Rock, I Am an Island.” Then he puts it on a fire hydrant and
the rap tune, “Who Let the Dogs Out” begins. At a pedestrian traffic signal, with a hand face
outward, the stethoscope plays, “Stop in the Name of Love.”
Finally, and a little apprehensively, the man places the stethoscope on his own chest, and he hears
“Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!” It is the “Hallelujah” chorus by Handel.
At the heartbeat of the Christian life is a hallelujah.
Hallelujah—praise the Lord for the rich pinks, orange sherbets and purples of the sun setting against
a darkening sky. Hallelujah for the taste of homegrown tomatoes or fresh corn, for something from
the grill and good food shared. Hallelujah for clean water in our taps and for medicine. Hallelujah
for a child’s hand in ours.
Hallelujah for forgiveness and the sweetness of love. Hallelujah for people who give us a hand to
hold when life is so dark we cannot find the light switch. Hallelujah that God has brought us
together into a community of faith. Hallelujah that Jesus is a rock upon whom we can build our
lives. Hallelujah that Jesus is a living stone and we are the building blocks for the construction of a
community vibrant with life.
There are moments, of course, when the Hallelujah is not so strong. The refrain “Lord, have mercy,
Christ have mercy” or “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus” may be the
prayers of our hearts. Sometimes hallelujah is a distant memory or a faint echo of a once stronger
faith. There are other times when we don’t want to listen to the stethoscope for fear of what song
we might hear. It might be Elvis Presley trashing us by singing
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine
Or Justin Bieber accusing us with the song
How could you be so heartless?
So you took a chance
And made other plans
I bet you didn't think that they would come crashing down
There are times when we won’t put the stethoscope on our hearts because we think that what we
will hear is the voice saying that we are inadequate.
Whether it is the voice of reminding us of our past mistakes or our rehearsing the things others have
done to us, there are some tunes we simply need to get out of our heads. I Peter says, “Rid
yourselves of all malice, all hateful speech, envy, and scheming.” I certainly struggle with these
words and I imagine you do too. But the New Testament often tells us to quit thinking about how
so-and-so wronged us. Stop dwelling on what other people have that we don’t have. Clear our
heads and our mouths from making others out as the bad guy. Clean your house of the negative
speech about yourself or others.
Cleaning house may mean getting honest, not minimizing the pain. The new move, “Hope Springs”
is about a couple for whom intimacy has been lost. There are old hurts which are unvoiced and
unforgiven. Years of not speaking the truth in love has built walls between them. It is a good
movie. I won’t tell you the ending.
Of course, there is something both delicious and addictive about being negative. Bad news sells.
Being up to our ears in bad news and joining into a culture of complaint drains us of the willingness
to see the good in others and to make positive change. It may keep us entertained but it restrains us
from looking at our own hearts and actions.
The antidote to malice and envy, I Peter says, is to drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Tune your
heart to a different radio station and a new challenge. Download iTunes that sing Hallelujah and
remind us of God’s love and will. Focus on the goodness of God not in a “look on the sunny side
of life” way. Rather, hold fast, like your life depends on it, because it does to the promise that God
does not let us go.
That is why worship and Christian community is so important. We need to get the bad-news songs
out of our heads to hear the hallelujah at the heartbeat of the Christian life.
I Peter tells us that we “are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in
order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his
marvelous light. “ This is an amazing, radical and even revolutionary message:
Why is this radical? A little background is needed.
Five percent of the first-century Roman population had almost complete control over all the affairs
of the empire. 90 percent of the population lived hand to mouth. In the cities, as many as 20% of
the population were slaves—prisoners of war or sold from other territories. Children and woman
were viewed as sub-standard human beings. Only 49% of children lived to the age of five and only
40 percent lived to age 20. ((Nancy Benson-Nicol, Dispatches to God’s Household: The General Epistles,
page 59). The majority of women were forbidden to receive an education and much of the
population was illiterate. All people owed allegiance to Caesar and anyone who threatened the
established order was suspect.
Imagine that you have come secretly to a gathering of early Christians in a home. You gather to
pray, listen to the Hebrew scriptures, sing hymns and psalms and hear about Jesus. Today is a
special day because a letter has been circulating among the churches. It is like a YouTube video that
has gone viral. You hear-But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may
proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a
people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
It is hard for us to grasp the effect that the Good News had for these early followers. God put a
new song in their hearts. It was a hallelujah so powerful that they crossed lines of class and status to
belong to this community of believers who were learning to love one another—powerless slaves and
free citizens, Gentile and Jew, women and men together. They encountered the life-changing power
of the Holy Spirit in such a mighty way that they were willing to commit themselves to Christ even
though it brought hardship and persecution.
Becoming new people in Jesus Christ was a song that the early church wanted to share and they sang
it everywhere in whispers and out in the public square, with friends and strangers.
We don’t do very well sharing the good news of God’s love. We are scared of hitting the wrong
notes and offending people. But sharing God’s love starts with sharing God’s acceptance of
ourselves and others. This means trusting that God loves us. It means laying aside what we think
our children out to be to learn who they are. It means working to accept people, warts and all.
Sharing God’s love is first getting to know others, whether they are church visitors, one’s neighbors
or one’s colleagues at work. Sharing God’s love is showing genuine interest in others, whether we
think we have the time or not. It is including new people in a game of tennis or inviting them to
have a cup of coffee. It is inviting people into our lives who visit our church. We listen to what is
important to others and we share what has put hallelujah into our hearts—our great Presbyterian
Women’s circle, an officer training class, a worship service that lifted us up.
At a board meeting of a non-profit, we were asked why we wanted to help homeless people get a
new start in life. A large man, Jeff, with a commanding presence, surprised us when he said, “I grew
up in the midwest. My teachers did not think I would amount to much. But I had a coach who
believed in me. He took some of us to church. He let me and others boys know that we were
worth something. His love changed my life.” The coach sang hallelujah to a boy and now Jeff
wants to pass the song on. May we do the same.
Rosalind Banbury
August 26, 2012