Last Sunday, someone messaged me: “Stupid sermon – on the back deck being bothered by yellow jackets that I now feel sorry for.” I took it as a compliment. One of the roles of a preacher is to teach. Sometimes that means offering a different perspective that can challenge attitudes and expectations. We may even come away looking at things, like yellow jackets, differently. We may even come away looking at people differently.
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.
There is a certain eloquence to the epistles. Anyone here have ‘itching ears’? Do we know people who have ‘itching ears’? What do we think is meant here by ‘itching ears’?
It is an interesting way to say it. Instead of the ears focusing on listening for what is true and loving, they are distracted by itching, and the fulfilment of one’s own interests and desires. Itching ears can be that stubborn desire to keep thinking of yellow jackets as a useless annoyance rather than a valued worker in Creation that gets laid off in the fall. Yellow jackets aren’t the only gifts of Creation treated with distain and vilified for reasons beyond their control. We have heard people, including those who call themselves Christian, justify dismissive, and downright harsh attitudes and behaviours towards others.
Think about how people justify starvation in Gaza, or ICE raids South of the boarder. Closer to home we could talk about the justifications for shutting down safe injection sites or clearing of encampments including one in front of an Anglican Church in Toronto this past week. We could talk about the excuses used when basic income is introduced or affordable housing raised. We could talk about justifications about the inaction towards the epidemic levels of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit individuals. These attitudes come from within and beyond the pews of churches reminding us that within congregations there are situations and contexts where people accumulate for themselves beliefs that suit their own desires instead of respecting the dignity of every human being.
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.
The time isn’t coming. It is already here. So then, how do we keep our ears from itching? How do we make sure that we remain focused on sound doctrine, that we centre our attitudes, expectations, and behaviours on what is good and true? What are we doing to protect ourselves from itching ears?
As for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus offer our most profound examples of sound teaching. He is the fullest embodiment of love in human form. The way he treats all people – the marginalised, the sinful, the proud, the sick, the dead, provide the metric for how we are to treat each other. No itching ears required. He has already shown us how to respect the dignity of every human being. May we focus on the sound doctrine that is the example of Jesus and seek to continually embody love for all people and all Creation in his name. This we pray as we sing: MI: 412 My Soul Cries Out