“Thus the Lord passed before Moses and cried out, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.’” (Exodus 34.6)
It is a simple fact of life that we identify others by their voice. Our voices, much like our fingerprints, are particular to us, so much so that a person unable to see–for whatever reason–can recognize a person by the sound of his or her voice. As mothers know from experience, a baby quickly learns the sound of her voice, associating it with familiarity, and just as easily recognizes the sound of a stranger’s voice, associating it with someone unfamiliar.
Some years ago, a survey was conducted, asking people to identify certain voices, the results showing clearly that we easily associate the voice with the person. The most famous voice in Hollywood, according to the survey, is James Earl Jones, which comes as no surprise to any of us, who also would have no difficulty recognizing his voice. The second most famous voice was Morgan Freeman, again someone we all know by his voice.
The third voice belonged to Dennis Haysbert, whose name may not be recognizable, but whose voice is, since he is the voice of the Allstate Commercial, with the well-known line, “You’re in good hands with Allstate.” His voice is so recognizable that when he was asked once if he was able to order a pizza over the phone without being recognized, he answered, “No.”
Another experience that we all have had is that when someone we love is not with us, either because of distance or because of death, we often say we wish we could hear their voice again. For this same reason, many people who have lost loved ones refuse to delete their greeting on the phone or answering machine because they don’t want to let go of the voice, which feels for the world like losing the person all over again.
Not only do we humans have a voice that others recognize as “ours,” but the Most High God also has a voice. Were we to thumb through the pages of Sacred Scripture, we would see soon enough passages about the voice of the Lord. The Psalmist frequently speaks of it, as he does in this passage from Psalm 18, “The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of Glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters.”
One of the most famous passages concerning the voice of the Lord is found in the story of Elijah the prophet, who escapes to Mount Horeb, where he sits outside a cave, waiting to hear the voice of God. A cacophony of noises greet him, but God is not in any of them. Finally, as the text says, “After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” It is in that gentle whisper that Elijah hears the voice of the Lord.
This notion of the voice of the Lord becomes even more important to us today as we celebrate the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, an occasion set aside each year for us to consider the nature of God, when we reflect particularly on when and how we have come to know who God is, especially in our experience of him in human history. Theologians express the mystery of God, gleaned from our human experience, as three persons in one godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit, differentiated while simultaneously indivisible.
The complexity of the concept–which a mystery is by definition–can be lessened, perhaps, by thinking of the voice of God as a way to help us understand who God is, appreciating as we do the uniqueness or oneness of a person’s voice, while at the same time accepting the differences in the same person’s voice. While it is an analogy that limps, the truth is all analogies limp when they refer to God, even St. Patrick’s use of the three leaves of the shamrock as his explanation of the Trinity.
While the voice of the Lord is omnipresent in the pages of the Scriptures–after all, it could not be otherwise and still be the word of God–we should not be surprised to find that it takes only three verses in the first book of the Bible for us to hear the voice of God. The Book of Genesis describes for us in powerful images how the creation of the world came about, but each act of creation always is preceded by the words, “Then God said.” It is the voice of the Lord that creates and gives life. If God did not speak, there is no creation, no life, nothing. It is his voice that brings everything into being.
As we hear the creation of the world described to us, it is clear that the voice of the Most High God is a voice of command. “Let there be,” the Lord God says, and light is created, and water is gathered into the sea, and vegetation is put upon the dry land. It is as if the Lord God issued command after command, day after day, until the seventh day, when he rested, seeing that it was good.
It is not by chance, then, that the gospel writer John refers to this creation story when he begins the story of Jesus of Nazareth, choosing the memorable phrase, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (Jn 1.1) Several verses later, John brings this reworking of the creation story to a crezendo when he writes, “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” (Jn 1.14)
This understanding of Jesus of Nazareth as the “Word of God made flesh” is one of the most powerful in the Christian scriptures, inviting us to understand the Man of Galilee as the very voice of God speaking to us in the most human of ways, with a human voice. Later, in the same gospel, the Galilean Teacher will tell his followers, as he prepares for his return to his Father, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.” (John 14.10)
As we follow the God-Man on the roads of Galilee, as he makes his way to Jerusalem, we hear his voice at every crook in the road. And his is a voice of compassion. “Do not weep,” he says to the widow whose only son has died. “Do not be afraid,” he tells his frightened disciples on the wind-tossed boat. “Do not judge,” he speaks to those only too ready to cast stones at the one who has stumbled on life’s road. Whenever he spoke to the least, to the last, or to the lost–which really is all of us–his voice carried the sound of a shared humanity, filled with compassion for the likes of us, as one who shares in our suffering.
And though wicked men sought to silence the voice of the Word among us, it could not and it did not die, but as promised in an ancient covenant and repeated in a new covenant, the voice stays with us until the last day, on that day when the world is restored to the paradise intended by the Most High God, who will make all things new by a command of his voice.
While we walk towards that day, the Spirit hovers over us, the voice of the Lord still speaking to us, now in a voice of encouragement, urging us towards that day, directing our steps on the right path, uplifting us when the way has been long and hard. It is the same voice, but now speaking to us in a way that encourages, strengthens, and guides us on our way back home. It is much the same as the prophet Isaiah describes the divine voice to the people of Israel, when he said to them, “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or to the left.’” (Is. 30.21)
Today, then, as we ponder the voice of the Lord, filling the world with life and with love, we surely see that it always has been with us–at the beginning when it put the world on track, and when in time we got off track, and still with us until the race is run. It is a voice that commands the world, that cares for all creatures of the world, and that encourages the world forward, a unified voice continually speaking, for if it did not, there would be no world and none of us.
The writer Piero Ferrucci, in his book, The Power of Kindness, tells the story of a woman who lived in an apartment with thin walls. Every evening she could hear a newborn child in the apartment next door crying. The parents put the child to sleep alone in the dark room, resulting in the baby crying for a long while each night.
Surely, the neighbor decides, the parents are exhausted, or or oblivious to their child’s anguish, or at a loss as to what to do. The neighbor is unsure of what she could or should do. Speaking to the parents of the child might turn the situation into something even worse. So the woman decides to sing.
Just as she knows that she can hear the baby, she knows that the baby can hear her. So every evening when the child’s parents put her to sleep in the dark bedroom, the woman sings lullabies and baby songs, talking softly and gently to the baby through the walls, consoling and comforting the scared child. And the baby hears the invisible, friendly voice through the wall, and falls asleep peacefully, without a tear or a whimper.
As we seek to grasp the mystery of one God in three persons–and it is always a search for the unknowable–we nonetheless can know something of who he is by listening to his voice, a voice speaking, singing, reassuring us as we grow fretful and fearful on this side of the wall, where it is dark and we are alone, a voice that comes through the wall, breaking the silence, calming our fears, and stopping our tears. This we know–the voice can always be heard, so long as we have ears that hear.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 