Pastor's Musing

August 6, 2026

If You Listen to His Voice

Psalm 95

A homily at Galloway Ridge

I thought I’d try a little something new with you this morning. The rabbis of ancient Israel interpreted the Bible, including Psalm 95, with lessons known as midrash, a word that means “searching.” A midrash is like parable or symbolic story. Jesus told them as well. I will summarize one midrash from a fifth-century book known as the Babylonian Talmud:

Once, there was a rabbi who went to Elijah and asked, “When will the Messiah come?” Elijah replied, “Go, and ask him.” The rabbi responded, “Where is he?” And Elijah said, “The Messiah sits among the poor and sick at the gate of the ruined city.”

This rabbi went and found the Messiah right where Elijah said he would be and asked him, “When will you come again to bring about the new heaven and new earth?” The Messiah replied, “Today.”

It was evening and then morning of the next day. The new heaven and new earth did not come. There was no sign of the Messiah.

So, the rabbi went back to Elijah and complained, “The Messiah lied to me. He said, ‘I am coming today,’ but he did not come.” Elijah replied, “Today he will come, ‘If you listen to his voice.’”

A couple of points from this midrash: notice that the Messiah is found among the poor and the sick in places of need. This idea very similar to what Jesus taught, “Whatever you do for the least of those among you, you do for me.” While we wait for the new heaven and new earth, we can help others. Like the hymn we shall shortly sing, God calls us to serve and we respond, “Here I am, Lord.”

But the midrash is also about the presence of God in the moment. You might have recognized that the Messiah’s response to the rabbi was actually a quotation of Psalm 95:7, “O that today, you would listen to God’s voice!” Elijah had to explain it, and I suspect we all need reminders.

This “today” refers to the mystical idea that the kingdom of God is both now and yet to come, and we encounter God in the moment, every time we call out and pray. To quote Jesus again, “Ask, and you shall receive.” Not that Jesus is Santa Claus, but he promises to abide with us.

Recently, I read an essay by the poet Fatimah Asgar with the evocative title “On asking, and staying still long enough to listen for an answer.” The poet wrote about the role of prayer in their process: they ask for wisdom or assistance and then are still enough to listen and notice answers arriving.

I am a praying person, and I am someone living in a breakneck society. I ask for help or guidance from God, but then I do not stay still and quiet long enough to receive an answer! Maybe you can relate.

The poet invites us to think of it this way: if you whisper to someone, doesn’t it make sense to stay quiet and wait for them to whisper back? If you tap someone gently on the shoulder, don’t you wait for them to turn towards you?

Patience and stillness are needed. Patience and stillness and attention: “O that today, you would listen to God’s voice.”

I turn our attention to this prayer for stillness, attributed to Felgild, a late-seventh-century Celtic monk. I love this prayer:

Calm me, O Lord, as you stilled the storm.
Still me, O Lord, keep me from harm.
Let all the tumult within me cease.
Enfold me, Lord, in your peace.

I appreciate how the opening verse of Psalm 95 calls us to “shout for joy.” There are times and seasons for such loud praise. And I also believe the spiritual life also calls for silent reflection, not only for asking but also for listening. Such listening is waiting in hope.

I know that the coming of the Messiah is often taught with a judgmental sense of doom and gloom. But in the idea of the kingdom that is present and still to come, we are invited to dwell in God’s time and reality rather than become overwhelmed by our human understanding of what is going on. Hear the words of priest and theologian Rachel Mann: God asks us to locate ourselves in the realm of Jesus Christ, whose birth, life, death, and resurrection transform all things. The story of God is a reminder that fear, death, anxiety—real though they are—are not the final words. We can dwell and wait in the fearsome challenges of the present, because God is remaking the world in Jesus Christ—a world coming to an end with the gift of God who is World Without End. Amen.

In hope,

Andrew