Listening Hearts
We spend much of our lives becoming who we think the world needs us to be, often hiding the beloved self God delighted in from the beginning. Drawing on Solomon’s prayer for a listening heart and Jesus’ parables of the mustard seed and hidden treasure, this sermon explores healing as the work of remembering, recovering, and being made whole. How might the church be a place where masks are laid down, hidden treasures are uncovered, and people become more fully alive together?
The Glimpses of Grace podcast is a ministry of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia. We are passionate about supporting the spiritual growth of souls, and we hope these sermons and conversations meet you where you are and enrich your soul as we all continue to make meaning in the world today.
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Transcript
A few weeks ago, Mallory sent me this:
The point of healing
is to become
a weirdo again.
To be an artist.
To be unhinged.
To create wildly
and freely with
whimsy and ingenuity.
That’s the point.
I don’t know who wrote those words.
But they’ve stayed with me.
Beneath the humor is something deeply true:
healing is a bit like recovering who God created us to be.
A strange thing happens as we grow.
We’re born into this world beloved.
As young children we move through life with a kind of freedom. We’re curious. We aren’t worried about getting it right.
With this comes a kind of unguardedness. A center.
Then the world begins teaching us.
Some of these lessons are beautiful.
We learn kindness by someone’s kindness.
We learn generosity by sharing snacks, playing on the playground.
But we also learn:
Where it’s safe to speak and where it’s safer to stay quiet.
We learn which parts of ourselves earn approval.
We learn how to become a version of ourselves that can survive.
It is simply being human.
Because children cannot survive on their own.
As children we depend completely on the people around us.
And so, we become experts at reading a room.
We adapt. That curious, authentic, beloved core…
we begin to wear masks, tucking away parts of ourselves that are too much or don’t meet expectations.
We learn what seems to be:
too loud, too sensitive, too curious, too weird.
Really, it’s an astounding thing to be human. Because it works. Those masks help us survive.
We spend the first part of our lives
becoming someone the world can accept.
And if we’re fortunate,
a time comes when we can begin the slow work
of remembering who God created us to be
before fear took hold. And we’re able to recover ourselves.
Maybe this is why Solomon’s prayer is so beautiful.
God appears to him in a dream and says, “Ask what I should give you.” It’s easy to hold those masks, what the world demands, and consider: power, money, a long life…the downfall of an enemy.
But Solomon asks, “Give your servant an understanding mind.” The Hebrew literally evokes a listening heart.
Not understanding in the sense of intelligence or having information. But a heart capable of hearing.
A heart quiet enough to hold, to weigh, to recognize what is true. Solomon’s request suggests a wisdom that is not about accumulating more. It’s a wisdom about learning to sense, differently.
And then Jesus tells some more stories:
the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,
like yeast hidden in flour,
like treasure buried somewhere in a field.
I think these images endure because they remind us that what God treasures isn’t the same as what the world demands,
or what those masks convey.
It is something God placed in us from the very beginning.
Like a seed. A treasure. A pearl.
Something that perhaps can feel forgotten or overlooked but never destroyed.
We spend too much energy believing we must be someone else to be worthy of love.
This is a false kind of becoming. So Jesus tells his people the opposite. Repent.
[I think I’ve said before:
We have weird stuff tied to that word.
But it doesn’t simply mean, “feel bad.” It means, “sense differently.”] Turn around. Come home. Recover. Remember.
This summer we’ve held this season of fellowship:
Sunday suppers, Fellowship of the Ring study,
the language of our liturgy, our prayers.
We’ve spoken about tables, belonging,
family, disciples learning to be companions.
But being made one can be beyond me and God, me and my neighbor, it is also becoming one within myself.
The distance between who God knows me to be
and who I learned I had to become.
Until we learn that healing,
we hide, we perform, we juggle impressions and seek acceptance. So our relationships become negotiations rather than communion.
Wisdom as a listening heart…
it can be helpful to get out of the mind.
Because behind all that noise,
the fear and shame that comes from those false voices in our heads, God keeps saying, “You are beloved.”
Before the masks, the exhaustive trying, the pretending,
God created all things and said, “It is good.”
It’s hard to remember to listen to that voice over the others.
It’s hard to forgive the things that shaped us
without allowing them to define us.
It’s hard to acknowledge our wounds,
refusing to hand them to our children as inheritance.
But this is how the mustard seed grows.
Small bits of grace, curiosity, love
over resentment, self-protection, and certainty.
Until one day, what seemed impossibly small (hidden)
expands and becomes a place that holds, with confidence and strength.
That treasure hidden in the field is not only that kingdom of heaven out there somewhere.
It’s God’s life rooted in you.
Not your ego or accomplishments, or identities we craft to earn approval. It’s the self God created before the world told you who you had to be.
It’s hard work to let go of the identities that kept you alive,
the masks that protected you.
Finding that treasure costs a lot.
There’s a death in it.
But Jesus reminds us there’s a resurrection.
I hope this is where our season of fellowship has been leading. Being made one is not about gathering people into the same room, having a deeply meaningful discussion of the Fellowship of the Ring, or having a huge VBS crowd or a perfect movie night.
I think the deepest meaning is found in becoming whole enough that we no longer hide from ourselves or from one another.
A community cannot be one if everyone is pretending.
Imagine a church where people are becoming more themselves— where image doesn’t matter, where winning is less important than listening, where treasure is unburied, and where the smallest seed thrives because the community gives light.
Healing is becoming free enough to be
who God has been calling beloved all along.
Like the poem says, “a weirdo again.”
Not strange for the sake of being strange.
But wonderfully, unapologetically you.
Not who the world needs you to be, but who God made you to be.
The church could be a place where folks lay down their masks, trusting that beneath
there is something holy:
A child that God has delighted in from the very beginning.
May we have the wisdom to trust that voice.
May we have the courage to listen with a listening heart.
May we become the kind of people who make it safe for one another to become more fully alive.
Amen.
Rev. Dr. Brandon Nonnemaker
July 26, 2026