“Tony Walker never heard the gunshot. Back in his room, playing video games with a neighbor boy, the 10-year-old only heard what he called the usual ‘fussing’ between his mother and (step)father. Then he heard his mother say something like, ‘Don’t do it.’ When Tony came out, he found his mother, Judy S. Walker, lying in the laundry room with blood everywhere. Authorities said she died immediately after a bullet from a high-caliber handgun passed through her head.”
On March 22, 1994, those words opened the front page of Anderson’s Independent Mail. I spent that Tuesday afternoon playing with my SEGA Game Gear. In the small bedroom of our tiny house, the sound from its tiny speaker was interrupted by the explosion of a .40 caliber Glock 22 which echoed throughout our neighborhood… a sound so loud that my mind heard it even though my ears didn’t.
For years, I wondered how people many houses away heard something I didn’t hear two tiny rooms away. Eighteen years later, in 2012, I finally understood what happened. While reading a book on self-defense, I came to a section that explained “auditory exclusion.” Basically, the mind can hit the “mute button” in extreme situations. When I heard the usual arguing between my parents, I thought nothing of it. But somehow, unknown to me, in milliseconds, something in my brain reached for the remote of my mind and hit “mute” to tune out what it heard was about to take place. I dropped my Game Gear, life’s audio turned back up, and our family was instantly changed forever.
Have you ever experienced auditory exclusion? Have you ever heard something so loud, yet so silent, change you forever? In John 11:39–44, the Bible tells us about someone who did in the raising of Lazarus. In this passage, we have several instances of auditory experiences. Jesus speaks, and the crowd responds to what they heard by removing the stone that covered Lazarus’s grave. This causes an exchange of listening and speaking between Jesus and Martha, Lazarus’s sister. What happens next are multiple auditory experiences that take place on numerous levels.
Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.” And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” And he that was dead came forth…
With his physical voice, Jesus spoke. Without a human body, the Father heard. Thinking of others, Jesus spoke again… and we would expect the following phrase to say, “… that they may hear.” But, Jesus vocally speaks to the Father who “spiritually hears” so that the people would believe. It almost seems as if Jesus is saying that someone can hear and someone can hear. And what does it look like for someone to hear Jesus? Though completely dead and deaf, they’ll respond by hearing and living. Lazarus heard the word of God incarnate, and he lived. And according to Romans 10:17, when we hear the word of God, we believe.
In a small home in 1994, I experienced auditory exclusion when my mind heard what my ears did not. And in 2001, in silence alone in my backyard, after years of hearing the word of God at church, what I had heard for years with my ears I finally heard with my heart.
Father, you indeed are a God who can loudly speak through silence. As we quietly read and meditate on the word, may your Holy Spirit continually open our hearts to hear the grand voice of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen.
—Tony Walker has been married to his high-school sweetheart for 19 years, and they have six children (four of them being two sets of twins!). He is currently an M.Div. student at Anderson University (SC) and has been in full-time ministry for ten years at Gethsemane Baptist Temple in Starr, SC.
preachertony.com 