Abstract: This plea echoes in the aural/oral culture of the New Testament. How much more urgently it must be attended to today. With reference to Trinitarian theology of the preaching event this paper will concentrate on the critical need to restore godly listening and participation. Some steps for encouraging active listening will be outlined and some practicalities discussed.

"The skills of the hearers are more important than the skills of the preacher" controversially claimed G.E. Sweazey, (Preaching the Good News 1976, 310). He went onto argue how hearers "need their own instruction in homiletics . . . they need to know what the whole idea of preaching is." This overstates the case for in preaching there is a principle of mutual responsibility with a complex balance of accountability between hearers and preacher. No preacher can abdicate accountability for conveying God's truth and neither can hearers evade responsibility. Boring sermons produce yawns, but willfully bored people can stonewall sermons. Both sides have to listen and learn from each other. Preachers need to listen to their own hearers in order to preach better and hearers need listen to preachers in order that they might respond more sensitively to God's word.

This paper considers a New Testament command embedded in the teachings of Jesus and probes at some of its implications in the light of recent research in orality, culture change and a theology of preaching. It concludes with some practical steps (which would please Sweazey!)

The Synoptic gospels testify that on several different occasions Jesus called for active listening with the refrain: "Let anyone with ears to hear, listen" (Mark 4:23; 7:16; Matthew 11:15; 13: 9, 34; 25:29; Luke 8:8; 13:9; 21:4.) It is particularly interesting to look at Jesus' parable in Mark 4:1-20 (and its parallels) with its different soils and harshly realistic quotation from Isaiah 6: 9-10. How significant is it that Jesus opens with the command: "Listen!" (verse 3) and concludes with the refrain: "Let anyone with ears, listen"(verse 9)? Commentators are convinced that Jesus raises the threshold for hearers. Cranfield likens it to way the daily Shema opens (Deut. 6.4). It is "both an appeal to hear aright and at the same time a solemn warning of the possibility of a wrong hearing." (Cranfield, 1959, 149.) "This is no self evident truth." Wessel (1984, 648). "By it the hearers are summoned to hear at a deeper level than mere sense perception, to take hold of the meaning of the parable, to apply it to themselves and thus ultimately to hear the word of God which can save them (Ezk. 3:27)." Marshall (1978, 320). It seems that hearers bear some responsibility for being seeded in 'good soil' accepting and "bearing fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold"

"Let anyone with ears to hear, listen" is not an empty ritual refrain but an urgent encouragement that listeners need to listen with more than their ears with spiritual apprehension. It calls for holistic listening. Hearers have a responsibility to be willing to live in new ways. It involves an intensity of response that casual notice may miss to its peril. Hearing words and not putting them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house upon sand (Matt.7: 26). For "faith comes from what is heard" (Romans 10:17.) You catch the urgency, for example in 1 Cor. 15:51, "Listen, I will tell you a mystery! Hearing opens up a dimension of responsibility that echoes in the early church (Rev.2: 7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22) and complements the accountabilities of the preacher.