There are many things in life we never
fail to undervalue. Among them are natural things—plants and animals; rain and
snow—that we take for granted, and then there are personality traits—faithfulness
and humility—things that we enjoy in other people but rarely repay in kind—and
finally there is something closer to our essence as human beings that we also tend
to minimize: our words. One of the great casualties of this busy world with all
our talking heads, tomes of print literature, and innumerable websites is the
thoughtful word. There are fewer and fewer poets, even as there are more and
more bloggers. There are fewer great wordsmiths, even as there are more text
messages composed each day than all messages in any format in any year prior to
the 20th century. Anaphorisms like “Talk is cheap” and “Sticks and
stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me” are common and
accepted.
In the 21st century you
can say anything and find an audience. The more controversial, the better. The less
time you spend considering other opinions, the more response you will get. When
it comes to words we have made thoughtfulness and clarity expendable and too often consider the measure of an author her volume and provocativeness. Thoughtfulness
doesn’t sell very well anymore, and so all words are cheapened; a casualty of
our race to the lowest common denominator.
We can be very thankful, therefore,
that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts (as Isaiah reminds us). Maybe you’ve
seen the Sprint commercials with James Earl Jones and Malcolm McDowell
re-enacting absurdly dumb Facebook conversations, which we are meant to laugh
at because we do not picture two of the great voice actors of our time saying such plainly dumb things, but the sad reality
is that, for many people, McDowell (at least) may now be remembered as the
Sprint commercial guy. That’s the world we live in. Parodies are
parodying other parodies, hardly realizing they have become parodies themselves, demonstrating just how certainly we are circling the drain of cultural banality.
Our mass media are forever dumbing down our words into static boxes that we
associate with being good or bad. All
I have to say is the word “liberal” or the word “conservative” and you have a
whole set of emotions and preconceived ideas of how the world fits into those
boxes. I could do the same with the words “capitalism” and “socialism,” or “Vikings”
and “Packers.” Actually, that’s a bad example, because Vikings fans have bad associations with both
of those words. Regardless, we are crippled by binary thinking. It’s easy; it’s
convenient; it doesn’t require much thought; and it’s also dulling our ability
to interpret God’s word, because God’s word is far more creative than ours.
This is part of the reason why it’s
difficult to give an account of our faith as Christians in the 21st century, because our language is inhibited by trigger words; if it isn’t “liberal” or
“conservative” then it’s “progressive” or “traditional;” “Bible-believing” or
“Spirit-led;” “Missional” or “Confessional.” The words we use to describe our
churches are mostly cheap imitations of words we use to describe our politics. They
are vacuous phrases designed to justify what we believe; often over against
other Christians. God’s word does not return empty, but our words so often are.
But
it’s not all bad news! The fact that we still read from Isaiah on Sunday
mornings instead of Time Magazine or Christianity Today is evidence of the
long-lasting power of God’s word. But, dare I say even more important than the Bible, we
have this good news from the Gospel of John that the
Word we await in this Advent season is not a book, and not an idea, but, in
fact, it is a person. This Jesus, who we celebrate in a manger in Christmas
pageants, is actually the living, human form of God’s Word. We’ve been trained to think of words as things that are found on
a page, but Jesus came so that we need not rely on mere descriptors but so
that the Gospel could be proclaimed bodily, physically. The Bible is critical
because, like the manger, it holds Christ, but it is not the full extent of the
Word; the Word was—and is—Jesus himself. That
might seem kind of strange for those of us trained to think of words as
things in a dictionary. We still live by the mantra about sticks and stones, treating
words as ephemeral things that describe but do not act, even as there are
countless examples to the contrary. Our words can hurt (you know this), because
our words are a reflection of God’s word, and God’s word does things—both very
good and very frightening. Try telling God that words cannot hurt you, and see
how well that works out for you.
In Genesis, God literally spoke the world into
being. It was not the divine hands and feet that created the heavens and the
earth but God’s Word. God spoke and there was a planet; God spoke and there
were seas and trees and monkeys and fish and all sorts of things. God spoke and
there were natural laws and evolutionary processes by which creation was governed.
God spoke and stuff happened. Lots of stuff. Good stuff. Much later, God spoke
in a different way and there was a person who walked among us, speaking himself
not just as if he was from the Father, but as God incarnate. God spoke
not just through Jesus, but Jesus was in fact God’s word. So we can actually say that God’s Word lived,
walked among us, and died on a cross. The very thing that God used to create
the heavens and the earth is the thing that died for us. How powerful is that!
But
it didn’t even end there. Soon after there was this moment at
Pentecost where the Word went out into the world again in a new way. Then, centuries
later, thanks to Martin Luther and the advent of the printing press, and thanks
to King James, who commissioned our first English Bible, God’s creative word was made accessible in the common language of the people. And it didn't stop there. God's word is still speaking today. Wherever there
is creativity, God’s word is there, because, according to Isaiah, the word will
not return empty but it will accomplish what God purposes. Yet, at the same time, it is hidden
underneath all the junk and half-baked ideas we have concocted. And that’s what we’re seeing
today: a wasteland of creative destruction, punctuated only by
the occasional brilliant thought.
Our
words remain inadequate. Every time we rehash the common narrative of the
day—every time we speak ill of something for being “liberal” or “conservative,”
or insert your favorite talking point, we bulldoze over the way that God’s
creative word is working in the world. God tends to destroy our categories. We
see this in worship week after week. There is no such thing as “traditional” or
“contemporary." It’s either worship or not, and that
depends far more on how present we are in the sanctuary than it does what kind
of music we’re singing. In our tradition we say most of the same words every
Sunday, and that may seem an affront to creativity, but part of the genius of
liturgy is that it connects us with
the creative words of those who have gone before. Still, the honest truth is that our
words do very little to impact God’s creative word; in fact, the real brilliance
of liturgy is simply that it limits the times we are blasphemous in church to only
those minutes I’m up here saying things that aren’t in the script. The rest of
the service… well, if it’s blasphemous, at least it’s as blasphemous as every
other service from the beginning of the Christian church.
At
least the words we use in the liturgy have been prayed over and considered for
generations. The danger of most of our words is that they haven’t
been considered at all. They are
cheap; in that they bear few marks of historical care and concern. They bear
little evidence of a community holding their authors accountable. We have
become more isolated, more individualistic, and so we have resorted more often to trite and ignorant words that mean absolutely nothing; words that are designed
only to spur our baser emotions of anger and pride.
In our rush for technological advancement we have systemically exiled ourselves from our community. In a way we are more similar to the Jews in exile in Babylon than we would like to admit. Our thoughtless words betray us as a people exiled from the grounding influence of a shared land and community that dwells thereupon. Of course, this makes Isaiah's proclamation all the more powerful because it comes as the Promised Land is being restored. Isaiah 55 marks the end of
the exile. The Persians defeated the Babylons, and King Cyrus of Persia gave Jerusalem back to the Jews who were exiled. And
out of this call for the community to return and rebuild, God's word is proclaimed, which tells us two things about what we need to rediscover God's creative word in our midst. First, we need a community—we need to come out of
whatever exile we are in—and second, we need a history—a chance to reflect on
where we have been and compassionate understanding for the creative differences
between one another.
In
some ways not much has changed between 500 BC and today. God’s word is still
doing things in the world, and it is not returning empty. God’s word is
invigorating Christians who live in physical poverty all over the globe, many hearing
the Gospel for the first time; God’s word is turning around the lives of those
who have been saddled with drug or alcohol abuse; God’s word is working comfort
for those on their death beds; it is giving hope to young people whose lives
seem out of control. God’s word is doing much more than we give it credit for
because even as we have reached a new height of cynicism about words, God's word is working overtime to make up for our faults. We turn on the TV
to our favorite cable news station and we get words, words, words.
We know exactly how to react to talking points, and so we think we understand
what it means to speak, but it’s all a farce. It’s all just pointless babbling.
The
creative word is the word that speaks through all the junk, offering instead thoughts
worthy of the majesty of creation. God’s word does this, but this is not only something that we passively receive. Each of us also has within us the capability to be created
co-creators. It just happens to take those very traits that we find so
difficult, especially in this Advent season. To be a co-creator—or, to use
Isaiah’s imagery, a seed bed for God’s word—requires patience and reflection;
things that require time. That’s maybe the key: allowing yourself the
time to sit and reflect; to pause from accepting the normal everyday words you
hear and read; to refrain from responding with haste, and to wait instead for
words that befit the marvelous grace of God. These words are difficult to find.
Most of the time I think a week is too short a time between sermons for me to
offer you any good examples. Instead, it is a lifelong process that begins when
you reject the banal words of the day and when you start, maybe for the first
time, to think for yourselves. You’ll discover, in that moment, that in fact
you aren’t thinking for yourself at all, but God’s word is working through you.
There is no more intimate moment between you and your creator than that moment
of thoughtful reflection. It’s also a wonderful illustration of what Advent is all about.
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