THE POWER OF A WORD


One summer – a while ago – oh, let’s call it 40 years – I attended a Youth event at Mo-Ranch. Several of us formed a close group early in the week, and invented a ritual which required that we each carry with us a handful of Fruit Loops from breakfast and greet one another with the question “Have you nibbled today” and the response “Indubitably”.
Much of the attraction of this silly ritual lay in the very word indubitably, which wasn’t something any of us regularly said; we were pretty sure we were using it correctly, but that wasn’t really the point. By including in our greeting an unfamiliar word which we did not use in conversation with other people, we marked and reinforced the connection between us.
Words express relationship.
In the case of that long-ago MoRanch clique, we selected a random word and granted it narrow power to express friendship among ourselves. There are many words which more widely articulate the various ways in which we are bound to one another. Words of family – mother, father, brother, daughter, cousin, aunt. These words and others like them speak the contours of family – help us establish and understand our own identities, locate us in a particular place in the world of human interactions. It is always our hope that these words serve as hallmarks of relationships which offer us safety, support, and love, although we know that sometimes the words of family are fraught with pain and loss. Whether for good or ill, these words express relationship.
Among Christians, there are words of vow, of promise which speak the past and present into a new future – “Do you take this man to be your husband?”; “Do you trust in Jesus Christ your Savior?”; “Do you desire that this child be baptized?”; “Will you seek to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, love your neighbors and work for the reconciliation of the world?” We answer such questions with “I do and I will”, and by these words we speak into existence new relationships, new vocations, new lives of faithful service. A poet writes of words “threading one soul to the next” – and this seems to me to be an excellent description of the community of faith, those of us who have through the centuries woven ourselves side by side into a rich tapestry of discipleship. Words express relationship.
The truth and strength of such a statement is borne out in today’s Scripture readings. The Jeremiah passage begins “For thus says the LORD” and that in itself is an astonishing phrase.
Thus says the LORD.
The sovereign, omnipotent, eternal LORD communicates with finite, fallible, fallen humanity. And does so throughout the witness of Scripture. Over and over again, God comes to us with a word to speak.
God speaks a word of creation – “Let there be” – and with this word, it is so.
God speaks a word of promise – “I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing” – and with this word a covenant is formed.
God speaks a word of instruction – “I am the LORD your God; you shall have no other gods before me” – and with this word God’s covenant people are drawn into the circle of faithful worship and obedience.
These words – each in a particular way – express relationship between God and humanity.
But God is ever clear-eyed in this covenant relationship, and when the people fall away, God speaks a word of judgment, declaring through Jeremiah, “I am going to sling out the inhabitants of the land / at this time / and I will bring distress on them / so that they shall feel it.” C. S. Lewis contends that authentically loving someone does not mean to overlook or excuse that one’s faults, but to persist in the conviction that the beloved is capable of – is meant for – something far better. To view unacceptable behavior as an aberration, a departure from the norm, a condition which requires correction. Further, when we love, we encourage and participate in the beloved’s movement away from problematic behavior and toward a healthier, more faithful future. Lewis comes to this understanding partly as a result of contemplating God’s interaction with Israel, for authentic human love is always a reflection of divine love.
God does not pretend that the covenant people are faithful when they are not; it would not be true to God’s character to allow such unfaithfulness to prevail; nor does God renounce Israel, counting the covenant with Abraham a loss. Rather God remains close to, involved with, sovereign over Israel by speaking a word of judgment, for the relationship with this people is too dear and too deep to abandon. But as we have heard in our reading today, judgment is not God’s final word; Jeremiah also brings to the people words of consolation from the LORD. “I am going to bring them from the land of the north / and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth.” All who have been scattered with be gathered together again, none forgotten, none left out. Even the blind and the lame; those with child and those in labor – the ones who require special care and attention – all will be redeemed and comforted. Why? Why does God go to such lengths? Thus says the Lord – “For I have become a father to Israel, / and Ephraim is my firstborn”. Words express relationship.

But God’s words of judgment and of consolation spoken to Israel, the punishment of exile, the comfort of return, are finally not enough to sustain the relationship God desires to have with humanity. There is still distance, estrangement – a distance God is willing to bridge, an estrangement God chooses to heal. There is another Word for God to speak.
And so we come to John’s Gospel – these poetic, profound verses which open John’s work. It’s been said that each Gospel writer begins his account of Jesus at the point where that author believes Jesus Christ’s work of reconciliation and redemption begins – Matthew with the prophecy-fulfilling genealogy, Luke with angelic announcements of the birth of the savior and his herald, Mark with baptism. But John – look how John introduces Jesus to his readers:
In the beginning / there was the Word; / the Word was in God’s presence / and the Word was God.
Certainly this echo of Genesis is intentional on John’s part. The reader is meant to remember the Scriptural account of creation – and then reconsider that creation story in light of this “Word” who was present with God from eternity, an active, engaged, co-creator at every step:
Through the Word / all things came into being, / and apart from the Word / nothing came into being / that has come into being
This Word who becomes flesh and lives among humanity is not a late addition to God’s roster of assistants, a Plan B for God’s work of reconciliation and redemption. This Word – the Word who is known to us in Scripture as Jesus Christ – has been a part of the life of God always.
Christians affirm a Triune God – a God who is Three-in-One and One-in-Three – Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. God, Word and Spirit. We use these and other verbal constructions to try to articulate what is immeasurably beyond our comprehension, let alone our articulation.
But for us, this is not foolishness or a stumbling block, because we know, we sense out of the very depth and richness of the bonds of love which uphold us, that the God who enters into relationship with humanity does so out of a nature which is relational within God’s very self. “God’s will for life in relationship with and among the creatures is an expression of God’s faithfulness to God’s own eternal life, which is essentially communal.” When we speak of the triune God, the very name of God expresses relationship within itself. I’ve learned quite a few 50¢ words at seminary, but I think my favorite is perichoresis, which is used to speak of the indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity with one another. The literal translation is “to dance with”, which I think is just a lovely image of the Triune God – the Three-in-One and One-in-Three dancing together in an eternal movement of unity and exuberance.
And the wonder is that we are invited to participate. Catherine of Siena uses just such imagery in her account of being drawn toward God: “I won’t take no for an answer”/ God began to say / to me / when He opened His arms each night / wanting us to / dance.
Isn’t that a most remarkable idea? That God would wish to dance with us? To be with us? Yet this is what our Scripture assures us is the case. The Word – the eternal Word who is with God and who is God – becomes flesh and lives among us. One scholar writes that “Jesus is the primal utterance of God, the Word behind the words, framed in the triune heart of God before time, yet not content to be sequestered outside of time.” God’s desire for a full and lasting relationship with humanity could not be fulfilled in the abstract and so the Word takes on finite, human life and pitches a tent in our midst. Theologians like to speak of God breaking into human history, and indeed our creeds and confessions attest to God’s consistent and on-going activity in the world, but this “Word becoming flesh and living among us” – this is a singular event. John Calvin – never one to doubt God’s involvement with our lives – says of this verse in John’s Gospel: “by this expression he must mean a new and extraordinary kind of presence, by which the Son of God was manifested, so that men might have a nearer view of him.” This idea is supported by John’s description of the Word coming into the world as an unquenchable Light, for it is in strong light that we see most clearly.
And what we are able to see in this light is that this Word become flesh expresses the ultimate relationship – both within God’s communal nature and between God and humanity. “Any who did accept the Word, / who believed in that Name, / were empowered to become children of God.” To become children of God. A God who chooses to embrace us in this remarkable, intimate way; who grants to us an identity not available in any other way but through this relationship with the Word. And as those children of God, we are granted grace upon grace, gift on top of gift, for this is a relationship of infinite and eternal love.
Becoming children of God also connects us to one another in new ways. The human words we use to express relationship – brother, sister, friend, indubitably – are humble things. They serve an important purpose, help us understand and articulate our identity, but they are finally language which draws boundaries around who we understand ourselves to be. The Word made flesh expands our vocabulary of relationship in ways that both embrace and transcend all that we have known. By becoming children of God, we enter into new understandings of what it means to be a brother or a sister; we trade boundaries for bridges.
Words express relationship. They do so in many ways. And all the ways we express and experience relationship lead us finally to The Word which spoke all of creation into existence, which became flesh in order to dwell among us. For this Word calls us into eternal relationship. This Word, which was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be – this Word is our Savior.
Amen.