Sermon, 8/25/24: Words, Words, Words!

14 Pentecost

Psalm 84; I Kings 8:1, 6, 10–11, 22–20, 41–43; Ephesians 6:10–20; John 6:56–69

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. John 6:63b

A recent alumni magazine of my alma mater featured an interview with a freshly graduated young man who spoke about the power of words.  That did not surprise me.  After all, at universities words are the currency.  Professors and students use words in order to communicate ideas.  So, asked I myself: Why did this young fellow choose to end his undergraduate career talking about words?  I read on and learned that for him to speak of words carries a significant value.  English was not native to him.  He was born in Bosnia after a devastating genocidal war and immigrated to the United State.  Initially, he had learned to choose his words carefully. 

Secondly, he plans eventually to become a foreign service officer.  Even that decision struck me as a logical future profession, if one considers his background.  However, third, he is undertaking a planned detour towards that goal.  Herein lies a surprise!  Presently, he serves in the national program “Teach for American” in Washington, D.C., where he will teach third grade.  That caught my attention and enticed me to read further.  Third grade?  Nine-year olds?  Did I misread?  Had a paragraph been perhaps omitted in his summary of his undergraduate years?

He comments, “Third grade is a pivotal year when students transition from learning to read to reading to learn….I can think of no better way to start my career in public service than being a force for good for these children. This is my way of paying forward all that I have received from my teachers, my professor and everyone at the College.” (Washington: The Magazine of Washington University in St. Louis, August 2021, p.33)   

I present to you, on this fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, on this Sunday in Ordinary Time, a series of related questions.  Does his observation apply to us, who are no longer third graders?  When do we, as people of faith, transition from learning to read about faith to implementing what we have been taught by preachers and what we have ourselves read?  Have we ceased following along the line with our finger, as second and third graders often do when first learning to read, in order to be sure not to misread or skip a line in our Book of Records pertaining to the role of faith in our lives?  When do we allow the words from the prophets, the apostles, and Christ himself on the page to cause us to think deeply about what has been recorded? 

If I were challenged to summarize today’s gospel, which I have just seconds ago read, I would imagine a dialogue of two one-liners.

They, (the disciples,) said: “This teaching is difficult.”
Jesus said: “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

That is the dialogue. Summarized.  So, what is the problem?  Under consideration is “faith.”  And the problem is words.  Words get in the way.  Words get in the way because the disciples in their time and their individual instance (or to address ourselves in the 21^st century) we come, each of us, with an individualized encounter with words.  I would not insult your intelligence; yet, I offer you, as an example, a simple four-letter word, which we may not use every day for it is so commonplace, that we bother not to think about it.  That word is “tree.”  TREE! 

What has been your encounter with a tree?  Depending on your own long and complex encounter with a tree, your conversation with others, who like you, will have encountered trees in their lives, will be different.  Discussions of climate change, reactions to tornadoes and hurricanes, conversations with a neighbor when a tree stands on the shared property line, when fruit trees encourage you to invite friends over to pluck the cherries or apples or pears! 

Our Book of Records, from the opening sentence, directs our attention to words as a tool of implementation.  God speaks, and the heavens and the earth come into being: “God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light…”  “God spoke: Let us separate the darkness from the light, and there were day and night.”  Prophets prefaced their oracles by saying, “This is the word of the Lord.”  And no less than the writer of the Gospel of John begins his narrative with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 

Beyond Scripture, we know from experience that words are powerful. Words can create, and words can destroy.  When a couple stands in the presence of God and family and friends and pledges to love each other and be faithful, their words summon a new world into being. 

Words can take on a life of their own, independent of the author.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”  When Mr. Jefferson wrote those words, which you recognize from our Declaration of Independence, “all men” was defined as “all free, white, male property owners above a certain age.”  However, his words accomplished more than he intended or could have imagined.  They served not only to sever the ties of the colonies with England; eventually, they set also this country, these United States of America, on the arduous and painful course towards equality for enslaved Africans and unrecognized women, as well.  Having learned to read, through our reading, we have brought and continue to bring new meanings to those words.  These words of Mr. Jefferson, spoken in the present tense, had a future tense trajectory!

I pause to reflect, then, when I encounter someone who tells me “Not once has my faith in God been shaken.”  Or, when in a moment of unintentional hubris, an individual says: “I know the word of God.”  I ask myself, surely that person has not taken a serious look at the words which Jesus of Nazareth spoke to the crowd, and which are recorded for us in Holy Writ.  Even Jesus of Nazareth whom we call the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, had his moments of doubt, or at least the men who recorded our gospels teach us that he did.

Think for a moment.  The word which Jesus spoke before the larger crowd that followed him, did not leave his closest circle without anxiety: “This is a hard saying: who can accept it?” (John 6:60)  These are words spoken not by casual observers, but by the very people who had given up the comfort of home, the surety of a profession.  For you and me, as attempt to live out our faith, these are both words of caution and words of reassurance. 

The caution is that just because we announce today our belief in Jesus as the Messiah of our Creator God, does not mean that our faith will not be challenged, this afternoon, tomorrow, a week from now.  As Paul, in his various letters has attempted to explain to the fledgling churches, we will falter and doubt.  Challenge and doubt come with the territory of faith.  Jesus came into their world, and into our world, to turn things 180 degrees and to ground them firmly in God’s way.  Those, who turned back on that day so long ago, could not quite believe that Jesus was the one sent from God.  That word demanded too much of them. 

The words, in the form of a question, “Will you also go away?” which Jesus poses to the Twelve, that core group, are as relevant to us in our century as then.  Words of faith are not always clear, precisely because they point to the future, where we cannot envisage or ensure the outcome, for which we fervently hope.

Peter’s declaration articulates what stood before for his crew, as well as stands before us: uncertainty and hope.  “Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69)  Peter’s confession is a mustard seed.  His next step was to allow it to take root, to nourish it, to permit it to expand, that it may offer others a resting place.     

Today’s gospel invites us to question what or who should be at the center of our faith.  And Jesus gives us direction: In teaching his disciples to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven…,” a prayer given in the present tense, but expressing a future tense implementation, Jesus answers that question and reaffirms the direction that our faith should take us.  In that one, seemingly simple prayer, Jesus teaches us that a meaningful life of faith is not a self-centered one, but is one of risks and uncertainty, because it includes also The Other, our fellows.  “Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it….” (Mk 8:35)  And so, with the Bible as our primer, we develop our skills in understanding the role of faith in our lives.  We learn, as Christians, that should our faith not challenge us, that faith is like the salt which has lost its essential quality. 

My fellow young alumnus has, notwithstanding how much I identify with his philosophy of reading and his laudable future career, in my opinion, failed to mention an essential ingredient as we learn to read and to use words: Like many whom I know or encounter, whether friend or stranger, I, too, am guilty of forgetting that essential ingredient.  We speak.  Exchange words.  Too often, however, we forget to listen.  Even as our conversationist speak, we are preparing a rebuttal, a one-up-man-ship response.

With Peter we can say, “Christ, what you ask of me, I don’t understand, perhaps even most of the time, but if you permit me, I will continue to come each day to you with my questions: How am I to understand the words with which you demonstrate the longing of God to reunite the creation with the creator?  How do I transition from learning to read about my faith in you so that others come to see in my daily life that you are the Holy One of God?” because you have inclined my ear to listen to your aim for me, and to transmit what I have heard with my ear to my heart  Amen