A Word to the Wise

Isaiah 59:15b-21
Perhaps you’ve heard the expression, “You took the words right out of my mouth.” It means that someone has said what you were thinking but had not had time to express for yourself. Our reading from Isaiah today offers the opposite perspective, literally along the lines of, “You put the words right into my mouth,” and God is the one doing the putting. “And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord: my spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouths of your children, or out of the mouths of your children's children, says the Lord, from now on and forever” (Isaiah 59:21). What does it mean for God to put words in our mouths? And what does it mean that these words will not depart the mouths of three or more generations of God’s people? Good questions.

I think of it this way, that there are many positions we might take in life on a variety of issues, a number of perspectives we might embrace and then share with others. Like quasi celebrity endorsers, we might pass along all types of information to our friends and our neighbors, and all manner of rumors or pieces of gossip sometimes stated as fact. According to the prophet, however, God’s word is to become our word, God’s glory the subject of our speaking, God’s actions the topic of our conversations. The days are coming when we, our children, and our children’s children, will speak the truth of God’s love and be known by that speaking and no other.

The charge to speak God’s word, of course, removes from us the opportunity to share the half-truths and hurtful innuendos that pass for communication in much of our world. I suspect were this to come to pass in a literal sense that Twitter and Facebook would become vastly different places and that reality TV would die a quick and ignoble death. What replaced them would not be the stodginess of what too often passes for religious talk, but the grace-filled and life-giving words of hope and peace that God has always used to create and to restore. Here’s hoping.

Prayer: Lord, may we learn to speak your truth in all we do. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

When Faith Trumps Fact

Luke 8:40-56
Those who mourned the death of Jairus’s daughter openly ridiculed Jesus when he came to heal the girl. “And they laughed at him,” Luke tells us, “knowing that she was dead” (Luke 8:53). But Jesus did heal the girl, and in doing so he demonstrated that even when we are faced by that which is factual, faith allows us to move beyond, to a deeper level of truth, one that opens up possibilities we might otherwise not consider. It’s hard to fault those who had come offering comfort to Jairus and his wife. The crowd had no reason to expect the girl to recover. Jesus’ assertion that she was only sleeping sounded foolish at best. So they laughed. Considering that up until then they had been “weeping and wailing for her” (v. 52) this was quite a turnaround. What they did not appreciate was the power of God to transform mere fact into a greater truth. A little girl who is dead according to human standards may, by the will of God, rise up and live.

Are there situations in our lives where, based on “the facts,” we make certain assumptions only to find that God still has something new to reveal? Are there those who we dismiss as worthless, of redeeming value, unworthy of our consideration who, by God’s grace, can be raised to a new lives of purpose? Are there circumstances where all the data tells us to walk away, to cut our losses, to move along but where God still has a word to speak? Too often the answer is yes, we have accepted “facts” where God was offering “truth.” But new days bring new challenges and new opportunities. By learning to trust God to be at work in our lives we will find ourselves living in ways we did not imagine possible, sometimes in the face of “facts” that might have led others to write us off.

Even when we “know” something to be factual there is still room for God to work, and at those moments may our laughter be caused by joy and not by derision.

Prayer: Lord, give us faith to see all that you are doing in our world and in our lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

If Only…

John 18:28-38

We can have all the information in the world, all of the emails and letters and TV broadcasts and newspapers and magazines and spreadsheets and campaign ads and tweets and, yes, blog posts, but at the end of the day we may be left asking the same question that Pilate asked of Jesus. Jesus said, “’For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’” (John 18:37b-38a). I can imagine Pilate smirking as he said it, as if he had heard that sort of thing before. After all, everybody claims to have the truth in some shape or fashion.

Years ago, just as the internet was becoming more common, a woman who regularly visited the church I served approached me with an email she had received. The email claimed that members of the board of directors of Proctor and Gamble were Satan worshipers and that the CEO of the company has said so publically. The woman was aghast at the news and wanted to know what I thought about it. I tried to explain to her that even though she had gotten the item off of her computer it didn’t mean that the story was factual. That particular rumor had been going around for some time.

“What is truth?” It’s a question that we all must wrestle with constantly. It is so easy to accept what we want to believe. There is no such thing as a compassionate conservative; all liberals are out to destroy the country. The president is a socialist; his main rivals are idiots. The denomination to which I belong willingly ignores the Bible; anyone who disagrees with me is filled with hate. I hear variations on these comments on a regular basis and they make me sad. Jesus spoke the truth when he said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (15:12). Love is what Jesus wants; not hate or apathy or disdain or disinterest, but love. And this love is true because Jesus died for it. If we could only begin there, with the love of God, and reorient our lives accordingly. If we would only let go of the falseness of life. If only…

Prayer: Lord God, help us to hear your truth and to embrace it even as we seek to embrace one another in love. For it is in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.

NOTE: Beginning on February 25, I will be including blog posts each Saturday written by "guest bloggers" who will offer their insights on the readings for that particular day. I deeply appreciate the willingness of these folks to share their time and talents with us. Be sure to stop by on upcoming Saturdays to see what they have to say.

Learning to Speak the Truth

Jeremiah 8:4-7, 18-9:6

Our reading from Jeremiah today continues to decry the sins of God’s people and the indifference with which they have turned away from God. “They all deceive their neighbors, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongues to speak lies; they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent. Oppression upon oppression, deceit upon deceit! They refuse to know me, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:5-6).

At the heart of this particular accusation is that the people have “taught their tongues to speak lies.” This makes sense, too. As children we must learn to crawl and then to walk. We learn to dress ourselves and to tie our shoes. We learn sports and how to ride bicycles. We learn right from wrong and what is expected of us in certain situations. Somewhere in all of this we also learn to use language first speaking, then reading, and then writing. When does it occur to us to speak untruths? When does lying become a part of our skill set? According to Jeremiah’s words the art of lying is something that we teach ourselves, something at which we become adept over time. Once we have trained ourselves to be deceitful it becomes easier and easier to reject the truth and “to rely on the lie.” In doing so we move further from God and further from each other until we are completely set apart by our iniquity and our sinfulness. We may even lie to ourselves while we are lying to one another.

But just as we’ve learned to lie, we may also train ourselves to live in truth according to God’s word. It probably won’t happen overnight. It is difficult work that challenges who we are and the culture by which we are surrounded. But it is worth the effort for it moves us from separation to fellowship. It helps to dismantle the oppression that passes as human interaction, and the webs of deceit that pretend to be communication. We’ve learned to lie, now it is time to teach ourselves the truth.

Prayer: Lord, help us to speak the truth in love and to honor and cherish each other as gifts from you. Amen.