The Power of Words
NEH 8:2-4A, 5-6, 8-10; 1 COR 12:12-14,27; LK 1:1-4; 4:14-21
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but I have a problem with my weight. Call it whatever you want . . . heavy, overweight, fat, portly, rotund, obese . . . I’ve heard it all. When I was a youngster attending Catholic elementary school, I used to dread the annual visit to a store called Lobel's in Levittown, NY to purchase my school uniform, because every year after the salesman measured me, I would hear the same thing . . . “Oh, it looks like we’ll have to try the “husky” sizes!” My mother used to call it “baby fat,” and comforted me by assuring that it would disappear as I got older. But last year I came to the realization that, at my age, maybe it was more than "baby fat," and as many of you know, last September I had surgery to try to do something about it.
As a kid, I was the big butt (no pun intended) of many jokes and comments from my peers about my weight. And one of the expressions I used to defend myself was: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” As children so often do, instead of physically fighting with one another we used to have a “war of words” by calling each other names. It was to inflict insults and get somebody upset, and maybe even make them cry. One of the popular techniques for trying to deflect the name calling, and pretend that it wasn’t really bothering you, was to say: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Those are just words; they can’t hurt me. But the truth is, they did hurt—those names, those words made a difference, and sometimes they cut deeply and really hurt.
Do words really make a difference? What about, “I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.” And how about: "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit?” Words spoken by prophets, or history’s greatest writers, or the simplest of individuals. Words of a powerful world leader which bring a country to war. Words of a helpless child who begs his mommy and daddy to stop fighting. Words of anguish and desperation—“I want a divorce.”—which rip a family apart. Words spoken by an employer or a manager—“You’re fired.”—which crush an ego and force an unwanted change in the life of an employee. What about the simple words “I’m sorry?”—words from the heart and soul, words which heal and give hope? Just words you say? Think again. Words have real power. Words make things happen. Words change lives.
Jesus grew up in a small town, in a community where everybody knew him. If he misbehaved on his way home from school, his mother heard about it by the time he got home. He was like any other Jewish boy—growing up he heard and memorized his sacred scriptures, and he was shaped by them. But today is different; today everything changes. Today Jesus preaches his first sermon to his own people. He had grown up in front of them and now he was saying: “Today I’m fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah . . . in your hearing—God has called me to bring Good News to the poor and freedom to the oppressed.” If Jesus is the son of Joseph, an artisan, what gives him the right to preach and teach us? Shouldn’t he be working with his hands?
For the first time, Jesus preached a living word to them. Some rejoiced, some repented, others became hostile, and all wondered what this word was going to do to them when they heard it.
Every Sunday we come to this place and we hear that same Word. And our tradition teaches us that when that word is proclaimed it is Christ himself who is speaking. Is that what we really believe? If it was, wouldn’t we be listening and concentrating as best as we could, sitting on the very edges of our seats excited about what God has to say to each one of us? Ezra read to the people. Jesus read and preached in the synagogue. Today we listen, but do these words change anything? Or are we looking for comfort of the same words we’ve heard over and over, year-after-year, Sunday-after-Sunday, changing nothing but making everything familiar and comfortable?”
What does this word have to do with us? What does this word do to us when we hear it? “The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free?” Are we oppressed, do we need to be set free, are we imprisoned or exiled, are we downtrodden? Besides, the captives are in prison because that’s where they belong. The poor can get rich if they’d just get a job. The disabled and the disadvantaged, they’ve got laws to take care of them. What do they have to do with us?
But what if Jesus had said: “Your mortgages are paid-off, your credit card balances have been taken care of, those terrible mistakes you made years ago, the hurt you caused, the damage you did, all record of it is gone, you’re forgiven. Your cancer has been cured?” Would that make a difference—would Jesus then have our attention?
But that isn’t what he said. Maybe those words of Jesus were meant to unnerve us. Maybe those words were supposed to make us sit and think, examine our behavior, and get us to act in a different way. Maybe Jesus was trying to challenge our attitudes and confront our prejudices. Just maybe Jesus was attempting to show us that our faith has everything to do with justice, economics, poverty, and other real world issues. The words of Ezra the prophet, the words of Jesus first proclaimed in that synagogue, and his words we hear every time we gather in his name—do they make a difference to us? Do we try live better lives, are we more understanding, do we become less tolerant of the status quo, are we more generous in our community and in our parish? The words spoken by Jesus are supposed to be fulfilled in our hearing. Every one of us here brings life to those words—we give them voice, we walk with them, and we act with them. Without us those words are rendered barren and lifeless. We make them real. For us it is a matter of faith. Do we really believe the words we hear? When we enter this sacred space every Sunday, when we open our ears and our hearts to God’s words, we place ourselves at grave risk. It is a risk we cannot avoid; it is risk we have to take.
Jesus grew up in a small town, in a community where everybody knew him. If he misbehaved on his way home from school, his mother heard about it by the time he got home. He was like any other Jewish boy—growing up he heard and memorized his sacred scriptures, and he was shaped by them. But today is different; today everything changes. Today Jesus preaches his first sermon to his own people. He had grown up in front of them and now he was saying: “Today I’m fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah . . . in your hearing—God has called me to bring Good News to the poor and freedom to the oppressed.” If Jesus is the son of Joseph, an artisan, what gives him the right to preach and teach us? Shouldn’t he be working with his hands?
For the first time, Jesus preached a living word to them. Some rejoiced, some repented, others became hostile, and all wondered what this word was going to do to them when they heard it.
Every Sunday we come to this place and we hear that same Word. And our tradition teaches us that when that word is proclaimed it is Christ himself who is speaking. Is that what we really believe? If it was, wouldn’t we be listening and concentrating as best as we could, sitting on the very edges of our seats excited about what God has to say to each one of us? Ezra read to the people. Jesus read and preached in the synagogue. Today we listen, but do these words change anything? Or are we looking for comfort of the same words we’ve heard over and over, year-after-year, Sunday-after-Sunday, changing nothing but making everything familiar and comfortable?”
What does this word have to do with us? What does this word do to us when we hear it? “The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free?” Are we oppressed, do we need to be set free, are we imprisoned or exiled, are we downtrodden? Besides, the captives are in prison because that’s where they belong. The poor can get rich if they’d just get a job. The disabled and the disadvantaged, they’ve got laws to take care of them. What do they have to do with us?
But what if Jesus had said: “Your mortgages are paid-off, your credit card balances have been taken care of, those terrible mistakes you made years ago, the hurt you caused, the damage you did, all record of it is gone, you’re forgiven. Your cancer has been cured?” Would that make a difference—would Jesus then have our attention?
But that isn’t what he said. Maybe those words of Jesus were meant to unnerve us. Maybe those words were supposed to make us sit and think, examine our behavior, and get us to act in a different way. Maybe Jesus was trying to challenge our attitudes and confront our prejudices. Just maybe Jesus was attempting to show us that our faith has everything to do with justice, economics, poverty, and other real world issues. The words of Ezra the prophet, the words of Jesus first proclaimed in that synagogue, and his words we hear every time we gather in his name—do they make a difference to us? Do we try live better lives, are we more understanding, do we become less tolerant of the status quo, are we more generous in our community and in our parish? The words spoken by Jesus are supposed to be fulfilled in our hearing. Every one of us here brings life to those words—we give them voice, we walk with them, and we act with them. Without us those words are rendered barren and lifeless. We make them real. For us it is a matter of faith. Do we really believe the words we hear? When we enter this sacred space every Sunday, when we open our ears and our hearts to God’s words, we place ourselves at grave risk. It is a risk we cannot avoid; it is risk we have to take.
