THE WORD AND WORDS

We communicate mostly in words. Yes, we get in touch with one another by a touch or a glance or a nod. We are able to communicate in non-verbal ways and sometimes words are simply inadequate to convey what is in our heart and mind. And when we attempt to put into words that cannot ever express what we mean, we can be heading for a heap of trouble. We know from experience whenever we try to tell the person we love how much we love that person, our words always come up short.

The same hold true about the words we use when we talk about the Word, Jesus, the Word of God. The Gospel and Epistle writers, theologians from Irenaeus to Augustine to Aquinas to Luther to Barth and Rahner have written volumes about the Word, about Jesus. They have come close in trying to explain him but, in the end, their words all fail.

Even worse, perhaps they as theologians and we as readers of their writings have become so seduced by the written word, by the depth of their thoughts and the soaring vocabulary they employ that we miss the Word from all the words. The person of Jesus, who he is and what he means for us as believers, is lost because the words themselves have become and are so impersonal.

The words we use to speak about Jesus may bring us close to understanding the Word but, in reality, we have it all backwards. Eugene Petersen in his Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (p. 103), says “Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meaning of words.” We don’t need a dictionary to explain Jesus as much as we need Jesus to be the dictionary to help us explain and understand what some words truly mean, words like love, forgiveness, compassion, service and many others.

Any dictionary can help explain these words; but for us as Christians, Jesus’ living explanation is all we need and what we need. If we want to know what it means to love another person, we do not need to read Rahner or Bultmann, we need to read the Gospels and read how Jesus loved. If we want to know what it means to forgive, we do not need to look up that word in a theological dictionary; we need to read the Gospels.

The same is true for any word that we might use to describe and explain what it means to be a follower of the Word. Jesus was and is that living dictionary that nails the meaning of that word for us. Jesus’ definition is always quite simple even if living out the meaning Jesus’ life conveys is not all that easy. In fact, sometimes we would rather have a neat theological definition of love, for instance, than Jesus’ living definition.

None of this is to denigrate the works of all the great theologians who, over the years, have tried to help us understand the Word of God in words that express the truth. It is only a reminder that we can get so lost in words that the deeds that are to be the fulfillment of those words never get done or not get done as well as they could. It’s like engaging in a bible study that helps us understand exactly what is expected of us and then having cake and coffee afterwards and doing nothing about it. Jesus is the word that is the way, our way, the only way.