Exodus 20:1-17 Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 John 2:13-22
What is a basic assumption about God which is obvious from reading the Bible? And it is one which we don't often think about? The Bible is based upon the assumption that God is a language user.
The Bible is in the written form of language. And it includes language about God. And God is portrayed in the Bible as a language user.
How did God create? God spoke and creation happened. God said, "Let there be light and there was light."
Why do we suppose that God is a language user? Well because we as human are language users; we think that it is what distinguishes us, and by analogy, a greater being like God must be the greatest language user of all.
Language is at the heart of human life, and language is something we believe that God uses? Why? Language is the most personal form of inter-relationship, connection and communication. We communicate and we believe that higher values have been communicated to us as "divine" gifts.
Probably one of the greatest gifts recorded is found in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures for today. The gift to Moses is introduced in this way. "And God spoke all these words." And what were those words? They were the words of the 10 Commandments, with the wisdom recommendations for how to live well with God and with each other.
In the Big Story of the Hebrew Scriptures, God spoke a beautiful creation into existence. But for creation to be completely beautiful, it had to include genuine freedom expressed in morally beautiful persons. And the history of humanity is a record of failing at freedom; failing by making decisions which has resulted in all manner of disharmony in the social order.
The speaking of the law by God was seen as a recovery effort of God to inspire people to use their freedom towards a harmony to counter the tendency towards disharmony.
God, the speaker of the law gave a language script to be directions for how we as people are supposed to act toward God and toward each other.
Lent is a good time to ponder the teaching function of good laws of behavior toward God and toward each each other.
If we as language user, project upon God the attribute of being a language user, we do the same with Nature. We as poets, assume that nature, plants and animals speak or communicate with us.
The Psalmist wrote about how nature speaks. What does nature say? The Psalmist wrote, "The heavens declare the glory of God....and though they have no words or language....their message goes to the end of the world." Even though the stars do not use language....they still have a message. Of course the ancient world had astrology and so does the modern world. And practitioners of interpreting messages of the heavens think that it can be translated into specific life events, especially since Jupiter and Saturn, I am told, are now in conjunction, whatever that means. Without presuming to know planet positions and causation in human life events, as poets who use language it is natural for us to read personal messages to us in the beauty and the awesomeness of nature. I usually take a rainbow very personally, as a gift to simply cheer me up. It is not unusual for us to choose to integrate all kinds of messages from nature, whether a bird, a blooming flower, or the special comfort of a pet. Because we have language, we have a conduit to receive messages from nature, even if they are our own therapy of projected imagination in believing this world was made to be, in part, friendly to us.
When the New Testament came to textual form, the story of language and God as a language user became more advanced. Language was so crucial to the identity of God, that God was called Language itself. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, and everything has come into being by this Word. And this Word was made flesh and lived with us....
And this Word, in particular human form, was Jesus. Jesus was living embodied Word. He was not like written laws on the tablets of stone, he was fullness of Word in action, in deed, in speaking and in Spirit and in ministry. And because of his life, we have the words of the New Testament which tell about him and the effect of his life in creating a new movement of people.
With Jesus, we must admit the diversity and finesse of the language which we have and use. Language is metaphorical; words represent things which are not words but events in human experience.
What was the storied belief about the Temple in Jerusalem? It was the house of God, the dwelling place of God with a holiest of holies being the most sacred place, only to be visited by the High Priest. But Jesus, the living Word of God, is proclaimed as the new Temple of God for humanity. The body of Jesus became the most holy dwelling place of God for humanity. This is how the early followers of Jesus understood the significance of his life. The Temple was destroyed; and the body of Jesus was killed in his death on the cross. The Temple in Jerusalem has never been rebuilt. The temple of the body of Jesus came to be revived and known in the afterlife of his post-resurrection appearances.
When it came to the words of the law; not everyone kept them. And when it came to Jesus, the living Word made flesh, not everyone understood the witness of his life. And the most difficult thing to understand about Jesus as the living word was his death, his death on the cross.
But for Paul and many others, the cross of Jesus was an important message about God. It represented the full identity of God with human experience. And for Paul, the death of Jesus was the power to die to what is unworthy in one's life.
But not everyone appreciated Paul's understanding of the cross. For many Jews, who could not join the Jesus sect of Judaism, they saw the death of Jesus on the cross to be a stumbling block because in their notion of the Messiah, such a death could not be a witness to a powerful king who was supposed to free Israel. For those who inherited the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, the cross seemed like foolishness. They, like the Jews, wanted to reduce the life of Jesus to their language of logic. If Jesus was divine and the greatest king of all; greatest kings don't get killed by the soldiers of another king in an event of capital punishment. Therefore according to good Greek philosophical logic, it did not follow that Jesus was the greatest king. Hence it was not logical, and foolishness.
And for Paul, the logic of the cross, of course, is known in the subsequent post-resurrection appearances of Christ and in the spiritual and mystical experiences which were being experienced within the community of the followers of Jesus.
Paul believed that in Christ, there was a new creation. And God said in Christ, "Let there be new life and new creation, new spiritual life.
You and I live and move and have our being in the Word of God today, with God, the ultimate Language User. That Word is true to the depths of human sorrow and death; that Word is true to the ecstasy of the Sublime of God's love language which comes to us in many ways and at many times.
So, let us take comfort that we cannot ever be separated from the Word of God which surrounds us today. Amen.
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