Action Words

3rd Sunday after Epiphany
January 27, 2019

Sometimes we feel like there are too many words and not enough action. But sometimes words are the action. While we don’t want to just sit around and talk about things, there are times when a carefully spoken word changes the reality around us. This is called performative speech. Think marriage vows…with the words, “I do,” promises are made and someone proclaims a sentence that in fact makes a couple married when they were not before the words were spoken. Or “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” With word, and, yes, water, a person becomes baptized. Or much simpler and ordinary: “I promise to do the dishes tonight.” The dishes aren’t done, but a promise now exists because it has been spoken. Or when the promise is broken, someone says, “I apologize.” And, perhaps, “I accept your apology.”

But let’s be honest about this kind of speech – it’s not always so joyful. “You are under arrest. I sentence you to prison. We declare war. I resign. You’re fired.” All these things create a new reality in their being spoken, a reality perhaps at least someone doesn’t want to be created. Speech can create, but it can also un-create. Though it’s not technically an example of performative speech, hate speech and even simple name-calling creates or uncreates a reality, too. “I hate you. You’re worthless. We don’t want your kind here.” It speaks into being un unwelcome or hostile environment. And heard enough times, speech like that – and much worse, of course, that doesn’t deserve repeating – can shape those who hear it such that they internalize it. Someone else’s words create internal experiences for us that change and shape who we are – for better or worse.

Today’s readings are full of performative speech. In the book of Nehemiah, which even the most active of Bible readers rarely find themselves reading, we hear the story of God’s people returning from exile. There had been generations of failed leadership, tribal struggles, war with neighboring peoples. And, as often happens, an empire emerged that was powerful enough to destroy what was left and drive at least many of the people away from their homeland. Generations more lived in a foreign land struggling to find new expression for their faith in a different context. And now, some of the people have returned to Jerusalem. They have tried to make a new life in a home that they have known only in the stories of their grandparents and great-grandparents. They are trying to negotiate the ways their faith has grown differently than the faith of those left behind. They are trying to seek hope in the midst of ruins just beginning to be rebuilt.

And so Ezra calls them together and together they read. They read the promises of God to their ancestors. They read the stories of liberation from oppression. They read the stories of God’s vision for justice, for rest, for wholeness of person and community. And, just as it does when we gather on Sunday to hear the scriptures read among us, it creates a new or at least renewed existence. To hear the old stories of God’s promises made and fulfilled through all manner of trial and hardship has the power to create faith and hope in us. Words are read, promises are spoken, a new reality is created.

And even more so when Jesus stands in the synagogue to read scripture. He returns to his hometown synagogue now an adult who is beginning a ministry. All the eyes are upon him as he takes the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and finds the place: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of the sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” To people who largely still experienced a difficult life living on the economic margins of the empire it probably sounded like a pipe dream, something far off in a fairy tale land. But Jesus pauses and says to them: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” What they may not yet see is that in reading this, in placing God’s promise yet again in a new place, a new context, Jesus creates the reality of the promise all over again. Speaking the words creates the freedom of which it speaks.

And, yet, their troubles, ailments, poverty persists. The God of life has stood among them and proclaimed their release and yet they remain bound as ever. It’s what we experience to – the already and not-yet of God’s promise. Jesus has come, freedom has been proclaimed. But we remain caught up in all the same kinds of things that perpetuate oppression and poverty. We participate, most of us, as both victims and perpetrators. We are both the ones hurt and the ones hurting. We hold grudges, we cling to privilege at the expense of others, we speak division and violence into being, we alienate parts of the body of Christ by ignoring them, tokenizing them, walling them off. We still live among ruins and feel the weight of captivity.

And yet the words are spoken into our midst every Sunday. Today, in your hearing, the fulfillment of God’s promise. The God who spoke the whole of creation into being, speaks words of liberation and freedom and restoration in our midst, week after week after week. God says, “You are my beloved, with you I am well-pleased.” And it is so. God says, “Your sins are forgiven.” And it is so. God says, “This is my body given for you.” And it is so. God says, “You are blessed.” And it is so.

We so much more easily believe the things that tear us down and tear others down. We live as if to be set free might leave us unprotected and alone. We live as if setting others free might cause us to lose what we have. But into the midst of it all is God speaking to us over and over again, reminding us of the promises of old and speaking them anew in ourtime and place. God is calling us to speak with care, to speak justice and freedom, to speak love and welcome, to speak peace and hope, to speak all those things into existence. But even more than that God is speaking us into being over and over again. Renewing and resurrecting us from our failures and setting us free from the things that bind us, giving us new life every day. And calling us beloved. And when God speaks, it comes into being. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco