The Challenge of Words

"The Challenge of Words"

Genesis 25:19-34
July 13, 2008

These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham was the father of Isaac,
and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the
Aramean of Paddan-aram, sister of Laban the Aramean. Isaac prayed to the LORD for
his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD granted his prayer, and his wife
Rebekah conceived. The children struggled together within her; and she said, “If it is to
be this way, why do I live?” So she went to inquire of the LORD. And the LORD said to
her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the
one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” When her time
to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red, all his
body like a hairy mantle; so they named him Esau. Afterward his brother came out, with
his hand gripping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when
she bore them. When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field,
while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of
game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.

Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was
famished. Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stuff, for I am famished!”
(Therefore he was called Edom.) Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” Esau said, “I
am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So
he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and
lentil stew, and he ate and drank, and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his
birthright.

When I was in college, in the late eighties and early nineties, I was part of the tail end of
a conversation that had started in the early part of that decade in some churches, a
conversation about language and words in Christian worship, especially words that
seemed to excluded half of the human population—that is, women—and even more of
the church, if you keep in mind that women have generally populated the pews of
churches more heavily than men. The eighties seemed to have been the era when
churches and denominations began to argue over the use of inclusive language when
it came to talking about other human beings, and, if they were willing to go to the edge,
to begin thinking about using inclusive language when they named the Divine. It was
an interesting conversation to watch, though, again I only was on the tail end of the
debate, because both sides at that point were incredibly entrenched and passionate
about either changing the language or keeping it the same. One side argued that
language that only uses male pronouns, that only uses Father and Son as the
descriptions of who God is, misses the other side of God, the God who created
humankind in God’s image—and if males and females are both images of God, mirrors
of who God is, then God also has a female side, and so it is appropriate to use
language that reflects this reality. The other side argued that the tradition has
overwhelmingly used only male images of God for a reason—actually, for a variety
cultural and maybe even spiritual reasons—and that language cannot and should not
be changed. God is only a Father, and never a Mother, they argued.

Now, I don’t agree with the latter group, as you can probably imagine, because, like a
lot of people, I think that the exclusive use of male language, that is, only using male
language in our naming of God, has done great harm to women, because, as the logic
sometimes goes, if God is only named using male images, then it stands to reason that
maleness is closer to the divine than femaleness, and thus you have the reason that
males should continue to control and dominate human community—men reflect more
perfectly the God who created all of humankind, ironically enough. I don’t believe that,
and I don’t think that is what God wanted for us human beings. And, so, if you have
listened to how I have used language in my sermons, in my talking about God, it is very
rare for me to talk about God in gendered terms, in male or female terms, though God
is both, and neither, of course. I do that because I don’t want to contribute to a system
that uses God as a way of justifying sexism. Now, do I believe that we should never use
the word Father or Son when referring to Jesus—no, I don’t believe that, because
Jesus used those words, but not because he was emphasizing the maleness of God,
but rather because he was pointing out the radical tenderness of God. The equivalent
word in our language for Father is actually “daddy,” which is a radical way of
understanding of God even back hen. And so we should use words like Father, but we
should also realize that other words are appropriate as well, words like Mother,
pronouns like “she” because they too reflect who God really is.

Now, of course, you and I may disagree about that, and that is fine, but it does show
how powerful words can become, how a simple pronoun can send people on both sides
of the debate into a fit of rage. That debate that raged in the eighties has generally
quieted down, though it flares up every now and then, with both sides doing their own
thing, in their own particular settings. Up until this particular debate about words,
simply words, I don’t think I understood how powerful words really were, and how much
they actually mattered. You often hear people say, “it’s just words. It’s not that big of
deal” but if you start messing with the words that people especially value, you realize
quickly that words are never “just words.” Think about our story today, the one from
Genesis: you have the story of the birth of Esau and Jacob, and the names they
received because of the way they came of the womb—their names reflect who they are,
oddly enough, something typical for their ancient culture.   And then you have this
other story, the one at the end of our text, in which a few words recklessly passed from
one brother to another completely changed the lives of these two men, and their
families, and maybe even the world is changed forever. Esau, the favored son of his
father, comes in from the field, famished, hungry, and he says that for a pot of red stew
will give up his birthright. Now, let me lay out the numbers for you: as the eldest son,
his birthright entitled him to double the second son, so he would have received 66% of
his father’s wealth, while Jacob received 33%. With these simple words, Esau traded
away 33% of his future wealth for a pot of stew. A very stupid thing to do on Esau’s
part, and, let’s be frank here, a very deceptive thing to do on his Jacob’s part, to play
on his brother’s impetuous nature and recklessness with words, in order to swindle his
brother out of a lot of money.

You see, words do matter, and they can cause a lot of trouble. I mean, who here hasn’t
had a moment when we wished we could have taken back something we had said,
something that had caused a rift between you and someone else, a rift that perhaps
has never healed. Or you were on the other end of that slight, those words that cut
you to the quick, and you have struggled to let got of your anger because of what was
said, the betrayal you felt. Even now, there are words others have said to me that I can
still remember, words that I will probably never forget, that hurt me deeply, and
ironically enough, I don’t think the persons who used them really even thought twice
about saying them—to them the words that were said were no big deal. And I know that
I’ve been on the other side of those negative words, where I’ve said something that
caused great harm to someone, or effected someone negatively—sometimes I meant to
hurt someone but most of the time I didn’t even realize the pain I had caused. And yet,
there are other times I’ve said something and it changed a life or two for the better,
something I suspect some of you have experienced as well—you said something,
something that needed to be heard by someone else, you were the vessel God was
speaking through, and years later someone says to you how that simple set of words
help them through this or that particularly difficult moment.

That is the power of words, to heal or to hurt, to create or destroy. Jacob knew the
power of words; he knew that they could change his brother’s life and his life forever, if
only he could get Esau to say the right words, or the wrong words, depending on your
point of view, the words that would change the destiny of these brothers forever. If
Esau is an impulsive oaf, then Jacob is a scoundrel, always trying to get something
meant for another, as in a later, more famous episode where he disguises himself as
his hairy brother Esau in order to get his blind father’s blessing, something very
important in this ancient culture. How sad, really, if you think about it: a family torn
apart for years because of deceptive words and deceptive lives, where people are
forever scrambling to be number one. Competition may be good for the economy, and
it may good in sports, but it’s not so good for families, and when words are used in the
arsenal we use to wage war with each other, then the consequences can be
devastating for all.

But words can also do positive things, they can create, they can do wonders in the
world, they can heal us and keep us alive. Rev. Wogaman tells this story: “A friend of
mine was a prisoner of the Germans during World War II. He was kept in solitary
confinement for a long period in an isolated castle somewhere in Germany. He reports
on the method he used to retain his sanity. On the walls of his room, he wrote from
memory all the Bible verses and hymns and poetry he could think of, the things he had
stored up through the years that now had become his best friends.” (http://www.csec.
org/csec/sermon/wogaman_4301.htm) The words on the wall kept him alive. In the
Gospel of John, when the eternal existence of Jesus is told to us, the image of Jesus is
as the Word, a creative life force that has been around since the beginning of time.
The Word has always been, and it’s creative and life-giving—it doesn’t destroy, but
builds up instead. And that is what God did through this Jesus of Nazareth, when God
spoke into the universe through this man thousands of years ago. Words matter to
God, and they mattered to the Christ and he used words to tell us the truth, even the
difficult truth, and from those words came the possibility of something new, especially
when his disciples put the words into action, when they put feet to his words, to his
words about life and love and God.

And, of course, it’s the putting of those words into actions that has been the difficult
thing for us, hasn’t it? For me, for you, it is a challenge to be both hearers and doers
of the word, of Jesus’ words, and even our words. (James 1:22) All of us have failed
our words, our well-meaning words—we couldn’t keep our vows or promises, we couldn’
t live up to what we said. As a minister, every week I feel the unique burden of that
truth, knowing that I fail more often than I succeed in practicing the words I preach here
very week. But I preach about love and hope even when I am feeling loveless, even
when I am feeling hopeless, because I do believe that our words help to create at least
some of the reality around us. If I speak words about love, about hope, about
goodness, about inclusion, then one day my actions are going to catch up with my
words. Again, our words do create some of our reality—not all of it, surely, but a lot
more than we usually realize.   We’ve all met people who were especially negative with
their words, always downing others or speaking badly about their own lives, never a
positive word to say about others or even themselves—and, oddly enough, their words
seem to help create the reality they actually live in—the words actually construct the
flop house they find themselves living in. And it’s hard to be around them without falling
into their orbit of negativity, and sometimes you just have to walk away because you
realize how their shadows have suddenly infected your own blue skies—they seem to
bring storm clouds whenever they arrive, with their words and with the lives they’ve built
with those negative words. Our words do change things, they have power, they can
create, like Jesus used his words to create, or they can destroy, like Jacob’s smooth
and deceptive words to Esau.

You know, both sides of the debate around using inclusive language in worship are
right: language has real power, it means something, it isn’t something to be simply
dismissed, as though it was “just words.” The fight around pronouns and the names of
God, well, it’s a fight about how to understand the reality of God, and how those words
have the ability to shape our lives and our understanding of what really matters in this
life. I’ve been in congregations that have used inclusive language in worship for so
long now that whenever I worship in new settings where the language is exclusively
male, or the preachers and leaders of worship use only male pronouns for God, it often
feels jarring to me, surprising to me, and I am little taken aback by it—I forget out how
male the language we often use for God is, in settings that are not sensitive to this
issue. Now, I have strong feelings about that issue, and I respect people that don’t
agree with me on this, but I have to admit that changing the way I talked about God
changed the way I understood God, how I experienced God, in this world. For me, it
was a good thing, a positive thing, because the God I meet seemed fuller and more
reflective of the actual world I lived in—God seemed more real to me now after I
changed some of the ways I talked about the most Holy of Holies. To me, it’s a
reminder of how changing our language, changing the way we use words, changing the
very words we use, can often effect our lives for the better. If we always use only one
way of describing something to the exclusion of the other ways, or if we only use
negative words to describe others, or to describe life, or the world, well, we will get that
same negativity given back to us. But if we choose another way, the way of Jesus, and
the way that he used words to lift up, to hold tight, to let go, to free others from their sin,
their negativity, then I think we change our world.

Years ago, in my own life, in a story I have told here before, I decided to stop telling the
story about something that happened to me in the way I had done previously, which
was negatively—it had become a story of all the wrongs that had been done to me.
And I decided to tell the same story in a different way, from the perspective of what I
had learned from that experience, and how God had gotten me through the hell of that
time. Same facts, same story, but instead of a story about crucifixion, it became a story
about resurrection, simply by changing the words I used to tell that story. We have the
power to change much of our lives through the simple use of our words, because they
can be used to create or they can be used to destroy—it is the choice between Jesus’
way of creation new life with words, or Jacob’s way of destroying life with words. Well,
you know what way we should go, so let’s go with the better way, with Jesus’ way of
changing this world, one word at a time. Amen.