Use Your Words

Text: Jeremiah 1:1-10 January 28, 2006

Words matter. They are not just ways to label the world. They influence how we see the world. What categories we have for things. How we perceive things, how we perceive time. People—like advertisers or politicians—try to put words in our brains so that we will see the world and our place in it in a particular way. When we see things, we attach them to categories we already have words for. New ideas take a while to take hold because they either demand new words or new ways of using old words.

The words for things we think a lot about seem to take up a lot of space in our heads, and things that are not so important take up less space. There is less chatter there. But the reverse is true, too. If we spend a lot of time with the words of an idea, we begin to think a lot about it. Partly, that’s what education is. Partly that’s why TV is so powerful. And books. It makes a difference in your head depending on whether you read a lot of murder mysteries or The New York Times or Consumer Reports or the Bible.

It turns out the on the piano, in the key of C major all the notes are played on the white keys. C D E F G A B C. In the key of A minor, also, all the notes are played on the white keys. A B C D E F G A. Same notes. This is pretty “duh” if you know music, so please bear with me a moment. But if you know nothing about music, as I know nothing, you might find this pretty mysterious, as I did until last week, when I read a book explaining it (the book is called This Is Your Brain on Music). How do we know, if the scales are exactly the same, in which key a song is written? The answer is that in a song in C major the note C is played a lot, and played strongly, and played longer, and that the song returns to it. And a song in A minor, it is the A that is played lots, and loud, and so forth. The note that gets the most attention is a good clue to our brains about the key. It is the same with ideas. The words that get the most attention in our brains tell us what ideas are important to us.

Last week I went to a conference at the new convention center in Boston. The half-day program was sponsored by Microsoft in order to tell everybody about the new version of Microsoft Office that they are releasing. I’m a little embarrassed to admit to you that I went to this conference, and I can’t quite say why I did. It was my history as a techy, maybe, that drew me there. You know I like to think about technology, but this was kind of an overdose of it. The people there were professional technology managers, designers, and engineers.

What was amazing to me was not the software, which it turned out I didn’t really care much about. What was amazing was that it seemed to me that in many ways people had come to the convention center to worship. Not that Microsoft was like a god—far from that. But that the attitude of many of the guests was worshipful. They were there because they had a deep-seated need to know important things that affected their lives in significant ways. They came for guidance. They came for truth. They came for a way to behave, a way to live, that would give them a kind of peace in their work. They came to be nourished and energized. As someone might come to church.

I imagined what was going on in the minds of the guests. They had come to sit for at least three hours, six for some who stayed all day. What I saw—and I admit I’m just making this up—I saw a bunch of emotions. I saw boredom and anxiety. I also saw desire, a kind of lust for this technology. And coupled with that a disgust at themselves for these desires. I also saw ideas, revelations, understanding; I could see people imagining solutions, possibilities. Some had come for salvation: help me!, I’m in a pickle, show me the way out. And in some I saw a sense of dislocation. What am I doing here? What does this have to do with my life, my family, my children, my worries about the war, the kind of world I want?

Microsoft’s purpose in this conference was evangelical. That is, they had hoped to spread the word, the good news about Microsoft Office. (It is not an accident that technology companies have people called “Evangelists.”) They hoped to fill the heads of the people there with Microsoft kind of words. To think in the key of Microsoft, so to speak. Microsoft wanted people to look at the world of their own work and the problems they face with Microsoft eyes. So that when they saw something, they would think about it in terms of Microsoft products.

Except for the details, my fellow conference goers were like the people that the prophet Jeremiah was sent to talk to. Jeremiah’s audience probably wasn’t worried about Solutions Management or Continuous Content Replication, but I’m sure they had other things on their minds that were more appropriate to the age. Crops and rituals and family feuds—or whatever. Things in their world that were important, scary, and confusing. In other words, they were just ordinary people. Seeking guidance for daily tasks and decisions, a way of life, and salvation from fear and pain.

The prophets that God calls in the Bible are by and large ordinary people. Moses was embarrassed about the way he talked, David was a young shepherd, Isaiah a man of unclean lips. Jeremiah was a twelve-year-old boy. “I’m only a boy,” he said when God calls him. They were nothing special. Just ordinary people like you and me.

We are like these prophets. Hesitant to speak about things that are important to us. We are, after all, Lutherans. And some of us Yankees, to boot. We are hesitant, perhaps, to talk about our faith and our relationship with God. We are like Jeremiah, who says, “I don’t know what to say.”

It is usually not the knowing but the saying that is working against us here. We know what to say about all sorts of complicated things in our lives, things about how things work, how they ought to work, why they work the way they do. We are good at knowing and for many things in our lives, good at saying. But not so good, we think, at saying about faith.

But we don’t have to think we are good at saying, any more than Jeremiah did. Partly, because God can do the saying. “I have put words into your mouth,” God tells Jeremiah. And partly, because God tells us to. “You shall speak whatever I command you,” God tells Jeremiah. But mostly because people need to hear us.

It makes a difference—to me and to the world—which words are in my head. I can be thinking about Windows Vista, or OS X Leopard, or Ubuntu—all computer operating systems. When I think of operating systems, those words look to me like answers. Or I can be thinking about what God has done, or what God is showing me and what God wishes I would do. Or what God is showing Faith and what God wishes Faith would do. When I think about God, the words look to me mostly like questions.

We all are called to speak because it is good for people to have lots of God-words in their heads. To think in the key of God more than the key of operating systems. And we are the ones—not the only ones, but some of the ones at least, to help put God-words there.

What if we read Jeremiah replacing the Jeremiah with Faith Lutheran Church? It would go like this:

Before I formed Faith Lutheran Church, … I knew it, and before it was built, I consecrated it; I appointed it a prophet to the nations. Then Faith said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a small church.” But the Lord said to Faith, “Do not say, ‘I am only a small church; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid …

How would that be?

Or better, what if you put your own name where Jeremiah’s is. Think along with me: “Before I formed <your name here>, I knew <your name here>. I appointed <your name here> to be a prophet. Then <your name here> said, “I do not know how to speak. I am only an ordinary person. ” But the Lord said, Do not be afraid. I am with you.

Everybody is like the people at the computer conference. Everybody has a deep-seated need to know important things that affect their lives in significant ways. Everybody longs for guidance, for truth. Everybody wants to know how to behave, wants a way to live, that will give them peace.

You don’t know all the answers, but you’ve thought hard about the questions. And you have words in your head that maybe they have not heard yet, but long to hear in their own heads. You and I, we are ordinary people. We are the prophets.

Speak up! Do not be afraid. God is with you.