Big Talk

Text: Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Other texts: Mark 1:14-20

Someone said this past week that one thing that Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama had in common was their intense belief in the power of words.

Martin Luther had the same belief. Luther was a preacher and a teacher. It is hard to preach or teach if you don’t think anything you say makes a difference. Luther said quite a few things. His collected writings, sermons, and other talks fill up a fifty-two volume set of books. I’m sure that Luther loved to talk, but I’m equally sure he loved to talk because he thought that words were a force to transform his world, a world that needed transforming.

Jonah did not believe in the power of words. But he was later convinced. Jonah was told by God to go to Nineveh and speak to the the people there. Proclaim to it a message that I tell you, God says to Jonah. God moves Jonah to action. God moves Jonah to action by saying things to him. He doesn’t poke him with a stick or pull him along with a rope. It is the word of the Lord that makes Jonah go down to Nineveh. God’s words to Jonah are powerful, and by speaking them, God prevails on Jonah to do what Jonah doesn’t really want to do at all.

What Jonah does not want to do is to speak powerfully to Nineveh. But he does. In forty days, he tells the Ninevites, things are not going to be so good around here. And, to Jonah’s surprise and annoyance, the people repent. They change their ways. A whole city is transformed. The whole city fasts, and the whole city starts wearing scratchy clothing. The whole city is transformed. And when God sees what the did, God changes God’s mind. God changed his mind, the passage says, about the calamity that God had said he would bring upon them; and God did not do it.

Jonah’s words were powerful. They changed the world. Jonah was not happy. He had wanted his words to be weak and puny, and to change nothing. Jonah really wanted to see Nineveh get it. Right after this in the story, Jonah sulks about this and complains to God. But the good has already happened, on account of Jonah’s words.

God’s words are powerful. In the book of Isaiah God says

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

Maybe not all words are as powerful as God’s, and maybe not all our words accomplish what we desire, but they are pretty powerful, and they accomplish much.

Words are like filters or lenses. They make sense out of what our eyes record. They make things distinct, separating out the trees from the forest, or making a bunch of disparate trees be one forest. When we name things we see them. How we name them makes us see them as good or evil, useful or useless, indifferent or threatening, possible or impossible.

When we first moved to the city, we met someone at a party who lived near Inman Square. She loved Inman Square. We loved Inman Square. It was one big Inman Square lovefest. But then she asked about our street. What street did we live on? We live on Tremont Street, we said. Her look grew cold. Oh, she said, East Cambridge. And she walked away.

We lived on the wrong side of Prospect Street. Now I have to say that the houses one block east of Prospect. where Tremont is, and one block west of Prospect (which is called mid-Cambridge) are not all that different. Nor are the people who live on one side and the other. But in her eyes, as her eyes saw them, they were. Much as people see others who live across borders, which are often just lines on the ground, or lines of culture, religion, race, or class.

Not only do words determine what we see, they determine what we can do. They constrain us. They are like a template or a jig on a workbench. They define what is right, good, and fitting. Our friend from the party would have been unable to live on our street. The words “east” and “west” have constrained her freedom. Half the city is closed to her. Too bad for her, I’d say. But she pities us. Not only have we not seen or named a crucial difference, in our ignorance we have trespassed, sinned in her eyes. We have mistakenly gone where she could never go.

Not only do words determine what we see and what we can do, they determine what we want. Words are desire, pulling us toward one thing or another. Words are little pieces of imagination, put together to pull us to one future or another. Perhaps after we considered them, our friend’s words have convinced that we should move to mid-Cambridge, where life is grand and people are all happy. I don’t know how you feel about our new president, but by the words he uses—like courage and sacrifice and fairness—he hopes to enlist our imaginations and draw us forward. He hopes to direct our desires.

We do more than listen. We speak. Words move us. And as a result we create the words that move others. Jesus calls Simon and Andrew. But he calls them not just to hear but to say. I will make you fishers of people, he says. I doubt Jesus means that they will trap, net, and ensnare people. I suspect he means that they will gather, inform, and persuade people. That Jesus will speak to the disciples, teach them (disciple means student), and then send them out as apostles (apostle means one who is sent) to teach others, help others see things in a new way, to be free of old boundaries, and to imagine different futures.

We gather later today at Faith’s annual meeting. Why do we do that? (Besides that we have to by law.) When we meet like this, we read reports. We do that because it helps us tell ourselves who we are and what we hope for. We name our roles. The congregation of Faith Lutheran Church. But also the Community of Faith, made up of Faith Lutheran plus the Eritrean Worship Group plus Calvary Praise and Worship Center. Calvary and the Eritrean group are not guests of Faith, but we are all three of us part of one community. We are because we say so. We name it so. We do not say we are a church with young people in it but a church where many people are young. Not a comfortable home for people passing through but a worshiping community where many here are at the beginning of their life’s adventure, and who knows what’s next?

We are a church of Christ. We come here and hear the words of Jesus. And then we in turn speak them to others. We are the disciples and the apostles. The recruits and the recruiters. The guests and the servers. The eaters and the cooks, as we say at Faith Kitchen.

Talk is transforming. It transformed the lives of the people of Nineveh. It transformed the lives of Simon and Andrew. And it transformed the lives of people they talked to. And the people they talked to. And the people they talked to. All the way down, through 2000 years, to us. And the people we talk to.

Last Sunday we discussed being called and listening for God. Listening is good. A good first step. On Tuesday millions of people stood in the cold and listened, and many millions more watched remotely. Eyes filled with tears, and hearts were uplifted. But what happens now?

After listening, it is time to speak. If Jonah had never spoken, Nineveh would not be saved. If Simon and Andrew never preached, we would not be here today. God created the universe, it says in Genesis, by speaking it into existence. The future is made by what we say. Listen. Then speak.