Then Simeon
blessed them, and he said to Mary, the baby’s mother, “This child is destined
to cause many in Israel to fall, but he will be a joy to many others. He has
been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. As a result, the deepest thoughts of many
hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul.” (Luke
2:34-35)
As I was reading this passage from Luke
this morning, in which Simeon tells Mary about the amazing future of the baby
Jesus, I remembered another passage from Hebrews
about the power of God’s word:
For the word of
God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword,
cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our
innermost thoughts and desires. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked
and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.
(Hebrews 4:12-13)
As I pondered these passages, I realized
that it’s no wonder, considering what Simeon and Hebrews say, that the people of
Galilee hearing the Sermon on the Mount were saying this:
When Jesus had
finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching,
for he taught with real authority—quite
unlike their teachers of religious law. (Matthew 7:28-29 et al)
That “real authority” was the word of God
in the flesh speaking to them. Every
word Jesus spoke was God speaking, so of course it would go straight to the
hearts of all those who listened like a sword . . . or a laser, to use a more
modern analogy. And some who heard
wouldn’t like to have what was in their hearts exposed, and others would be
encouraged and comforted to have these words touch their hearts, maybe because
some would hear grace, and some would hear truth.
And the Word
became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only
begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
The grace would bring joy, but the truth
would be difficult.
It’s amazing to me how the same words can
be so different depending on how we hear them.
This is one of the reasons I love having the opportunity to talk about
the Bible with people. We all hear and
see God’s word a little differently, depending on what’s in our hearts and minds
at the time. That timeliness is another
reason why the words of the Bible are so alive and powerful and timeless. This is the mysterious and wonderful work of the Holy Spirit living in us.
Maybe I am fascinated by this idea of the
piercing potential of Jesus’ words because I am a reader and a writer, one who
seeks to find and share the power of words.
Even though I read and write prose, I love how words can point to a
beauty that transcends the words themselves like poetry, just like how individual
notes of music put together create something that transcends the notes
themselves. This I think is in essence what it means to be spiritual--being open to the experience of this transcendence, and appreciating its beauty. If this happens with words and notes of human
making, how much more powerful it must be when this happens with words of
divine origin. Surely this is what
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was thinking about when he said that the “proclaimed word
is not a medium of expression about something else, something which lies behind
it, but rather it is the Christ himself walking through his congregation as the
Word.”
Maybe this is what Cornelia Funke was
thinking about when she wrote Inkheart, a story in which some people have the power to truly bring words to
life. When the people in the book with
this gift read a story aloud, the characters in the story come out of the story
and are stuck in the real world until another reading puts them back. You can imagine the complications that
result. I wonder if any of us have read Jesus to life
out of the Bible and then wished we could quickly put him back rather than deal
with his grace and truth. But oh how he
lives on and on as those words echo through our hearts and minds and lives.
May you hear and see Jesus as you hear and
read his words today and every day, and know the power of his word to bless and
comfort and heal and reveal, and find in them grace and peace.
\VELT-shmairts\ noun, often
capitalized
