IV Epiphany
February 1, 2009
The Ven. Richard I Cluett

Deuteronomy 18:15-20 + Mark 1:21-28

This morning I want to use a few of my words to talk about the Word of God and I know that is a daunting task I have set for myself, but I am going to step out on the Word of God.

“Words, words, words, I am so sick of words…” were the words of Eliza Doolittle, in the musi-cal, My Fair Lady, and those words are basically what the people of God were saying to God about “the Word of God” in the reading from Deuteronomy. “No more. God’s Word is too pow-erful, too demanding, too real, too personal, to close, too much what God wants and not enough what we want, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Which is, really, an understandable human response.

God’s word is powerful. God’s word can be overwhelming. God’s word sometimes is too per-sonal. God’s word sometimes is too demanding, and too relentless, too stark, too true. It gets in your head, it gets in your gut, and it gets eventually into your heart. It can be too much. It can be too hard, sometimes, to hear the word of God and then to bear the Word of God, too live with it. That was the experience of God’s people told in the Deuteronomy.

And we know what they knew. You cannot run from, you cannot hide from, you cannot turn off the Word of God. It just keeps on coming. Or do you disagree?

Do you think perhaps the word of God takes a holiday? Leaves the scene from time to time? Or takes a hike when God is fed up with us? No. We have learned that God is faithful. Won’t leave. Won’t give up. Called the “Hound of Heaven,” God is.

God’s word is eternal. It’s there – always there. We may not hear it, but it is there. If the word is rare in these days or on any days, it is because we have blocked it out, sort of like the Voice of America radio station is blocked out of Cuba. But like the VOA, it is possible to shut it out, but you can not shut it off.

So what the people of Israel tried to do was to tone it down. They wanted an intermediary who would stand for them in God’s presence and receive the Word of God, and then who would re-cast it, reframe it, rephrase it, humanize it, tenderize it, downsize it so that it becomes palatable to God’s people in a more comfortable form.

And so God called Moses to be the intermediary, and he became the greatest of all the prophets of Israel. But what people discovered was that the Word of God delivered by Moses was still the Word of God. It still had power – power to create, power to move nature and kings and armies and God’s people; power to reveal God’s will, power to reveal God’s reign in the midst of life.

When Moses spoke as Moses you could tell it was Moses. Like when I speak as Rick, you know it’s only Rick. When Moses spoke God’s Word you could tell it was God’s Word. Theologian Karl Barth said, “There is a yawning gulf with no fellowship or comparison possible between God’s Word and all other words. God’s word works wonders.”

Eventually “the word was made flesh and dealt among us, full of grace and truth.” We learned new things about God, experienced the power of God’s Word in new ways: healing ways, re-demptive ways, life-creating and life-changing ways.

The Word has the power to confront and overcome evil and to restore humankind into a relation-ship with God where each of us can hear the Word of God as Jesus heard it, himself. “You are my child, my beloved.”

Because of Jesus we know that God has said to each of us and continually says to each of us, “You are my child, my beloved.”

And those words have the power to move us deeper in God’s kingdom, deeper in God’s world, deeper into meaningful relationships with those around us and with those who live far, far away from us. Power to move us out from our self-centeredness, self-conceit, self-delusion, and self-gratification.

Some of you know of the marvelous poet Maya Angelou who wrote a memoir titled Wouldn’t Take Nothin’ for My Journey Now.

“One of my earliest memories of Mamma, of my grandmother, is a glimpse of a tall cinnamon colored woman with a deep, soft voice, … each time Mamma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said, ‘I will step out on the word of God.’

“The depression, which was difficult for every one, especially so for a single black woman in the South tending her crippled son and two grandchildren, caused her to make the statement of faith often.

“She would look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and tell her family in particular and the world in general, ‘I will step out on the word of God. I will step out on the word of God.’ … I grew up knowing that the word of God had power.”

“(But) In my twenties … God didn't seem to be around the neighborhoods I frequented.

“One day a teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, asked me to read to him. I was twenty-four, very eru-dite, very worldly. He asked that I read from Lessons in Truth, a section which ended with these words: ‘God loves me’ I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, ‘Read it again.’ I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, "God loves me." He said, ‘Again.’

“After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority?

That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me…”

The power and possibility of the Word of God. Don’t deny it. Don’t close yourself off from it. Seek it, eagerly. Hear it. Crave it. Wait for it. Don’t let it pass you by.

God would speak a Word to each us – maybe it will come in the night hours, or in the reading of scripture, or in the bread broken and the cup shared, or in the voice of another, or in the face of a stranger, or perhaps in the silent spaces when we make ourselves ready to hear the Word that is always there.

Listen for it and “step out on the Word of God”.