• Jeremiah 1:4-10

The prophet describes his call when he was still a young boy.  The Lord speaks directly to Jeremiah and tells him that “before you were born I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah protests that he is just a “boy.”  But the Lord tells him not to underestimate  himself due to his age, because “you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.”  Do not be intimidated.  The Lord “put out his hand and touched by mouth,” Jeremiah testifies.  The Lord tells the boy, “Now I have put my words in your mouth.”  Those “words” will have such power to uproot established nations and plant new ones.

• Psalm 71: 1-6

Because the Lord is my “shelter,” the psalmist begins, let me never be “ashamed.”  He alternates between acknowledging the Lord’s “bounty,” which sustains him, with his personal petitions.  He avers that he was “ordained” and kept his “hope” in the Lord from his “youth,”  indeed “from my birth.”  Out of the womb, he praised the Lord and become “an example to many.”

• I Corinthians 13: 1-13

Paul is outlining the purpose, methodology and structure of the church when he pauses to emphasize that nothing about the church matters, ultimately, without “love.”  Speaking in tongues, prophecy, wisdom/understanding, even “faith, so as to move mountains” are hollow without “love.”  The most ascetic charity or even martyrdom are “nothing” without “love.”  What is this extraordinary thing Paul includes in “love?”    “Love” is patience, kindness, humility, joy in “truth.”  This “love” bears, believes, hopes, endures “all things.”  “Love never ends,” although prophecy and knowledge will fade, because they are always only fragments.  But “when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.”  As a child, I understood as a child, naturally, but as an adult, I stopped with childish ways.  We are fated to see things fragmented, hazy, like looking into a “mirror.”  But when we ” see face to face,” we will finally “know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  Repeating for emphasis and in summary, Paul writes:  “And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

• Luke 4: 21-30

Whereas Matthew and Mark also include stories of Jesus returning to his hometown synagogue, Luke’s version is notable for the way Jesus goes out of his way to antagonize the congregation, who react violently.  The initial reaction to his reading from Isaiah (61:1-2;58:6) and his declaration that “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,”  is appreciation for the “graciousness” of his words.  Some  in the congregation note that they know him as “Joseph’s son.”  Jesus turns the conversation to their obvious question, Why will you not perform miracles here in your hometown as we have heard you have done throughout the Galilee?  Jesus responds that a prophet is never accepted/honored in his home.  Now he becomes offensive.  He recalls an incident from the life of the great prophet Elijah who performed miracles for Gentiles and not for Jews.  This insult infuriates the congregation.  They rush at Jesus, force him out of town to the edge of town (on a “cliff”) and are ready to throw him over.  “But passing through the midst of them he went away.”

These readings and today’s psalm scramble our expectations about who and at what age one knows she or he has been “ordained” to speak God’s word; Jeremiah and this psalmist knew it from birth.  Paul takes the opposite perspective.  As a child he understood as a child, but as an adult he acquired insight and wisdom that only comes with age.  But then he realizes that even our most developed wisdom is fragmented,  hazy.  It will be only when we see God “face to face” that he will discover himself  “as I have been fully known.”  God’s  wisdom, by definition is not humankind’s wisdom, can come at any age and from the least likely source.  Even a child can speak God’s wisdom, according to Jeremiah and the psalmist.  The older we get, we gain some experience, competence and self-knowledge, but we also are surprised to discover that we will never know ourselves “fully.”

Once again, biblical texts leave us in a conundrum.  God’s words are plain enough for a child to speak, but their meaning is unfinished.  God’s words are written in human languages(s), but they are about the ineffable.  For instance, they rant continuously about ‘justice’, about which we think we have some ideas, but then we realize God’s justice is a kind of justice which we can never fully grasp.  Even more daunting, God’s words can have such awful power when spoken  that they can determine the fate of nations, according to Jeremiah, or incite violence, as Jesus encountered in his hometown.  God’s words are irresistible.  They want to be spoken and interpreted.  And some feel “ordained” to do that, even with trepidation about misinterpretation, as the psalmist admits.   Yet, these same words never fully contain final meanings.  Still, they can uproot and re-establish!

The work of Ludwig Wittgenstein ranged throughout human inquiry, from math to philosophy.  His genius was to realize that human beings function only within language.  Therefore, we cannot escape to any dimension greater than language, but, on the other hand, we can accomplish virtually the best and the worst imaginable with language.  Fergus Kerr applies the insights of what many call the greatest philosopher of the Twentieth century to theological interpretation.  In Theology after Wittgenstein, Kerr writes:

“This is the hidden theological agenda of Wittgenstein’s later writings.  In effect, by remarking that theology is grammar, he is reminding us that it is only by listening to what we say about God (what has been said from many generations), and to how what is said about God ties in with what we say and do in innumerable other connections, that we have any chance of understanding what we mean when we speak of God.” (pp 147-148)

What is repeated as God’s words and interpreted as God’s words require the speaker to take full responsibility for her or his interpretation. 

Biblical texts urge/insist that God’s words be spoken.  The same texts also insist that the least likely– the youngest, for example– are capable of saying these words.  These exact same texts, however, carry a warning;  these words, spoken in the Name of God, can cause powerful reactions, for good or for evil, even violence and death.

“Talking about God has to be a reflection on how the word ‘God’ is used…” insists Fergus Kerr (p. 163).  Now might be the right time to read Paul’s admonition that everything else the church says and does is hollow without “love,” whose traits he describes in such specific and concrete detail– humility, patience, perseverance, hope, “truth” wherever it arises, expectedly   or unexpectedly.  The church bears the responsibility to preserve and to read and interpret the word of God in public, which entails a responsibility for the consequences of that interpretation.  The criterion is plain: do our interpretations incite more justice, more “love,” as defined by Paul?  Speaking and interpreting the sacred texts can incite strong reactions, as Jesus experienced in his hometown.  Speaking and interpreting the sacred texts can cause more justice and more love.  The responsibility for the impact of the texts rests with those who interpret  and those who hear.