Preacher, Rev. Glenn Johnson

WHAT’S IN A WORD?

Genesis 11:1-9

Not too many Sundays ago, our pastor was offering a children’s lesson in the early part of the service. He distributed lollipops, telling the youngsters that they were the kind known as "Sour Warheads". Our mostly-pacifist congregation stiffened noticeably at the name, and one of our members made a comment audibly. I wondered at that, and was, once again, forced to think about political correctness.  It is my hope this morning to get you thinking about language, about our use of it, and about our misuse of it.

Words come to mind when we recall the notorious difference between American Baptists and Southern Baptists: "American Baptists proclaim, ‘there ain’t no hell.’ Southern Baptists reply, ‘the hell there ain’t.’"You and I each know that our words are important. They do communicate, often more than we intend. Words can cause hurt and harm, quite apart from our intentions. Liberation theologians and feminist writers and spiritual leaders from many faiths tell us over and over that the words we use can and do make a difference -- to us personally and, more broadly, in our culture. Words, especially the repeated use of words, do impact attitudes and the ways we see issues.

Words fail us, too. We find often that we have miscommunicated or have been misunderstood. A frantic call to the doctor: "Doc, you must help us. My wife is in the final stages of pregnancy, and her contractions are two minutes apart!" The physician asks, calmly, "Is this her first child?" "No, you idiot, this is her husband!"

The fact that words can hurt has led to our sometimes-misguided attempts to correct that problem, and in many cases, has led to worse language problems than we began with. Someone figured out that the derivation of the word, "handicapped", is literally "cap in hand", which connotes a beggar. That’s not a positive image, so soon thereafter, the word "handicapped" became taboo, and sensitive persons began to use "disabled" in its stead. Then someone figured out that "disabled" connotes "not able to function", so "challenged" became the in-fashion pseudo-speak. People are said to be vertically-challenged, visually-challenged, hearing-challenged, rather than short, near-sighted and hard of hearing. I suggest we have gone too far.  Please bear with me as I try to paint a picture for you of the people of ancient Israel in the wonderful myth we read from the Old Testament. Just like us, they longed to make their mark on the world, to leave their legacy. They were a lot like us.

Visualize, if you will, those ancient Hebrews in their simple bib overalls with bandannas around their necks, wearing Dale Earnhardt baseball caps, as they settled down near the edge of Union County, and began to dig that rich, red clay in order to make bricks. With shovels and mattocks, they loaded their wheelbarrows with that good ole’ boy dirt. One of them even observed, during the digging, that with a little work they could make a decent racetrack out of the site. Before they could race, however, they made bricks….Boren bricks or Kendrick bricks…it doesn’t matter, but they were strong, high-quality bricks.  They planned to pile those bricks one on another until they had a city and a tower with its top in the heavens. ‘Sorta like a Methodist or Presbyterian steeple, right there in the suburbs of Waxhaw. Well, God took a look at what they were doing, and immediately went to the confessional booth. You’ll notice that God did that a lot in the Old Testament.  (my notes say here: ‘sound like God’. I don’t know how. You’ll just have to imagine that I do.) "They have a single language; they understand each other clearly; they communicate without confusion. If I don’t do something, they’ll be able to accomplish anything they choose to do…nothing’ll be beyond their reach. Come, let us go down there (God used to talk to himself like that….. ’let us’… ’go down there’) Come, let us go down there and confuse their speech, so they will not understand what they say to one another." And then the Lord scattered them all over the face of the earth, even unto Tyvola Road in Charlotte, USA.  What a wonderful way to present the trouble we have with words. Like all great stories, it contains many meanings. This tale is a way to put a spotlight on our failures in communications, and to note that those failures may well have started with human hubris. We still engage in babble with one another. Sadly, we seldom realize that we are babbling, but find it easy to recognize babbling in others, especially spouses and children.

Usually, when our words hurt, it was not because we wanted them to. In a sense, words and our use of words reflect the Law of Unintended Consequences. "Unintended consequences" reminds me of the three men who had spent seven years on a small desert island after the sinking of their boat. One day, an ornate bottle washed ashore, and as they passed it from one to the other, suddenly a genie came out of the bottle. "Hi guys….I have no idea which one of you brought me out. Since I want to be fair, I’ll just grant each of you one wish." The first man said, "Gee, I’ve been here for seven long years. I just wish to be back home again." And poof, he was gone. The second man made much the same wish, and poof, he also was gone. With that, the third man said, "gosh, I’ve gotten real fond of my friends over the last seven years. I wish they were back here with me."  We, at least some of us, were raised with the very comforting, warm image of God as a strong, protective male parent. The writer of Matthew claims in the 6th chapter that Jesus’ direct instruction was, "After this manner therefore pray thee: Our Father which art in heaven…." The version in Luke 11 is equally clear: "…one of his disciples said unto him, ‘Lord, teach us how to pray….’ And he said unto them, ‘when ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven….’" Those words stem from, and support, the centuries-old notion that God is masculine. Men and boys invented the concept of an anthropomorphic male deity, and have perpetuated that stereotype and have maintained the domination of women that goes with it. Taken in that sense, those words make Jesus sound like a charter member of Promise Keepers.  Was Jesus a misogynist? Did Jesus hate women? Clearly not. Did he intend to perpetuate hatred of women and abuse of females? I think absolutely not. His relationships with and approaches to women of all classes reveal him to have cared deeply for them. It was not in the nature of Jesus’ dealings with others to accept any group as superior to another, and for that reason alone he would not be a Southern Baptist today….one of those whom I think of as the Taliban Baptist Convention. In truth, much of his ministry was dedicated to overcoming the abuses of the Domination System inherent in his society. But we must acknowledge that his purported words, as offered in what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, serve somewhat to keep males in ascendancy. It may have been unintended, but for 1,700 years of our canon it has added to the burden that women must carry in our world.  So, should we rewrite the Lord’s Prayer? Should its 21st Century liberal American Protestant version begin, "Our parent of either gender, who art in Heaven…."? How far should we go toward political correctness?  It may be enough to recall John Shelby Spong’s words from his autobiography, Here I Stand. He is describing a lecture on Worship to the House of Bishops. "My presentation was designed to break open the sacred mantras we are taught to repeat in worship but (which) are not, in fact, based upon accurate history. For example, the idea that Jesus founded the church, ordained and empowered the Twelve, and intended for certain institutional forms to journey through history is historical nonsense. So is the suggestion found in [Episcopal] liturgy that we pray the Lord’s Prayer because ‘Jesus himself taught us to do so.’ The Lord’s Prayer embodies a definition of Jesus that did not develop until well after his death. I wanted to open worship….my recurring theme would be "the heart cannot worship what the mind rejects."  Intellectually, I agree with Spong. But experientially and practically, I know that I cannot exclude from worship everything that my mind rejects. To do so would be to cut myself off from the rich and challenging understanding of others. For me, the middle road is much wiser. It was for that reason that although I truly struggled with selecting the hymns for today, I finally chose ones that I like, even though each one contains reference to God as our father, and may therefore be abhorrent to some of us.

Like well-meaning people everywhere, we in this faith community struggle to be clear, to communicate accurately, to say what we mean. But sometimes we goof when we set out to correct language, at least partially because the original has significance for another person that is unknown to us.

We at Wedgewood presently struggle with the Doxology. My belief system is such that I deplore all the lyrics, even more than the tunes, and wish we didn’t sing it at all. But our heritage is Trinitarian, and the song is important to many. Some members have suggested that we substitute "God" for "Him" whenever it occurs, and those lyrics are printed in our bulletin when we use the Doxology. Others find that that change does not go as far as they would like, while a few of us struggle to hold on to the lyrics we learned at our grandparents’ side, for the repetition of those words has meaning. In some sort of conflict avoidance, we seem to have decided that each of us should sing whatever words he or she finds important.  In consequence, when we at Wedgewood Baptist Church sing the Doxology, we sound like the folks at the foot of the Tower of Babel. If "discordant cacophony" is not part of your vocabulary, it should be for it’s a good descriptive phrase for our congregation’s performance. It occurs to me that we have gone farther than reason or good sense would permit. Political correctness, like any other virtuous human endeavor, is corrupted and becomes a parody of itself when it is carried to an extreme.  I have in my head an image of God’s saying, "Come, let us go down there and enjoy this rendition of the Doxology, for it proves that things have not changed much since I confused their language out there at the brickyard."  I do not claim to have any final answer to the dilemma posed in these remarks. I do not know when our effort to improve language becomes overkill that destroys communication. I do believe that much of human wisdom is right in valuing the Middle Path, the Golden Mean, …..and in deploring humanity’s tendency to go to extremes, especially in matters of religion. To that end, I will close with the expressed hope that we will, each of us, remain conscious of the need to avoid extremes, especially in our words and the ways we use them. It may help to remember that no words can ever communicate perfectly, and that all words are babble in some sense.  Let us now sing "Blest Be the Tie", knowing that these words contain a reference to God as Father, and that while that term may be simply a metaphor to some of us, it is one which is said to harm half the human race. It is, for that reason alone, painful for many in our congregation. I ask all of us to remain very much aware of that, but not to change the lyrics to this well-known hymn.

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