There are people out there with guns: guns that can put a bullet through a person's brain from several hundred yards away, guns that can pierce through armor, guns that can bring down an entire city block with a single shot. But they aren't the most powerful things out there.
There are people out there with computers: computers so fast they can do a billion calculations in a millisecond, computers so powerful they can monitor the medical equipment of a hundred medical facilities simultaneously, computers so intelligent they can actually perform microsurgery. But they aren't the most powerful things out there.
The most powerful person is not necessarily the one standing there with the biggest gun; the most powerful person is not necessarily the one with his finger on the launch button of a nuclear warhead; the most powerful person is not necessarily the one standing over a supercomputer with pens stuck in his front pocket. Actually, the most powerful entity is the one who has command over his words, who uses her words carefully and wisely. It's the person who knows that kind of massive power is vested in these seemingly puny little words.
Words can build up; words can tear down; words can burn bridges; words can build bridges. Words can create energy, words can harness energy, words can create and mold and blend and syncretize; words can heal. But words can also destroy and humiliate and humble and crush and blow away the good work that a good person has spent a lifetime trying to achieve. Words can implode all that down in the length of time it takes to blink an eye.
Certain words are so powerful, all one need do is verbalize them contextually to create an explosive situation. Mention the "N" word to an African-American. Call a Jewish person a lampshade. The first word is a derivative of the Latin word for black. It seems harmless enough. The second word refers to something that controls light. But unless you have a history of slavery and rampant discrimination, and unless your entire race and religious identity was almost wiped in the ovens at Auschwitz, you'll truly never know the power of these words.
This leads us to the word that Jesus calls Himself in this morning's text: "Lord." Personally, I've never had a bit of a problem with the word "Lord." My guess is that most of you haven't either. And until 20 years ago, I never would have guessed that ANYONE would have ever been troubled by the word Lord. But that was until my first year of seminary when I encountered a topic that was called inclusive language.
Inclusive language is the attempt to express words in a manner that minimizes bias either in terms of gender or race. The most glaring example of this is the way historically people referred to people. Take the word "man" and "mankind" for example. Mention the word "man" in the past and one would think of that word in two ways: an adult male specifically, and the human race in general. The Psalmist, for example, asks God, "What is MAN that Thou art mindful of him?" Most people thought that the Psalmist was talking about people in general. Most women didn't break out in hives to be grouped in with an entity called MAN
.But the Hebrew and Greek languages are, as you might have guessed it, a wee bit more specific when it comes to word usage. The Greeks have a word for a guy, a man, a baby of the male gender called ander. I'm not making a pun: the Greek word for man, ander--as is the case for many Greek and Latin words--was co-opted into other European languages and ended up in the Germanic and Scandinavian as the word "man." What is the most common last name in Minnesota? Anderson. And Anderson literally means "son of a man."
The Greeks have another word that was translated for the longest time into the word "Man" but really means people in general. This is the word "anthropos," from which we get the word anthropology, "the study of humankind in all its aspects, especially human culture or human development."
Proponents of inclusive language assert that the term describing people in general should be the "human" instead of "man." When the text refers to a guy, a male, then by all means, use the word "man." Personally, I'm all in favor of using anything that will facilitate better communication.
But inclusive language doesn't stop there. Many, but probably not all, proponents of inclusive language believe that God should not be referenced with male terminology. They believe, for example, that God should not be called "Father." Why? Well, God isn't specifically a male. God is God and not a human. Biologically, God is neither male nor female. And a father is, biologically, a male.
Why the big fuss over using male terminology with God, other than the fact that He really isn't specifically a He? Much of it has to do with how many men (males, guys) have treated females throughout the ages. Some people believe that society has been overwhelmingly male dominated, that males (men, guys) have shoved women and children around and subjected them to near slavery.
Is there any validity to this? Of course. One need not look very far to see a lot of men who beat their wives and children, bully them, abandon them, and treat their Hostess Twinkies with more love and respect.
Inclusive language adherents believe that assigning male terminology to God is tantamount to representing God with the same tendencies and mannerisms of wife beaters and deadbeat dads. They don't want to pray to God the Father if it spurs images of a father is a cruel and abusive lout. They don't want to refer to God as a "He" when so many of the he's in their life are such creeps and slimeballs.
Their solution is to castrate traditional language where God is called Father and to substitute the word "Creator" instead. The term "Son" is definitely male, so it is substituted with the term "Redeemer." Some go as far as to take out the word describing the third person of the Holy Trinity, Holy Spirit, and replace it with the word "Sustainer." Thus the old formulary, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is replaced by the new formulary Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.
And that leads us up to the question that Jesus asks: "Why do you call Me Lord, Lord, and don't do what I tell you?" You see, many proponents of inclusive language go spastic at the mere mention of the word "Lord." The word Lord is associated with "lording it over others." It draws connotations of forcing others to do things against their wills. It gives the impression of enslaving others and ruling over others for less than altruistic reasons.
Four generations ago, my paternal ancestors--the Brown and Graham clans--left Scotland and came to America in great part because they deplored the class system in Great Britain. They didn't like the fact that you were second-class citizens if your name wasn't Windsor; they couldn't handle the fact that your mobility was determined whether or not you were nobility. They detested how a small group of people could live in luxury at the expense of a large group of people who worked to keep the rich rich and who got little or nothing in return. And so they came here. Some of them stayed in Pennsylvania, some migrated to eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. They came in large part because they didn't want others lording it over them. I have a feeling that my grandfather, Benjamin Graham Brown, could not handle calling some uppity British nobleman "Lord Montrose."
If my impression of a lord is a member of the British House of Lords, then I might have a little trouble with Jesus' words here. But I can honestly say that all of us, 100% of us, more than the sum total of all our parts have trouble with this statement of Jesus: "Why do you call Me Lord, Lord and do not do what I tell you?"
This is where the rubber meets the road. We all have trouble calling Jesus "Lord" because the mere assignation of that title to Him, the mere addressing God as Lord, has some radical strings attached to it. When we call Jesus "Lord," it means that we do what He tells us to do. It means turning over final authority in our lives over to Him. It means writing over to God the ultimate say in what we do and how we do it. Allowing Him lordship over our lives is the most difficult thing you'll ever do.
The real sin in the Garden of Eden boils down to this: Adam and Eve didn't do what God told them to do. Adam and Eve believed THEY, rather than God, knew what was best for their lives. Adam and Eve believed they could do a better job at being God than God could do. Our dear old, great, great, great (etc.) grandparents were exiled because their palace coup was an attempt to dethrone God from His throne. All of us do this when we say to God, "I'm not going to let You be Lord."
This may sound sacrilegious, but it's true. We come here on Sunday mornings and sing hymns like "Fairest Lord Jesus" and pray a prayer called "The Lord's Prayer." Yet every last one of us tells God things like,
"You can be Lord of my life here, but my finances, nah, that's off limits to You."
"You can be Lord of my life on Sunday mornings because I know You want me at worship, but You can't be Lord of my schedule the other six days."
"You can be Lord of my life in terms of whether of not to invest in T-Bills, but my life goals are off-limits. You, of all entities, know I've got important things to do. I can't possibly get them done as long as You're meddling in my life."
The word "Lord" in Greek is a derivative of the word kyros, which means ultimate authority. When you call Jesus "Lord," you are assigning Him authority of your life. You're turning the say-sos in your life over to Him. You are earmarking His Word as the guideposts of your life. You are turning over the blueprints of your life and designating Him as both Architect and Builder.
Once upon a time, I was a technician for what is called a geotechnical engineering firm. Geotechnical is a combination of two Greek words. Geo means earth. Technical is from the Greek word meaning to craft. Geotechnical engineers are people (note how I'm using inclusive language here) who lend their expertise on how best to use the earth, the ground, and the soil when building a foundation.
Down in West Virginia, there were people who wanted things built and there were people who built things. Some of these builders were like some of the inclusive language proponents: they didn't want to be lorded over. Some of them didn't like being told by somebody else how to build a foundation. Some of them were like people in general: they thought they knew more how to build a foundation than someone with expertise and know-how. Why pay a guy with a degree 50 bucks an hour? Any buffoon can dig a hole and put a structure on top of it.
And so every year, builders would go on mountaintops and valleys and willy-nilly bring in their earth-moving equipment and bulldozers and backhoes. They would scoop out the earth and mold it. Concrete footers and slabs were poured and formed. Hundreds of thousand of dollars were spent building houses and warehouses and office buildings on those foundations. And every year, the rains would come down and the ground underneath those structures would give way and those buildings would collapse. And if that didn't happen, every year the rains would not come and the soil would become bone dry and the ground underneath those structures would give way and those buildings would collapse.
What would happen then? Those who had acted foolishly would wisely come running to Alfred C. Ackenheil and Associates, my employer. We would send out people who would gather samples of the soil and the concrete and we would say, "Well, you built your house on soil that was too sandy." "You built your house on a faultline on top of soft shale." "You built your structure on clay that is way too wet for this kind of a building." These same people would bring out their bulldozers and their backhoes and their earthmoving equipment and tear down everything they built. And then, with the data and expertise of which they paid through the nose to obtain from Alfred C. Ackenheil & Associates--which would not have been nearly as costly had they consulted with Alfred C. Ackenheil & Associates to begin with--they would rebuild. Most of the time, they got it right the second time around.
And the question remains: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to Me, hears My words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. "But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house."
Why did the foolish man build his house upon the sand? I think it might be because he was like the rest of us. There may have been a time where he called Jesus "Lord" but Jesus didn't answer his prayer the way he wanted. He may have called Jesus "Lord" and Jesus may have led him to places he didn't want to go. And so out of sheer disobedience or disappointment or willful stubbornness, he built his house upon the sand. And when life really got tough, it all came out from underneath him.
But here's the thing about Jesus. I believe that no matter how bad things are, now matter how the world around and underneath you seems crumbling, no matter how much you've built is crashing down all around you, you can always go and say, "I acted so foolishly." And I believe Jesus will always come and repair what has collapsed.
It's never too late to tear down that which you've built foolishly, you're never too old to begin building wisely on the foundation that is Jesus Christ. That's wise no matter what language you use.
© Rev. Duane Brown, 2004
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