[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a guest post from Daniel Grothe. He is an associate pastor for theMILL. He oversees small groups and theMILL at Northern Hills. He has a wife named Lisa, a daughter named Lillian and a son on the way whose name is yet to be disclosed. I thought this was an excellent follow-up to last week's post Must Reads for Every Pastor. Enjoy.]
Lillian, my twenty-three month old, has changed the way I talk, or at least the way I think about talking. Thankfully, since she has come along I have not had to scrub many words from my vocabulary, but I have had to work on using them more correctly, more literally. I learned this lesson when I told her, an 18-month-old at the time, to “hit the rock.” In my vernacular it means “hit your fist against my fist,” much like Michael Jordan and John Paxson used to do after connecting on a fast-break, alley-oop dunk. In Lillian’s mind a rock is the hard substance, fun to chew on and throw, that outlines the perimeter of our yard. She was beginning to grasp its meaning—until I messed it up by using the aforementioned slang phrase. Her progress in her quest to successfully acquire language was temporarily impeded by her “silly daddy.”
The loss of and change in word meaning was not unfamiliar to Jesus.Take for instance the misunderstanding of the colossally important word, Messiah. Scripture and historical evidence point to the fact that a large portion of people (the sword-swinging, ear-severing apostle Peter included!) interpreted the word Messiah through a political filter. That may be why Jesus used the word sparingly, not wanting to give cause for the perpetuation of its misuse. This might also partially answer why Jesus didn’t want certain people to disclose who healed them because Messiah, to them, was skewed—a political over-thrower and power gatherer!
The irony should not be lost on us—Jesus, the “Word made flesh,” could not keep the word that most accurately described him from being redefined and misconstrued, even among his closest friends. As sad as that is, should we really be surprised? We are pros at this work of redefinition. Our market-driven culture has successfully changed the word “beauty” from an inner wholeness displayed outwardly into an utter neglect of the inward for the sake of the outward.
Vocationally, I encounter this on a daily basis. The title “pastor” gives me the opportunity to be with people who have real desires and needs; they need a wedding performed, want a nagging habit obliterated, hope for an answer to their crisis at work or home. This is one of my favorite things to do and a great honor. But here’s the reality—some of these people don’t want anything to do with God. They just want their wedding done, their habit gone, their crisis fixed; and they’ve been trained to come to the pastor for this. The problem? Historically, pastor has never designated one who dispenses helpful products to efficiently meet consumer needs. They can get a wedding cheaply done in Vegas or find a “quick fix” for their problem on late night infomercials. Pastors are called to be spiritually-minded companions, able to encourage and, in some cases, challenge people to live lives of obedient submission to Jesus...to the Messiah.
Lillian’s experience and Jesus’ reality direct our attention to a critical issue—namely, the recovery of words. In The Contemplative Pastor, Eugene Peterson says that pastors “treat words with reverence, stand in awe before not only the Word, but words, and realize that language itself partakes of the sacred.” But it’s not just pastors who hold this responsibility; we’re all in on this and the stakes are high. Words must be treated as sacred. Why? Because they are the life-forming or life-destroying tools we use most often and in our most important work—the work of engaging with a human soul.
Is what I am talking about easy, this work of being faithful to the meaning of words? Absolutely not. Our understanding of words is largely informed by our unique histories and experiences. A child who is savagely beaten by a hot-headed father or neglected by an abdicating mother has no other grid for processing the meaning of the word “nurture.” However, nurture, regardless of one’s unique lens, must ultimately transcend personal experience. The meaning of words cannot be subjective at base, left to be defined by the whim of a father’s actions or a culture’s ever-changing preferences.
For all of you literature lovers out there, does this mean we should castrate our vocabularies and do away with imagination, mystery and poetry, settling for a strictly literal mode? Not at all. (I’d rather attempt climbing Kilimanjaro in the middle of a mudslide than read literature with pulse-less words.) What I am saying is that, as believers, we must recognize and take the “exact or primary meaning” of words seriously.
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