Minister: Marv Vose

Some of Life's Most Impossible Words

John 1:1-5, 14-18



            When our kids were little, they had the typical fascination with animals.  They just loved animals and because of that, we would go to the zoo on occasion.  It didn't happen too often, but they always enjoyed it when we did go. 

            One year, we went at just the right time.  There were all kinds of baby animals.  There was a baby giraffe, a baby hippo, and a baby antelope.  There was even a baby gnu only 20 minutes old.  The kids were excited!  To see the wonder on their faces was really neat. 

            I remember asking my son what his favorite thing was about the zoo.  You know what his answer was?  I thought he would have picked one of the baby animals.  But that wasn't it.  His favorite thing was the garbage truck that was there picking up trash.  You never now what to expect from kids.

            One summer when our son was about three or four, we spent a week at a cottage in the mountains and the cottage had a hummingbird feeder.  I'm sure you've seen those contraptions.  It is just a glass bottle with some feeders at the bottom.  You put red sugar water into the bottle to attract the hummingbirds.  And this one worked really well!  There were hummingbirds coming all of the time!  They would fly up, drink some of the nectar and then fly away again.  But whenever our son saw one feeding, he would get excited.  He would jump up and point and yell, "Honey bird!"  Needless to say, after all of that commotion, there were no hummingbirds left in the near vicinity.

            Chuck had lots of trouble wrapping his tongue around "hummingbird."  He just couldn't quite get it.  So he settled for "honey bird," as in the land of milk and honey.   We decided that really wasn't too bad a name for them, because they were drinking nectar.

            Most of us have trouble with some words.  We may say "nucculear" rather than "nuclear".  "Aluminum" is another word that people have trouble with.  Or may they say "bidness" instead of "business."  That's really not a big deal.  Most people understand what we are talking about anyway.

            But there are other words that, if they are not said, can cause real problems.  Over the years, Chuck has had trouble with other words.  I'm not talking about pronunciation.  I'm talking about being able to say some of those difficult words.  For a long time, he had a really tough time say, "I'm sorry."  I don't know that it is easy even today, but it is easier than it once was. 

            Most of us have trouble with that one.  We just don't like to say it.  It's not because we can't pronounce it, but because it is so humbling.  We have to admit that we made a mistake, or did something wrong.  And we don't like to do that.

            But it is very important that we can begin to say things like that.  One writer put it this way.  "The more I think about it, the more it seems that the capacity to apologize is probably one of the most civilized attributes of being human."

            I hadn't thought about it in those terms before, but that is probably right, isn't it?  To be able to apologize, say "I'm sorry" is one of those simple yet difficult phrases that does so much to hold our civilization together.  Without it we move closer to chaos and anarchy.

            But that still doesn't make it easy, does it?  Even if it is important and civilized, it is still hard.

            I still remember a "discussion" my wife Caroline and I had.  We do that every once in a while.  We had been "discussing" for a while and then there was a period of silence and I started to think about what we were talking about.  I decided that I would really be a Christian and apologize.  Once I had done that, I assumed that Caroline would probably say something like, "Oh, no, I was wrong.  It was really my fault."  We would kiss and make up and that would be the end of it.

            So I apologized.  And do you know what she did.  She didn't say what I expected her to say.  She just accepted my apology!  Can you imagine that?  What a rotten thing to do.  I wasn't about to kiss and make up after that! 

            That, of course, was just what she should say.  If someone apologizes, we need to accept the apology.  We need to forgive them and begin to leave the issue behind us.  Now that isn't always easy to do.  Sometimes those are very difficult words as well.  So we had a rule at our house for many years that if someone apologized, then the apology was to be accepted.  You were to say, "That's alright.  I accept your apology."  Sometimes those words were said between clenched teeth, but at least the words were said and the feelings could begin to follow at a later time. 

            Those are hard words to say, aren't they?  But I've got a tougher set.  This is especially tough for men.  How about these words? "I love you."  Now those are really hard words to say.

            Do you remember the fear and the anxiety that accompanies those words when you first said them to your girlfriend or boy friend?  All kinds of awful thoughts went through our heads. "What if they don't like me?  What if they don't say 'I love you' back?  What if?  What if?"  Those are such frightening words.  They expose us.  We have no protection.  We are vulnerable and so we don't say them very often.

            But they are such very important words.  We all need to hear them.  We all need to say them.  If we don't hear them, if we don't say them, then something very important is missing from our lives.

            I remember talking with a husband whose marriage was about to break up.  He had been married for a number of years and there were children involved, but he had almost decided that he did not love his wife and, in fact, had never loved her.

            So I asked what seemed like a reasonable question.  "Why did you marry her then, if you didn't love her?"

            His response took me by surprise.  He said, "I married her because she said she loved me." Now that one I had to think about for a moment, but finally I said, "That doesn't seem like a very good reason for getting married, just that she said she loved you."

            "Well, he continued, "I guess you need to understand how I grew up.  You see when I was a kid, no one ever told me that they loved me."  He paused and then started again.  "I guess that isn't quite right," he said.  "When I was about six years old, I can remember sitting in the back yard, crying my head off.  My mother came out and asked me what the problem was and I told her that nobody loved me.  And she said, 'I love you.'  So I guess my mother told me one time that she loved me."

            And all of a sudden, I understood his life a great deal better.  Here was a man whose whole life had been altered because those difficult words of "I love you" were not a part of his family's vocabulary.  And he entered into a marriage because he needed to hear those words so badly.

            Can you imagine growing up that way?  Lots of people do, because those words are hard to say and their absence has such an effect. 

            Now contrast that with a story about a little girl who grew up with a cleft palate.  She grew up knowing that she was different.  When she went to school, the teasing started.  Her classmates made sure that she knew how she looked to them and to other people.  She had a "misshapen lip, a crooked nose, lopsided teeth" and a funny way of speaking.   She couldn't even blow up a balloon without holding her nose and if she bent over to drink from the water fountain, the water would run out of her nose.

            By the age of seven, she was convinced that no one outside her family could ever love her.  And then she entered second grade.  Mrs. Leonard was her teacher and Mrs. Leonard had this genius for loving her students.  Mrs. Leonard was round and pretty and fragrant.  She had shiny brown hair and warm dark eyes that smiled even on those rare occasions when her mouth didn't.  Everyone adored her!

            Then the time came for the annual hearing tests to be given at school.  Well, this poor little girl with a cleft palate was barely able to hear out of one ear, but she wasn't about to admit to another defect.  So she had figured out how to cheat on the test.

            She had learned to watch the other children and raise her hand when they did during the group test.  But the whisper test required a different technique.  Each child would go to the door of the classroom, turn sideways, close one ear with a finger and the teacher would whisper something from her desk, which the child would repeat.  Then the same thing would happen for the other ear.  But this little girl had discovered in Kindergarten that no one really checked to see how tightly plugged the untested ear was.  So she would just pretend to block her good ear, so she could hear out of it. 

            As usual, she was the last one to be tested.  And she wondered what Mrs. Leonard might say to her.  From previous years, she knew that teachers would say things like, "The sky is blue" or "Do you have new shoes."

            When her turn came, she walked to the door, turned her bad ear to the teacher and then pretended to plug her good ear.  She waited and then came the words that God had surely put into her teacher's mouth.  Seven words that changed her life forever.

            Mrs. Leonard, the teacher she adored, gently whispered, "I wish you were my little girl."  Did you hear those words?  She said, "I wish you were my little girl."  Now there is someone who truly has a genius for saying those difficult, impossible words.  And they changed that little girl's life. (Guidepost magazine)       I don't think those words are even easy for God to say.  How can the God of perfect justice simply say, "I forgive you?"  How can God extend that kind of incredible grace to a people who isn't even sure they need it much less ask for it?  How can the God of such incredible greatness say, "I love you" to such a small and insignificant race of people like us?

            But what is even harder is this.  How can God say it in a way that we can hear it?  How can God who is so grand and magnificent speak those words to us in a way that we can really comprehend them? 

            The answer is in our scripture.  God became like one of us, with all of our limitations and shortcomings.  God came in Jesus simply so we could hear those incredibly difficult words.  And Jesus created all kinds of special ways of saying those words, so that somehow we could catch a glimpse of what God longed to say.  Jesus performed signs and wonders.  He healed people.  He fed the 5000.  He blessed the children.  He created the sacraments for us.  All of these were ways that the God of all creation used to communicate with us. 

            If this still isn't clear enough, let me say it again.  God sent Jesus so that you could hear this. God will forgive all that is past.  And God cares for you with an intensity and a magnitude that we cannot even imagine.    That's the Word of God come to live amongst us.  All of that was a way of saying more than "I wish you were my child."  It was a way of saying, you are my child.  In fact, that's exactly what God said through the prophet Isaiah.  It is chapter 43.  "I have summoned you by name.  You are mine."