The Last Word?

Inspiration can come to us in many ways, most of them unexpected. Recently I was surprised, not so much by joy as C. S. Lewis would have put it, but by a new, or I should say, renewed awakening to life’s deeper meanings. It encroached upon me from two sources that have been dormant in my life for some time. The first was church. My wife and I started going back to church several weeks ago. A prolonged COVID-imposed hiatus, coupled with our retirement relocation to Denver, conspired to suspend the Sunday morning habit that had marked, and in many ways defined, our lives since college. Recently, however, we overcame our sedentary inertia, got into our Sunday clothes, and went to church. An impressive edifice that had caught our eye and was within an easy drive, it immediately drew us in with its stately, cathedral-like ambiance, its outstanding choir, traditional order of service, and thoughtful pastoral leadership. After five weeks we are starting to feel like we could belong here. Christmas Eve was especially moving, the well ordered liturgy of song, scripture and sermon providing us a rare and welcomed indwelling of the sacred while filling a void we had too long endured.

This return to ecclesiastical roots rekindled my attentiveness to those doorways to reflection that a good homilist can open. An Advent recitation of the poetic prologue to John’s Gospel, with subsequent comparison by the preacher to Genesis 1, set the wheels of introspection turning. The Bible’s first book begins with a litany punctuated by the Deity’s spoken words ushering in each new day of creation,  “Let there be” calling the universe into well-ordered existence. First summoned was light, then sky, then land distinct from the oceans. Vegetation to cover the land came next, followed by creatures to inhabit the seas while planetary lights and timepieces were positioned on the overarching firmament. Finally God ordered into being all manner of birds and animals to populate skies and landscapes, with human beings—made simultaneously in male and female forms—the last to come on stage. While the first chapter of the Bible’s first book raises any number of questions to the scientist, its poetic, liturgical cadence remains both beautiful in structure and uplifting in spirit. Each of creation’s “days,” including its Sabbath conclusion, was ushered in by God’s commanding voice, making it just so, its inherent goodness affirmed at every turn in the judgment of the writer. So when John declared in his gospel that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…” he was reiterating what a poet long before him had sensed to be true in his reckoning of creation’s origin and purpose.

Hearing that connection in church reminded me of another inspiration that had stirred me a few days prior. I have long been a reader and admirer of the late Frederick Buechner--author, teacher, chaplain, minister, and essayist--whose meditations used to be my first email read each day. I had stopped receiving them shortly after we had shifted our hunkered down existence from Texas to Colorado.  Yet they once again began appearing on my computer screen every morning, with serendipitous overtones for me. One of them, in particular, struck my eyes like a heavenly herald bringing assurance to shepherds on a cold winter’s night:

“God never seems to weary of trying to get across to us. Word after word God tries in search of the right word. When the creation itself doesn't seem to say it right—sun, moon, stars, all of it—God tries flesh and blood.

“God tried saying it in Noah, but Noah was a drinking man. God tried saying it in Abraham, but Abraham was a little too Mesopotamian with all those wives and whiskers. God tried Moses, but Moses himself was trying too hard; tried David, but David was too pretty for his own good. Toward the end of his rope, God tried saying it in John the Baptist with his locusts and honey and hellfire preaching, and you get the feeling that John might almost have worked except that he lacked something small but crucial like a sense of the ridiculous or a balanced diet.

“So God tried once more. Jesus as the mot juste of God.

"The word became flesh," John said, of all flesh this flesh. Jesus as the Word made flesh means take it or leave it: in this life, death, life, God finally manages to say what God is and what human is. It means: just as your words have you in them—your breath, spirit, power, hiddenness—so Jesus has God in him.”*

With interest piqued by church and Buechner, my mind took me down one of those rabbit holes from which essays either surface or get buried in a mind-shaft of thoughts and verbage from which they never see the light of day. I became fascinated by the juxtaposition, not so much of Genesis with John, but of two phrases which beckoned further reflection: first and last words. Genesis, that book of beginnings, lives up to its name in introducing many firsts that continue to hold importance for us today, whether we view them literally, symbolically or mythically. It paints pictures of the first days of creation, first peoples, first temptations, and first acts of disobedience. We see the shame of the first human killing one of its own. In its ensuing narrative we learn why languages spread over the earth, and how an angry Deity almost drowned the entire human race before consigning two wicked cities to ignominy somewhere beneath the Dead Sea. We follow tribal heroes and villains in their deceptions and treacheries, and euphemize the unseemly accounts of incest, rape and masturbation that we didn’t expect were hiding in pages of holy writ. Whether we regard Genesis as a record of causative or illustrative events from a long ago past, it nonetheless serves as a compendium of first things whose allusions appear in so much of our literature, music and art.   

Buechner put a summative spin on the biblical story that I find compelling. What if God—whose first word set in motion a universe so large in scale and so complex in its minutia that it continues to boggle the mind—what if God had never stopped talking? What if this cosmic mind, spirit, force--however we futilely try to conceive of Him, Her or It--had spoken other words through the language of nature and the inspiration grasped by its most intelligent creature? Could they have come through unaltered in our perceptions and translations? Would they have found transparency in our interpretations, or would they have suffered distortion commensurate to the earthen vessels in which they were carried? And what if the babe of Bethlehem who, 2,000 some years after his nativity, still stops us in our tracks when we recall both his birth and his death—what if he was not just another of God’s words, but God’s last word? 

Now I can only imagine on what pathways these questions may lead you. But my intent was not to provoke a theological argument in support of or opposition to what they are posing. Rather I’m stuck pondering whether or not we have ever had the capacity to hear whatever God may be saying to us without interference from those predispositions that color and direct what we find believable. So whatever God uttered in and through the likes of Jesus, Siddhartha, and Mohammed--not to mention the cast of characters in Buechner’s roster of biblical saints and heroes--the issue at hand is not God’s revelatory ability or inclination but our receptivity and willingness to listen. Whether it be God’s first or last word, our problem remains the same, and it is upon that problem that faith ultimately rests. 

But suppose, just suppose that God has, in fact, uttered a definitive word—maybe even a last word--in the life of that one whose memory still divides our historical timelines into before and after segments. What would that really mean to us who claim to be listening? Would we truly be committed, above all else, to peace and goodwill for all people on this earth? Would we finally “study war no more,” turn our guns into farm implements, our missiles into grain silos to feed a hungry world? Could we bring ourselves to offer the other cheek when offended, exponentially forgiving those who have violated us in some way? Could we be moved to love others, even the most loathsome and detestable among God’s creatures, as we love ourselves? Probably not this year, or next, or at any time we can imagine. For if God’s last word was spoken in the life, teachings, death and exaltation of a 1st century Jew of otherwise ordinary credentials, most of us seem to have either never really listened to it, or accepted it as true enough, compelling enough, or relevant enough to take seriously. 

It probably goes without saying that most people assume God uttered the first of all words, and if so, it is a reality that neither time nor argument can ever silence. But in these final moments of this old year numbered 2022 that is fast passing into history, whom do we think will or should have the last word ? Will it be one of those politicians gifted in speaking out of both sides of the same mouth? Or one of the sabre rattlers stealing someone else’s land or posturing to assault a neighbor in the coming months? Will it be one of those celebrity athletes or entertainers upon whose words we cling in heroic idolization? Or will it be spoken by one having neither home nor hope in this age of plenty? Who will get the last word in? That, I’m certain, will depend on what we are willing to hear, and to whom we are willing to listen.

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*”Word,” originally published in Frederick Buechner’s Wishful Thinking, and later in Beyond Words. Distributed by The Frederick Buechner Center (info@frederickbuechner.com).