To Hear and Speak the Word of Christ Jesus

Words matter.  Indeed, words make all the difference, because God does everything by His Word.

You already have at least some awareness of this fact.  You know how powerful words can be — to hurt, or to help: They can totally make or wreck your day, your week, or whole seasons of time.

Words matter.  For the Lord your God does everything by His Word, from the Creation to the Redemption of His Creation; and you, being made in His Image and Likeness, are created to speak.

What you say matters.  And not only what you say, but how you say it.  And what you don’t say, that matters, too.  And all of your speaking, whether it be good or bad, depends on your hearing.  Garbage in, garbage out.  But if you hear the Word of Christ, that is what you speak and confess.

You cannot fear, love, and trust in the one true God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, nor can you confess Him rightly with your lips, except by the hearing of the Word of Christ.  You cannot pray, praise, or give thanks, and you cannot call upon His Holy Name, except by the Word and Spirit of Christ Jesus.  You cannot bless God, nor can you bless your neighbor, if you are not hearing and receiving the blessing of God’s Word.  Apart from His Word to you in Christ Jesus, you can do nothing but curse, swear, lie, and deceive, grind your teeth, and foam at the mouth.

That is why it is so basic and fundamental to the faith and life of the entire Church on earth, and why it is so necessary to your own Christian faith and life, that there be preachers and teachers of the Word of Christ Jesus.  That is why preachers must be sent to preach repentance and forgiveness in His Name, and teachers must teach as the oracles of God; and disciples must listen and learn, and hear and heed the Word of Christ, in order to follow Him, believe in Him, and live in Him.

To be a Christian is, above all else, to be a hearer of the Word of Christ.  That is the first and most important thing that a Christian is given to do — to hear the Word that Christ Jesus preaches into your ears.  And to be a Christian is then also to confess with your mouth the Word that you have heard — to speak what God the Father has spoken to you by His Son, Christ Jesus — and by that Word to pray, praise, and give thanks, to call upon the Name of the Lord from a heart of faith.

To speak with the mouth of a disciple is to glorify the Name of the Lord by confessing who He is and what He has done, by speaking what He has spoken.  And it is precisely with that Word, with that confession, that you are able to sustain the weary one with the Word of Christ Jesus.

Is someone you know and love hurting?  Then, along with whatever good you can do for that person in his or her body, do not neglect to speak the Word of Christ.  Indeed, speak that Word of Christ to all of your neighbors.  For words do matter; and the Word of Christ matters most of all.

It is by the Word of Christ that the weary are comforted and sustained.  That is the main thing that pastors are given to do — to sustain those who are weary with the Gospel of Christ Jesus, with the forgiveness of sins in His Name.  And that is why pastors are held to such a strict accountability for their words and work, because everything depends upon the preaching and teaching of Christ.

But so also, in turn, are husbands and wives to speak that Word of Christ Jesus to each other.

And fathers and mothers — along with everything else you are given to do, and really above all of your other responsibilities as parents — you are to catechize and care for your children with the Word of Christ Jesus.  Not only by careful and consistent instruction, as an academic subject, but especially by way of your example, by your own speaking, by what you say and how you say it.

It is by the preaching of the Word of Christ Jesus that the entire Body of His Church is bridled and guided, just as a horse is bridled and as a ship is guided by its rudder.  And much the same thing is true in your home and family.  The way you speak guides the entire course of your household, whether it is in harmony with the Word of Christ or completely out of sorts and out of sync.

Consider the consequences of your words for those entrusted to your care.  If you speak the Word of Christ Jesus to your children, for example, they will learn to confess and to pray in His Name.  What is more, they will learn to know and love Jesus Himself in your speaking; because there is no other way to know the Lord Jesus, except by the speaking and hearing of His Word.

By the same token, tragically, when you routinely curse, swear, lie, and deceive in speaking to and around your children, that is what they learn to know and to speak.  Garbage in, garbage out.

Consider the example of that father at the foot of the mountain in the Holy Gospel this morning.  And think of how he differs from that faithful Syrophoenician woman in last Sunday’s Gospel.

Remember how she prayed?  There were no ifs.  There were no demands.  With her there was only the prayer of confident faith, even in the face of the Lord’s apparent rejection.  “Lord, help me.”  She knew that He could do it — and she trusted that He would — so she just kept on praying.

But this Dad today just doesn’t get it, leastwise not at first.  And you can feel for him, because your own circumstances, your own experience and feelings are not so different.  “I told Your disciples to do it, and they couldn’t; but if You can help me, do something.”  This is not the prayer of faith but of last resort and desperation, a case of clinging to the Law and making bargains and demands.

So, in this case, the father has to be catechized first.  He needs to hear the Word of Christ Jesus, in order to confess and pray rightly; so that he, in turn, will have a Word of the Lord with which to comfort and sustain his weary son.  For only by the ongoing catechesis and confession of the Word of Christ Jesus will the demons be kept at bay and prevented from coming back seven times worse than before.  Only by the Word of Christ will father and son be preserved in faith and life.

These are not fairy tales.  This isn’t make-believe or let’s pretend.  You also are given to hear the Word of Christ.  You are given nothing else, finally, nothing that will remain or save you; but you are given the Word of Christ, and everything depends on that.  If you would bring your family to Jesus — if you would have them live and not die — then hear, confess, and pray His Holy Word.

You cannot confess what you have not heard.  You cannot pray except by the Word and Spirit of Jesus.  And you cannot forgive your neighbor, except as you are forgiven by the Lord your God.

It is by the Word of God in Christ Jesus that all of this is accomplished and happens.  But the Word of God is not a magical formula.  The Word of God is not a mantra to be invoked, like the artificial intelligence on your phone, as though He were at your beck and call and subject to your whims.

The fact is that you can’t even open your ears to hear His Word, nor can you open your own mind and heart to comprehend and believe it.  You live by His grace, not by your own work or efforts.

You can’t convert your neighbor, either, not by your own eloquence or savvy.  It’s not a matter of finally getting the right combination of all the right words to convince your neighbor that you’re right about this or that.  The Word of God does not aim at “winning” arguments.  It doesn’t debate the truth but simply declares what is so, the Law and the Gospel, unto repentance and faith in the forgiveness of sins.  The one true God does not have to prove Himself to you or to your neighbor; but He speaks to you in love — and He would have you speak His Word to your neighbor in love — because it is only by His Word that you and your neighbor are given to live by faith in Christ.

To that end, it is absolutely fundamental that you must keep on listening and learning, hearing, and heeding the Word of Christ Jesus.  Even if it were true that you’ve heard it all before, and even if you actually remembered every syllable of the Holy Scriptures — even so, you would still need to hear the preaching of God’s Word, not for the sake of “education” and “information,” but for the forgiveness of sins, for faith and life in Christ Jesus.  For it is by His Word that He is with you.

Apart from the Word of Christ, there is nothing but darkness and death, and separation from God, which is the essence of damnation.  But He has not abandoned you, despite your stubborn sin and fatal unbelief.  As He created all things out of nothing by His Word for the sake of His divine and holy Love, so does He draw near to you in love, by and with His Word, in order to give you Life in and with Himself.  As He preaches His Word into your ears, He Himself is thereby with you.

So, do keep listening to His Word and the preaching of it; and do keep speaking His Word.  But understand that, even with that effort and that discipline to hear and heed His Word, it is still not by your own intelligence, knowledge, or wisdom that you believe and trust in Christ Jesus.  No, that is by the power of the Word itself — by the working of the Holy Spirit through that Word.

So, too, for your neighbor as for yourself, and for all your family and friends, speak the Word of Christ in faith and confidence; but know that you cannot force or constrain anyone to believe it.

As often as you listen to the Word of God, and as often as you speak His Word, pray to Him.  Call upon His Name.  For the demons that prevent you from hearing and speaking the Word of the Lord “can only come out by prayer.”  Take that seriously, and pray that Christ Jesus, by His Word and Holy Spirit, will open your ears to hear, your heart to believe, and your lips to confess His Name.

That is the point and purpose of the Collect of the Day.  For the Church does not even presume to hear the Word of God by her own efforts, intelligence, or powers, but she rather beseeches and depends upon the Spirit of the Lord, that she would not be deaf and dumb to what He says.

Listen with confidence that the Lord wants you to hear what He says.  Listen with that confidence, but not presumptuously.  And as you hear, so also speak with confidence, but not presumptuously.  Rather, pray and intercede that you and your neighbor would hear and believe the Word that God the Lord here speaks to you.  For it is only by God’s grace that anyone does.

Do not imagine that it’s easy, not at all.  For now you are caught like that poor father at the bottom of the mountain, down in the valley between faith and unbelief, between life and death — between God and the devil, as Luther’s life was described.  Scary stuff.  And left to yourself, you can’t win.

Not only that, but when the Church’s prayer is answered and the Word of Christ strikes home in your heart and life, then there is a strange and dreadful strife that rages within you.  Then you are thrown into the fire and the water, as it were, as though to be utterly destroyed.  And the truth of the matter is that the Word of Christ Jesus does put you to death.  The Sword of the Spirit slices and dices between your very bones and marrow and cuts you to the quick of your unclean spirit.

But take heart, for this is the fire of the Holy Spirit and the water of His rebirth and regeneration; and this is the death of Christ having its way with you, even the death of His Cross.  And by these ways and means of His Word you are brought to repentance and to faith and to life through the free and full forgiveness of all your sins, so that death and the devil will not get to have the last word.

See, here now is the hand of One who has come down from heaven to help you and to save you.  Here is the hand of the One who has gone through the fire and the water, through death and the grave — ahead of you and for you — in order to deliver you, and to open the way of Life for you.

Here is the hand of the Crucified and Risen One, whose tongue and lips speak Peace and Life to you — who prays for you at the Right Hand of God the Father — and whose Spirit also intercedes for you at all times, even when that deaf and mute spirit has shut your ears and shut your mouth.

Here is the hand of the One who lays hold of you in love, who raises you up with Himself from death to Life — who has opened your ears to hear and your heart to believe — who opens your mouth and your lips and places on your tongue His own Word-made-Flesh.  So that, as you have heard, so may you believe, and so may you speak, and so may you live by His grace everlasting.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.