Words, words, words...The readings we just heard are really all about words…well, about words and the Word. Today we’re inundated with words – words in print, broadcast words, televised words, internet words, words of telemarketers, robo calls, emails, voice mails, text messages, tweets – words pouring down on us from every direction.
At home we have phones and TVs and PCs in every room, even the bathroom. Our homes and cars and offices and briefcases and backpacks all have their own laptops or netbooks or iPads. And we walk through our lives with the words of our favorite music streaming through little earbuds stuck in our ears, blocking other words and worlds from disturbing us. And words, as they expand and multiply, are much like any other commodity; they become increasingly valueless.
Lovers utter words of binding love, words of commitment at the foot of the altar, and then follow them with the big words, the legal words of separation and divorce that try to break what cannot be broken.
Politicians love words too. They want our trust, hoping we’ll trust in the untrustworthy, asking us to believe they’ll always strive for the good even when they don’t. And how many of us offer them our trust, shifting our allegiance, our faith, from God to man?
Others change words, distorting them, substituting them, all the while hoping we won’t notice. To kill the most innocent becomes a choice. To murder the old and the ill becomes dignity. And in all of this, as we drown in this flood of words and distortions, of the words of this world, we cease listening to The Word.
Moses realized this over 3,000 years ago. That’s why, in our first reading from Deuteronomy, he told the people: “Take these words of mine into your heart and soul. Bind them at your wrist as a sign, and let them be a pendant on your forehead.” Yes, Moses pleads with God’s people: Don’t forget these words, this Word of God Himself.
What were these words of Moses, this Word of God that is so important? They’re the words of the Shemá, the words pious Jews pray when they wake and as they go to sleep, the first prayer a Jew learns as a child, and the last prayer he utters as he dies:
”Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One, and you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”Moses lays out a choice, a real choice before the people: choose a blessing or a curse, a way of faith or a way of disobedience, a way of love and life or a way of death. This Word, this choice, still applies, for all of us; because Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, enshrined it as the greatest of commandments. But Jesus doesn’t leave it there, for He doesn’t just repeat the Law; He fulfills it. Jesus, the Word, opens God’s Word for us, showing us the will of the Father.
It can be a bit unnerving, can’t it? No matter how hard we try, the words, the Word, won’t just go away. It’s there before us in its stark reality. And here, today, in this Gospel passage before us, it’s a word of judgment. It tells us that our words, the words of the world, really aren’t all that important: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,”
It’s not the words, is it? It’s not the saying of words. Well, then what is it? “…but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”Does the will of my Father…It’s the doing. But, even then, it’s not all the doing. “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’”
And as I hear these words, I certainly don’t condemn you, brothers and sisters. No, I turn my glance and my thoughts inward, trying to measure myself against God’s Word. Lord, Lord, did I not preach in your name? Did I not heal, and teach, and bury, and baptize…all in your name?
But that’s not the doing our Lord wants from me or from you…at least not all. He wants more, much more. He wants the doing of the Father’s will, the fulfillment of His commandment to love.
Warning us against self-deception, he wants us to turn inward in our understanding of self. Warning against a distorted self-love, he calls us to turn outward in expressing our love for God and one another. We must listen to these warnings, because Jesus is the judge, the decider, the one who will welcome or deny. And there are words none of us wants to hear: “I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.”
Jesus, you see, knows His disciples and they know Him. Does He know you? Does He know me? And do we really know Him?
Yes, as Paul tells us in the 2nd reading today, it is through the gratuitous gifts of faith and God’s grace that we are justified. But God’s grace doesn’t free us from obedience; no, it is Christ’s fulfillment of the Law, the New Law, that lives within us, His disciples. And it is the Holy Spirit that moves within us, bringing us to knowledge of Father and Son. It is Christ’s presence working with us, through the Holy Spirit, that forms the firm foundation of which Jesus speaks, the foundation that protects us from life’s storms.
Ssalvation is a gift, but you and I can reject God’s gifts. We can reject His love. For God respects our freedom. He allows us to choose, to make the same choice Moses placed before the children of Israel: a choice of blessing or curse. Eternal loss, then, is certainly possible.
The life Christ wants for each of us here and now is nothing less than a challenge: How do I receive the gift? How do I let Jesus Christ into my life? How can I know the way to salvation?
You and I must be like a small child who’s been given a wondrous toy, who clutches it against his breast, holding it tightly for fear it will be taken away – this is how, childlike, we should treasure the gift of Jesus Christ. For as Jesus told Thomas at the Last Supper: “Where I am going you know the way...I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”What is the way? Nothing less than our Christian faith and the struggle to put that faith into practice by loving God and our neighbor. We can’t do it on our own, and so through the grace of the sacraments God gives us mercy, and Spirit, and forgiveness, and healing, and the very gift of Himself in the Eucharist.
And the truth? Why, it’s the Good News of Jesus Christ! It’s the truth of Jesus’ promise, borne out and proven by His resurrection.
And the life? Oh, the life is eternal life, the fruit of Jesus’ promise. It’s the understanding that we’re here for a purpose: to do the Father’s will so that we may spend an eternal life of happiness with Him.
And so don’t let God’s Word, the mystery of His love, be drowned out by the words of the world. Lent begins only a few days from now. Don’t let it slip by unnoticed. Take some time every day to hide yourself from the noise of the world, from the cacophony of meaningless words, and listen to God’s Word working within you.As God spoke to us through the words of the psalmist:
“Be still and know that I am God.”
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