'Humans communicate with words. Every orator knows the power of words. Every poet and every lover knows how we can be moved beyond our expectation.' Photo: sean hobson / flickr CC.
God’s energy
John Southern reflects on the nature of words and deeds
I was struck the other day by a passage in Isaiah (Isaiah 55:8-13). The poet compares the ‘ways of the Lord’ with what at school I was taught to call ‘the water cycle’.
For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returns not thither, but waters the earth, and makes it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please…
(Verses 10-11)
I believe God’s ‘word’ is God’s energy. I looked again at the opening of John’s Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word…’ I referred again to William Temple’s commentary, which I have found valuable on many occasions.
The Word
William Temple says that Logos (the Greek for ‘The Word’) has two meanings for the writer. It is both the word of the Lord as understood by the Hebrew prophets, by which the heavens were made, and it is also the Rational Principle as understood by Greek philosophy for some six centuries since Heraclitus. This Principle is what we seek, for example, when scientists today try to find one over-arching law that governs both the infinitely small and infinitely large in the universe.
Temple says he believes John deliberately opens his gospel this way to appeal to both Greek and Hebrew readers, to show them there is common ground from which they can understand what he has to impart. There has grown up in modern western society a heresy that interprets the Word to mean the exact words (in English!) of the Bible. Heresy is perhaps too strong a word, but nonconformists place the lectern and not the alter at the centre of their worship, and this is indicative of their reliance on the Word.
The poet says God does not wish his word to return to him a void. It is not explicit in the text but I take this metaphor of the water cycle to mean that the poet understands that water also returns to heaven: just as water falls from heaven and is used in a transforming way in nature before returning to heaven, so God’s word will be used in a transforming way. God’s ‘Word’ is not a word but energy. God accomplishes his plan for the world through the lives and actions of his people.
A miracle
Today, we know in detail what the ancients could only surmise: that the plant kingdom takes water and uses the energy of light to create matter. We see it happen in every garden every spring. This is a miracle which, blinded by our urban existence, we can often fail to appreciate. I believe the poet whose work is in Isaiah 55 understood this. I believe the writer of John’s Gospel understood this: ‘The Word was with God, and the Word was God.’
Light and water come together because plants live. This is not a mindless chemical action like the combining of oxygen and hydrogen. This is life. We know that at some point in the evolution of the earth inanimate material became living material.
Humans communicate with words. Every orator knows the power of words. Every poet and every lover knows how we can be moved beyond our expectation. Every cheat knows how we can be lulled into a false sense of security. It is not surprising that we should describe God’s communications as words.
But the very word ‘God’ is a metaphor. The Hebrews knew this and would not even utter the name of God, using instead the consonants of the name almost as an acronym. God’s Word must, therefore, also be metaphorical. We would do better today to understand it as God’s energy.
How does this affect our relationship to God? If in prayer we wait to hear God’s word we will wait a long time. Some do claim to have actually heard words, and there are many powerful and moving examples in the New Testament. I believe these are records of experiences that their authors could not express in any other way. We, twenty centuries later, misunderstand if we take them literally.
Prayer
Prayer is how we respond to our experience of God. Do we, in prayer, need words with which to pray? No. If we wish to engage in prayer together we will need words, because this is our nature. If we wish to respond to God’s energy, which we find coursing through our bodies, we do not need words: we need deeds.
Just as the rain is converted into ‘seed’ and ‘bread’, God’s energy must be converted into action. Action will build God’s republic. I use the word republic deliberately. The word ‘kingdom’, for me, implies that God is masculine, for which there is no evidence, and the word ‘republic’ implies that we are all in it together: God and people working to build it.
So many good Christian people say: ‘I don’t know how to pray.’ Yes they do! Go on doing good Christian things! Love your neighbour, do good to them that persecute you, feed the poor and visit the sick. ‘Worship’ the Lord your God. That is to say, get together with others of like mind and share your experience of God: sing hymns if that is what energises you, recite scripture, paint, dance, fall to your knees or sit quietly in their company.
You may find that worship can only be done once a week. Prayer is God’s republic, and it must be built every day. It may be built in the classroom or in the home, in the marketplace or the workshop. The work may be known only to neighbours or your family, or it may be known to millions. No matter, this is how God’s republic is built.
