A Reflection for I Christmas All
Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC December 28,
2014 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Plighting Troth
In John's Gospel for today the author
calls Jesus, the Word of God; God gave word. The preface begins “In
the beginning was the word.” The phrase “In the beginning” has
a double meaning – it means “at the beginning of time”, and it
can mean “first, most importantly of all.” The author of John
means both at the same time. “First of all, God gave God's Word.”
How do we give word?
I think of the Christmas shopping
experience where I pulled out my hunk of plastic and handed it over
to the store clerk. That clerk took a risk and accepted my word when
I signed the piece of paper that the money would be there. That hunk
a hunka of burning plastic is useless - it is just a piece of
petrochemical organic polymer of dense molecular mass, but it has
meaning because my word is imbedded into its very being. I can cut
this card up and throw it away but my word, once given, needs to be
upheld. Without the respect for word in daily life, our economy would
fall apart.
Indeed our economy did fall apart
because people were playing fast and loose with their word. Some
called it being clever, with all sorts of Word statements hidden
under bushels of verbiage which robbed the Word of meaning. They
said, “Trust me” as they bundled worthless paper together as a
tissue of lies and sold it as worthwhile Word. The manipulators of
great wealth became strangers to truth and innocent people were hurt.
There is a collapse of the political
system because of a suspicion that the leaders and truth have become
strangers. In the political ads in the last election, all sorts of
charges were made in 30 to 60 second blips of sound and image about
opponents, and the candidate's voice would be recorded saying that
they sponsored that ad. They pledged that it was true. When caught in
the lie, they would backtrack and call it a misstatement. But even if
you win the election with that method, you have sown the seeds of
your own ineffectiveness to rule, for - can your word be trusted?
Or do we just see words as syllables
thrown up in the air? There is a scene in Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 3,
where Claudius, Hamlet's uncle and stepfather, speaks words of
repentance for the murder he has done, saying:
 |
| Hamlet refusing to kill Claudius because he thinks that Claudius is in a "state of Grace" while Praying |
O, my offence is
rank it smells to heaven; …
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.
He kneels down in prayer but when he
gets up he admits: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
words without thoughts can never to heaven go.” If the opposite of
heaven is hell, then the inability to treasure the word, to fill the
words we say with the fullness of our being, makes a hell for all of
us.
There have been times when I have had
to go back on my word, as was the case when I got a divorce. We had
given our word to each other and to God, but now we said that we
would not keep it. We had said, “I plight thee my troth” to each
other. “I plight thee my troth” has been replaced with “This is
my solemn vow. The word “Plight” is a Middle English word which
comes from the old English “to put at risk”. It means I am taking
a risk - I am putting myself out there. The word “troth” comes
from an old English word which has evolved into truth. Troth meant
the word being spoken resonated with the depths of my very being. I
can find all sorts of excuses and rationales, and I can be forgiven,
but I had to face, and mourn, the fact we had taken risks with each
other and the truth, and we had been strangers.
John's Gospel preface says that God
plighted God's troth to us, entering into a relationship of love with
us. God pledges God's very self to us and asks for our word to be
echoed back from the depth of our being. The Gospels were not written
as historical biographies of the man Jesus who lived in a small
mid-eastern nation 21 centuries ago; they were written as witness to
an acted-out drama which declares God's love to us and invites our
love in return.
God loved us so much that God would
empty out God's self for us to live as a servant and to put up with
indifference and abuse and even death, but God would keep his Word no
matter what. Every Sunday we come together and we hear God's word. We
do not mean that the surface of these words came from the lips of
God, but that the words contain God's promise, God's deeper word,
God's love for us and commitment to us. When we come, we are invited
to give our word back to God.
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