The Power of Mere Words

Lives are changed through mere words — maybe that’s the only way we ever change.
— William Willimon

When I was in graduate school at Emory, a fellow student developed a questionnaire for his congregation to measure their racial attitudes. He passed out a survey and recorded the results. Then he preached a series of five sermons that in some way touched on the race issue.

After his sermon series, he surveyed their responses — they were three points more racist than before!

I was surprised back then but not today. On many days since, I’ve wondered if my words were impotent. Getting up to preach was like trying to put out a thousand-acre forest fire with a garden hose. How could my words possibly make a difference to a mother who just lost her newborn to sids, to the wife who can’t get pregnant, to the woman whose husband beats her regularly, to the chronically unemployed husband and father of five?

Furthermore, how can one person standing alone and speaking from an ancient book possibly impact this word-saturated, image-driven society? It seems impossible.

Yet according to Scripture, this is our chief weapon: words. So over the years, I’ve given this paradox a great deal of thought. Here is what I’ve discovered.

Insignificant Words

The office of pastor doesn’t seem to be valued by society. We don’t make a lot of money. We perform no specific function that directly contributes to the Gross National Product or index of leading economic indicators. The profession of clergy is usually right next to garbage collector on the list of most-valued careers by high school students.

No wonder we sometimes doubt the power of the preached word! We’re not paranoid, then, when we begin to wonder about our preaching. Yet there are other reasons to wonder.

First, we feel we’re up against Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings. We believe our people expect us to preach like news anchors. They smoothly present the six o’clock evening news, speaking to us as if they were in our living rooms; that has heightened expectations. Few of us, however, can present God’s Word with the same polish.

Second, we can never count on the Holy Spirit to move people as we expect. I have to live with the thought that some Sundays, the Holy Spirit might say, “Oh, by the way, Will, I’m working in Poland this week” — that’s one reason I keep stomach medicine in the Duke Chapel bathroom.

I can work hard crafting my message, making my words coherent, and deliver these finely crafted words in a well-modulated voice, only to see it all fall on deaf ears. But then when I have little time for preparation and I breathe a prayer of desperation as I step into the pulpit, someone will say later, “One of the greatest contributions to my deciding to become a missionary was a sermon you preached.” When I review which sermon that was, I invariably remember a Sunday when I felt disgusted with my performance.

Third, we feel overwhelmed with the reigning issues of the day; our message, frankly, feels irrelevant sometimes.

The Sunday after the last election, I preached a sermon on Christians and politics. The lectionary dictated the subject: the exchange between the Pharisees and Jesus about Caesar’s coin.

“I want to tell you how to vote in the upcoming election,” I said. “Oh, that’s right. You’ve already voted. Isn’t this just typical of the church? We’re always coming a little late to the party.”

I went on to explain that the morning’s text was not written specifically to help Christians know how to behave toward government. “Luke says the Pharisees don’t care one bit about Jesus’ answer,” I said. “They were trying to trap him. Jesus, as it turns out, is not all that interested in their question. He asks them, ‘Whose picture is on the coin?’ and then says, ‘Well, Caesar must want it then.’

“Hey, people, this is a joke,” I continued. “This text is supposed to be funny. Jesus is saying, ‘If Caesar is desperate to have all this stuff, let him have it. But you be careful and give to God what is God’s.’ I don’t know that Bill and Hillary are that important. I don’t know that taxes are important. I think Jesus is after bigger fish than that.”

I’m not saying the issues of our day should be ignored, but too often we let their seeming urgency overshadow the gospel, which in the end is the really urgent message we have.

Fourth, our words seem impotent sometimes because we rarely see our people change. An elderly woman in my last congregation said to me, “You should feel lucky to be here. Most churches would not put up with your preaching. I have Baptist friends who wouldn’t take this; they would fire you. Fortunately for you, we Methodists have seen just about everything.”

Apparently she had heard the Word preached for years but had never seen fit to let it transform her. And it was clear my preaching wasn’t having much of an impact.

So it’s a tough environment in which we preach.

Afraid of the Power

I teach at Duke Divinity School, and from time to time my students bring in case studies of local church ministry. I’ve noticed some interesting patterns. One of them is lay people who report seeing a vision — hearing a word from God or a personal directive from Jesus while sitting on their patio, for example — and their clergy who don’t believe them. The typical response of the clergy is, “Have you been working too hard? What did you have to eat last night?” Pastors are often the last to recognize the hand of God.

I’ve also noticed this pattern in Acts 12. Peter is jailed, and the local church at Jerusalem prays for his release. After being miraculously released, Peter walks to the house where a prayer meeting for his release is in progress. But those inside don’t believe Rhoda, who insists it’s Peter at the door.

“You’re out of your mind,” they tell her. They’re shocked, in disbelief. Surely their prayers haven’t been answered!

I’m tempted to react the same way when I think about the power of my words. Frankly, I’m unnerved by the effectiveness of the gospel, and sometimes I wish what I preached wasn’t so powerful. First, I don’t want to be responsible for people doing something “foolish.” When an auto mechanic hears in my sermon a call to sell everything and become a missionary, I get nervous.

“Wait a minute. What are you doing?” I want to say. “I don’t want this kind of power. This could be a disaster; you’ve got a wife and three small children and a mortgage. Someone could get hurt. I certainly don’t want to hurt anybody.”

Second, my pastoral side sometimes wants to shield my audience from the gospel’s counter-cultural edge. From time to time, we invite the North Carolina legislature to Duke Chapel, and about half of them, including the governor and several on the North Carolina Supreme Court, show up.

On one of these occasions, I preached on repentance. I mentioned that repentance was one of the weird things that Christians believe in, and that not everyone in our world believes in repentance. I talked about how saying, “I’m sorry,” or “I was wrong; I apologize,” is not a popular response of nations. I told the sad story of the Iranian airbus that was shot down accidentally by American missiles. I relayed the emotions I felt as I watched the footage of the tragedy on CNN — the bloated bodies of the victims bobbing in the ocean.

The moment I said that, my pastoral instincts chimed in, This is going to hurt some feelings. These people came here for a nice celebration. Here I am, hitting them over the head with the gospel’s implications.

As it turned out, one newly elected legislator was deeply moved by the sermon and committed himself to legislating by his Christian convictions. Still, I’m sometimes nervous making the bold assertions the New Testament calls for.

Creating Worlds

We are right to be afraid of our words. They are powerful things. All of our worlds are linguistically constructed, that is, our worlds are built by words.

In Genesis 1 there is no world until God starts talking. When God does, stuff begins to happen. His words create a whole new world.

So do ours. A few years ago, my denomination published a magazine that focused on social action. The editors had interviewed leaders in our denomination who struggled for racial justice. One of the questions asked how they got to be leaders in this cause.

I was impressed by how many of those leaders mentioned preaching. As a result of hearing a sermon, they were motivated to pursue social action as their life’s calling. A whole new world and lifestyle had opened up to them as a result of preaching.

Perhaps that’s what the apostle Paul meant when he said, “Faith comes by hearing.” Christian faith is auditorially derived. Lives are changed through mere words — maybe that’s the only way we ever change.

The theological dynamic of this change — the work of the Holy Spirit — is easy to understand, though somewhat of a nuisance.

I can think of many instances when after a sermon someone has walked up to me and said, “Thank you. This morning’s sermon on salvation was so moving.”

Salvation? I think. This morning’s sermon was not on salvation. It was on loving your neighbor! The Holy Spirit had twisted my words and applied them in a way I didn’t expect.

The Holy Spirit is also annoyingly unpredictable. Last summer I led a Bible study at a resort where my words had such a deadening effect that the summer help was dangerously close to being called in to drag the people out by their feet.

“Bear with me, folks,” I begged. “I only have several paragraphs left.” My forbearing listeners wept at this pronouncement. Let me out of here, Lord, I thought. I promise never to come back here.

I’d been there the year before leading a similar study. That time the air was electrified with the power of the Spirit. Stuff was happening. And when I ended, the room fell silent. Then applause broke out. Everyone felt the Spirit of God hover over the study.

I trace both effects to the Holy Spirit. The ways of the Holy Spirit may stump me, but that’s what makes preaching such a wonderful adventure. The Holy Spirit converts preaching from a science into a beautiful art form, an art form that creates new worlds.

Letting the Word Emerge

So, the Word we preach is intrinsically powerful; by the working of the Holy Spirit, it creates new worlds. But it isn’t as if we offer people just words, words in total isolation. When we preach, other dynamics are at work, and the more sensitive we are to them — the better we make use of these dynamics — the more the sermon’s power can fully emerge.

For example, there is the love we have for our people. I once visited a church of one of our Duke Divinity School graduates and was severely embarrassed at his sermon. He had a virtual speech impediment. He tripped over every other sentence, repeated himself, and basically stumbled through the entire twenty-five minutes.

During the coffee time following the service, a woman walked up to me and said, “Boy, do we like Duke Divinity School! You people really do a job on clergy.”

“Really?” I said. I wondered if she were joking.

“Oh yes,” she replied. “We owe our preacher to you.”

I was thinking that during the sermon! I thought.

“He has set this church on fire,” she said. “Isn’t it obvious to you?”

“Ah, no.”

“It’s his preaching!”

“His preaching?” I asked, staring in disbelief.

“Oh, it’s so obvious that he has so much to say and finds putting these important things into words so difficult,” she stated.

Wow! I thought. What a beautiful testimony of the relationship between a congregation and its preacher. She loved him, and his words came across to her as meaningful.

I served a church in North Myrtle Beach before coming to Duke, and I rarely got angry responses from my audience except from the visitors. Our church was located in a resort community, so our summer services were filled with visitors. I once preached on divorce, and the visitors lined up at the end of the service to gripe at me: “You’re so insensitive! Don’t you have divorced people in your congregation?”

I later realized why the visitors wouldn’t put up with me: we had no relationship. With the regulars, I was the first person on the scene when trouble arose. When they went to court, I was there. If they contracted an illness, I was there to comfort them and their families. My congregation had given me authority to speak on difficult matters in a way the visitors hadn’t.

Second, each of us has a God-given personality we bring to the pulpit. One student from the Midwest rarely uttered a word in class. One of the requirements of the class was to preach from the first ten chapters of Genesis. This quiet student chose to preach on the flood. When he preached, he read the story of the Garden of Eden and then the story of the flood. He opened with a slow-moving story about working in a summer camp where he met a young man who became his best friend.

He went on to describe their long walks in the woods, the beauty of the Wisconsin trees, and sitting on the mountainside.

Okay, I thought. Get to the point. Where are you going with this?

The student went on, “My friend invited me home with him, and we visited a small farm near where he lived. My friend said, ‘Since you and I have gotten to be such good friends, I want to show you something very important to me.’ We walked into his family’s barn, which was filled with neo-Nazi posters, submachine guns, anti-Jewish literature, and other hate propaganda.”

This student then pounded the pulpit and began preaching emotionally about what he saw there. He pointed out that in the Noah story some were saved, but the evil continues, and all God says is that he won’t kill us again by water, though we richly deserve it. He ended by saying, “We are a people who need saving.” Then he sat down.

The class was silent. Part of the sermon’s power came from this student’s honest use of his own personality. He was quiet and unemotional for the most part, but when something troubled him, he let us know.

Finally, we bring our bodies to the pulpit. The better our use of body language, the more effective our message.

A preaching professor at Duke used to play in his class a video of sermons collected from various preachers around the country. When one of the tv preachers said, “I want to talk to you about our financial needs,” he would reach over, pick up his Bible, and open it to a passage. He never referred to the Bible directly. In fact, his point had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bible. He skillfully used symbols to move his audience to react a certain way.

After reviewing the video with his class, the professor would say, “I wish I could get you to be half as sensitive to gestures, to eye contact, to tone of voice as this media preacher.”

He wasn’t advocating manipulation. But our mannerisms can get in the way of the Word, or, if used sensitively, they can amplify the power of our message.

Detonating the Dynamite

Recently a Duke student about to graduate knocked at my door.

“Dr. Willimon,” he began, “one of your sermons saved my life. I was considering suicide until I heard you preach one Sunday. I just wanted to thank you before I left school for good.”

“Wow! That’s great,” I replied. “When was this?”

“I think it was last January, the week after classes started up again. The sermon was the one on the love of God that is higher and deeper and wider than anything.”

My mind was spinning; I couldn’t remember preaching such a message. Then it hit me.

“Ah, wait a minute,” I said. “Dr. Thomas Long preached that sermon, not me.”

“Oh yeah,” the student replied, “the guy with the blondish hair. Oh well, you two look a lot alike.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t take your life, and I’m sure Dr. Long would be thrilled.”

I was a little miffed that I hadn’t preached the sermon, but I was once again impressed with the life-changing power of the preacher’s words.

Gerhard von Rad, a German Old Testament scholar, once said that the best sermon he ever heard was given in the middle of World War II — some of the darkest days for the Germans. With bombs exploding all around and fear striking the hearts of all Germans, this tiny congregation had gathered to hear a young inexperienced preacher. When he stood up to preach, he gingerly and carefully opened up the Bible to his text as if he were, von Rad said, unwrapping a package of dynamite.

Our words are not mere words. With them we unloose the powerful and wildly unpredictable truths of the gospel, transforming lives in the here and now — and forever.