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Today we are told in Hebrews that “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
Here is what those words mean to me:
As I’ve said in our past baptisms this year, it is important that we ensure that our children in this church grow up never knowing a time where God wasn’t present to them. It is important for me personally because I was such a child. I was surrounded by God in church, in school, and in my home. Both my parents taught Sunday School at one point or another. Perhaps most importantly, I was giving resources to hear God’s Word and feel God’s presence, such as The Children’s Illustrated Bible.
As I grew older, I had a deep abiding love for what I had heard in the Bible, and I decided to make my own journey through it towards the end of my time in middle school. Growing up surrounded by God’s presence helped me feel God with me as I read the Scripture. These words were truly living to me because I felt God in them. I felt God teaching me through them.
Eventually I realized that God was also training me so I could start to understand His Word on my own. It was never a perfect journey for me, and it took a great deal of time. Yet different stages of my life helped cement in me the various things God still has to say to us in Scripture now.
In college, I came to realize the importance of community through Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians. This had a huge impact on my understanding the importance of others in my life and the need for the church to serve as a Christian community. My understanding of community grew as I came to rely on the church, my local Christian community, particularly as I navigated life after college.
During my time in Montana, the sense of Christian unity became more clear to me, again through Paul’s words in Scripture. I saw the rivalries we have with other churches and even other denominations to be silly because we all, as Paul reminds us, serve the same Lord. I saw that I myself needed to move beyond a sense of division into a greater understanding of unity in the church. My time in other churches, including Holy Comforter in Atlanta, GA, only helped strengthened this understanding.
In seminary, I gained a clearer sense of what Genesis has to tell us about family. The call to “be fruitful and multiply” isn’t given to just Adam and Eve; the command is given to all humanity. We are all called to help raise one another, whether we have biological children or not. This realization continues to help me understand the responsibility we all have to the next generation, and it has helped me reflect on who we are as members of the human race as well.
Finally, as I have continued in my ordained ministry, I see more and more what Hebrews means with it tells us that the Word of God acts as a judge for us. Throughout Scripture, we see examples of people who fail to follow God well, such as the Israelites wandering in the desert or even Elijah contemplating leaving the duties of his ministry. It is easy to look at these stories and judge the people in them. Yet when we stop and reflect, we will realize that we ourselves are often those people in our own stories too. These tales are meant to act as a mirror for us to keep us from going down the same path and to give us hope that we can turn back to our Lord. Personally, they have given me a clearer sense of my own shortcomings and helped in the times I needed to move back to God.
In all these ways, we see that God’s Word is in fact “living and active”. God still speaks to us in these words today. To hear them, we have to take the time and effort to listen to them. We have to teach and train ourselves to hear better. We also need patience in order to take the time needed to hear God’s Word and to change when and where we need to for His Name’s sake.
I share with you my journey through Scripture not to say anything good or bad about myself, but instead to give you an example. My hope is that you will find my journey helpful to you on your own path, whether in whole or in part. I hope that where you see yourself in my story, you can take hope and comfort, or at least have a sign pointing you to the way ahead.
This is why our services begin with the Word of God. The Word of God is still speaking to you, as individuals and as a community. While these words were written so long ago to very specific groups, they were also written as a testament to what God was saying to those people at that time. Those divinely inspired words can help us understand what God is saying to us still. That is why we preach on the words of Scripture we hear every Sunday: to suss out what God is saying to us now in this day and age. I hope you will continue to do the work of listening to what God says each and every week in our worship. I hope you will also take the time on your own to determine what God is saying to you through His living and active Word.