We are not, and never will be, what we are apart from words. Words bring us into existence. Words shape us. Words preserve us. Words mark the end of our days. Words are creative, powerful things. Words don’t only describe. Words do. And the most important words come from outside of us, not from within. We will never escape words. So where do we find the right words?

Lutheranism takes words seriously. It holds God’s Word, the Holy Scriptures, to be the authoritative word in the church. It holds two words, law and gospel, as critical for understanding those Scriptures and ourselves. It confesses the Word became flesh, Jesus Christ.  We are a people bound together by words and a people sent out with the same.

We cannot escape words. The question is which words will take hold of us. We are creatures, but our first parents knew well the temptation to transcend our creatureliness. The devil assured them they could. He gave them words. He gave them God’s words, but with some changes. He grabbed them by their ears.

The Syrophoenician woman caught Jesus in his word. Her little daughter had an unclean spirit. She fell down at his feet. She begged him to help. He told her that he had come for Israel first, that you don’t take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. Dogs weren’t thought of like they are in America today; dogs were mangy and mean. Jesus’ words must have stung. They didn’t stick, though. The woman gave an answer that blew him away. She was happy to be a dog, so long as she was at the Lord’s table. Jesus commended her faith. She had caught him in his word.

We all do well to catch Jesus where he wants to be caught—in his words. His words still create. They still restore. They still preserve. And these are words we stand under and not over. They are given to us. They are proclaimed to us. They are applied to us.

The culture wars in America are as much about words as anything else. Words are lobbed like grenades, used for power, to persuade, to belittle. We define ourselves by them—conservative or liberal, traditional or progressive, right or left, this or that. The words suck us in. The words fire us up. The words get the best of us. And in the process, the words that matter most get lost in the mix.

What are your words? There are two words that we all need, no matter our temptations, no matter our backgrounds, no matter our affiliations, no matter our orientations. We all need law,and we all need gospel. We all have plenty to confess. And we all need absolution, the forgiveness of sins. There is no difference between anyone when it comes to these two words. We all need the very same thing. We all stand under the very same words.

What are your words? For every Christian they are the same. They are the words of your baptism, words given by Christ. Whatever gets in the way of those words, whatever tries to grab our ears, whatever tells us that we should be more or less than a baptized child of God, those words aren’t worth speaking, or hearing.

We are a people with words. Words bind us together. Words send us out—the most creative, powerful, redemptive words ever spoken. Remember those words. Remember they are for you. Remember they are for everyone else, too.