Just about seven years ago to the day, God drew my attention to a question he wanted me to consider.  It was at a time when many had spent no little time focusing on a different question.  For years folks had been pondering “What would Jesus do?”  I confess I even preached about the very question.  But then God spoke to me and said, “That’s the wrong question.  And when you ask the wrong question you’re going to get the wrong answers, even if they seem right”  The question God put to me back in 2009 was “What DID Jesus do?”  The popular WWJD question is actually open to all matter of opinion and speculation, and doomed to lead us to answers that will come up short.  But ask, “WDJD?” and look in the one reliable source for the answer, the Bible, and we can be confident that the answers we discover are as reliable as they are timeless.

   For nearly four years I wrestled with the question of what did Jesus do.  And I posted over 500 answers in my first blog (http://psalmfox.blogspot.com/).  Then I arrived at a place where, though I hadn’t exhausted the subject, it is truly inexhaustible, nonetheless felt somewhat empty and exhausted of the spiritual energy to continue.

   Yet, as I survey the world today, and consider my calling as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament, I feel the leading of the Father get blogging again (the internet providing me with a pulpit these days since I last pastored a congregation).  But, rather than return to WDJD? the Father has led me to focus my time and energy on His final word—Jesus.  And Jesus will be the final word of every one of my posts beginning with this one.  If you read what follows, but never glance at another thing I put on this blog, you will encounter this day His final word…

  

Can More Words Solve Any of Our Problems?

   Considering how we are adrift in a virtual tempest of words at this point three months away from the 2016 Presidential election, it’s easy to lose sight of how much meaning and power words can carry.  There are going to be a lot of words thrown at us voters, and many of these words will be either bombastic or of doubtful veracity (considering the two candidates vying for the White House.), and bereft of any transcendent meaning or real potency.  It’s a shame really, not the least because of how words will be so sorely discredited as a result of this election cycle.  We’ve good reason to become ever more inclined to let words “come in one ear and go out the other” as their number exponentially increases while their significance continually decreases.  But, make no mistake, words are important.  Ultimately, words can be life-forming, life-changing, and life-saving.  What really makes the difference in the end is whose words are being spoken, and what specifically are they saying.  Think about it.

   The Bible launches us immediately into the Word, and words, of God:  “In the beginning…God said…”  Sadly, a lot of people have always been more ready to listen to a Smith-Barney than to God.  Others, more willing to lend God an ear, aren’t satisfied with what God has already said, i.e. the Bible just isn’t enough for them; they want an additional word, a new word from God.  But, again, make no mistake.  God, more specifically, God the Father, has already uttered His final word, and it is Jesus.  I mean, really, what more could God possibly say? 

   The Son, aka “The Word,” has been with the Father from the beginning, and is responsible for, well, everything that exists:

            “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made

            that was made.”

                                                                        John 1.3

   When we’re talking about Jesus we’re talking about the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last word.  The Father employed the Son to get everything going.  And, knowing the world was hopelessly fallen and there was absolutely no way it could save itself, the Father had in the vast recesses of eternity past appointed the time when He would utter His final word, and pronounce both the arrival of salvation and the answer to all the world’s troubles with the proclamation that,

            “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

                                                                        Luke 2.11

     What more need the Father say?  What more could the Father say?  With Jesus, He’d said it all.  Declaring the Word that became flesh and blood, the Living Word, the Father spoke healing, peace, reconciliation, and salvation.  In the Son the Father spoke release where there was suffering, freedom where there was bondage, fullness where there was emptiness, harmony where there was discord, joy where there was sorrow, life where there was death.

   If anyone reading this has been searching or listening for something else, hoping for something more, waiting for God to have anything more to say, I have to tell you bluntly that you’re wasting your time, and your life.  The Father has spoken His final word, He doesn’t need any others, and neither do we.  The reason I’m putting these words down on, well, not paper but the electronic equivalent, is because the Father has put it on my heart to affirm His final word and maybe help someone who reads this blog to embrace the extravagant gift that is the fulfillment of all we ultimately could desire or need, the gift of Jesus.