Luke 1.37 ‘For no word of God will ever fail.’ (NIV)

Words matter. A word can make or break a person. A word can heal or it can destroy. A word can end a conflict or start a war. There is a Jewish saying for in a time of trauma: A thousand words may not be enough but a single word may be one too many.

For those that compiled the Gospel accounts, words mattered. Time was passing, those that knew Jesus personally were no longer around, those that had witnessed the miracles, heard the stories, marvelled at the teaching and experienced the resurrection on that extraordinary Sunday had passed from this life. How were they to convey the Jesus event to a rising generation? The means they adopted, for it was the only truly effective means at their disposal was to seek to capture what had happened in word. They would do so in different ways.

The earliest account that we have is the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of sayings, many of which found their way into the earliest canonical Gospel Mark. Mark is focused on acting as a witness to the adult Jesus – no annunciation, no trip to Bethlehem, no Shepherds, no Magi, no Herod, no slaughter of the innocents. Mark cuts to the chase and presents a blow by blow account of the adult ministry of Jesus. Matthew decides to highlight a link between what we would come to know of as the Old Testament and quote after quote Jesus is seen as the fulfilment of the prophets, a continuation of God’s purposes throughout history– the accomplishment of Jesus. John, much later spends huge time on explanation of Jesus through lengthy discourse and the use of symbolism.

A few decades earlier, and about a decade or so after Mark, Luke tells stories, parables to illustrate the truths of the teaching that Jesus brings. He, like Matthew sees Jesus as the fulfilment of ancient text and draws on a technique adopted by others. At key moments early on in the Gospel, Luke has the main characters bursting into song, imagining what all this has to mean and the impact it will have on others and our World.

So it is that Mary’s Magnificat has the same style and sim substance of Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel on giving to birth the child Sam. The same style would be adopted by Luke not just for Mary, but for Zechariah on the birth of John and also, to a degree, the joy of Simeon on receiving Jesus into the Temple. Words matter.

Art and music are often employed to convey deep meaning. They have the ability to draw us in, sometimes in a far greater way than words. But those without the gift of art or music, words are their only means of conveying how they truly feel. The great Telly Savalas aka Kojak complete with lollipop in cheek and the catchphrase ‘Who loves ya baby, got to number in the charts in the early 70’s with a song entitled ‘If’. The lyrics included: ‘If a picture could paint a 1000 words, then why can’t I paint you? Around the same time the Bee Gees would sing: It’s only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away.

For Luke and the other Gospel compilers words matter – they are all that they have to pass on the Good News of Jesus Christ and win over our hearts. And knowing that God spoke into creation, ‘and God said let there be, and there was,’ they knew that God’s word was important – that G spoke and it happened, the outcome was good. According to the centurion anxious about the sickness of his servant, Jesus would only have to say the word “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.” There are many other occasions where Jesus simply speaks a word, sometimes intelligible, sometimes not intelligible, but the outcome is the same, healing occurs. Salvation has come to that house – meaning wholeness, justice, harmony, shalom. For us of course we may wonder whether God is going to speak into our lives, or our World. If only G would speak into the conflict. If only G would speak into our prayers. If only G would speak and all will be well.

Sometimes it seems that the Word is absent from our lives and our World: the clamour of voices seems to drown out the voice of reason, that the lies are louder than the truths, that 1000 bigots surely can’t be wrong, or that the silence is deafening. John would come to see something even deeper than his predecessors – that Jesus not only speaks as God did but is actually the Word – the expression of all that G is. Even when the voice of God is apparently silent, the Word is with us, even the darkness cannot extinguish it. As the graffiti in the ghetto had it

I believe in the sun even when it not shining

I believe in love even when I cannot feel it,

I believe in G even when he is silent.

In the end it is true, it is good news, that God’s Word after all everything is said and done never fails.