Among the variety of unhelpful things that children of my generation were told by well-meaning adults was one very harmful rhyme: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me’.  There is of course a certain level of truth in this rhyme but equally, the downplaying of the power of words to hurt and harm was undoubtedly crass and insensitive to say the least.  Many children have come to believe that there is something wrong with them when they experience acute pain because of words directed maliciously against them.  Some of this shame and pain is carried into their adult experience.  I do not need to spell all the different permutations of bullying and slander that can do so much to make life a misery for anyone so targeted.

Most of us recognise that words have the ability to be extremely powerful things.  The right word can do an enormous amount to cheer a depressed spirit just as the thoughtless word can put someone down.  All of us look back to our failures to use words as well as we could.  Perhaps our early efforts to use words better might have been helped by not having had to encounter at an early age the dreadful rhyme I mentioned above. 

If we want support for the idea that words should be treated with extreme care and respect, we need go no further than considering how words are understood in Scripture.  One year in Lent, while still in my parish, I gave a whole evening presentation about the word ‘word’ as it is used in the Bible.  I began my piece by pointing out that the Hebrew word ‘dabar’ contains far more than the act of speaking as we understand it.  To understand this Hebrew word we have to add to the idea of speech the notion of ‘creative power’.   Although the Genesis account describes creation as the result of speech, it only when we get to the Psalms that we begin to get a real feel for what the Hebrew writers think about the power of words.   This is of course especially true when referring to what proceeds from the mouth of God.  ‘By the word (dabar) of the Lord were the heavens made’.  ‘The Lord spake and it was done, he commanded and they were created.’  Another very vivid picture is given us as we read the following passage from Isaiah 55.11.   ‘The word will not return to me empty until it has accomplished all that I have commanded it to do.’  It is easy to miss the full impact of such passages until we have absorbed the Hebrew perspective on words and their potential.  Words are in this setting are instruments of real and lasting power.  When God speaks things happen.   Sometimes human individuals, like prophets, are given God’s words to speak.  Once again there will be an understanding of how much there is active power in operation.  Even when mere human beings like ourselves use words, this Hebrew understanding of their potential to exercise real power is never far away.  

It is against this background of understanding a little of Old Testament assumptions about the meaning of ‘word’ that we can understand better the first verses of St John’s gospel which are always read at Christmas.   The reader at the Nine Lessons and Carols often introduces this reading with the words ‘St John reveals the mystery of the Incarnation’.   I am not sure how many people in fact get the point of the reading with its evocation of the creation story and its distinctive understanding of the meaning of ‘word’.  To talk about the primordial reality as a word seems an odd thing to say on the face of it.  But little by little we come to understand that what is being shared is the breath-taking claim that an eternal God is communicating with and reaching out to his creation through his word.  Word is not speech in a human sense; rather it is an extraordinary moving out from the divine mystery to touch and communicate with the world through the life, speech and actions of Jesus.   The word, the self-expression of the inner being of God, became flesh and dwelt among us.

In this reflection, I am hoping to encourage a reader to learn to use and respect words better.  They are potentially, as we have said, agents of real power.  They can hurt but they can also build up and encourage.  When we use words flippantly, as we often do, we tell ourselves that we are speaking in jest.  This jesting may be, if we are self-critical, an attempt to trivialise words and treat them as cheap.  I would like to think that Christians never think of words as having little value.  So much can be achieved or possibly undermined by the way we use words. We have a biblical duty to think of them as infinitely precious, to be used as far as possible for good.  I am always convicted by the passage of the Epistle of James about the importance of ‘bridling the tongue’.  While I stand accused at a being a failure in this area, I find I can be helped by making a connection with all that the Old Testament says about the Word of God.  If God creates, communicates and reaches out with his Word, does he not call us to do the same?  Our words do not of course function like the Divine Word but they do potentially have some things in common.  The words we utter are capable of becoming a focus of transforming power.  When used properly they can create, encourage and build up others.  When they succeed in doing this, they distantly evoke the divine action of creation itself.  What greater challenge or calling could we have than this?