John 14

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

John 14

You can just feel Jesus talking way over their heads in this.  He's way over my head too, and I have the benefit of knowing what's going to happen and years of people discussing and parsing what these verses mean.

But Jesus says here that that's okay.  We're not equipped to really understand it with words.  Words aren't built to carry the kind of meaning and Truth that He's dealing with.  That's what the Holy Spirit is for.  And the world cannot accept the Holy Spirit, but He will be with us always.

Perhaps a big part of the problem is that there just aren't words for the Holy Spirit.

I remember when my father first died, my mom spent a good deal of time wanting me to write his biography - gather stories and talk to people and write up a story, and I even made a few notes.  But I always knew I really, really didn't want to do that.  And I finally said the two main reasons - at first, because I couldn't handle it, and second, because when I put a story into words, I experience it more in words than in the sense memory itself.  So I didn't want to replace all my memories of my dad with just words about my dad.

Because I knew the words would be hollow in comparison.  They aren't built to do the work that would be needed to equal the memories.

There are moments in my spiritual life that I'm likewise afraid to touch with words and even clear-headed thoughts feel like too rough a touch - like they might spoil and make smaller something...better. Precious was the word that tried to happen there, but I could feel it not being right.

I can feel the words here not being right, not being enough, not being...something there aren't words for.  Not being something that could make it clear and could make it click.  Not something that could work.

Something we only see in glimpses that are beyond words.  Something that lives in our chests, and I don't just mean "our hearts."  I mean the thing that bursts forth into sudden tears sometimes when there's something too beautiful or too true that suddenly shifts into place.  I mean the thing that aches even when my feet and mind are anxious to turn our rough and rude thoughts from Church things.

Words are not enough for some ideas, but they can help you reach the part that does matter.  That's what I have to believe, since my gift is words.  But that's why you can really believe me when I tell you, sometimes things are too precious to try to put them in mere words.

And I can never decide if it's part of the grand gift Jesus gave of becoming less than omniscient omnipotent God, becoming a limited human, that He is the Word - or if it's the promise that there are words out there big enough.  Of course our little words are hollow substitutes.  Somewhere, there are perfect words for this - there is the Word.

The Word, who can make all this fit and make sense and be a part of some discernible whole.  The Word, who made us and sustains us and understands us and all the rest of it enough to hold it.  Enough that it only makes it more what it really is.  The way the right words sometimes do for more ordinary things.  The way words like "wife" or "love" or "dance" somehow change what was before something less wonderful.

There's a Word that can do that for us and for all the things too precious for our little words.