Last Sunday in church our interim pastor decided to use the “N” word in his sermon. As soon as he said it I went into a mild state of shock, my brain unable to hear any more of his words as I reeled from the jolt of that powerfully charged word. After I recovered somewhat, I tried to listen to the rest of his words, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt that a justification was somewhere to be had. But I came up short in that search.After the service I approached my dear friend who is in a biracial marriage. Her husband just happened to be in church that morning too, but I’m not as close to him as he is rather shy, and I wanted to be sure I wasn't just overreacting. So I asked her what she thought about the sermon. She said; “You mean the “N” word?” I acknowledged that was what I meant. She said that she had been unnerved by his use of that word too. We both tended to apologize for the pastor, saying we thought we understood what he meant, but that it just wasn’t really clear in the sermon, and didn’t justify his use of the “N” word for effect.
We met with him this morning after Thursday morning prayer group and he said that someone had actually said the phrase to him that he repeated in his sermon. He explained that he was trying to draw a parallel between Jesus being scolded for having contact with the pharisees and tax collecters and the way people treated him as he was trying to do the Lord’s work in an inner city environment. [People called him a; “N----- lover.”]
The question of the power of a single word comes into play. After all it is just a word isn’t it? As I have reflected upon this issue I have come to the conclusion that a word isn’t just a word. A word is a symbol for a concept. It is a neat little cognitive package that we slip ideas into and deliver to whomever will listen. Through continual use in a specific way, those symbols come to be known not only literally, but emotionally. So to drop the “N” word in the context of the sermon, believing that it is of no consequence other than to illustrate an allusion to the persecution Christ experienced, is at best naïve and at worst an unimaginative solution to communicating this concept. For with the saying of that word, most minds reel and lose a sense of the direction the sermon was taking, undermining the whole point of the sermon.
What did my friend’s husband think of it? She said she talked to him after they returned home and he said that he had hated it being mentioned in the context of the sermon. They had hoped that the one place they wouldn’t have to hear that word was in the church.
It was nice the pastor sat down with us so we could help each other through this. Since this happened I’ve been thinking left and right about the use of words and their potential to elicit and invoke. In the Bible John says that Jesus is the Word made flesh. That is pretty powerful. That in and of itself is pretty noble testimony as to the power of words.
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs
(strange fruit; Billie Holiday)
