“Omit needless words.”
This is the greatest commandment in “The Elements of Style,” a little guidebook for writers by William Strunk and E.B. White.
If you want to be a powerful, effective writer, then heed Strunk and White’s instruction: Omit needless words.
The rule elegantly obeys itself. It requires only three words to teach writers the power of brevity.
I first read Strunk and White as a creative-writing student at Sibley Senior High School in Mendota Heights, Minnesota. Our teacher was David Coleman, an Irish scholar of mythology and drama. Mr. Coleman nurtured my first attempts at writing things worth writing. His assignments were deceptively simple: “Write a paper about an interesting person,” he would assign us. And: “Write a paper about an interesting experience.”
We spent the class doggedly weeding needless words from our gardens, while cultivating and pruning the needful words. “Do not say that something is very good,” Mr. Coleman taught us. “‘Very’ is a weak word. The thing is good, or it is not.” And he taught us not to fill our written confections with empty calories such as “I think that…” or “I believe that…” “If you didn’t think it,” Mr. Coleman would say, “then you wouldn’t have written it. Just say what you think. Show, don’t tell.”
Words are powerful. As the prophet Samuel came of age, growing steadily into a clarion voice of God’s Word, we are told that the Lord “let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground.” Words can fall to the ground — that is, they can be wasted or lost, cast aside, ill-chosen, or ignored. They might just be weak words, filler words, words like “very.” Or they might be destructive words, words meant to injure, striking the ground with dreadful force.
And this is the graver sin. Sometimes I write too many words in a frivolous way — I have written a sermon or three that could have helpfully been edited down by several dozen — several hundred — words. But it’s even worse if I use words to cause harm, to tear the fabric, to plunge the sword.
Words are powerful.
The fourth evangelist, whom we call John but who might have been as many as three different people, was an eyewitness to the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He (or she: we aren’t completely sure about their gender) knew well the power of words. John takes up words, and the singular Word — capital W, logos — as a key way to understand who Jesus is, how Jesus relates to God, how Jesus is God, and ultimately how God, through Jesus the Word, creates. “In the beginning was the Word,” John sings. “The Word was with God; the Word was God.” And here’s the money quote: “All things came into being through the Word.”
All things came into being through the Word.
God creates through the Word. God is Word; God is with the Word; and God also speaks the Word, out and into the universe, bringing all things into being. We can better understand these heady concepts if we appreciate the power of words, and how their power deepens — for good or for ill — when we craft them into a message. God shared with us God’s own power to create with words. And we are also able to twist that power into a weapon.
For nearly every week over the last two years, I have written what we call The Weekly Word, a short article that anchors our weekly newsletter (sometimes not so short: I will forever be a student of the laconic Mr. Coleman!). Maybe you pass over this article week by week, or you briefly scan it to glean an idea or two about how things are going at St. Paul’s. The Weekly Word is not literature as much as a brief note in a periodical. But perhaps you can at least appreciate that The Weekly Word is but one example of the many ways words create St. Paul’s; the ways words shape our community; the ways words guide and form us in faith.
But there are other, painful examples. Have you ever written an email and then sorely regretted it? If we had a show of hands on that, I would raise my own hand high: oh, the suffering I have caused myself and others by quickly pressing ‘send’! If you’ve ever said or written something hurtful, then you likely have felt that sickening, futile desire to take those words back. But you can’t. The power of words deepens when we release them. Words create. And sometimes they create something new by destroying something, or someone, else.
We email a lot in our church life. We converse a lot. We trade thousands of words a day, as we work here and play here; as we live here and die here.
And so we should pay attention to words, here in this congregation of faithful souls, we who, in that font, are drowned as many, then raised as one; we who are gathered around this Table to be strengthened for mission. We choose words, many words, countless torrents of words, to shape our prayers to God. And many of these words are chosen for us, whether we like them or not. And we argue about words. Tell me: what is your least favorite sentence or phrase in our thick, word-stuffed Prayer Book? I bet you have at least one.
Here’s mine: I strongly affirm our faith, but I worry quite a bit about the words of the Nicene Creed. I wish we weren’t required to recite the Creed every Sunday. The Nicene Creed is mystifying and upsetting; it parses words (what is the difference between “begotten” and “made”?!). It confuses, or disturbs, or even enrages us. (What do we mean by “virgin”? And how can we square that with the startling, prophetic proto-feminism of the New Testament? And does the Spirit proceed from the Son? Yes or no? How can we decide that question when we barely understand the esoteric concept of “Trinitarian procession” itself?) All these words! If they create, they sometimes seem to be creating a big, upsetting mess.
And John the evangelist, for all their elegance in the sublime words of the Prologue, which we proclaimed today as our Gospel: John does not follow the “less is more” wisdom of Strunk and White. Jesus in John says substantially more words than he does in the other three Gospels, teaching and praying at great, exhausting length. The Word, in John’s telling, seems never to stop talking.
But those words, numerous and exhausting as they may be, sound a deep bell in our hearing. John’s words work on us; they move and shape us; they form us in faith; they bind us as one, as Christ’s Body.
”The light shines in the darkness,” John sings, “and the darkness has not overcome it.” Another translation has the darkness failing to understand light. These powerful, consoling words can stir us to action in this benighted world, so full of suffering and so impoverished of good, strong words of authentic hope.
But the song continues. “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” John sings. Another translation has the Word becoming flesh and “moving into our neighborhood.” Our neighborhood is plagued by inequality, by indifference, by human anguish; but God is with us.
And then: “From the Word’s fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” Another translation has grace “following after” grace. So we receive the grace of hope, but that is quickly followed by the grace of the realization of that hope: by God’s faith we have found housing for several of our neighbors; by God’s hope we have incorporated nearly two dozen children into our community; and by God’s love we have established a legacy of faithful stewardship here that will nourish our great-grandchildren.
And so we rejoice. We may have plenty of words to injure one another, to break our bonds of fellowship, to destroy all that is good and great in this world; but we have even more words, countless words, the fullness of the Word — the Word by which God mends this world, and repairs our relationships, and builds a home for our descendants to live in peace.
Do you have a favorite word that speaks of God, a favorite phrase that proclaims God’s Good News, a favorite paragraph or poem that creates a new thing in this universe? Maybe your favorite is in that Creed I find so troublesome. Maybe your favorite is in a hymn you sing from the depths of your heart.
My favorite creative word — my favorite needful word, my favorite word that speaks of God, my favorite word that creates something new in the universe — my favorite word is Reconcile.
I invite you to wonder about your favorite word, your needful word, the word you love most among the words that bring forth something new from the chaos. And I promise, as long as I know you, I will never omit your needful word from our common prayer. I will sing it right along with you, by your side, for many long days.
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Preached on the First Sunday after Christmas, December 29, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147:13-21
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1:1-18