Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing-and How We Can Revive Them

by Jonathan Merritt

“The father is convinced that the younger, the prodigal, is the one who is lost, and in many respects he is correct,” writes Levine. “However, we find out at the end of the parable that the son who is in fact ‘lost’ is the elder. The owner spots the missing sheep among the hundred, and the woman spots the missing coin among the ten. The father, with only two sons, was unable to count correctly.”

A clue that reinforces Jesus’ point in this parable occurs in the first story. Jesus explains the end of the parable of the lost sheep: “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

While we often use the term lost to refer to someone who needs to get her act together and start following the rules, in these stories, Jesus uses lost to mean loved, valuable, and worth pursuing. People who are “lost” are precious, not pitiful. By playing with the word lost, reframing in light of these parables, we can look at the categories that Jesus wants his followers to pursue most fervently: the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely. He calls us to be the shepherd who places such value on the one.

A mystic friend of mine once told me that life’s greatest journeys are cyclical rather than linear. When you end up back where you started, prepare to begin again—only this time, you’ll progress with greater wisdom, insight, and courage.

Thinking of Jesus as a singular word confines us to a one-dimensional understanding of God. It is static and unmovable. But understanding Jesus as a divine Conversation reveals a God who is vibrant, alive, involved, and a good listener.

As Mechthild of Magdeburg, a medieval Christian mystic, said, “Of the heavenly things God has shown me, I can speak but a little word, not more than a honeybee can carry away on its foot from an overflowing jar.”

Learning to speak God from scratch is a cyclical journey rather than linear. Having no beginning or end, the practice is perpetual and perennial. It means participating in the conversation of our ancestors and one our descendants will soon join. The cosmic conversation draws in each new generation of the Jesus way, spiraling us upward and propelling us forward as we peel back new layers of meaning in our most sacred words.

As Martin Buber once wrote, “Every man of Israel is told to think of himself as standing at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. For man there are past events and future events, but not so for God: day in, day out, he gives the Torah.”