The LORD Speaks by No Other Word But Jesus

When Mary's Boy called Samuel

1 Samuel 3:1-10, (11-20)

In the lectionary for this coming Sunday of Epiphany, the Old Testament text is 1 Samuel 3. To my mind, the most auspicious but least noticed feature of the passage is verse 7: “…and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.”

It’s critical we understand that locution. And it’s essential we hear it in the context of the Gospel’s prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If we do not, then Christians have neither the reason nor the right to read Israel’s Bible as also our scripture.

When the Old Testament tells us that “the word came to…” it does not mean that the Father sent some words to one prophet or patriarch and then sent another batch of words to another prophet or patriarch.

If that’s what it means, then, for Christians, the documents which comprise the Old Testament are nothing more than interesting historical background and cultural context for the New Testament.

Of course, this is all the Old Testament is for a great many— maybe most— Christians.

But this is not what “the word of the Lord came to…” means.

When the Old Testament tells us that the word of the Lord came to Jacob, when the Old Testament reports that the word of the Lord came to Isaiah son of Amoz, when the word of the Lord came to Elijah, saying ”Go and present yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain upon the land,” the word of the Lord in the Old Testament is the word incarnate.

The word of the Lord who calls Hannah’s son is Mary’s boy.

The word of the Lord— the Logos— is Jesus.

The reason the word of the Lord responds, over and over again, to the hot mess that is the house of Israel, responds just like Christ before the woman caught in adultery, is that the word of the Lord in the Old Testament just is Jesus.

Fully human, fully divine Jesus. Jesus did not become fully human and fully divine— that’s not the dogma. Jesus is fully human and fully divine, eternally so. As Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “Before Abraham was, I am.”

The logos who speaks in the Old Testament is not some other extra word of God.

The logos is Jesus.