Our speech to one another is supposed to be a response to the speech of God. God says, “Speak truth in love” (Eph 4:15) and “Lay aside falsehood, and speak truth to your neighbor” (Eph 4:25). If we respond rightly to His word, our words to one another will build communities of truth and love, cultural habits and institutions that embody hope and justice.
But we don’t. We don’t speak rightly back to God, and so we don’t speak rightly to one another.
After Adam sins, Yahweh comes to the garden to speak to him. It doesn’t go well (Gen 3:8–13). Yahweh calls Adam to appear before Him, but Adam is hiding among the trees in fear and shame. Confronted with his sin, he doesn’t confess, but blames Eve and ultimately blames God.
Everything’s upside down. Instead of responding to a call to worship, Adam slinks out from hiding. Instead of confessing, he targets the closest scapegoat. The dialogue doesn’t end with benediction but malediction, with Yahweh issuing curses against the serpent, the man, and the woman. It’s the Bible’s first liturgy, but it’s twisted. It’s an anti-liturgical dialogue.
When Adam’s dialogue with God gets spoiled, so does his dialogue with his wife, his sons, his eventual neighbors. He submits to the serpent, whose wickedness is linguistic wickedness. Human speech becomes diabolical, full of lies, half-truths, seductions, temptations, threats, hatred, and anger. We speak like the serpent, with forked tongue.
Speech is corrupted, and so are all the common practices that rely on speech. Patterns of common life and the institutions that carry communities become infused with lies, slander, gossip, boasts, blasphemies. Husbands accuse wives instead of defending them. Parents denigrate children, and children defy parents. Sellers deceive buyers. Legislators write unjust laws, judges favor the rich or the poor, presidents and prime ministers manipulate public opinion through slick media campaigns.
The world comes under the dominion of the father of lies.
The God who creates by Word re-creates by Word. The eternal Word becomes flesh in order to redeem man and society. He enters our linguistic disorder to put it back in order so that our speech to God and one another is what it ought to be, restored to truth, love, hope, and justice.
Here’s where the liturgy comes in. The liturgy of the church restores language so that it becomes what it’s intended to be: a medium of dialogue with God and one another, the common practice that facilitates other common practices. By putting our fragmented language together again, the liturgy of the heavenly city repairs the common life of the earthly city of man.