"In the Beginning Was Dialogue"
#92-19Presented on The Lutheran Hour on January 5, 2025
By Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler, Lutheran Hour Speaker
Copyright 2025 Lutheran Hour Ministries
Reflections
Text: John 1:1
"There are dirty dishes in the sink, again."
It's a simple observation—plates, forks, knives, food residue, in and around the vicinity of the sink—it's a matter of fact. But, you know, such a statement—"there are dirty dishes in the sink, again," can induce strong emotion: defensiveness, resentment, anger, righteous indignation. "There are dirty dishes in the sink, AGAIN." Mmm. Dem's fightin' words!
And dirty dishes could be substituted for any number of facts in the world: the time dinner was ready, the time the job was finished, the time we arrived at the church this morning, the amount of money spent, the amount of toilet paper left on the roll, the amount of sarcasm in your voice, the way we drove here, the way teams were picked, the way plans were made, the way she looked at you when you were talking. Vocalize any of these carefully selected facts and the mere mention of them can induce strong emotion.
So, how does it work? How can an observation such as "there are dirty dishes in the sink, again," become fightin' words? How can an uncontestable fact put your amygdala* on alert?
Well, it's not the fact. It's the story told about the fact.
Maybe his story goes like this: "I spent all day making chili. We had guests coming over. I had to take a shower and get ready, so I let the pot soak in the sink. It's easier to clean if you let it soak, right? I'm being efficient with my time. I'll clean it tomorrow."
But the story she tells goes like this: "I'm always cleaning up after everyone in this house. And he doesn't care how the house looks. And our guests are going to think we live like pigs. And who really likes chili, anyhow?"
And when they start to speak these stories out loud, that's when it really gets fun, or sometimes just louder. And if they keep on like this, it's gonna lead into one of two directions: fight or flight; silence or violence.
So, is there a third option—a way to avoid both silence and violence? Yes. Absolutely there's a third option. It's called dialogue. That's the main idea behind a book titled, Crucial Conversations, by a social scientist named Kerry Patterson and his co-authors, but others have put it in similar terms.i
And maybe it seems obvious that being human and acting humanely involves dialogue—dialogue defined as "the respectful exchange of meaning between two or more persons." Humans do dialogue naturally. But we're also really bad at it, sometimes. We have a hard time staying together in dialogue when our amygdalas are trippin' on adrenaline. Sometimes we drift into silence or violence, instead.
Silence is the result when the story I tell myself convinces me that that person won't listen, or isn't worth the effort. Violence is the result when the story convinces me that that person is dangerous, and I need to defend myself.
So how is it that humans seem simultaneously designed for dialogue, but yet so dismal at it? Some people focus on our inability to sustain dialogue and conclude that we weren't designed for dialogue, but only for digestion. That is, we were made to consume or be consumed. People use words like the deep-sea anglerfish uses the luminescent fin mounted on his forehead, that is, to lure in his next meal.
Humans are sophisticated anglerfish, it's said, that sprouted legs and became skilled at the cunning use of words. And the truest thing about us isn't our dialogue, but our throbbing amygdalas and growling stomachs, so goes the story.
Author C.S. Lewis, in his book The Screwtape Letters, once imagined a conversation between two demons. The demons are writing letters back and forth to each other, catching up on what's going on in their lives. At first, they seem to be having a dialogue—a mutually beneficial exchange of meaning. But by the end, we see that exchange hasn't been about dialogue at all, it's only about digestion. Because when you strip away all the formalities of hell, all that's left are growling stomachs. And the demons' standing order is "Bring us back food or be food yourself."ii
So, is that all there is to being human—to consume or be consumed? Some say so, but others believe there must be more to the world than just appetite. Some ancient Greek philosophers held to this belief. They believed in something they called the "logos," (sometime pronounced "low-goes"), usually translated as the "word"—logos, which is the root word for "logic" and also "dialogue." The logos, these Greek philosophers said, was the force that held the universe together.iii
Logos was sort of like the God that the ancient Hebrews spoke of in the Bible, but different. Because the logos wasn't personal, not some One you could dialogue with, but some thing you could talk about.
And talking—talking logically and rationally according to the law of the logos is the thing that makes us human, these philosophers contended. It's what keeps us from chaos. And they believed that the logos was the solution to humanity's problems. And if we just teach it enough and understand it enough and practice it enough and harness it, maybe all our problems will be solved.
But it didn't work like they hoped, not then, not now. Humans still do damage with words: wars, divorces, break-ups, betrayals, life-long emotional trauma. Even the most logical among us can be awful with our words, whether by silence or violence.
The ancient Hebrews who wrote the Old Testament of the Bible also believed in the logos, the word—not in impersonal logic, but the personal Word of God, the wisdom of God, by whom the universe was created, and through whom human beings were invited into conversation with God through prayer and praise, and to practice love for neighbor through mutually edifying dialogue. Some of these ancient Hebrews even speculated that dialogue had eternally existed in God.iv They weren't saying that there were many gods, but only one God—the Hebrews were fiercely monotheistic. But the Scriptures also revealed that God had always had the word—dialogue—words to share with another—God speaking with another who is also God, but not many gods, just one God. But this was just speculation.
Until there was this Hebrew teacher from Nazareth. And He said things and He did things that no one else had. He was clearly a man, a real human being. And He spoke and acted as though He were the Messiah promised by the Hebrew Scriptures. But more than that, He spoke as though He had always been. Even before He was born in the flesh, He was. He is. He called God His Father, but not in the same sense that other Hebrews thought of God as their Father, because God had adopted them as a people. No, with Him it was more than that. He spoke as though God had always been His Father—not by adoption, but by nature.
These claims were too much for the religious leaders of His day. It might just sound like run-of-the-mill crazy to you. But in that context, it was blasphemy, dangerous words, a capital offense. And they condemned Him to death. They had Him crucified. Three days later, though, a group of His followers saw Him alive again—risen from the dead. And they became convinced that this Jesus from Nazareth is who He claimed to be—the Son of God, the logos, the Word of God made human, crucified and raised from the dead and returning to judge the living and the dead, which means that Jesus is God's living invitation into life-giving dialogue. He is our way back into what we were made for.
Listen to how one of His followers, a man named John, says it at the beginning of his biography about Jesus, the Gospel according to John, it's called. He says, "In the beginning was the Word, the logos, and the logos was with God, the logos was facing God, and the logos was God. He was in the beginning with God and by Him all things were made. All things happened. And nothing happened without Him. And what happened in Him was life. And His life was the light of humankind. The light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not grasped it."
He continues, "The true Light, the Light that gives light to all people was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world came to be through Him, the world did not know Him. He came to that which is His own, but His own did not accept Him. But to those who did receive Him, to those who believe, who are trusting in His Name, He gave them the authority to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, not of a husband's will, but children born of God. So, the Word, the logos became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory—glory of the one-and-only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth—full of love and faithfulness ... no one has ever seen God, but the one-and-only Son, Himself God, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known."
John, this follower of Jesus, he's contending that the world does not reduce to growling stomachs, nor to detached logic, but rather, to loving dialogue. Dialogue goes all the way down and all the way back—the exchange of words between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—dialogue based in love and grounded in mutual respect. And human beings? We were created to be invited into this eternal dialogue. That's our origin story. That's where we come from and why we are here. But we have been taken captive by a lie. That's the darkness John mentioned, brought on by Satan, the "father of lies." The darkness can't grasp that God would truly love us without the need to feed on us or use us. So, the darkness is always trying to reduce dialogue, to silence us, and digest us.
And in the case of Jesus, it ended in violence—a violent death, a crucifixion on a cross. But the darkness couldn't grasp Him. Jesus rose from the dead. He took the violence and exchanged it for a word of forgiveness. God's Word will not be silenced. Jesus is risen, and He lives today and sends His followers to speak, to enter into dialogue, on His behalf. I'm one of them—His followers. He won me over, not with threats, not with cold logic, but with dialogue—hundreds, maybe thousands of conversations along the way, with people who've been reading about Jesus in the New Testament Gospels, hearing people speak of Him and in His Name. And eventually, I found that I believed, and I still believe. "Believing"—not like signing a sales contract and being done with it, but believing as in trust, personal and relational and sustained by dialogue. And without this dialogue, my faith would suffocate in about three minutes. But Jesus keeps calling me back, and I keep falling back into the Word.
Do you need more faith? Then you need the Word. Faith comes from hearing the Word of Christ. So, listen! Listen again with us next week. We're going to keep listening to the Gospel of John. Listen and join the dialogue.
I've been following Jesus for many years. But I still find I have a lot to learn about practicing God's dialogue with the people around me. Because sometimes I still treat conversation like a contest. As comedian Dave Barry put it, "I can win any argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Sometimes, often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me."v
Treating conversation like a battle isn't a great way to win friends and influence people. But more importantly, it misses the bigger story. If we trust that Jesus is who He says He is: God's personal invitation into eternal dialogue with God and God's people, then we know that dialogue isn't a win-lose contest, because those games have to end. Dialogue isn't like a game of chess, where players are trying to end the game by outwitting their opponent. No, it's more like making music. No serious musician ever sang or wrote a song thinking, "This will be the song to end all songs!" No, we play the game of music, not because we want it to end, but because we hope it goes on forever.
So also, God's commitment to meet us and sustain us in conversation is eternal. So, when I put my foot in my mouth again, or when you put someone down with your words, when we drift back toward silence or violence, when people stop inviting us to parties, Jesus calls us back, promises forgiveness, and puts us back in the game. And a crucial conversation is when the game gets difficult. Crucial conversation is when there are two or more opposing viewpoints, negative emotions, and high stakes—when words become "fightin' words."
The authors of that book that I mentioned, Crucial Conversations, encourage us, when we find ourselves in a conversation like that, to slow down and consider the story we're telling ourselves. Because it's the story that's producing those fight or flight emotions and making it difficult for us to stay in dialogue. So, you ask yourself, "Am I making myself into a victim? Am I villainizing or demonizing that person I'm talking with? What story am I telling myself that is leading me away from respectful dialogue?"
That secular book gives some good conversation skills. But the Gospel of John gives us the bigger story to tell. The Gospel says that dialogue is the most important activity in the universe, and it's worth the effort. It's more important than winning, more important than feeling comfortable, more important than life itself, because Jesus was willing to die for dialogue with us, because God's dialogue is the source of life. And life without a Word from God is a living death. But Jesus is proof that dialogue wins over death.
In the phrase, "crucial conversations," the root word for crucial is "cross"—as in crucified. The cross is now behind Jesus. He's put it behind Him. And one day, He will return to raise the dead and make all things new. And then there will be no more arguing with the facts. And that will be the end of crucial conversation, but not of dialogue. So, in the meantime, we bear the cross of crucial conversations. And remember that winning arguments isn't the goal, but neither is avoidance. Dialogue is the goal.
I got a glimpse of this last winter when my family hosted a game night with some friends. We made some soup and gathered together in the living room to play a game called Encore. Encore involves working together as a team to think of songs that go with certain prompts. So, for example, the prompt might be "songs about seasons." And so you have to think about songs about seasons, and you have to sing them, you can't just say them. So one side might start with (sings) "Walkin' in a winter wonderland." And the other answers with "It's a cruel (cruel) summer," and then the other side, "Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you got to do is call." (I didn't say you had to sing them well; you just had to sing them.) And it goes on and on and back and forth like that. You get the point. And even though there are teams, and one eventually wins, the truth is, in a game like this, everybody wins, because the conversation is the win.
To paraphrase something C.S. Lewis said:vi the win is having the whole group together, with our shoes off and our feet toward the fire and our drinks at our elbows, and each person is bringing out what is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. And the whole world, and something beyond the world—new creation in Christ—opens to our hearts and minds as we talk.
And whether we let the chili pot soak in the sink, or scraped it clean before everyone got here, it was worth the effort.
In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
i Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMilan, Al Switzler, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (McGraw Hill: New York, 2012. See also Stanley Fish, Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom (Harper: New York, 2016).
ii C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Broadman and Holman: Nashville, 1996), 106.
iii Anthony Kenny, An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy (Blackwell: Malden, MA, 2006), 7. See also, D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1991), 114-15.
iv Oskar Skarsaune, Incarnation: Myth or Fact? (Concordia: St Louis, 1991), 29-33.
v Quoted in Crucial Conversations, 211.
vi C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Harcourt Brace & Co.: New York, 1960), 72.
*amygdala--the part of the brain associated with emotional responses.
Reflections for January 5, 2025
Title: Listening to Understand
Mark Eischer: You're listening to The Lutheran Hour. For FREE online resources, archived audio, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. Once again, here's Pastor Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Today I'm visiting with Dr. Chad Lakies, who serves as vice president for ministry engagement here at Lutheran Hour Ministries. Welcome back to the program, Chad.
Chad Lakies: Hey, thanks, Mike, for having me again.
Mike Zeigler: That's an impressive job title, vice president for ministry engagement, which, as I understand it, means you travel and you talk to people—
Chad Lakies: I do. I do.
Mike Zeigler:—about what Lutheran Hour Ministries does to equip everybody to reach out with the love of Jesus, right where they're at. One of the presentations that I've heard you give and know that you've given in the past is titled "How Not to Let Issues Prevent Relationships." And as I understand it, you did this in one place for a youth gathering and received an amazing, an unbelievable response, people waiting out in the halls to hear. They didn't necessarily know you, but there was something about the title, "How Not To Let Issues Prevent Relationships," that grabbed their attention. What do you think it was about that title?
Chad Lakies: Yeah, I think it just speaks to something that's hitting a nerve in our time. I think all of us can look around and notice that we seem divided as a society, polarized. And it really seems like a knee-jerk reaction to disassociate from people with whom you disagree in some significant sort of way. But that also prevents the opportunity for being able to share the Gospel with them and have them meet Jesus in us.
That was one of the reasons why I wanted to give that talk was to clear that space in order to be able to open one up for us to consider more deeply, how do I engage winsomely as a Christian in conversations that might be spiritual in nature and maybe offer me the opportunity over the period of time in that friendship or that relationship to introduce those people to Jesus? Not just how He plays a role in my life, but how He matters significantly for them, how He has come to give everything for them to change their eternal destiny.
Mike Zeigler: In the message today on John 1, we talked about dialogue, how dialogue is at the center of all reality because God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit engage in this exchange of words from eternity, even before there was creation. How do you understand dialogue mitigating or coming between this potential tension between issues and relationships?
Chad Lakies: I think dialogue requires us to listen to other people and not just be people who talk. I think sometimes we interpret the idea of listening as just waiting for my turn to speak. But if we're going to be the sorts of people that Jesus calls us to be and see other humans in their full humanity, hearing them out and trying to understand where they're coming from, why they're coming from, why they're convicted deeply about something that we would disagree with, I think it's critical for us to come to something like an understanding.
Listen to understand, not simply to respond. Dialogue, I think, is ultimately something that is meant to get us toward that end, to encounter the truth, to experience the truth, to know it as God's truth, truth the way that He would have us understand it.
Mike Zeigler: Yeah. Give us some practical tips here. You mentioned not just listening to respond, but listening to understand. What are some other practical ways that we can be better at dialogue as followers of Jesus?
Chad Lakies: Yeah. I think there are two more we could add. One is just this idea that—I like John Inazu, he's a legal scholar in the St. Louis Missouri area, teaches at Washington University—and he says all of us in our society share a modest unity. There're all things that we want and benefit from: clean water, good infrastructure, access to education, healthcare, etc., etc. And so we've got to, I think, frame our sense of how we relate to other people in terms of what do we have in common with them?
Well, Christians would say we've got a number of things in common. We're all made in the image of God. Deeply important, right? So, every time you encounter another human being, you encounter the fingerprints of the divine. Or, from a more New Testament side of things, you're encountering someone for whom the blood of Jesus was shed. Another thing would be kind of going down that line of humility. Understanding that we're limited beings, that I don't know everything. The other person that I'm talking to doesn't know everything. That our way of thinking and understanding the world is constantly under development. And as I encounter the truth, whether that's through a person that I disagree with or a person (who) shares many of my same convictions, I'm on a path to understanding the truth and the way of things better. And that is a way of understanding God and revealing Himself and His ways and the grandeur of His creation to me. And it is a way for me to learn, and especially as I encounter experiences when I realize I'm wrong. That's always humbling. But there's not a way for me to learn and encounter just the grandeur of everything that God has made without doing it with others. And those others aren't always going to think in every way like me. We're going to form and shape and sharpen one another, to use a scriptural metaphor. And I think that humility, expecting that sort of experience, is important.
Mike Zeigler: Thanks for joining us, Chad.
Chad Lakies: Thanks for having me, Mike.
Music Selections for this program:
"A Mighty Fortress" arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
"Crucifer" by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
"Within the Father's House" From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.