Three Perfect Words
Living in Nashville means I get to hang out with songwriters. These men and women are an amazing bunch. I’ve seen them sit on a couch and strum their guitars for hours trying to find just the right word to give the song its punch. They are masters of using absolutely no more words than necessary to either break your heart or get your feet dancing. They will go through the entire dictionary looking for that one word with the right number of syllables to fit into the beat.
“Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers is the perfect example. The song hangs on three words. No more. No less. To add anything would ruin the song. To take anything away would leave the song empty. These three words are perfect.
First, notice it’s not, “There Isn’t Any Sunshine.” Yes, the grammar of the song is improper, but this song isn’t about proper English. It's about heartbreak and loneliness. “Ain’t” is the only word that works. “Isn’t” takes all the pain out of the song. “Isn’t” is too clean, too smooth. It doesn’t snag the heart the way “Ain’t” does.
Second, the song is very simple. The entire song is made up of very few words. In the bridge, Withers just sings, “I know” over and over again. There’s nothing more that can be said. There’s nothing more that needs to be said. The hurt and longing in those words would be lost if anything was added. After all, when you hurt as badly as Withers does in this song, to say more wouldn’t be possible. The language of pain is silence.
Most preachers aren’t as disciplined as songwriters in the use of their words. As a result, we lose a lot of impact because we clutter up the image with unrelated noise or lose our congregation in a flood of disconnected syllables. Sometimes, preachers would do well to remember that less is more.
This is why the first Easter sermon is so perfect. “He is risen!” Nothing more is needed. Nothing can be taken away from that sentence nor can anything be added to it. The sentence is a present celebration of a past action. Did you notice that? “Is” is present tense. “Risen” is past tense. The resurrection is done! Christ is alive! And the reality of the resurrection is present tense, forever in the now.
If you were to write this sentence in an English paper, you would get a red slash across the words. You would be admonished for putting words with different tenses in the same sentence. But how else do you say it?
There’s one Jesus. There’s one resurrection. There’s one moment that changed everything and one moment that keeps on changing everything. Now that Christ has been raised, we have to rethink who we are, our pasts, our present and future. How do you say that?
In three words. Only three words. This is the perfect Easter sermon.
“He is risen.”
Nothing more. Nothing less. These are the only three words that work.
This essay was first posted in Scot McKnight’s newsletter.
