Words Have Power

5 May 2026  Acts 14:5-18

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter

“But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city.” Acts 14:20

It isn’t true that all talk is cheap.

It is true that all words are abstractions. They never stop being vibrations in the air, or lines on a page. Words are signs, which means they are not “the thing itself,” but point to “the thing itself” – the word “ball” is not a ball, but points to one.

Every step Paul took back into Lystra, every moment he remained in Philippi when he could have run away, amplified his words. Our words will gain strength in direct proportion to the times, and the stature of the times, we are caught red-handed as witnesses.

And words are almost spontaneously forgettable – we start forgetting them almost as soon as we hear them, and in the absence of recording devices, what we do remember we remember wrongly. It is why games like Whisper Down the Lane are often so hilarious, people twisting absurdly words they have just heard seconds before.

It isn’t true that all talk is cheap, but if you want people to remember it, wrap it around an image. When the advertiser Fred Barnard said, back in the 1920s, that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” he was merely stating a truth our species has understood for centuries. St. Paul certainly understood it – stoned by his opponents, dragged out of the city and left for dead, he regained consciousness, but didn’t flee. Instead he walked back into the city, and every single courageous step of his return made his words louder. It happened again in Philippi (cf. Acts 16:16-40) – arrested, beaten and thrown into jail without a finger lifted in the interest of due process, an earthquake gave Paul a golden opportunity to run away. But he stayed, and demanded an apology from the town fathers for violating his civil rights as a Roman citizen, an apology which he got. The image, and memory, of that moral toughness did more to persuade the Philippians than a thousand letters to the editor. Words never stop being vibrations in the air, or lines on a page; but wrapped around an image that people can see with their eyes shut, they can last forever.

Martin Luther King understood that, too. There is a reason why his “I Have a Dream” speech has had a greater impact than his eloquent and prophetic Letter from a Birmingham Jail. “I Have a Dream” had the Lincoln Memorial, and 250,00 cheering people, and the hot summer of 1963 which saw the centenary of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, and “…the last full measure of devotion…,” “…with malice toward none, with charity for all…” engraved on the wall nearby. If we close our eyes, we can still hear, “I Have a Dream.” Images make words louder than they can ever be on their own.

It isn’t true that all talk is cheap. Words do have power. But all our words are louder when we are caught in the act of loving Jesus. Every step Paul took back into Lystra, every moment he remained in Philippi when he could have run away, amplified his words. Our words will gain strength in direct proportion to the times, and the stature of the times, we are caught red-handed as witnesses.