Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
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SERMON
As a child, did you ever say,
“Sticks and stone may break my bones,
but words will never hurt me!”?
I wish we could wipe that saying out
of our lexicon of cultural cleverness,
because it’s a lie!
Words do hurt.
Words cause incredible damage.
James knew it two thousand years ago …
you’d think we would have caught on by now.
Listen to him again:
“…the tongue is a fire” (v. 6)
“…no one can tame the tongue –
a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” (v. 8)
Don’t you wonder what sorts of things he had been hearing,
that made him react in such a way!
One can guess, of course, from what we have heard the past two weeks,
that some of what James was hearing
was people who taught one thing, but did something else;
people who blessed and welcomed wealthy people,
but cursed and put down the poor;
people who talked the talk,
but didn’t walk the walk.
Which is another way of saying that
many things may have changed in two thousand years’ time,
but human nature isn’t one of them!
There are, however, other ways in which
we can cause damage with our tongues, with our words,
that are at least equally important,
which James doesn’t deal within his context and in his letter.
And those are also worth taking a look at.
To begin with:
Only starting in about the nineteenth century
and then especially into the twentieth,
have we begun taking seriously the issue of
violence within families.
There are now laws dealing with spousal abuse,
and child abuse,
and marital rape,
that are quite new as far as human history is concerned.
And while we continue to recognize
a certain amount of privacy rights within the family,
and certain rights on the part of parents
to raise their children as they see fit,
we also place boundaries where necessary.
What we haven’t yet come to terms with,
in part because it’s more difficult to see,
is verbal abuse.
You can’t show up in an emergency room
for treatment of bruises on your soul.
There is as yet no medical way to detect
a heart broken or wounded by constant, vicious verbal attacks.
What we are now starting to realize is
that even though the wounds caused by verbal abuse are invisible,
they are just as damaging over the long term.
You don’t ever entirely “get over”
being constantly told by your parents that you weren’t wanted,
or that you’re incompetent, or will never amount to anything.
You may, if you’re lucky, prove them wrong …
but the scars are always there.
Even if you eventually come to know
that it was more about them than it was about you.
These things don’t only happen in families, of course …
They also happen in workplaces, and at school,
and, sad to say, in the church.
Through most of its history,
the church’s treatment of women has amounted to verbal abuse:
“daughters of Eve,” “gateway to hell,”
to quote only a couple of illustrious church “fathers.”
Most churches at this point in time
are engaged in active verbal abuse against
gay and lesbian people,
to say nothing of those who are bisexual or transgender.
I wonder how much of that would stop
if the “bashers” read James,
and came to realize that their tongues are saying far more about themselves
than they are about the people they hate.
With your words,
you can tell me what kind of person you think someone else is …
but your tongue tells me without any doubt who you are.
But our tongues manage to do harm in other ways as well.
Often, we don’t directly attack a person or persons verbally …
Maybe they’re stronger than we are.
Maybe it’s not that they did anything wrong;
we just don’t like what they did.
Maybe we aren’t even sure of our facts,
we’re just having a little fun speculating and wondering out loud.
Or maybe we don’t mind doing a little harm,
but we want to be sure we stay anonymous about it.
Anthropologists talk about gossip as a form of social control …
that is, if we don’t like something you are doing,
but it’s not particularly illegal or maybe not even immoral;
we just don’t like it …
then we will start whispering about you among ourselves,
and pretty soon you will find out that we are whispering about you,
and you’ll stop doing whatever it was.
In addition, anyone else who was considering
doing the same thing that you were doing
is now going to think twice about it.
Gossip is particularly a preferred strategy
among those who are deemed “less powerful” in a given society.
Which is why it’s often been the province of women in our culture, and many others.
We may not have the physical power or the imputed authority
to force someone to behave,
so we exercise control in more subtle ways that are available to us.
Well, that’s a good anthropological, culturally relative way
of understanding the topic,
and in my experience, it’s quite on target so far as it goes.
However, there’s also a theological dimension
that we have to consider as well.
“The tongue is a fire,” says James.
“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!”
Does it matter whether our attack is direct or indirect,
if our words are nevertheless doing harm?
When we choose to initiate gossip,
or to share those tidbits that have been passed along to us …
our words may be about someone else,
someone who’s not even in the room,
but our tongues are saying something even louder about us.
Something not very flattering.
Something we should pay attention to,
because others catch onto it,
even when we don’t.
James even seems to suggest that,
if there are bad things coming out of us,
that no good at all can come in addition.
“Does a spring pour forth from the same opening
both fresh and brackish water?
Can a fig tree yield olives,
or a grapevine figs?
No more can salt water yield fresh.”
In his frustration, James finally overstates his case.
Before we dismiss that last bit, though,
we need to take him seriously enough to recognize
that he is so angry at his readers
precisely because they have caused so much harm,
and done so much damage,
by misusing their tongues.
He wants them to take that seriously as sin,
not as an innocent choice of a way to kill some time chatting.
But he does take it a little far.
If you want evidence that good can still come
out of someone who misuses their tongue far too often,
just look at this morning’s gospel story about Peter.
If Peter had lived in the wild West,
he would have been one of those
“Shoot first, ask questions later” kinds of guys.
As it is, he has to settle for
shooting off his mouth with some regularity,
and then repenting at leisure.
In our lesson for today,
Peter goes from fresh water to brackish
in the space of just four verses:
In Mark 8, verse 29, Peter gets the answer right,
telling Jesus, “You are the Messiah.”
Exactly! Good work, Peter!
But then in verse 32, we find that Jesus is rebuking Peter
for having rebuked him,
for daring to tell the truth about what would happen to the Messiah.
Bad Peter! Bridle your tongue!
But God continued to use Peter,
who continued to allow his mouth to get him into trouble,
yet who also gave his life for the sake of the gospel.
So, James exaggerates.
But he’s in good company …
Jesus, after all, loved to exaggerate …
I mean, remember that camel / eye of needle bit?
But he reminds his hearers, and us,
of an important balance to keep between faith and works.
Between believing and doing.
Between going to church,
and being a church.
Between loving God,
and acting like people who love God.
We are saved by grace …
James generally doesn’t say enough about that.
But we are saved in order to be gracious …
and sometimes, we like to forget about that!
What does your tongue say about you?
Does it say that you are a person who needs to put others down
in order to feel okay about yourself?
Does it say that you believe you are better than other people?
Or does it say that you are a person who knows him- or herself to be blessed by God,
and who tries to use words to bless others as well?
Assuming that your tongue is a fire …
does it burn people, or does it warm them?
What does your tongue say about you?
Amen.