What Are You Saying?

Scriptures:
James 3:1-12, Mark 8:27-38

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” We all recognize that sing-song-y ditty from our childhood, don’t we? Our parents and teachers used to use it to keep us from feeling that any epithet hurled at us would have any lasting effect. But we also all know that it just isn’t true. Words can be very powerful, reaching deep into our psyches and twisting with an impact more deeply harmful than any switchblade. Nigger. Wop. Kike. Faggot. Mama’s-boy. Some of you can already feel your blood pressure rising just hearing me speak these negative labels without even trying to use them as battering rams. (I may have told you this story before, but one of our life-long family traditions, which started out as a joking kind of way to illustrate that my parents weren’t prejudiced against anyone, is that when my father would come home from work my mother would ask him, “Well, how did your Italian?”…..so she wouldn’t have to say, “Well, how did your day go?”) Words have power. Otherwise, why would there be an advertising industry that carries such clout today (as it has for many years; just watch the HBO series “Mad Men” to see what it was like in the 50′s). Words have power. Otherwise, why would so many of us get so exercised about four-letter words and other forms of “blue” language heard in movies and plays and Las Vegas strip shows (George Carlin was absolutely brilliant about this in his famous “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Radio” skit – his important point being: why do these words hold that kind of sway over us?). Words have power.

And so this little book of James, placed toward the end of the New Testament, has this passage which is titled in the NRSV “Taming the Tongue” – admonishing us about what loose language can do (those of us of a certain age remember Flip Wilson as Geraldine: “Loose lips sink ships”). Now, I would be willing to bet that not many of you have heard or read this particular passage before. Indeed, the whole Epistle of James is not one that congregations are called upon to deal with very often (Martin Luther referred to it as “as epistle of straw”). Yet, here are the lectionary authors in Year B giving us five Sundays of texts from James as the epistle lesson – starting on August 30 through September 27 (I’m actually using the lectionary scriptures from last Sunday today, because I’m still playing catch-up). And so the lectionary texts are making us preachers work, because who likes to deal with phrases like, “The tongue …is itself set on fire by hell,” and “with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.” Biblical scholars tend to describe the form of the Epistle of James as a diatribe – and which of us enjoys having a diatribe thrown at them? Maybe, like Luther, we should just dismiss this text altogether.

Or, maybe we should struggle with it. The passage that we read from Chapter 3 is actually set up by a verse toward the end of Chapter 1: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless (1:26).” So, James is equating what we say and how we say it with something that is at the very heart of our religious faith.

Gordon Poteat, a minister from Daytona Beach, FL, sums up why James is raising this connection between what we say and our faith in this way:

“Thus James is not far wrong when he places such great emphasis upon the tongue. ‘The tongue is a fire’ which can inflame a mob to a…lynching. ‘The tongue is a little member’, but it can inspire a nation to heroic actions. Hot words start quarrels, destroy friendships, break up homes, instigate wars. On the other hand, words of comfort can rescue a soul from despair; bold words can strike powerful blows for justice; inspired words can start feet marching toward the goal of human [solidarity]. Someone has said, ‘A word spoken at a solemn moment may be a mightier force for good or ill than any bodily act whatever,’ And Pindar wrote, ‘Longer than deeds liveth the word.’ Think of the reverberations of the closing sentence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Think of what might have happened in Britain if there had been no one like Churchill talking about ‘blood, sweat, and tears.’ The effect which Jesus has had upon history has been mediated by words….. Is it any wonder that Jesus said [in Matthew], ‘for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.’” (12:37)

OK, I think the point has been made. What we say has an impact, often far beyond what we might originally intend. And what’s more, if we are to take the author of James seriously, what we say has a religious impact – a faith-focused import that shapes our lives and the ones of those around us for good or for ill. The book of James is perhaps best known for its admonition in the second chapter, “so faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (2:17) The author of James wanted these early Christians to whom he was writing to take their faith seriously enough so that it would show up in what they did – and, as in this third chapter, in what they said.

So, what might it be like to take James seriously and try to tame this terrible tongue that can set fires ablaze? We’ve all had the experience, I rather imagine, of saying something, and almost as soon as the words were out of our mouths wishing we could take them back. Spiritual director and retreat leader Glenn Mitchell tells the story of playing with toy dinosaurs as a kid. His brother would go for the T-Rex, but Glenn went for the less popular stegosaurus, mainly because it had the oddity of a second brain. Mitchell says, “Frankly, in the years since, I’ve often suspected that my tongue has a brain of its own. How else to explain what sometimes comes out of my mouth – words that, if given even modest scrutiny by my brain, would be judged to make no sense; words that can be as sharp as the spikes on the stegosaurus’s tail; words that make a good case for a second brain dedicated to the nonthinking function of the tongue.”

Of course, it’s not always that easy to follow the old admonition of “think before you speak”. But to the extent that we can poet Beth Day reminds us to let each remark that comes out of our mouth pass through what she calls “Three Gates of Gold”: first, “Is it true?”, then “Is it needful?”, and finally “Is it kind?” Such filters might go a long way toward forestalling the kind of speaking that, either immediately or ultimately, we wish we could take back.

So far what we’ve been saying in response to James’ diatribe is pretty common-sensical. And that fits well with the practical nature of this epistle. James wants the expressions of our faith to be no-nonsense and matter-of-fact – “care for orphans and widows in their distress” is one of his admonitions (1:27).

But there’s a deeper level to this “taming of the tongue” as it relates to how we act. And this takes us into our gospel reading from Mark. Jesus is on the road again, heading north to the villages of Caesarea Philippi in order to gather his disciples around him away from the hubbub and opposition he’s feeling in Jerusalem and Nazareth. And on the way he asks what seems to be a fairly simple question: “Who do people say that I am?” This is very human of Jesus, isn’t it? We like to know what people think about us. We like to be compared favorably with those we respect and admire. We like it when someone says “you remind me of so-and-so” – and then comes out with a well known and popular figure of the time. And the disciples respond in this way to Jesus, saying people think of him as another John the Baptist or one of the prophets or even Elijah (who, along with Moses and David, is about as high a complement as you could pay an Israelite).

But Jesus isn’t interested in this kind of fawning adulation (here he moves away from a more typical human response). He presses them: “But who do you say that I am?” The issue isn’t whether Jesus is well-liked or admired or whether he’s going to come out on top after the opposition in Nazareth runs its course; the issue is what those who are closest to him believe him to be, because on this depends what the course of Jesus’ mission and ministry will be in the coming years. What Jesus is wanting to get at here is how well do the disciples know him – how close are they to figuring out who he really is?

And Peter, of all people, comes through: “You are the Messiah.” No waffling; no caveats; no “but only if…” Just straightforward: “You are the Messiah.” What a bold declaration – really, practically a confession – given that Israel had been looking for a Messiah for so many hundreds of years!

Jesus then responds to this weighty scriptural title that Peter bestows on him by referring to himself with another important scriptural title: the Son of Man, a title associated with grandeur and majesty, but also one wrapped in mystery. Jesus takes this title and links it for the first time with future suffering, rejection, and death – but also with resurrection. Mark throws in an aside: “He said all this quite openly.” In other words, now he really wants the disciples to get it.

But this time Peter doesn’t get it. He takes Jesus aside to rebuke him, presumably because he didn’t want Jesus speaking quite so openly about the role he was about to fulfill. Now Peter wants to play it safe. He’s not sure that they (the disciples) and the world into which they are being sent are ready for Jesus to declare openly who he is. This kind of “not yet” mentality reverberates down through history – remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail and his admonishment of fellow clergy who would counsel a “go slow” policy because the south just wasn’t emotionally ready for full integration, or those who would say that same-sex marriage laws shouldn’t be enacted (despite the love and commitment that is present in so many same-sex relationships) because the community isn’t ready to accept it. At the General Synod meeting this past June when out-going UCC president John Thomas (in fact, his term ends in just ten days) in a video interview was asked about the tension between courage and caution, Thomas replied, “We privilege courage over caution. At critical moments we have been willing to be courageous rather than retreat to caution.”

Peter doesn’t want to “privilege courage over caution”; he wants to take a step back and hold things closer to the vest for just a little while yet. And Jesus in his return rebuke is about as direct as he can be: “‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’”

With this direct rebuke we are circling back to James’s concern about taming our tongues. What Peter has done is to speak a great affirmation and confession…but then to follow that up with a fear-filled, timid, refusal to act. Here is a classical case of “talking the talk” but not “walking the walk”. The deeper meaning behind being careful of what we say is the importance of fitting our actions to the affirmations that we make.

“You are the Messiah.” We, along with Peter, confess that Jesus is Lord of our lives. But then do we hide that fact? Do we surreptitiously say inside our heads, “I really don’t want others to know how important Jesus, and my faith in him, is to me?” The tongue that is set on fire by hell for the author of James is one that says one thing but then is afraid to act on what has been unleashed by that awesome confession. It should come as no surprise that Jesus responds so vehemently with “Get behind me, Satan!”, for it is indeed the demonic that seeks out the hypocrisy behind “You are the Messiah” – “but I don’t really want to act on the basis of that reality”. James, in metaphorical language, is condemning this same hypocrisy when he says, “Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?… No more can salt water yield fresh.”

Jesus’ response to Peter’s timidity is one of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” In the context of what we’ve been talking about here, “saving your life” means talking a good game about who Jesus is for you and how important he is in your life, but then not following through on concrete ways that that importance is manifested. And that is the way to lose our footing, lose our sense of direction, lose our very lives. But losing our lives for the sake of the gospel means that all that we say and all that we do come together in proclaiming the Lord of our lives.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” No, words have power and can indeed do much harm. But so much more importantly words can heal and help and have the possibility of proclaiming to all the world a Lord who moves us to deeds of mercy and justice and kindness. What are you saying? Are you saying – by your actions and not just by your words – that Jesus is Lord over all the earth? By so doing you are indeed saving your life – but even more importantly: the life of the whole world.

Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
September 20, 2009