A Sermon preached on
Sunday, September 16, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Proverbs 1: 20-33, James 3: 1-12, Mark 8: 27-38
Sunday school has started again today, and we
have several new volunteer teachers. So, I am very glad that they are not
sitting here and listening to James say, “Not many of you should become
teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be
judged with greater strictness.” (James 3:1) What I feel for our teachers is not
judgement, but gratitude that they are willing to take on this responsibility. But
it is a position of trust, which is what James is getting at. People listen to
teachers, children especially, and we need to trust that they teach well and
that they care for those entrusted to them. We have a good course for them to
use and keep them on the Episcopal straight and narrow, called “Living the Good
News,” and we will also train them in their responsibility to keep God’s
children safe in church.
Teachers are not James’s main focus anyway
(and I don’t think we already had Sunday schools in the 1st century
AD). His concern is our speech and communication, how we use our tongues. He just
highlights teachers as one group that makes particular use of the tongue as an
instrument of teaching.
A few weeks ago, when we started reading the
Letter of James, I commented that Martin Luther was not a fan of this letter as
he thought it contradicted the doctrine of justification by faith alone. I
wonder though if it wasn’t also today’s passage that upset or even embarrassed him.
Luther was not very good at taming his tongue! We worry, rightly, about the
quality of today’s civic and civil discourse. But the discourse was also very
uncivil indeed in the 16th century. Far too many people were capable
of both blessing and cursing from the same mouth.
James calls the tongue a fire because with our
tongues, one act of evil can start a destructiveness that spreads well beyond
the initial act. And he was just thinking of word of mouth, of how gossip,
slander and criticisms would spread through the
church family and poison relationships. By Luther’s day, the recently invented
printing press allowed each side’s polemic to spread via pamphlets and
broadsheets. In word and in often very ugly caricatures, opponents were made out
to be less than human or in the service of the devil. Much destruction, many deaths
and several wars were the result.
It hasn’t got any better. James’ warning and
teaching are just as valid today as they were 2,000 and 500 years ago. In fact,
if he had been writing today James might not just have warned against the
tongue, but also against the thumbs with which abusive tweets and comments are
so easily and quickly written, with grave consequences not just for a single
church community or family, but for the whole human family.
James is not the only author in the Bible to
identify the tongue as something deadly or dangerous. In Revelation (1:16), the
tongue is compared to a sharp two-edged sword, also in Hebrews (4:12) it is described
as “sharper than any two-edged sword, … able to judge the thoughts and
intentions of the heart.” But while those two books see the tongue as a weapon
against evil and for good, James is more critical. In the first half of the
passage the tongue is described as something extremely powerful, a small member
that boasts of great exploits, (James 3:5) and that needs to be controlled
before it controls us.
In the second half, James focuses on what
happens when we do not control the tongue – our speech and communication. He
dwells on the potential for evil rather than the potential for good. The tongue
is like a fire that can set the whole world ablaze. This is what we call incendiary
speech. The sight of a rapidly spreading fire is terrifying and James uses this
image to stir us to action. Even more so when we realize what that fire's
source is: it is set on fire by hell. (3:6) In Germany, the AfD, and
unfortunately even some mainline politicians, use rumor and exaggeration to
spread lies. Because someone is killed by an asylum seeker, all asylum seekers
are declared to be potential killers. Migration is described as the mother of
all problems. But if migration is primarily a problem, then migrants soon are
too, especially if we start using insulting and dehumanizing language to
describe them and those who support them. I find it very disturbing that in
German the word “Gutmensch,” good
person, is often used as an insult. To be fair, those of us who oppose such
groups must also avoid demonizing whole groups of people. That is just as wrong.
James seems pessimistic about our ability to
control the tongue. “Every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature,
can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue,” (3:7-8) he
says. But this is an exaggeration, as he clearly wants us to tame the
tongue and to control our speech. In fact, if we are really Christians, James
claims, we have no choice. We cannot praise God and then curse our neighbors, as
our praise to God would be worthless. Anyone we curse, any other human being is
made in the likeness of God, the Lord and Father. If we treat other people with
contempt, even those we disagree with, we treat God with contempt. This sort of
inconsistency is simply unthinkable for Christians. James is amazed that blessing
and cursing could come from the same mouth. “My brothers and sisters, this
ought not to be so.” (3:10) It simply can't be. And that is why all the examples
he gives from nature describe situations that never happen. Just as fresh and
salty water do not flow from the same spring, and a fig tree does not yield
olives, so we should not speak evil of another human being. But of course we do,
just as Luther did, and I for one certainly have done. And James knows this
too: “For all of us make many mistakes,” he writes. (3:2)
So, is it impossible? No, for one thing it
requires discipline. It takes self-discipline to “be quick to listen, slow to
speak, slow to anger" (1:19) as James instructs his readers at the
beginning of the letter. It takes the sort of discipline that Jesus defines in
the passage from Mark’s Gospel. He tells both the crowd and the disciples that
anyone who follows him must practice self-denial and submission to God, both for
Jesus’ sake and for the sake of the Gospel, the good news. You probably know
the saying: engage brain before opening mouth (or switching on smart phone). As
Christians we need to engage our hearts and souls also. That is where we will
find the words that are true, helpful, inspiring and loving.
I don’t think discipline is enough, that would
be relying on ourselves and our own power. Sure, it’s a start. What we must do
is make sure that we have other words in the place of the “evil and poisonous”
ones. We need to make sure we are filled with the Good News. To adapt James’ image,
we need to be filled not with brackish, but with fresh water, with living water
as it often called. We do that by following the “Way of Love” and by Christ at the
center of our lives, by filling ourselves with water he gives us. As we read in
John’s Gospel, Jesus says: “The water that I will give will become in them a
spring of water gushing up to eternal life." (John 4:14) And later (7:38-39):
“Let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the
believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Now he said this about the
Spirit, which believers in him were to receive.”
Today’s Collect was also about the power of the
Spirit. We prayed that God may “mercifully grant that
your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.” And I am
convinced that if we allow ourselves to be
filled with God’s Spirit we will find the right words, we will find good words,
we will find and use critical words, because they are often needed too. But
most of all we will find and use words of love.
Amen.
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