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James 3:1-12
September 13, 2009

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that
we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes.
Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in
check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we
guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong
winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the
pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How
great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is
placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire
the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For 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—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless
the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.
From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought
not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish
water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No
more can salt water yield fresh.

You know, sometimes sermons write themselves, or I should say, the events of the past
week lend themselves easily to making a point in the upcoming week’s sermon. A case
in point: Joe Wilson, the congressperson from South Carolina, who during President
Obama’s speech to the Congress on health care screamed out “No, you lie!” when the
President made the point that his health care proposal would not cover illegal
immigrants! In fact, Wilson was wrong on this point, but that’s not the issue: there is a
place to debate whether or not the President’s health care plan is the right thing for the
country, but it’s not when he’s giving a speech to the Congress. Representative Wilson
has a history of foot in mouth disease, as seen in an earlier moment in 2004 when it
was revealed that Strom Thurmond had a child out of wedlock with a black woman, and
Wilson castigated his newly discovered daughter for revealing this “shameful” fact, as if
the truth was shameful and having a child with a black person was a shameful thing.
Some of us struggle more than others with our tongues, some of us struggle with
putting our brains in gear before we open our mouths—and though I’ve not done it in
the kind of spectacular way Wilson has a tendency of doing it, I am very familiar with not
thinking before I speak, with letting my tongue wag before quite thinking through what I
am saying.

And yet, some of us intentionally use our tongues to tear down others, in as dramatic
fashion as Representative Wilson. I once served a large church in Dallas whose
primary ministry was with the gay and lesbian community, and occasionally we would
get protestors, people with picket signs telling our members that they were going to
hell, etc. Other times we got folks who infiltrated the worship services, came in as
visitors, and who would lay waiting until about a third of the way in the service, at which
one of them would then get up, start screaming at the congregation, screaming out
Bible verses or calling for the congregation to repent for being gay, and that person
would be escorted out, and then another one would then pop up, until all were escorted
out, as they revealed themselves, one by one, like spies amidst our number. Of
course, for some, it was incredibly painful, people who thought they were safe in our
walls, unlike so many of the other churches they had gone to or been brought up in—
but that was the point of these protestors from Operation Rescue: they were quite
aware how intimidating they were being, and they were quite aware of the pain they
were causing. For them, the tongue was an instrument of intimidation and destruction,
a tool used to tear down, and they had thought it out ahead of time, their brains were
very much in gear as they let their tongues spew forth words meant to beat down and
hurt.

With Representative Wilson and his inability to censor himself this week, and
remembering those incidents in Dallas, it was a perfect entry into our text from the book
of James today, this call to us as people of Christian faith to pay attention to what we
say, and how we say it, and to explore the motives behind the decision to say what we
say. We don’t know what brings up the topic for our writer today—and though James is
often labeled as the closest thing we’ll ever get to New Testament wisdom literature—
writings meant to pass on good advice to others—there can be no doubt the writer has
some incident in mind as he warns this early Christian community to pay attention to its
words. Perhaps rumors have spread a wildfire of discontent in community, though we
don’t know whether the rumors are true or not. And there is the old supposed truth
there is some kernel of truth behind every rumor, though, in my own experience, I’ve
not always found it to be true. Sometimes people just make it up, putting two and three
together and getting six, mistaking the facts or interpreting them wrongly. I even once
had an experience where a colleague of mine was accused all sorts of stuff, listed in a
long letter of the congregation, some of which bordered on the patently absurd—the
writer had simply compiled anything she had ever heard about this person, listing them
as facts without making an attempt to actually try to find out if it was true or not.

And yet, the irony of this passage is that its especially directed to the teachers, and
leaders of a congregation, because we, like Representative Wilson from South
Carolina, generally have the power to do more harm with our words than most people—
some people will believe anything them the minister tells them, though, I’ve met a few
who did the opposite, who believed that if a preacher said it, don’t believe it! The point,
however, is that those in leadership, leadership of any kind, have the odd power of
sending something south—just ask any CEO who admitted less than spectacular
earnings for the quarter on CNBC, and who just watched his or her company’s stock
begins its free fall. That doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t tell the truth, but there is a
difference between lighting a candle and lighting the house on fire, and the difference
is usually found in the words used. This little mouth, this little tongue, has such
tremendous power, because it can either be used to set a campfire going in order to
eat and get warm, or that same tongue can be used to set the whole woods on fire, an
intentional act of arson that will cause the destruction of so much.

And yet, it’s actually pretty rare for people to actually set a forest on fire, to burn a
place, a community, a life, down to the ground—most people don’t intentionally use
their mouths to destroy others. It’s usually an accident, a slip of the tongue, an act of
carelessness, around the campfire, that causes the forest fires in this country. Rare
are the arsonists, but plentiful are the casual campers who don’t know how to use and
put out fire in the wilderness. That’s how I usually get myself in trouble, how I’ve started
fires when I hadn’t intended to, but the result, the destruction, is the same as if I
purposely went around trying to burn down old Smoky’s habitat. Motives do matter, but
not that much, not really, because the damage is the same, and perhaps it’s easier to
forgive the accidental camper, perhaps she or he will only get a fine, rather than a 10
year stay in a federal pen for arson, but the result, the result of that carelessness is the
same.

So it matters, whatever our motives, our words matter, and paying attention to what we
communicate, and how we communicate it matters. But it’s hard thing, isn’t it, trying to
figure out what to tell and who to tell—believe me, I know, because I can’t tell how many
times I’ve been approached with the words, “I’m not trying to spread rumors, but I
thought you might want to know…” and often time, it’s really true—I don’t think they
were trying to spread rumors—they were giving me information they thought I should
know. You know, the funny thing is that most people assume that as a minister I
actually know what going on in everyone’s life, as if I had a telepathic ability to figure
that this marriage was in trouble, or that child just got out juvenile hall, or that Aunt
Mildred was in the hospital—and I didn’t and they became angry with me because I
hadn’t been visiting her, or hadn’t reached out to this or that person! The reality is that
I rely on people telling me information, passing on rumors, because the assumption is
that I either know what is going on, or—and this saddens me the most—people are too
ashamed to have their minister know about the problems they are experiencing, as if I
somehow didn’t experience problems that mirrored exactly mirrored their own. The
reality is that community, groups, whomever, rely on the passing on of information, from
one person to another, and that it can be important for the social flow, and the ability of
community to care for those in need.

Interestingly, I read something recently that showed that to be true:

Frank McAndrew, a psychology professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois,
outlines the [following] thesis. “[Gossip] is a social skill, not a character flaw,” he says.
“It’s only when you don’t do it well that you get into trouble.”

McAndrew set up an experiment with some of his students, asking 42 men and 98
women to read 12 brief fictional stories — the type that would be perfect for spreading
around the dorm. Some stories had positive subjects, such as winning a major award or
inheriting a large sum of money. Some stories revolved around negative themes,
including drunken escapades, sexual promiscuity, gambling problems and classroom
cheating.

After reading each story, the students were asked to rank how likely they would be to
seek out more information, depending on whether the scenario described a relative, a
professor, an acquaintance, a friend, a stranger, an enemy or rival or a romantic
partner.

The results, recently published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, show that
the nature of the gossip controlled whether it was passed on. The students were
generally more willing to freely share damaging, negative personal information when it
involved a same-sex rival. They would pass good news on only if it were about a friend.

According to McAndrew, we feel pleasure whenever we share savory scraps of
information because gossip helps build relationships and bond people together. The
study seems to imply that a little bit of gossip is actually necessary for the wheels of
social convention to keep turning. Think of it as the transmission of a positive “buzz,” if
you will.

But even McAndrew acknowledges that gossip, when taken too far, can be a problem.
“It’s important to share information, but not indiscriminately,” he explains. “It’s bad when
it serves no purpose but to ingratiate yourself with a group by saying awful things about
someone else.” (Homiletics Online)

It’s the “going too far,” the sharing of information for the sole purpose of taking down a
rival, or someone one simply dislikes: it’s using language to destroy rather than build
up, as a tool to dismantle another human being or an organization one does not like.
But divining human motives, especially within ourselves, well, that is a difficult task, isn’t
it? We are so prone to lie to ourselves about our motives, about what pushes us to
share information with someone else. The hard work is to plumb our own depths, to
ask ourselves why we think this person needs to know this or that negative thing about
another person, and why we are ones doing it—are we taking pleasure in sharing that
information? And are we using this negative piece of information as a way of becoming
closer to the person we are sharing the information with, kind of the reverse of
McAndrew’s positive observations about gossip, that it bonds us together, that the
sharing connects us somehow. I have often tried to follow Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s rule
about not sharing my thoughts about another person or their problems if they were not
present, and if I did, to tell that I shared that opinion with that person. I have obviously
broken that rule, more times than I would like admit, but even when I did, alas, the
shadow of the human heart, what I have found is that I use a different set of words and
different tone with the one I am speaking about than the one I am speaking with. And
that is a problem, because the way I say something matters as much as what I say—we
all know that truth, in one form or another. Sure, I keep my principle, but not really,
right because I use a different tone, a far less judgmental tone, with the one I am
attempting to talk to about something.

Now, before you get to feeling too superior to me, the reality is that James says that it’s
a problem for all of us, this talking out of both sides of our mouth, the tongue that
speaks good and ill, that heals and destroys, that blesses and curses, all with the same
instrument. The writer of James says it shouldn’t be that way—and he or she is right
about that, that we ought not to destroy with the same instrument we use to support
and love others with, with our mouth, with our words. The key here, the key to
unlocking the door of our motives, is to make the commitment to pay attention to what
we say, and to decide that we are going to ask ourselves, over and over again, on a
daily basis, before we put that mouth in gear, what the purpose of our words really
are—are these words being used to bless or to curse, to heal or to hurt, to build or to
tear down? To decide to ask ourselves that question, to sit with it before we speak,
and to keep asking ourselves—why do I feel the need to share this information? Am I
really doing this for the right reasons, or is it because I want to be right about
something, or feel superior to someone else, or am I sharing it I want to make a deeper
connection with this person, and sharing this information will somehow do the trick?
Don’t get me wrong: Jesus said some harsh, harsh things, but even the difficult things
he said, using difficult and painful words, were rooted in love, in wanting the best for
people. And that is the fundamental thing, the root of it, the heart of the question I just
proposed that we ask ourselves: is this an act of love—really, this sharing of a difficult
thing, a difficult truth, or is this an act of harm disguised as an act of care? Sometimes
the answers aren’t easy to come by, and you and me, we might find ourselves fooling
ourselves a bit more than we care to believe—but just asking the questions, going
deeper into our hearts and questioning our motives, and asking, why, is the beginning
of wisdom, something the writer of James deeply cared about. Amen.