Words take on lives of their own, so what we say and how we say it matters.
I know that is not news, but I repeat it because I saw it happen even as I was preparing to preach today. A friend from Texas, who is a former minister, called to check in this week and asked about my sermon. When I told him we were working through James’ letter for the month of September, he said, “I really don’t like James. He’s too judgmental.” Then last night I got an email note from Leon confirming that he would read this morning, and it began, “I love this reading.”
Words take on lives of their own, whether they are written down or spoken.
To get that point across, James used a whole bunch of metaphors to talk about, well, a metaphor. He wrote about the power—and danger—of the tongue, which is a metaphor for what we say and how we say it: for how we choose our words. In these few verses he likened the tongue to a bit in a horse’s mouth, a rudder for a ship, and a spark that sets off a forest fire, with a couple of other references thrown in.
In his descriptions, he also used rather incendiary and hyperbolic language (talking about sending the whole world up in smoke, for example), which often leads us to think his point was for us to not lose our tempers, but his picture was larger than that.
He wanted his readers to understand what they set in motion when the spoke. Whenever they spoke. He had specific people in mind when he set his words free and, as we said at the beginning, words take on lives of their own.
What do these words have to say to us?
We live in a time when it feels like language is changing a great deal. I don’t know whether that is because language is changing faster now than it has in the past or whether it feels that way because we are the ones having to learn new vocabulary and new definitions. I think it is probably the latter because language is always going through changes. Just pick up a Shakespeare play to see that. He wrote in English, but it is not what an English we easily recognize.
When it comes to those changes, it matters to notice that language doesn’t change. What I mean by that is language is not the subject of the verb, but the object. I know that’s kind of an English teacher moment, but it matters to remember that other forces—and we are one of them—change language. What words mean to us changes because what life means to us changes; how we look at life and describe it changes.
Then we have to remember that those changes don’t happen the same way for everyone. What a metaphor means to you may not be the same to me. How we think we are describing something or someone may not be heard that way, which is another way of saying our words are like the bit in a horse’s mouth, or a ship’s rudder, or the match that starts the fire.
I love the way our translation this morning phrases it: “By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it.”
Let me offer another way to make the same point. By our speech we can restore the world, turn chaos into harmony, raise someone’s reputation, and energize the whole world with the spark of our love.”
What we say and how we choose to say it makes a difference.
This is a good place to point out a change I made in today’s lectionary reading. It was supposed to begin with the first verse of chapter three, but we started with the third verse because the first two talked about being teachers. They say,
Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you’d have a perfect person, in perfect control of life.
James’ words make me think he had had a few educational experiences where what he had tried to communicate as a teacher had not been taken the way he intended. That makes me think of how I had to learn that when I said something that I thought was profound to a class full of students it was to everyone’s advantage for me to ask, “Did that make sense?” because they didn’t always get understand what I was trying to say.
His words speak to more than just educators, though we could also hear the word teacher as yet another metaphor in these verses, since we all play that role in some sense at different points in our lives. Part of what I hear in what he said is not to rush to be the expert, to be The One Who Knows, but to teach—or speak—as a lifelong learner.
And what we are trying to learn is how to live lives of integrity, of honesty.
We have spent three weeks reading in James. First, he implored us to listen before we spoke, and then to make our actions match our words, which brings us to this morning and the reminder (as one of Ginger’s seminary professors used to say) that actions may speak louder than words but words speak more clearly.
To drive home his point, James closed with a string of rhetorical questions:
A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?
He knew the answers; we know them as well.
Whatever we have to say will be better understood if we are honest and consistent and humble in what we have to say. Our words and our actions should match. Our words, however they come out, reflect who we are and who we appear to be to others. James’ questions call us to remember that those two views should be the same because the words we say take on lives of their own, so what we say and how we say it matters.
As I said when I began, I know I am not saying anything new, but it’s good to be reminded. Amen.
Peace,
Milton
