"The Evils of the Tongue"

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But words will never hurt me.

We all learn this rhyme as children, but even children know that it is not true. Words may not break our bones, but they can inflict pain that lasts long after a broken bone is heal ed and forgotten.

My guess is that most of us carry around the memory of words that have wounded us. They may not have been intended to hurt, a passing remark soon forgotten by the speaker but long remembered by the hearer.

For example, every time I have to multiply seven times six, I remember the time in third grade that I didn’t know the answer to that problem, and the teacher’s comment about it, one that I’m sure she did not intend to be remembered more than four decades later.

Some wounds, of course, are much more serious and painful than that one. Words hurled in anger that hit their target, or rumors that are deliberate lies spread to hurt someone’s career or personal life.

James, the writer of today’s epistle reading, did not know the children’s rhyme about sticks and stones, but he is quite clear about the dangers and pain that can be inflicted by the tongue.

“The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits,” he writes. “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.

“For every species of bird and beast, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue.”

James goes on to call the tongue “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

Those are pretty strong words. I don’t think when James calls the tongue “evil” he is talking merely about the careless remark or even words hurled in anger and later regretted.

He is talking about something much more serious.

“The real peril of the tongue is not found in the passing angry word or the incidental oath or the petty bit of slander,” one commentary I read this week said. “It is found in the creation of distorted worlds of meaning within which the word of truth is suppressed.”

Distorted worlds of meaning within which the word of truth is suppressed.

That is an accurate description of what is going on in our country right now.

Last spring, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning of the resurgence of hate groups in this country, an increase also noted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks such groups.

Examples from recent weeks show how that hatred and the deadly poison of its rhetoric can have dire consequences.

In late May, James vonBrunn walked into the Holocaust Museum and shot and killed a guard. VonBrunn was stopped before he could kill others, something he was prepared to do.

VonBrunn has a long history of participation in groups that feed on hatred of Jews. He maintained a website filled with poisonous and evil words, words that eventually propelled him to action.

Ten days after the museum murder, Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed on Sunday morning in the narthex of his Kansas church. Tiller was a provider of abortions.

“Tiller, the baby killer,” is how one cable TV host frequently referred to him, saying on air that the doctor must be stopped by any means. Antiabortion websites listed not only Tiller’s office address, but his home and church as well, and called in explicit terms for his “removal.”

The man arrested in the killing has a past which was saturated with that kind of rhetoric.

Last month, the day before President Obama’s visit to Arizona to attend a health care rally, the Rev. Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church, near Phoenix, took to the pulpit. His sermon that day was entitled, “Why I Hate Barack Obama.”

“I hate Barack Obama,” the preacher said from the pulpit. “You say, ‘Well, you just don’t like what he stands for.’ No, I hate the person. I hate him.

“Obama ought to be aborted. I pray that he dies and goes to hell.”

The next day, one of Anderson’s parishioners, who had heard the sermon, appeared outside the president’s speech with an assault rifle. He told reporters that he concurred with his pastor’s wishes.

All this summer, town meetings about proposed health care reform, gatherings intended for serious discussion and debate, have devolved into angry shouting matches filled with innuendo and untruths. At one meeting recently, a man in favor of health care reform bit off a protester’s finger.

Now this sermon is not about the pros and cons of abortion, or health care, or the president. It is about the language, the rhetoric, we use when we talk about such things.

And much of the language and rhetoric so prevalent in our country now is promoting a mean and polarizing spirit.

Language shapes reality. Words have consequences.

When a person, like any president; or an entire group of people, like gays, or Jews, or Muslims, or illegal immigrants; are spoken of in dehumanizing terms, when they are painted as “other,” or somehow less than human, then we are only a small step away from violence.

And when we can no longer discuss an issue based on truth and facts, when we can no longer engage in civil debate and come to compromises, then we are in danger of unraveling – as a community, a church, or a nation.

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed in a Nazi concentration camp, put it this way, “When we stop listening to each other, pretty soon we will no longer listen to God.”

For people of faith, this eroding of our language, this toxicity of our words, the restless evil and deadly poison of our tongues has profound theological implications.

Our faith is based on the Word.

In the Book of Genesis, God speaks and creation happens. God said, “Let there be light” and there was light. The words coming from God’s tongue have a creative force, God’s words speak the world into being.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus is the embodiment of God’s word. As the gospel of John says of Jesus, “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us.”

God created humans in God’s image. We were created to be God’s partners, to be co-creators with God.

One of the signs of being created in God’s image is our ability to speak. Our words, like God’s word, have creative powers. We create worlds of meaning with our words.

We can use this gift to create worlds of truth and beauty and healing and justice.

Or we can allow our tongues to be infected with the deadly poison that creates distorted worlds of meaning within which the word of truth is suppressed – a world where words are used to create fear rather than to inspire hope, to spread lies rather than truth, to polarize rather than unite.

I believe what James calls the evil of the tongue, the toxicity of our language, is one of the gravest dangers our society faces today. “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!” James warns. “And the tongue is a fire.”

We combat the blaze by watching our own tongues, of course – by trying to be mindful of careless remarks or words hurled in anger, by resisting the temptation to engage in rumor and innuendo.

But we also combat it by paying attention to the words by which we surround ourselves – by what we read, and listen to, and watch. Do those words dehumanize others, do they pander to our fears, are they more interested in ideology than truth?

If the answer is yes, then we need to turn off the radio, TV or computer, and put away the publication.

And then we need to let the words of the psalmist be our guide.

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Readings

Isaiah 50:4-9a

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

James 3:1-12

Mark 7:24-37

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 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? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

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