Sermons from Park Hill Congregational UCC Denver, Colorado Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] September 9, 2018 “The Power of the Tongue for Good and Evil” James 3: 3-10 – The Message A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it! 5-6 It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. 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, smoke right from the pit of hell. 7-10 This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth! A priest, a rabbi, a pastor, and an imam all walk into a bar. It’s not unusual; just a regular gathering of a foursome of friends who meet for mutual support, away from others in their congregation or denomination. Over the years, they’ve discussed all kinds of topics and one day it was the power of confession. They marveled at what their congregants confided in them. One of the group suggested they try it with each other, to take their openness and honesty to an even deeper level. The first shared, in fact, “I’ve been wanting to tell you something. I’m really struggling. I think my drinking may have gotten out of control.” They all listened sympathetically. After a few moments, another spoke up. “Since you were so honest, I want to tell you that I’ve gotten into a little trouble with gambling. In fact, things have gotten so bad, I’ve started eyeing the money in the offering plate as perhaps an answer to prayer.” The third said, “I’m embarrassed to say it, but I’ve got a crush on someone in my congregation.” They all looked at the fourth who sat in silence. “Come on,” they said, “you can tell us.” He stammered, “Well, um, ah… you’re not going to like it. I am an incurable gossip.” Sermon after sermon has been preached on this passage from James about the destructive nature of gossip. The dangers of the tongue. A restless evil, full of deadly poison. A big horse can be directed by a little bridle, an entire ship is directed by a little rudder. They can be controlled. But not the tongue. Just like a small flame, an ember even, can set a whole forest on fire, the tongue, one of the smallest of our body parts, can destroy communities and reputations and more. Being the victim can leave us feeling helpless. Greg’s car broke down in front of the bar in his small Texas town. It sat there all-night long. In the morning, Betty, the local Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched, started telling the story. By noon, the story had become that Greg was a raging alcoholic who had left his wife and abandoned his children and refused to pay child support. No amount of explanation that his car had simply broken down could change the story, so Greg had an idea. That night he parked his car in front of Betty’s house and walked home. By noon the next day, the story changed. Greg had left his wife because he was having an affair with Betty. That’s one way to deal with an incurable gossip. As I said last week, though it is considered one of the New Testament letters, James has more in common with scriptures from the wisdom genre like the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, with such gems as Proverbs 10:19 – “The more talk, the less truth; the wise measure their words.” Yes, gossip can destroy trust. Churches, families, organizations can all be destroyed by rumor. It’s a problem. But gossip is hardly the worst of our problems. It’s puny in the face of daily news. Decent people don’t know what to do with what falls so easily off the tongue of this president. Media outlets have done everything in their power to call lies “stretching the truth, massaging the truth, misleading claims, falsehoods, mis-representations, untruths, fictions, fabrications,” all in the attempt to avoid the over-use of the word “liar” about the Occupant of the White House. One argument for not using the word is that if it is used too often, the power of it decreases. It’s so normal for the president to lie, it’s not newsworthy. To be fair, sometimes he doesn’t lie. He doesn’t always understand what he’s talking about. But with the power of his tongue and tweet, America is diminished every day. There seems to be no bottom to the bottom. And no end to the excuses for his behavior, for one very important reason, which I’ll get to later. But lies, slander, gossip… They’re all small potatoes. Walter Brueggemann, the fierce social prophet and best biblical scholar alive today, has some other suggestions for the most destructive deceptions of the tongue, ideas he articulated long before this era we are living in today. The first deception is false advertising. Words that make our lives feel incomplete if we don’t… Name it. Obtain whatever it is that is being sold. The problem isn’t with simple claims like brighter, whiter, bigger, and better. It’s those words that make us feel like we are not enough as we are. But while false advertising makes false claims, propaganda, Brueggemann says, creates false policy from false facts (alternative facts?). Propaganda is his second deception. Building a Wall is supposed to keep the hordes of Mexicans from crossing the border – who, we’ve heard many times, must be stopped because they are rapists, drug dealers, and we can assume, some good people too. But one needs “false facts” for propaganda. Describing the horrors of hordes of Mexicans makes it possible to justify ripping children from the arms of their parents and locking them in cages, though fact-check, most of the victims were not Mexican. But facts don’t matter, and propaganda is simply a means to an ideology, Brueggemann’s third deception, which is fundamental to our nation’s conflict. The ideology of America, to me, at its best, is liberty and justice for all. A democratic system that welcomes the participation of every citizen. Competing against that, however, is a different interpretation of America. Not the philosophy “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Instead this is the ideology “of the right people, by a few people, for the people who earned it or deserve it because they’re ‘real Americans.’” An ideology built on a three-legged stool of white privilege, male superiority, and Christian supremacy. America has never been perfect, but each generation has made progress toward a more perfect union. But again and again it has come into conflict with that three-legged stool, cleverly, or not so cleverly, hidden in little words that sound as soothing as mom and apple pie as they fall off our tongue: Some of which include safe streets, family values, patriotism. But safe streets, as you know, is just code for locking up people who aren’t real Americans, creating a crisis of mass incarceration. Mixing racism with greed has proven quite profitable, allowing prisons to become a source of wealth, not to mention the bonus effect of disenfranchising large numbers of the wrong voters. And then turn that money into free speech. And turn corporations into people. Add to it religious freedom to discriminate. Call birth control an “abortion inducing drug” and voila! White privilege, male superiority, and Christian supremacy. Exactly what makes Russia so great. What is the ideology behind the Wall Street Journal headline this week about Nike and Colin Kaepernick? It described him as the man who kneels against the national anthem. How dare this Black man be so unpatriotic? Why wasn’t the headline about the man who kneels to protest the epidemic of police killing unarmed Black men, women, and children. Little words reveal the bigger story. “Secure borders” rationalizes Islamophobia. How can you be against secure borders? There’s an immigration crisis, but only because more of them aren’t Norwegians. Xenophobia is the immigration crisis. And on and on we could go, until we are exhausted, angry at all the people willing to excuse bad behavior, feeling insane as we try to make rational what is utterly irrational. Except that it’s not. This is all terribly rational for those willing to do anything to achieve “again” the ideology of white privilege, male superiority, and Christian supremacy. The president is its greatest cheerleader and willing to act by any means necessary. Why would anyone object? James said, a bridle in the mouth of a horse, or the rudder on a large ship, or an ember from a raging fire – the smallest of objects – can change the course of their direction. All along I was thinking, “That darn tongue.” Source of all our problems. Evil. Deadly poison. What if instead we considered the wisdom of this passage that something as small and simple as a bridle in the mouth of a horse, or the rudder on an ocean liner, or a single ember from a raging fire – the smallest of objects – is all we need? Curses and blessings come out of the same mouth. The tiniest of minorities turned the course of history for a billion people this week. India is culturally a deeply conservative country. A law put in place 100 years ago by their colonial oppressors criminalized same gender relations. This week the Indian Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, which had been done and undone before, because the majority didn’t want it. But a tiny, tireless group kept up the pressure, enduring harassment, beatings and imprisonments. Imagine a few hundred or a couple of thousand people in a population of one billion. Chief Justice Misra said, "The LGBT community possesses rights like others, and majoritarian views and popular morality cannot dictate constitutional rights. Veils of social morality can't be allowed to curtail the rights of others.” So, what can something as small as this congregation do to change the course of history in America? If you laugh and answer was “nothing,” I’ll go get a job at Starbucks instead. If all we did when we got together was try to make ourselves feel better about ourselves, I’d give up the ministry. But faith as small as a mustard seed. That’s all we need. That’s why we came back home today. For the inspiration to keep using our tongues for good, not evil. To keep proclaiming the ideology of an open, inclusive, just, and compassionate world. I don’t care so much for the word ideology. To me it just means following the teachings of Jesus – in words and actions – and working together with people of all faiths for human privilege, gender equality, and the supremacy of nothing but love. That means we must present whenever hatred roars, to sing of love; And wherever fear stalks, to stand with courage; Whenever bigotry rages, to call for justice; Wherever pain overwhelms, to extend comfort; Whenever systems oppress, to work for change. After I finished my sermon, I went home and realized President Obama gave me the perfect last line. And when a bully attacks, to call it out, not follow him.
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