Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. (James 3:1-12)
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In 1969, John Lennon and The Beatles recorded the song “Let It Be,” which included the words “speaking words of wisdom.” The song dwelt largely on the many challenges and uncertainties in the world: “When I find myself in times of trouble,” “when the broken-hearted people,” “when the night is cloudy.” These were all circumstances in which the “words of wisdom” seemed to offer relief, if not a full solution. Today, I want to reflect on the need for Christians to be "Speaking Words Of Witness" to a world in which there are now a lot of doubts about the Christian faith, about the church and even about Jesus.
I realize that the word “witness” might be a barrier to some people. I think a lot of people are intimidated by the prospect of offering witness, because it requires us to speak, and speaking in public is terrifying to a lot of people. It’s called "glossophobia" - the fear of speaking in public. It's estimated that 75% of people experience some type of fear when speaking in public. Jerry Seinfeld once said that: "according to most studies, people's number-one fear is public speaking. Death is number two! Now, this means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy." But offering witness to faith shouldn’t be hard or frightening. It really just means to speak from the heart about God; to speak the truth about God as we understand it and have experienced it. It has nothing to do with the Bible-thumping, judgmental Christians that often spring to mind, and it has nothing to do with being well-educated or knowing the Scriptures from start to finish. It’s all about what’s in your heart, and translating that into proper and appropriate speech. Maybe what makes us afraid to speak up is the fear that we'll get it wrong. The truth is that you can't get it wrong as long as you're speaking from the heart. Having said that, the truth is that we're all going to blow it from time to time. The goal is to keep maturing in our faith until our beliefs, our thoughts, our actions and our words all match. But James does remind us that “if anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.”
This verse is basically the great equalizer. It reminds us that none of us are perfect. At some point in our lives we've all said something that we wished we could take back; something thoughtless that has unintentionally hurt someone; we've gossiped about things that needn't be discussed; we've spoken in unwholesome language; in very traditional language, we've taken the name of the Lord in vain. As James says, if anyone is never at fault in what they say, then they’re perfect. Well, we’re not perfect. We’re imperfect people who depend on the grace of God to see us through when we slip up. That’s pretty common; everyone slips up. But even though we’re forgiven we shouldn’t just shrug off our mistakes, because even tiny slips of the tongue can have great consequences.
“The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts,” James says. “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.” We should be just as concerned with not using words carelessly in our relationships as we are with not using matches carelessly in a forest. I don’t know if there’s a spiritual equivalent to Smokey the Bear, but there should be! James is obviously using “the tongue” as an analogy for the way we speak and the words we use. It's so easy to cause hurt with a careless and ill thought out word. Our words can cause great harm to people. As I was saying with the children, the old ditty "sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me" just isn’t true. They all hurt, and at least broken bones heal, but the emotional torment caused by verbal abuse can last for a lifetime. It doesn't take much to do a great deal of damage. James asks us to “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.” We should also consider what a large church can be set on fire by an ill-chosen word. That’s probably why teachers are said to be held more accountable. Teachers - and preachers - teach and preach with words, and an ill chosen word from the pulpit can cause a great deal of harm, but it doesn’t have to be from the pulpit. Careless words spoken within the church community can cause a lot of damage to the church community.
James compares “the tongue” to bits and rudders. Sometimes we think that because something is small, it's also unimportant, and since the tongue is very small, perhaps we think that the words we speak are of no lasting importance. Even Abraham Lincoln could say (apparently in all sincerity) during the now famous Gettysburg Address that "the world will little note nor long remember what we say here ..." And yet, Lincoln's words are now a part of history. Small things control what happens. James refers to bits and rudders. Both are small and both are useful. What he’s saying is that a tongue under control is a very useful witness to God and faith. If we can learn to control our words, we can control our whole being and truly live for God. But if we can’t learn to control our words, then we become inconsistent and our witness is blurred. “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing.”
This is the problem of inconsistency. To go back to something I said last week, we have to live as if we believe what we say we believe. We also have to speak as if we believe what we say we believe. If we mouth pious words at church on Sunday and then spend the rest of the week gossiping and criticizing and complaining and attacking - then we're being inconsistent, and if we're not denying our faith, at the very least we’re showing that it doesn’t mean much to us. If unwholesome and ungodly talk becomes a habit, it's a problem. Our habits of speech say a lot about our inner character and identity. So James pleads for consistency.
“Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.” James isn’t talking here about good things vs. bad things. Olives and figs; salt water and fresh water - they're all good and productive things. But they're also different things. The point applied to us is that to praise God and to curse others (in whatever way we curse them) is a contradiction that makes no sense and that can cause great damage.
It's probably not by accident that most of the contemporary world's figures of speech about speech are negative: “Mind your tongue!” “Keep your mouth shut!” “Button your lip!” (David Hulme, Word & World 6/3 (1986) page 249) We distrust words, because so often they’re used so indiscriminately and so dishonestly. The era of the 30 second sound bite makes us impatient with words, too - as if words are meaningless; a waste of time. And yet words, properly chosen and used, can inspire us and move us to great things. Hundreds of years ago, the Japanese poet Moritake Arakida wrote: "The origin of all trouble within this world is a single word spoken in haste." The challenge for us as followers of Jesus is to never speak in haste, but rather to take care with our words, to use them to speak words of witness for God and words of inspiration to others. A recent CBS special on bullying was entitled “Words Can Kill.” That’s true about careless or abusive words - but real words of witness can bring life and hope and peace and grace. It’s our responsibility to make sure that our words do that.
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