James 3:1-12
Not many of
you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we
who teach will be judged more strictly.
We all
stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they
say is perfect, able to keep their 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 body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself
set on fire by hell.
All kinds of
animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed
by mankind,
but no human
being 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 human beings, who
have been made in God’s likeness.
Out of the
same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not
be.
Can both fresh
water and salt water flow from the same spring?
My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.
Here ends this reading of the word of God
for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Prayer for Understanding
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
Schadenfreude is a German word we
have adopted into English. We haven’t
come up with an English equivalent, and the German word suffices. Schadenfreude
is the experience of pleasure that comes from learning of or witnessing the
troubles, failures or humiliation of another person. Examples of Schadenfreude
include Flyers fans cheering when the Goalie of the New York Rangers is injured
during a hockey game; the satisfaction you feel after you are initially jealous
of a friend going on a dream vacation and then you find out it rained the whole
time she was there; or the sick joy you feel when you find out the supervisor
who laid you off got laid off themselves.
Schadenfreude is pretty yucky.
The book of Proverbs mentions an
emotion similar to Schadenfreude. In Proverbs 24:17-18, we are told: “Do not
gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart
rejoice, or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away
from them.
Psychologists understand that
feeling Schadenfreude is normal and common. We may not be able to avoid feeling
Schadenfreude. But, in today’s reading from our scriptures, we are reminded by James
the Apostle that despite feeling negative emotions, we must work to guard our
words and to not say out-loud the unhelpful thoughts that pop into our
heads. Just because we may think unkind
thoughts doesn’t mean we should say them out loud.
The tongue is a small part of the
body, James wrote, but it makes great boasts.
It can “create a world of evil among the parts of the body.” We can praise and worship God with our words
and our voices. But, we can also use our words to hurt other people. The phrase
“Sticks and stone may break my bones but words can never hurt me” is not true. I
suspect everyone in this room and everyone out in facebook land can recall
times in our lives when harsh or cruel words said by other people did indeed
hurt us.
This week at our Lunch Bunch Bible Study,
Bob shared a story he heard at a workplace conference. The speaker shared that
her boss had a quote by radio host Bernard Meltzer behind his desk. The quote
says:
Before you speak ask yourself if what you are going to say is
true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. It the answer is no maybe what you are
about to say should be left unsaid.
As we talked
about this statement at Bible study, we could all recall times in our lives
when we regret we did not follow this rule of thumb….are the words we are about
to say true, kind, necessary, or helpful?
Not only have we been guilty of saying words that hurt other people, the
hurtful words said to us linger.
Friends, we are living through a wild
and strange moment in history. None of us have lived through a pandemic until
now. And, in the middle of the pandemic we had a presidential election, ended
the war in Afghanistan with a lot of uncertainty, and had protests about racism
in every state in our nation. Our news
media and facebook pages are full of conflicting messages and contradictory
ideas about how we should respond to the news and the virus. People’s tempers
have flared and people have said and posted things that hurt other people’s
feelings.
In the midst of this, we remain the
people of Christ. We are God’s people. And, as God’s people, we are called to
work to let cool heads prevail. We are called to watch our words, to watch our
mouths. We are called to remember to be loving to our neighbors, even the
neighbors to whom we disagree. We can work to keep control over our tongue and
make every effort to keep our words true, kind, necessary and helpful.
Our work as Christians is not always
easy. We are called to rise above our unhelpful human instincts. We are called
to have self-control even when others around us don’t seem to be exercising
self-control themselves.
We are in this together. Let’s work
to follow Christ and to encourage each other as we all strive to follow Jesus.
May it be so. Amen.
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