Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones…

James 3:1-12

Remember the old children’s rhyme: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” (or “names will never hurt me.”) Well, it isn't true. As a culture we are starting to realize that words can seriously hurt people. A more accurate ditty would be: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can hurt more deeply.” We are very aware these days of things like hate speech, verbal abuse, and bullying. We know that words can be used as weapons and can incite acts of violence, as well as lead to depression and suicide. New forms of social media such as YouTube, cell phone texting and Facebook publicize and amplify words with devastating effects. Then there is political speech. Maybe words and name-calling cannot break our bones, but some people think they can win elections.

Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, had planned to host a civil forum between Barak Obama and Mitt Romney this fall like the one he hosted between Obama and McCain four years ago. But last month he announced that he was canceling it. He explained his decision in these words: “We created the civil forums to promote civility and personal respect between people with major differences. The forums are meant to be a place where people of goodwill can seriously disagree on significant issues without being disagreeable or resorting to personal attack and name-calling. But that is not the climate of today’s campaign. I’ve never seen more irresponsible personal attacks, mean-spirited slander, and flat-out dishonest attack ads, and I don’t expect that tone to change before the election…. It would be hypocritical to pretend civility for one evening only to have the name-calling return the next day.” It is sad when the verbal behavior of a sitting president and a presidential candidate who prides himself on his religious faith are so bad that the nation’s most well-known pastor has to scold them and give them a “time out” as if they were misbehaving children.

But we should not be too surprised that people from teenagers to politicians cannot control their tongues. The apostle James Bible tells us in our passage: “The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell….  No man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”  Today I am going to talk about our speech. It is easy to point fingers and talk about others; let’s do some introspective finger-pointing this morning. Even though summer is over, this was also a Summer Sermon suggestion, and I wanted to honor this idea submitted by a member of the congregation. The suggestion was actually more specifically on gossip, but I want to expand it to include other misuses of our tongue. James spends quite a bit of time talking about the dangers of misspeaking. As I read him he says three things.

I. First he introduces the topic by saying that we all do it; we all make mistakes. Our passage starts off in the first two verses: “My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. ² For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.” The NRSV renders it: “For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect...” None of us are perfect, folks. That is where we need to start this discussion.  In fact I have observed that those who most readily accuse others of “hate speech” are often themselves guilty of the same thing. A recent example of this is the shooting by a gay rights activist at the Washington office of the Family Research Council in Washington D.C. last month. He came to the office to kill some people because he disagreed with their stance on same-sex marriage. Gay rights groups rightly condemned the shooting, but the Southern Poverty Law Center continued to call the Family Research Council a hate group. By no stretch of the imagination is the Family Research Council a hate group! It is just has a conservative stance on this issue. By using a term like “hate group” the the Southern Poverty Law Center is ratcheting up the rhetoric, and may themselves be guilty of spreading the seeds of more acts of violence against organizations like this, while purportedly condemning hate. Do you see how insidious this cycle of name-calling is?

No one is sinless here. That is James’ point in his letter. I am not sinless. I say things like this about the presidential campaigns and the Southern Poverty Law Center, but I am no better. And if you think you are better than me or them, then you are also deceiving yourself. Don’t get into the trap of thinking, “Okay, maybe I do it some, but I am not as bad as ….” “My (religious group, political party, or social agenda group) is not as bad as …. So-and-so.”  Don’t go there. We need to start off the examination of this topic by looking at ourselves. That is what James does. 

Appropriately he starts off talking directly to religious leaders like me. He addresses teachers, by which he means religious teachers – preachers and pastors – and says, “My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.” He says that I am going to be judged by God more harshly than you on this matter, because of my position as a religious leader. Religious leaders are held to a higher standard, and he lets me know that right away. If I say something publicly or privately that is harmful, then it will have much more of an effect on this church than if a regular member of this congregation says it. Whether I like it or not, what I say – whether I am saying it officially or not – will reflect on the reputation of this congregation, my denomination and more generally on the Christian church. And my words are recorded and put on our church website through YouTube so I can’t say, “I didn’t say that!” To a lesser extent this is also true of everyone here. People will judge this church by what we say and do. And unfortunately we will all make mistakes. That is James’ first point.

II. Second, Do not underestimate the power of words. Words might seem like little things – fleeting utterances that disappear as soon as they are voiced -  but they can have big consequences that last for a long time. We say something in the heat of anger to our husband or wife, our mom or dad, our son or daughter, or grandson or granddaughter, and they may never forget it. So we must choose our words wisely; you can’t take them back. Words are like toothpaste, once out it is out of the tube you cannot put it back in. Scripture says, “Reckless words pierce like a sword."  Proverbs 12:18  “He who holds his tongue is wise.”  Proverbs 10:19 

James uses three metaphors to get across this point that the tongue is little but can have big effects.  First uses the example of a bit in a horse’s mouth, “If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. ³ Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body.” A little word can change the whole direction of your life. Look at that careless comment that Representative Todd Akin made about rape in an interview last month. He could have been a US senator. Now that seems very unlikely. Something small can have big effects for bad or good. A small bit can turn a horse’s direction, so does a small word change the direction of our lives.

He also uses the metaphor of a ship’s rudder. “⁴ Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. ⁵ Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things.”  I have an old boat, over twenty years old that I inherited from my mother. It is not in very good shape, and I rarely use it, and I really should get rid of it. For years I shared it with my brother and sister. Well, a family member took it out one day and promptly ran it aground onto some rocks and broke off the propeller and the skeg, which is the bottom part underneath the propeller that acts like a rudder. I didn’t have insurance at the time, so I only got a new propeller, but did not want to put the money into repairing the skeg. So now it basically I have a boat that does not have a rudder, and consequently it does not steer very well at slow speeds, which makes it very hard to dock. So now I have good boat insurance. But I don’t think you can buy tongue insurance. So I am very careful what I say.

The third metaphor is that of a forest fire. “See how great a forest a little fire kindles! ⁶ And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.” We have heard a lot about forest fires this year. Fires raged in the western states all summer long. Some have burned thousands of acres and consumed homes. Some of those forest fires were started by a careless match or campfire. Words are like these fires. Great harm can be started by a careless word which destroys lives, reputations, families and churches. Here we are talking about gossip, slander, rumors, and backbiting. Scriptures says that Christians are to "speak evil of no one." “Titus 3:1,2  and Peter 2:1 - "Lay aside ... all evil speaking."  Colossians 4:6 – “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.”  Psalms 141:3 – We need to pray with David, "Set a guard, O lord, over my mouth; Keep watch over the door of my lips."

III. The third major point that James makes in this passage is the need to tame the tongue. Here he uses the analogy of taming animals. “⁷ For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. ⁸ But no man can tame the tongue.” Trying to tame the tongue is like trying to tame a wild animal. There was an incident this summer concerning a American student from Saint Louis who working in South Africa. He was a graduate student leading a tour of the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee Eden, a sanctuary for abused animals. He was trained in the dangers of these chimpanzees, and was supposed to keep others safe. But he made the mistake of getting too close and was grabbed and mauled by two chimps. He has had multiple surgeries and almost lost his life. We might think chimps are cute pets and harmless, but they can be vicious. Likewise we hear other reports all the time of people who have wild animals for pets and they turn on their owners. People think that they can tame wild animals, but it can cost them their lives or health. James says that the tongue is worse than such a wild animal. “⁷ For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. ⁸ But no man can tame the tongue.”

I don’t know if you have ever had the experience of saying something you didn’t mean to say, but I have. I had that experience at the Bible study on Ecclesiastes this summer. I said something, and then thought, “Did I really say that out loud?”  Sometime we speak before we think. That is why I like to preach from a manuscript. It cuts down the likelihood that I am going to put my foot in my mouth and regret something I said. I take James words to heart that a preacher has to be especially careful about what he/she says. That comes to doctrine and ethics, as well as lesser matters. When it comes to truth or falsehood, I could spout some theological fad and a few years later change my mind and see how wrong I was. But the damage is done, and I may have sent some person down the wrong spiritual road. Preachers need to take preaching seriously. So I am careful. I know that ultimately the tongue cannot be tamed. It can only be leashed and caged. You might remember in 2003 what happened with the Siegfried & Roy magic act in Las Vegas. A Bengal tiger mauled Roy Horn.  He had been working with those animals for years, but one day the tiger turned on him. James says that you can tame the tongue even less than you can tame wild animals.

So what do we do? James gives us some guidance in the final verses of our passage. He says, “With it [the tongue] we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. ¹⁰ Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. ¹¹ Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?¹² Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.”

Here he uses a couple of other metaphors - one of a spring and one of a tree. He says that a spring does not produce both fresh water and bitter water from the same source. Neither does a tree produce two different kinds of fruits – a fig tree bearing olives or a grapevine bearing figs. With these analogies James is trying to make the point that you can tell a tree by its fruit and a spring by its taste.  A fresh spring will produce fresh water. If it is a fig tree it will produce figs. So if our hearts are good, then good words will come from our mouths. James’ older brother Jesus made the same point, using similar language. Jesus said, “For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. ⁴⁴ For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. ⁴⁵ A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6) 

Both James and Jesus are pointing to the fact that what is really needed to change our speech is a change of heart. You can’t tame the tongue, but God can transform the heart. And if God transforms the heart then the tongue will follow. That inner transformation comes through the grace of God through faith in Christ. God takes out the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh; he gives us a heart after God’s heart. That is our only hope. Sticks and stones can break bones and words can break hearts, but God can give us a new heart and place a new spirit within us. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.”  Psalm 19:14.