A sermon helped by James 3.1-12 and Mark 8.27ff
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it” that’s a quote by Dumbledore from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Books.
Kamala Harris in her book The Truths we hold published in 2018 wrote “Words have the ability to empower and deceive, to soothe and to hurt, to spread important ideas or wrong headed ones, to spur people into action for good or ill. People in power have a duty to speak them with precision” She goes on to say “What we call things and how we define them shapes how we think about them”. I’ll come back to that point in a moment.
James in his epistle is really concerned about how we speak. James is giving us some really clear warnings about the power of words to hurt, to set things on fire – so he uses the example of horse riding, or steering ships even in a storm, or wild fires. You might think that James is really aiming for everyone to be quiet and just not say anything at all!
But I think that James is really pushing for us to work a little at how we apply our faith.
Last week it was how we apply our faith to what we do – in how we treat people according to whether they look rich or look poor, or for that matter according to whether they actually are rich or poor.
And we saw that its no good just to say Nice Things to a brother or sister in need – ‘Go in peace, keep warm and well fed’ – if our faith has no action then that’s a dead faith. And the powerful scripture we heard last week was to let mercy triumph over judgement. When it comes to God we discover that Mercy triumphs over judgement – so that’s good advice for us.
James moves on to the subject of talk. You might think – given chapter 2 – that Talk is cheap what really matters is action, but St James would be saying How we talk shows what and where our faith is and that if
its any good it should be leading us into action.
So have a think about How we talk to God, How we talk to Others, How we talk to yourself– both out loud and in our own hearts.
How we talk to God – God has some pretty big shoulders so its okay to give to God a piece of your mind. In fact it’s a good idea to do that. The Psalms are full of sometimes joyful, but also sometimes angry words and emotions to throw at God.
Some Psalms contain words that are too embarrassing to repeat here from the pulpit and I hope that that is a sufficient tease for you to go and search them out.
So it is okay, in your private prayers to talk to God about how you’re feeling, whether you’re upset, mad, angry, whatever.
This is good and healthy because the alternative is to vent your emotions to someone else or
to tighten the lid on your heart and keep all these thoughts inside and that’s just a pressure cooker waiting to blow.
So it is good for you to give to God your hopes and fears and not to think carefully about how to phrase it but to be honest and real in the hurt and pain that you’re holding.
Talk to God in a full and open and frank way
But you might want to think about how you talk to others.
When someone says something or asks a question we’re not always sure where that thought is coming from, there are words we can use that can trigger off an emotional reaction, and things can escalate fast, or hurt can go deep down.
Where you have journeyed with a friend and there’s a lot of love in the bank, then when you say the wrong thing its often possible to absorb what was said without too much afront being taken.
But if I am tired and you ask me a question, I cannot promise that I wont snap back at you. I hope I wont but we all get tired and then who knows what we might say.
St James is right,when he wrote this chapter. The ease with which our untameable tongues can say the wrong thing in the wrong moment and then suddenly there’s an out-of-control fire blazing away.
What we need is a faith that will soak through us, through our actions in how we treat other people, how we give generously, how we practice our faith.
But we also need our faith in Jesus, we need His love that is being poured into our hearts, we need that love to help us speak words of love and encouragement and blessing to others.
Some years ago in a parish far far away, I was very hurt by the words of someone and I said to God – Oh dear God why don’t you just take him! – and God said ‘Are you ready to take the funeral?’ and I said ‘no.’
James is trying to lead us through simple practical ways to get us to apply our faith to every aspect of our lives, even to how we talk.
And how do you talk about yourself?
There’s the balance of bragging about yourself, and the then the self-deprecating vocab where we can talk ourselves down.
We can do it publicly.
But there is I think a worse version which is where we talk ourselves down privately, quietly, and we say things like – Oh I’m so silly, so clumsy, so stupid – and when we do this we can accidentally start to believe ourselves. And then every time we are clumsy, every time we do something a bit stupid, we point it out to ourselves.
It’s a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy as we hear ourselves and begin to believe ourselves.
St James is saying Don’t do that.
I remember coming across Norman Vincent Peale – do you remember his book – the Power of Positive Thinking. He encouraged us to repeat to ourselves every day that wonderful scripture from Philippians 4v13: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
And the idea was that if you started your day like this, and maybe reminded yourself of it as you go into a meeting or an appointment – I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me – that that might help you to remember how much you are loved and held by God – that if you said it to yourself through the day, out loud, that you might start to believe it, and that might give you strength for the day.
This sermon is headed in the direction of being about the call to Bless other people not to curse them. To speak encouragingly.
But for a short moment can we look to the Gospel reading? Jesus gathered His disciples about Him and asked a key question that we must all answer – Who do you say I am? Who do you say Jesus is?
Peter gives the profound answer – You are the Messiah.
Well done Peter. And then Jesus explains what that will mean – it will mean pain and suffering and death and – and don’t forget to hear this bit it will also mean Resurrection. But I don’t think that Peter heard that last bit.
There is already a lot of love between Peter and Jesus – and that’s important in a friendship when you say the wrong thing.
Peter rebukes Jesus, Jesus rebukes Peter – Get behind me Satan – that’s quite a hurtful thing to hear. How do you process that!
Peter now needs to find a way of saying Sorry to Jesus, and Peter also needs to forgive Jesus – there’s a lot of hurt here in this moment.
I have always wondered how the tone in their voices sounded, or what their body language was like in all of this.
I have even wondered if Jesus is really looking at Peter at this point. ‘Get behind me Satan’ – I wonder if Jesus is really speaking not to Peter but to the temptation that Peter is suggesting – the easy route, pain free.
So that Peter might see that he is not Satan in this moment, but rather what Peter has said has triggered in Jesus an awareness of this simple temptation. And His response is to rebuke it.
But we would also understand if Peter felt a bit taken aback here.
Peter actually has a bigger problem – what do you do when you feel let down by your messiah?
Peter knows that Jesus is the Messiah – but Peter has in his head a sort of fixed idea about that and Jesus is going to have to work hard to help Peter see that Jesus is not going to kill all the Romans, there isn’t going to be a big blood bath. Jesus isn’t that sort of messiah.
At different points of your journey of faith, you will have wrestled with this. Perhaps it is a prayer that hasn’t been answered, or it has been answered but not the way you thought it should go. Perhaps you had hopes and expectations that Jesus would do something quite particular for you and that has not happened. So what do you do when you feel let down by your messiah.
Peter will learn to resign himself to this – Where else can we go, he says, You have the words of eternal life (Jn 6.68) But these are not easy words to say.
There will be times when you will find yourself crying out to God and asking God What are you playing at!
Earlier in the sermon I talked about the importance of giving over to God all that you’re carrying, and not worrying about saying it right. So by all means Go ahead and Rebuke God and give Him a piece of your mind and tell Him where you feel let down. Its good for your soul.
But in your desire to bring some judgement to God, remember the letter of James – remember its teaching – to let Mercy triumph over Judgement –
because God’s mercy will triumph over you, over His judgement of you. God’s mercy will have the last word.
So perhaps we can let that doctrine seep into how we talk to others, about others, to ourselves, about ourselves,
To let our faith inhabit every aspect of our lives, even our language,
And perhaps we can learn to let mercy triumph over judgement.
Amen.