“Sticks and Stones”

James 3:1-12

September 14, 2003

St. Paul UMC, Little Rock

Rev. John Fleming

Let’s try this on for size. I love you. You are important to me. Thank you so much for all that you have done. How can I ever repay you? You look really great today. Is that a new suit that you are wearing? It looks great on you! You got your hair cut. It looks wonderful! I could have sworn that you were a super model! Great job! You know, this place just would not be the same without you. I do not thin that I have ever heard a better sermon, and I listen to Billy Graham and Charles Stanley on a regular basis! Sorry, that one is for me! I do not think that I could be more proud of you! Yea! Wow! You are irreplaceable. Will you be my wife? I must be the luckiest man on the face of the earth. God had better check his angel inventory because I think that there is one missing. I am looking her in the eyes right now.

I hate you. You make me sick. You disgust me. I wish that you had never been born! Do you have any clothes in your closet beside that old set of rags? That was awful! That was the worst job of anything that I have ever seen. Did you spend any time on it at all? You can be replaced! I am ashamed of you. You definitely could have done better than that! I wouldn’t have wanted my dog to hear that sorry sermon! It’s over! I want a divorce. No one loves you but your mama, and she might be jiving you too! Oh, I guess that that is what dark and handsome means, when it’s dark, you’re handsome! Nobody cares about you. I never want to see you again. As long as I live, I’ll never speak to you again! Words! Letters strung together that can help or can hurt!

Can you remember your days on the playground when you were just a kid, in elementary school? Do me a favor. Put an image of that day in your mind for just a minute. Maybe you are out there with a couple of other classes. Maybe Mrs. King’s class and Mrs. Parker’s classes are outside, too. Perhaps it is over there by the swing set or the slide when you hear the words for the first time. Maybe you’ve even said them yourself. Say it with me if you know it, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words, well, sometimes they will break your heart and crush your spirit.” I was thinking about this as I wrote the sermon of what a crazy phrase that seems to be. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? This thought crossed my mind, friends, “Broken bones heal after a while, but often we never get over words that are said about us. Just ask the teenager and she will tell you. Her high school reputation is ruined. Not because of something that she did, but because of something that was said about her. She is innocent in more ways than one. The only thing that she really did was to say yes when he asked her out. To boost his reputation and his ego, he said things about here that just were not true! Never mind her reputation and her ego. Just ask the guy hoping for the promotion and he will tell you. He made one mistake on one job and now he’s passed over time and time again for job after job, but he does not understand why. No one will tell him about it!

I am sorry for meddling this morning, but these words from James just seem to bring this sort of thing out in sermons like these. Sometimes it starts out like this, “Don’t tell anyone that I told you this, but...” And you cannot wait to find someone else to tell. A woman came up to her friend and gently whispered, “Now, I’m not one to repeat gossip, so listen carefully the first time!” Or maybe you’ve added a little something to the advice that your mother once gave you and it has ended up like this, “If you can’t say something good about someone, come over here and sit by me!” I can remember the game that we used to play when I was a youth minister, where you’d have all of the youth sit around a circle. The game began when I whispered something in someone’s ear. It might be something like, “Yesterday I saw Susie at the mall.”

And by the time the message was whispered in the last person’s ear, Susie was at the mall with a married man, holding hands with him, and buying a ten thousand dollar necklace. I do not want to say this to you, but sometimes in the church, under the charge of prayer our words can be hurtful. Maybe it happens like this, “Well, you know that we need to pray for him, I hear that his wife...” You will need to fill in that blank. I heard of a woman who said this, “I’ve been the subject of a nasty prayer circle. Four people I thought were my friends were praying for me about something that was full of gossip. When I confronted one of them, she said that it was an honest mistake and that she was concerned about me. She was so concerned about me that she could not pick up the phone to call me. Never mind that the prayer concern was hurtful and not true. Never mind that none of my friends had seen me in weeks. They were just concerned!” I heard this, this week. “There’s a reason that the tongue is in our mouths. It’s slippery!” Friends, never underestimate the power of the tongue!

Which is, I think, one of, if not the main message, of this little five chaptered letter that we have come to call James. This James is probably the Lord’s brother and a leader in the early Jerusalem church. One thing is clear about the letter of James. The writer of it does not mince words. He does not spend a lot of time expanding points, he just makes them. “Be humble” he preaches. “Submit to God” he writes. “Stop sinning!” he orders. Church, you do not need to look for hidden meanings in these words of his. I looked it up, there are fifty-four commands, said with authority, in these five chapters. And one of the most important ones, in fact, the one that James comes back to time and time again has to do with the tongue. Early in the letter, James lays it out for us, “You must understand this, my beloved, let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.” Martin Luther, the German theologian, did not have a high opinion of James. In fact, he called it an epistle of straw, meaning that it did not have much to it. He even said that there was little in it that was Christian. Here is what I think. I think that James was not written to convince people to follow Jesus. I believe that it was written to those who were already following Him, but were struggling with how to do just that. I think that it is for those who have ever asked, “What do we do? How do we live? What are the implications of our faith on the way that we live our lives?” Most of Paul’s letters have an element in them of exhortation, of what to do with the Christian life. All that James does is to exhort. More than anything else, James wants those receiving this letter to be mature, lacking in nothing. So if you have ever put your foot in your mouth. If you have ever been tormented by the memory of words you wish that you had never said. Or if you have ever said words that got just beyond your tongue and you reach out and grab them, but it’s too late, then these words of the third chapter might just be for you.

Let us look at these words. James starts out with the advice that not all of us should be teachers for we who teach will be judged more strictly. Three Sundays ago, we blessed those who are teachers in this year’s Sunday School program. Now, don’t go out and resign your positions after the worship service. What James has in mind here is setting the scene for the rest of the verses. While we all make mistakes, us teachers are especially at risk because of the powerful and dangerous tool that is our chief tool of the trade, our tongues. James wants us to know that if we can just keep our tongues in control, then getting the rest of our bodies in check is easier. You know this, of all the sins that cause us to stumble, the sins of the tongue are especially hard to avoid! Now I think to understand James, you need to know that he uses exaggerated language and embellished illustrations to grab us by the lapels and wake us up to the way that we are supposed to be living. James says that our tongues are like bits in the mouths of horses. A pull here and a tug there guide a thousand pound horse. He says that our tongues are like the rudder of a ship. With just a turn here or a turn there, the ship moves to where the pilot wants the ship to go. He says that the tongue is like a spark in a forest. Before you know it, every tree is on fire. Actually James says the tongue is more like the fire, and not just the spark. I heard this week that the great Chicago fire was started by Mrs. O’Leary’s milk cow, who kicked over a lantern. Soon everything was out of control. You know about things being out of control, don’t you? Or maybe you heard the words that Calvin Coolidge once spoke, “I have never been hurt by anything I did not say.”

Well, now what should we do with these words of James this morning? Let me suggest a couple of things to you. First, we can use our tongues not just for saying words that we should not say. We can also use words to build one another up. Listen again to what James says about this, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.” James says that it ought not to be like this and I agree with him, don’t you? I think that we need to be more in the business of building each other up than in the habit of tearing each other down. You know this and I have said this in a sermon before, that it doesn’t take our children long to learn that if they are told that they are not any good, that they are not worth anything at all, and that they are lazy, then pretty soon they will start believing it and you cannot tell them otherwise. But, on the other hand, if you tell your children that God loves them so much, that even if they fall short a few times, it is all right, because they have so much potential and that all of us make mistakes, then do you know what you have done when you have said those words? You have blessed them. I know that I have shared the story with you before about the little boy who came home from pre-school with a medal around his neck. His father came home and noticed it. He asked, “Son, where did you get that medal?” He answered, “Dad, I got it at school today!” His father asked, “What did you do to deserve it?” The boy answered, “Dad, today I was the best rester!” Do you know what his teacher did for him? She blessed him. Friends, our words of building up must not just be for our children! We must build one another up instead of always tearing one another down!

There is a second thing that I learned by studying our lesson this week. I had not seen this before. James is not telling us that what makes us Christian is being quiet. I missed that before. I have always been taught that if you don’t have something nice to say then you don’t say anything at all. There is another truth here. James does not tell us to zip our lips. Sometimes the failure to say anything is our biggest failure of all. James does not tell us to not speak. He tells us to bridle it. The bridle doesn’t stop the horse from running, it just helps it to run in the right direction! Listen again to the words near the end of this passage. James says that the tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. No one can tame it? No one? No one, James? Well, given the enormous amount of attention given to the tongue in these verses I think that he clearly wants you to try! And I do, too. I think you’ll be happier in your life if you can tame it. I certainly need to try to do this, too. Let’s do it together. Let us pray.