Sunday, September 15, 2024

Watch Your Words!

 


The presidential debate last Tuesday night was 90-minutes of back and forth that was a lot of what we have already heard...except for one very disturbing comment from the former president. 
The question asked was one of his favorite talking points...the people entering the USA from the southern border. But instead of answering that question, Donald Trump launched into a rant about how big his rallies are... how people want to go to his rallies... because they want to take their country back. And then he repeated a claim that in Springfield, Ohio, migrants were "eating the dogs, eating the cats, they're eating pets!" 
Even by Trump standards....this was truly wild. 
And then I looked again at our Scriptures for this week. And while the Gospel lesson from Mark, which is Jesus asking "Who do you say that I am" is often a compelling passage for preaching, given the fallout from Trump's baseless attack on the Haitian migrant population in this country...the lesson assigned from the Letter of James was far more important.
See what you think.

Text: James 3:1-12

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Stick and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.

We’re all familiar with that saying, right?

It was a great defense mechanism we could use on the playground when some bully was taunting us.

But I know…if I am being honest about it… the names hurt.

A lot.

When I broke my nose in a softball game…and sprained my knee playing soccer… those things certainly hurt.

But they were physical wounds that healed.

Words…on the other hand… have a way of getting trapped in the brain.

And hurtful words that enter the brain often will manifest as a pain in the body.

Take it from me: as a licensed massage therapist… I have worked with clients whose aching neck and shoulders are often connected to something said to them at their office earlier in the day!

Words… and the way we speak to one another… can have a tremendous impact.

I think that’s why our letter writer James takes the time to talk about the ‘unbridled tongue.”

James recognizes the real harm that words pose to our relationships to God and to each other.

Even though this is called “The Letter of James”…scholars have reached the conclusion that this more like our First Reading… in that it is Christian wisdom literature… giving us moral guidance and spiritual direction.

James is one of those books in the Bible that’s short and to the point and easy enough to read that it’s worth spending the time with it.

And not to rush through it… but to read it slowly and carefully.

For those of you who struggle with Paul… James gives you an equally faithful presentation and one which gives special care and attention to those who are the underdogs…and the pushed aside…. with words that should make us all stop and think.

Words…such as this passage about being careful about words.

And our tongues with the ability to praise God on the one hand…and then denigrate God when we curse those made in the likeness of God.

Oof!

These words are wise words.

They are tough words.

And they are words we must hear and consider…especially during an election year.

I’m sure many of you watched the Presidential Debate last Tuesday.

And if you didn’t… you likely heard about it from friends… or family.

Or maybe you opened Facebook the next morning and got hit with countless memes of cats and dogs in military fatigues.

For those who didn’t hear it… a rumor was repeated on the debate stage alleging that Haitian immigrants in Springfield Ohio are stealing people’s pets and cooking them for dinner.

It was an odd thing to come up in the debate.

And it has been debunked… repeatedly… by the city manager of Springfield as well as the police department.

And because it was so strange… it has become the big joke out of that debate.

I admit… even I shared a meme of a Gadsden flag with the silhouette of a black cat and “Don’t Feed on Me.”

But the suggestion that Haitians in a small Ohio city are stealing pets and eating them is not a laughing matter.

Since the debate…twice this past week… public schools in Springfield had to close because of bomb threats.

This is type of insinuation that’s not only hurtful to the Haitian population in Ohio…but all the Haitians who have fled the violence and lawlessness that has overrun their country.

Haitian migrants live and work in communities all over the United States.

Even Georgia has a long history with Haiti.

There’s a monument in Savannah…remembering the 500 Haitian recruits who fought alongside American colonial troops against the British during the siege of Savannah during the Revolutionary War. 

Business owners in Springfield have come to the defense of their Haitian neighbors.

They praise them for their friendliness and work ethic.

Dehumanizing people is not the way…the truth…or the life of Christ.  

And this sort of thing has been used before in human history with horrific consequences.

I studied German as my foreign language in high school and college. And when you study a foreign language…it’s typical you also learn something about the history and the culture of the country.

In my college class… I remember that one of the art history professor at the university…Edzard Baumann… shared with us his experience of growing up as a child in Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler.

His parents were not Nazis and his mother would eventually take him and flee the country.

But his older sister had become enthralled with the Hitler Youth program.

He described the weekly instruction that went on in his German school.

Every week… they made sure to show him and his classmates the picture of the stereotypical Jew on one side…and a rat on the other.

They’d make much of the elongated and prominent nose on the Jew…how much it looked like the snout of a rat.

The purpose of this…of course…was to dehumanize Jews.

If they weren’t really human… then they weren’t really kin…or in this case kinder… to the non-Jewish Germans.

How much easier it is to convince people to hate what they don’t see as one of them.

The same dehumanization led to the slaughter of Tutsis by the Hutu-government in Rwanda.

The government propaganda machine called the Tutsis “cockroaches.” It was repeated early and often… as a way of reducing the Tutsis to annoy insects that deserved to be exterminated.

This same toxicity has been infecting our politics for decades in this country.

Politicians use fear of the “other” to rally their voters and depress opponents from going to the polls.

Willie Horton.

Drag Queens.

Fill-in-the-blank of whatever “other” this side or that side wants to portray as “scary.”

As our writer James says…”How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is fire…itself is set on fire by hell.”

So where is the hope…the good news in this message from James?

We can hear it in our collect this morning: that prayer where we seek the Holy Spirit to be the guide of our hearts.

The Holy Spirit…that type of fiery tongue that lit up the apostles in the Upper Room and sent them out to do the work of Jesus.

That Spirit of a burning bush that is ablaze but is not consumed…and gave Moses the words to speak up on behalf of his people.

When we stop…and listen…and seek the Holy Spirit to be the one who leads us and gives us the words to speak…we are empowered to emissaries of goodness…especially in times when we feel anxious or angry.

The Spirit can help to calm and cool off the fire that we’re ready to spit out of our mouths at each other.

The Spirit within us leads us to use our words that can build people up.

It’s that very Spirit that will call us back into remembering what we say when pray the Baptismal Covenant…when we renew the promises that we make to each other every time we repeat it.

And so I invite you to open your prayer books to page 304…we will skip the Creed for now. But let’s remember what we promise to do for God and for each other…

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

A: I will, with God’s help

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

A: I will, with God’s help.

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? 

A: I will, with God’s help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? 

A: I will, with God’s help. 

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? 

A: I will, with God’s help.

“With God’s help”…with our willingness to listen…and to resist the temptation to demonize others and tamp down our fiery tongues…we can be the models of Christ that speaks words of encouragement…hope and love that so many people are waiting to hear from Christians today.

May the Lord meet us in this moment…and give us the grace and power to fulfill our promises to God and each other.

In the name of our one holy and undivided Trinity.

 

 

 


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