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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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