The Superpower Behind Our Lips--February 10, 2022

The Superpower Behind Our Lips--February 10, 2022

"For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits." [James 3:2-5a]

"We all make our share of mistakes."  Yeah, that's true, but even that is a polite way of putting the human condition.  James is a little more direct in his original Greek way of saying this, and it lands with a bigger impact to my ears.  James' original sense is closer to, "We are all stumbling and tripping all over ourselves all the time." 

And--wow.  Yeah.  That hits close to home... because it's true.  He's right.  

I don't just accidentally use the salad fork or leave my elbows on the table at dinner from time to time.  I don't merely forget my log-in password or leave the CAPS LOCK button on occasion.  I stumble all over myself, all the time, particularly with the words that come out of my mouth (and the ones that don't, but should).  I can be cruel or cold when compassion is really called for.  I can be sarcastic or passive-aggressive when sincerity would be the mature course of action.  I can lash out with a harsh word, even though I know it is only going to aggravate a situation, when it would be so much better to ease tensions by asking other people to help me understand their point of view. I can attack with sweeping generalizations like, "You always do such and such!" or "You never help with..." when what I really mean is something more nuanced, like, "When you don't help with this, it makes me feel pretty rotten," or "When you do that, it makes me feel really frustrated."  

I suspect that you have the same trouble, too, even if it shows itself in different ways.  We all trip all over ourselves with the ways we use words, and the ways we misuse them.  Not only in our interpersonal conversations day by day, but in the powder keg we know as social media, even more so.  We live in a time when a weaponized word can be lobbed at someone across great distances, without any regard for the humanity of the other person, all from the safety of our screens.  We are given the impression that we have to fight these battles online in the name of truth and honor and "stickin' it to the other guy," and then rather than listen to where someone is coming from we just brand them with the worst names we have in our arsenal.  We live in a culture filled with incessant messaging bombarding us all the time, but which somehow has less and less of substance to say.  Ours is a time when the right word can be used to whitewash monstrosities, to transform strangers into villains or selfishness into a virtue in our minds, or to cast an angry riot as legitimate discourse.  Words are powerful, because they shape the way we see the world into which we step every day. But all too often we treat our words as though they have no real consequences, when in truth we are children playing with dynamite.

James knows it.  Who knows what damage he has seen done in his congregation?  Who knows what heartbreaks he has lived through himself, or counseled others through, all because of destructive words?  James doesn't just single out one troublemaker in the congregation over everyone else--he sees that we all have this terrible power in our own tongues, one that is deceptive because it can seem so harmless or insignificant.  He knows that each of us is capable of wielding words carelessly, and that's why he brings this warning. Instead of only villainizing the people he doesn't like or doesn't agree with, as though only they were capable of weaponizing their mouths, he gives a warning all around.  Instead of giving himself permission to be mean or cruel in response to others "because they did it too!" he calls all parties, all around, to watch their tongues.  That's huge--it's James reminding us that just because someone else is being destructive (or disrespectful or rude or rotten) with their words, it does not give us permission to sink to their level.  To borrow those powerful words of Robert Hayden's that have gotten some recent play on late-night television lately, "we must not be frightened or cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us."

Today, the challenge in front of us is clear and necessary.  Each of us is called to recognize the power contained in our own mouths--the power of words--and to use it for good and not for evil.  Each of us has the capacity to use the amazing human capacity for speech in ways that build up, in ways that tell the truth, in ways that call out the best in us, and in ways that break the cycles of rottenness around us.  We also have the power to misuse words to send us down bad roads, to distort the way we see the world around us, to harm others, and to let ourselves off the hook.  James warns us not to use that superpower behind our lips in destructive ways, no matter what we see someone else doing.  That's at least one way we can do something positive to keep ourselves from stumbling all over each other and tripping up the people around us.  

And that's worth the effort.  

Good Lord, like the old psalmist said it, guard the door of our lips today, and let us use the power of speech to create, as you did at the beginning, calling light into existence out of oblivion.