Lectionary for Sept. 15, 2024
17th Sunday after Pentecost
Proverbs 1:20-33; Psalm 19;
James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38
Have you ever said words that you instantly regretted? I have. Someone said something horrible to me in the fourth grade, and I repeated it right back to him. I’ve regretted it ever since. More recently I had had enough of my kids yelling, insulting each other and talking back to me, so I told them to “shut up!” (which no one, even parents, is allowed to say in our house). I’ve said the wrong thing many times. But occasionally I happen to have just the right word to say at a shimmering moment of honesty and (probably literal) inspiration. This week’s lectionary readings are about speaking the right words at the right time.
James, the brother of Jesus and head of the Jerusalem church, tells the truth: the tongue is a powerful organ for speaking good or evil into the world. Too often we do both, praying to God and saying words of lovingkindness to friends and neighbors while also cursing and belittling others. Jesus puts a fine point on it (that we do well to remember this election season): if we call someone an “empty head,” we will be liable for judgment from humans. If we call someone a fool, we will be guilty enough to be sent to the fires of Gehenna (Matthew 5:22).
What we do with our mouths determines our direction in life and fate, just like the bit of a horse, the rudder of a ship or a spark in a forest, James says. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, and James says here in his letter, there are real consequences for letting our words become injurious invective. As one consequence, evil speech sours absolutely everything else we say. Just as a fig tree cannot produce grapes and figs, a salt spring cannot produce salt and fresh water. The mouth that curses humans simply cannot pronounce an unblemished blessing.
Sociologist and author Tony Campolo likes to say: “Partisan uniting of our Christianity with one political party is like trying to mix ice cream and cow manure. It doesn’t hurt the manure, but it sure ruins the ice cream.” We can’t mix up hatred and love in our mouths and expect the love to be untarnished by the hatred we speak.
As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, and James says here in his letter, there are real consequences for letting our words become injurious invective.
Jesus cautioned his hearers about another danger of uncareful speech. When he took his disciples to the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi, they encountered a crowd that, unlike previous ones, didn’t seem to have sought out Jesus. Instead, following on his journey to Tyre and then the Decapolis, Jesus sought out a gentile crowd. He found them at what most interpreters understand to be cultic site of the Gates of Hades/Banias.
To a crowd that begged Greco-Canaanite deities for life and health for crops, animals and themselves, Jesus’ words must have sounded like madness. Deny yourself! Take up your cross. Lose your life to save it! Trying to save your life will cause you to lose it. Jesus’ words were ridiculous and more than a little shameful.
When Jesus spoke of losing his life, even Peter took him aside to rebuke him. But Peter’s words were uncareful speech that concerned the things of humans, not the things of God! As we read in Mark 8:38, Jesus says our responses to his weird, shameful words will shape his response to us (no, really!). In a wicked and unfaithful time, what would it look like to vociferously champion Jesus’ teaching here? The key to preserving our lives is to be willing to pour them out for others—just like Jesus did!
Letting go of, rather than trying to defend and preserve, our preferences for our own lives sounds like foolishness to most folks—especially, again, in a year when we are going to make a choice together about who we think will best lead us in national executive positions. But Jesus didn’t try to win against the Romans by playing their own, evil game. Instead of fighting, he allowed himself to be killed. And he clearly told his disciples what was going to happen ahead of time (Mark 8:32). Such words are foolishness to Greeks and a stumbling block to Jews (1 Corinthians 1:23) unless they are called, and then Jesus crucified is the power and wisdom of God (24).
As the old saying goes, “Loose lips can sink ships.” So, whether it is James cautioning Christians not to try to bless from one side of their mouths and curse from the other; or Jesus insisting that we proclaim his death and resurrection, we are called to choose the right words.
