Inside Thoughts – 9/15/24 Sermon

We find ourselves once again in the book of James this morning. If you were with us last week, you might remember that James is zeroed in on the internal workings of the Christian community – reminding the people who are already seeking to follow Jesus of what we are called to be and do in the world. 

Scripture: James 3:1-12

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 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.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

There’s an American proverb that goes something like this: everything I need to know in life, I learned in kindergarten. 

But I want to see if we learned the same things. So let’s try a little experiment: I’m going to start a phrase that I learned as a young child, and you complete it, and we’ll see if we remember them the same way.

There’s no such thing as…a stupid question.

Be careful, little ears…what you hear. 

Sticks and stones may break my bones…but words will never hurt me.

If you can’t say anything nice…don’t say anything at all.

I was raised with this quote from the Bambi movie: little Thumper the bunny learns from his mother: “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” 

These days, I see classroom posters encouraging kids to think deeply about what they say, with the word ‘THINK’ in big print down one side, creating an acronym. Before you speak, it says, ask yourself: “is it true, is it helpful, is it necessary, is it kind?” 

We learn at a very young age that words are really important. Even before children are fully verbal, we say things to encourage them to speak, saying “use your words!” Words are one of the core ways we learn to navigate the world, identify our surroundings, and connect with each other. 

We know in our bones that our words matter. That’s not the problem. The hard part is the self-control it takes to use our words for good and not evil. 

See, there are a lot of things we could say. Legally, there is very little prohibited speech in the US. The First Amendment of our constitution says: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.” There are exceptions, but without action to go along with them, they are few and far between. 

It’s not illegal to be mean. It’s not illegal to be petty, or passive-aggressive, or to say all sorts of untrue, ridiculous, hurtful things, no matter how wide your audience. If you wordsmith it enough, you can’t even get sued. 

Even the Bible has very few absolute restrictions on our words – the big ones being lying, swearing by God’s name, and invoking the name of God in a trivial or frivolous way. 

But the Bible does give us some better direction, at least. In Genesis 1, God speaks and the world comes into being, showing us that words can create worlds. In Deuteronomy 30, God speaks to the people via moses saying “I put before you today life and death, blessings and curses – choose life!” 

Jesus, in his sermon on the mount, says “it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. Can a thornbush bear figs, or a fresh spring yield salt water?” 

Even Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10: “‘All things are lawful’, but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful’, but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.”

You could say any number of horrible things and still not go to jail, or even be in trouble in any major way. Even if you get “cancelled,” someone is usually waiting in the wings to say “ooh, I have an audience that would LOVE to hear what you say!” 

The question is not ‘can I get away with this’ – the question is, is that really how you want to spend your breath? Is that really how you want to use your oxygen? 

Right now, we are stuck in the middle of an election season, where we are inundated with words, but starving for wisdom, We are flooded with opinions, but parched for compassion. We are overwhelmed by talking heads describing various crisis scenarios, but we are somehow still left searching for hope.

Our words can create worlds – but what kind of world are we creating? What does that world contain? What does it feel like? 

I want to tell you about two different conversations: one that seemed inconsequential at the time but changed my life for the better, and the worst conversation I have ever been part of. 

Good news first. 

A little over a decade ago, when I was still a seminarian, I was a pastoral intern at Servant’s Community Church in Grand Rapids. It was a small, neighborhood church on the West Side of Grand Rapids, and I loved it. The summer after I took my first preaching class, the pastors there asked me to preach on Sunday morning for the first time. I was still convinced at that point I was never going to be a pastor, but this was part of the intern gig, so I did it. The sermon itself wasn’t anything miraculous, but the congregation saw me come alive in a new way that day. 

The following Wednesday, I was helping one of the pastors and a deacon set up for the weekly community meal, hauling tables and chairs to a park a few blocks down. 

As we were loading tables in his pickup, the Deacon – Carl – looked at me and said “so what do we call you now? Rev?” 

I was a little confused, because nothing had changed for me in those four days. I still wasn’t ordained. I was like “nah, Sarah is just fine.” 

But he wasn’t the only one. Suddenly, everyone was calling me ‘pastor.’ In the course of one sermon, I went from Pastoral Intern Sarah Juist to Pastor Sarah. 

They saw in me something that I wasn’t ready yet to see in myself, and they helped speak it into being. And, well, here we are. 

Now let me tell you about the worst conversation I’ve ever had. 

It’s the worst not because of what was said, but because we had to have the conversation at all. 

The church I served before Parkwood was in rural Ohio. Our building was a decent size, with lots of open spaces that could be used for various community needs, events, etc. We were also located less than a mile from all four school buildings. It was a consolidated district, so all the kids from that part of the county were bussed in to those buildings.

Because we were so close, our church building was designated as the emergency pickup site for the Intermediate School, grades 3-5. In the event that the building needed to be evacuated for any reason, the kids would be bussed to the church and parents and caregivers would be instructed to pick the kids up there. 

The first spring I was there, I was invited to sit in on a teacher’s Inservice day where they would all walk through the emergency procedures in our building. The administrators, bless them, were a well-oiled machine. They had everything down to a science. The kids would get off the busses and go in the main doors. Here’s where each grade would wait, and here are a dozen ways to keep them busy. The parents would come in the back door and show ID, and be escorted by a teacher to the other end of the building to pick up their student, and then they would leave out the side door. 

As we were walking through all of this, the administrators were dead serious. We all knew that there were very few scenarios where this plan would need to be put into action, and unfortunately, the scenario that was top of all our minds was an active shooter. They planned based on the worst-case scenario, and that was it. 

Now, the way our building was laid out, you had the fellowship hall on one end of a long hallway, and the sanctuary and basement access on the other end. Basically smack in the middle was my office. 

We were walking through the whole thing, starting in the fellowship hall where parents would enter. But when we got to my office, we stopped in the hallway. I was confused, and then I was devastated. 

The principal explained that in the event of a child’s death or serious injury, the school counselor and a sheriff’s deputy would wait in my office. The parents would go through the same process as everyone else, but instead of going all the way to the end of the hallway, the teacher escorting them would direct them to my office. There, the counselor and the deputy would sit them down and give them the worst news you could imagine in a mostly private space, not in front of other parents or children. 

I wasn’t mad they were using my office – I was livid that they needed to have this conversation and make this plan in the first place. 

From that moment forward, any time I heard sirens headed down the road in that direction, I would sit in that office and pray: “please, God, not today. Not today, not ever.” 

I prayed that same prayer this week for our own local schools that were closed this week due to online rumors or shooting threats –  both Byron Center and Jenison. 

I have written and deleted a dozen social media essays this week about various political and social issues. You may not know this, but my undergraduate major was in International Relations, with minors in Religious Studies and Journalism. I have plenty of hot takes rumbling around up here. 

But as James says in the very first verse of this chapter: those with influence, those with platforms, the folks people look to and listen to, have an even greater responsibility to use our words carefully and wisely, so that we do not lead God’s people into sin, violence, hatred, and heartache. 

Because of this responsibility, I have a lot of “inside thoughts” these days – things that I think, or journal about, or write out and delete, but never make their way to the eyes and ears of others. Even though I think they’re true, they are not helpful, kind, or necessary.

I know that this same worst-case-scenario conversation happens across the country, in classrooms and offices and churches and hospitals, that means I have a responsibility to use my words to inch us towards a world where no teacher, no principal, no pastor, no human has to imagine that scenario. Where we don’t need to make plans like this. 

When I say words create worlds, I am not being hyperbolic or woo-woo or metaphorical. I mean that in a very real sense – the words we choose can create life or death, love or bitterness, welcome or rejection, hope or fear. 

Friends, here is the good and hard news: we all share this same responsibility to use our words wisely, not only for our own good, but for the good of everyone we love, everyone who shares this nation and this planet with us, and everyone who will come after us. 

Our words can create worlds – let’s make it a good one.

Thanks be to God. Amen.