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You
Asked For A Sermon On 1] "Sticks and stones
may break my bones but names will never hurt me!" They won't? Someone
else's tongue can't hurt us? Ask Captain Dreyfus. Albert Dreyfus was an officer
in the French Army at the turn of the century. He was Jewish. The
under‑the-surface antisemitism which is never much beneath the surface
broke through. The name Dreyfus was called was "traitor". There was no
foundation for the label; in his case the word was devoid of truth. Dreyfus was
accused nonetheless. Then he was tried, shunted aside and shunned for years,
then tried again. Eventually he was exonerated. But his exoneration meant
little. By now his military career was in ruins, his life a shambles, his family
devastated. In addition the "Dreyfus affair", as it came to be known,
unleashed a wave of lethal antisemitism throughout 2]
It is plain that a word, once uttered, is not merely a grammatical unit. The
spoken word is an event. And in fact the Hebrew language honours this truth, for
the Hebrew word DABAR means both
"word" and "event". Our Hebrew foreparents knew that the
chief characteristic of God is that he speaks. They knew too that when God speaks something happens. It
is not the case that God speaks, and then silence swallows up his word as though
it had never been uttered, with the result that nothing significant has
occurred. God speaks, we are told, and the universe with its inexhaustible
complexity is fashioned out of nothing. God speaks, and the prophets themselves
are "voice‑activated". Elijah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah;
these men are prophets whose entire existence is
"voice‑activated" by the Holy One of Israel. Amos acquaints us
with the irrefutable ground of his vocation: "The Lord God has spoken; who
can but prophesy? Jesus,
the Word of God incarnate, utters that Word which he himself is, and Lazarus is
quickened from the dead. (We might as well add that the same thing happens every
time the gospel is preached.) Jesus
sends out his disciples to many different towns. They are to preach in his
name. If their word (his word) is not heeded in this or that town, says the
master, "it shall be more tolerable on
the day of judgement for the It
is difficult for us twentieth century-types to grasp this, because we think that
speech and act are entirely distinct. Speaking is speaking and acting is acting.
They are as unlike as sunbeams and creamed cheese. We have to work at thinking
our way back into a Hebrew understanding where speaking and doing are one.
Imagine yourself standing alongside the 3]
If we think about this for a moment it's obvious. One purpose of speech is to
disseminate information. If I am told that A
moment's reflection on the power of dysfunctional speech reminds us terrifyingly
of what speech does. Sarcasm, for example. Sarcasm is contemptuous, biting
speech whose aim is the opposite of what the words mean. The baseball hitter
strikes out with the bases loaded in the ninth inning. As he stumbles back to
the dugout, head down, a fan shouts, "Well done, all‑star!" The
words mean that the batter is a superior player who has just performed
outstandingly. What the fan intends to say, however, is the exact opposite: the
hitter is an incompetent who belongs in the lowest level of the minor leagues.
And it is all said with deliberate intent to wound. The
child brings home his report card with a glaring "ID" in arithmetic.
His mother can't help noticing it and comments, "I see that you are another
Einstein; my child is a genius!" The meaning the parent intends is the
exact opposite of the meaning the words have, and the intent is
to hurt the child. The child is hurt, stabbed in fact. My
psychiatrist‑friends tell me that sarcasm destroys children, simply
destroys them. The child understands the meaning of the words, yet also notes
contempt and anger and rejection in the speaker's voice and on her face; the
child is wholly confused by the contradiction and knows at the same time that he
has been stabbed in the heart. Sarcasm destroys children. (it doesn't do much to
help adults, either.) Humorous
speech is often a form of dysfunctional utterance. The purpose of humour,
ostensibly, is to amuse. But often humour is used to ridicule or mock; sometimes
humour is used to taunt and taunt and taunt until the taunted person explodes
and lashes back. Whereupon the taunter, insisting that the purpose of his humour
is never to upset, smirks self ‑righteously, "I always knew that
fellow had a bad temper!" Sometimes
humour is used to cloak a dagger‑thrust. Person A, with malice in his
heart, wants to say something nasty to person B, without exposing himself to
retaliation from person B. If A simply spoke nastily, B might turn the tables on
him and with superior verbal skill demolish A in a devastating counterthrust. A
decides to cloak his dagger‑thrust in humour. If B replies sharply, A
takes refuge in his humour saying, "I was only being funny; can't you take
a joke?" On the other hand, if B pretends to "take the joke" and
says nothing, he knows that he has been stabbed and can't do anything about it!
When humour is used not to amuse but rather to leave a victim defenceless,
speech has been used dysfunctionally; and used dysfunctionally with terrifying
power. The
crudest, bluntest, baldest form of dysfunctional speech, of course, is the
outright lie. A lie, by definition, corresponds to nothing substantive at all;
nothing in actuality corresponds to the lie. A lie, therefore, is like a vacuum.
A vacuum, by definition, is nothing. Yet a vacuum has immense power. A lie has
immense power. The worst feature of a lie isn't that misrepresentation has
occurred (serious though this is); the worst feature of a lie is that the person
telling it can no longer be trusted; forgiven, yes, but never
trusted. What is lied about may be of little importance; the fact that
someone can no longer be trusted couldn't be more important. The
so‑called "white" lie, "white" in that the teller
intends no malice but is simply taking an easy way out of a sticky situation; the so‑called white lie has the same
end‑result: utter breakdown of
trust. Many people have told me white lies thinking they were sparing my
feelings. But why spare my feelings at
the price of forfeiting trust? The people we find lying to us we can forgive and
engage politely thereafter. But it would be unreasonable to trust them. It
is little wonder that the apostle James speaks so severely of the tongue. While
the biggest ship or horse can be directed by the smallest rudder or bit
‑‑ any man or woman being able to control the small bit or rudder
‑‑ no man or woman can direct his or her life by controlling the
smallest tongue. The tongue, small as it is, escapes human control, with the
result that the whole person careens dangerously and disastrously like a
rudderless ship or a bitless horse. In only twelve verses James tells us that
the tongue is a fire, is a stain which stains the entire body, is a match which
ignites huge conflagrations, is itself set on fire from hell, is a restless
evil, is as untameable as the wildest animal, is as full of deadly poison as a
cobra. James gathers up all his teaching about the tongue by naming it "an
unrighteous world". The tongue is a world. "World", for James,
always means the culture and institutions of the universe organized without God
and as such the antithesis of the 4]
The men and women upon whom Jesus Christ first stamped himself knew what we must
do. First, we must speak the truth. This is simple. I didn't say easy; to speak
the truth in a world of mendacity is never easy. I said simple. Jesus insists
that the evil one is a liar and a murderer. This is no surprise; to be a liar is
to be a murderer. We have already seen how the liar slays; the liar slays trust,
therefore slays relationships, therefore slays people. We saw even earlier in
the sermon that the prohibition forbidding the bearing of false witness is found
in the prohibitions forbidding theft and adultery and murder. The lie slays.
Liars are killers. Since God is one who eternally has life in himself; since God
imparts life, sustains life, redeems life, fulfils life, his people must always
choose life rather than death. Therefore we speak the truth. It
is important that we speak the truth, important
as well that we speak. In the church
we hear endlessly of the sin of speaking when we shouldn't, yet we hear nothing
of the sin of remaining silent when we should speak. Everything that James says
about the tongue's hyperactivity applies as well to the tongue's inertia. After
all, when the truth is known but not spoken, then falsehood triumphs. I have
come home from church‑court meetings sick and heartbroken at the silence
of clergy who knew in their hearts what the truth was but who remained silent at
critical times. Next day they have phoned me and said, "Victor, we have
read the stuff you write; we agree with what you said last night; we are with
you all the way." But silent at the critical moment, so fearful that they
phoned me next morning lest they be seen talking to me. Silence, let us
remember, is a form of speech. When a false statement is met with silence, the
silence is a left-handed way of expressing agreement with the statement, however
false. James
insists that the tongue is an unrighteous world. It is. Silence is an
unrighteous world too. The unrighteous world is the only world the world knows.
But Christians do not aspire to ape the world; we aspire to that kingdom which
cannot be shaken and which unfailingly contradicts the world. Therefore we speak
the truth, giving equal weight to both "truth" and "speak". In
the second place we are to speak the truth in love. "Truth" describes
the content of what we say; "love" describes our motive for saying it.
Our motive is never to bludgeon (truth can be used as a hammer, all of us know).
Our motive is never to mislead (truth can mislead whenever what is said is true
but not the whole truth). Since love "builds up", according to the
apostle Paul, our motive in truth‑telling must be edification alone. And
if the truth wounds temporarily, it must only be a surgical wound, a
last‑resort necessity to promote life. Lastly
our truth-telling must "fit the occasion", says the apostle, "so
that it may impart grace to those who hear". There is always the fitting
occasion for saying what we have to say; there is always an appropriate context
for saying what we have to say. Only as the truth is spoken and heard in the
appropriate context does it impart grace; only here will it reflect the word of
the God who comes to save rather than destroy. 5]
The God who comes to save; the God who comes to bind saved people to himself,
inviting them to bind themselves to him; he will always be their God, he
promises them, even as he invites them to promise him their lifelong love and
loyalty, gratitude and obedience. All of this recalls the covenant. The
covenant, biblically, is God's declaration that
he wants a holy people so badly he will give himself, holding nothing back, at
whatever cost to him, to free and woo and win a people for himself. That people
which he has freed and wooed and won
through blood-shed grace; so grateful are they that they abandon themselves to
him and henceforth live in eager, cheerful obedience to him, reflecting in all
of this his own lifegiving goodness. This is the covenant. In
scripture the covenant is celebrated with salt. The offerings which God's people
bring to worship are sprinkled with salt. The incense which is burned in the
temple is seasoned with salt. Not surprisingly the Hebrew bible speaks of God's
covenant with his people as "a covenant of salt". (Numbers With
this much salt before us we can grasp immediately what Paul means when he tells
the Christians in Colosse that their speech is to be "gracious, seasoned
with salt". Salty speech is speech which befits the people of the salt-covenant.
The speech of God's covenant people is to embody the lifegiving goodness,
death‑defeating goodness, of the God who comes only to save. "Let
your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt ...... Eight
hundred years before Paul many people complained to the prophet Elisha that the
spring-water in the city of According
to Elisha's descendant, Paul, we who are God's covenant people are to speak in
such a way that our speech brings forth not death, not even something which
betokens life yet finally emerges dead; our speech is to embody the lifegiving
goodness of him who is the world's only saviour and therefore its only hope. F
I N I S Victor
A. Shepherd February
1993 Exodus
20:16*
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