James 1:17-27 "Words, Words, Words"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!

       A man once went to the hospital to visit an old friend who was very ill.  He was deeply moved by what he saw when he walked into the Intensive Care Unit.  You see, his friend had been there for a couple of weeks and was hooked up to an array of tubes and drips, screens and machines.

       When the man got home, he was pretty shaken up and so said to his wife, "I think we should have an Advanced Directive.” 

       He paused for just a moment before he continued, “And just so you know, I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and getting fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens to me, just pull the plug."

         Without saying a word, his wife got up, unplugged the TV, and threw away his beer.

         Words, words, words!  You have got to be ever so careful when you use them.  As you can clearly understand from that little story I just told you, they have a pesky way of often getting the better of us.

        That was certainly the attitude of the writer of this very short book in the Bible that we simply call James.  Be careful of words, the author forthrightly proclaims.  Bam!  No mincing or dancing around the subject here!

         Now that would be a sermon – watch your words – a sermon in and of itself.  However, even though the author was short on words, he was not that short.  So, let’s take a moment and find out what this brief letter tucked into the back of the New Testament is all about.  And who was this guy James anyway?

         Of course, no one is really sure when this book in the form of a letter was written, although some scholars believe it was penned even earlier than most if not all of the letters that the Apostle Paul wrote.  If that is so, then what we read this morning could be part of the most ancient writings in our New Testament. 

         Whenever it was penned, it was most likely written to one or more struggling Christian communities outside of Palestine.  Tradition has it that James, the younger brother of Jesus, wrote it:  James the Just, James of Jerusalem, James, the first patriarch and primary leader of the earliest Christian community in the Holy City.

         If you are someone who could not find the Book of James in your Bible if your life depended on it, well, that is OK.  You see, we do not read this book very much in the church (which is too bad, I think).  It may be because we have been told that the words in this letter run counter to the theology of the Apostle Paul. With the latter’s emphasis on justification through faith and James not at all willing to let go of the value of good works, the two seem to be at opposite ends of the theological spectrum. And really, who would give much credence to the writer of a single letter – and a short one to boot – when Paul was so much more prolific and, well, wordy?

         Sixteenth century theologian and reformer Martin Luther particularly disliked the Book of James and famously called it “a right strawy epistle…. has no gospel in it.” And that’s all he had to say about that!

         Luther concluded that this letter, which was one of the last picks for what became the final version – or canon – of the Bible, Luther concluded that it was like straw or chaff that the wind just blows away.  In short, he felt that it had no theological or spiritually nutritional value. 

         According to Luther, the letter of James offered nothing solid.  It was not as high-brow as, say, the Books of Romans or Galatians.  There were only a couple of brief references to Jesus, and it certainly muddied the waters when it came to the big theological question of precisely what roles faith and good works play in the sweeping story of salvation. 

         It is said that he who writes the most words shapes history – or something like that.  As Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor notes, “If you put together all the letters of James, Peter, and John together, their combined witness is shorter than Paul’s two letters to the Corinthians.  Paul wrote a good hundred pages more than all the other letter writers put together, so that he was the one whose views of Jesus, God, Torah, church, ministry, women, sex, time, salvation, afterlife, and faith took root in the early church.”

         However, the author of our letter was not out to one up Paul when it came to abstract theology or lengthy prose.  In contrast, we find the author to be quick and dirty – and preeminently practical.  And it all has to do with words:  Words, words, words!

         You see, words are important, and the author of James recognized this fact. Surely he sensed that…“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God – and the Word was God.”  In the Word was life, our life.  The word of truth was born into us from the very moment of creation.  That is what makes us God-like, first among creatures.   We are given the most divine gift of speech – and with it, we, like God, are able to create or destroy. 

       It seemed like a good plan at the time.  However, as Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor so eloquently writes:  “The problem with this plan is that we turned out to be really, really good at it.  In short order, God’s precious word babies were all grown up, using language to blame each other, curse each other, mislead and lie to each other. 

       Of course, they also used language to praise, bless, and woo each other, but the words rolled off their tongues so easily that sometimes people did not even know what they were going to say until they heard themselves saying it. The words just flew out of their mouths, floating in front of their eyes in shimmering globes that looked like soap bubbles at first, then hardened into small worlds of their own creating that spun away from them to go do whatever they were created to do. 

       The people who made those worlds could say, ‘Wait! I didn’t mean it!’ all they liked, but once the words were out of their mouths it was too late - because God had made them capable of speaking things into being the same way God had, even when they had second thoughts.  That was how much power those speech creatures had. 

       The only power they did not have was to uncreate what they had created.  Once the worlds of their words were made, they were made – some of them spinning away to do great harm while others spun away to do real good – with the breath of their human creators still warm inside of them.”

       Words, words, words.  They are indeed a pesky - and powerful - gift from God.  And so the author of James writes, “Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear… Everyone must be quick to listen, but slow to speak and slow to become angry.”

       That is an admonition that we should all take to heart – our politicians, certainly, whose words mean less and less to us each day, so filled with venom toward each other  and toward those who are different from them. are they and overflowing with quasi-honesty when it comes to us. 

       Oh yes, and we woo should take the advice of the author of James to heart – each one of us: to listen before we speak when it comes to our own personal moments of anger toward those in our families and communities we love deep down inside, when it comes to the gossip we invoke about those we call our friends.  

       “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you.”  Isn’t that what our mothers taught us when we came home from the playground, our eyes burning with tears?  Even as children, we knew it was not true. 

       We knew that sticks and stones were nothing compared to the mean things that other children – or even teachers or parents – and one day spouses and bosses - could say to us.  “Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.” 

       Words, words, words:  They are both pesky – and oh so powerful.  “Take your time,” Brown reminds us, “Think twice.  Choose your words with care because once you have given them life with your breath, they will spin away from you, taking on lives of their own out there where you cannot control them anymore.”

         That also is a sermon unto itself – the power and peskiness of words - but yet again, the author of this letter does not stop here.  He is on a roll, and so he speaks a few more very important words worth taking to heart, especially for us religious folk:  “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word (that is, God’s word) go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! (The author writes.)...Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.” 

         When it comes to our Christian faith, serving others is not a nice little extra, a few additional stars in our crown, grace points in heaven.  No - it is fundamental to our faith.  It is the foundation. It is the Word of truth. Take it away, the author of this Book of James maintains, and we have taken away what matters most to God. 

         Words, words, words:  Our faith must be more than words – more than our prayers and ours songs, more than this sermon even.  Our faith is more than our wordy worship here on Sunday mornings.  We are challenged to think beyond Sunday because what happens on the other days of the week is vitally important.

         Writing to a Denmark filled with “Christian” people who did not act very Christian, theologian Soren Kierkegaard once told this little parable. Once upon a time, there was a land inhabited only by ducks. Every Sunday morning, the ducks got up, washed their faces, put on their Sunday clothes, and waddled off to church. They waddled through the door of their duck church, proceeded down the aisle, and took their familiar places in the pews.

         The duck minister entered the pulpit and opened the duck Bible to the place where it talked about God’s greatest gift to ducks—wings. “With wings we can fly. With wings we can soar like eagles. With wings we can escape the confines of pens and cages. With wings we can become free. With wings we can become all God meant us to be. So give thanks to God for your wings. And fly!”

         All the ducks loudly quacked, “Amen.” And then all of the ducks waddled back home.

         Words, words, words:  In the end, they all merge together and, like straw, are blown to the four winds.  And we are left with only one word, the Word Incarnate, the Word become flesh, the Word of the Gospel imploring us to watch our words, to understand their peskiness and power, to seek commonality rather than polarity and transformation rather stagnation.  Because, when we do, our words cannot help but encourage and challenge and nurture, and we will become peacemakers, reconcilers, and seekers of justice.  And that is what God’s first Word called us to be. 

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine