Bits, Rudders and Sparks

Bits, Rudders and Sparks

James 3:1-12

August 30, 2015 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Sermon Study Guide

I would imagine that, when he recalled that day, he could not only hear the words in his mind but also feel the sting of the harshness with which they were spoken. One moment he had been feeling pretty good, and the next moment he was at one of the lowest places in his life. Funny how quickly things can change, isn’t it? It had been a long and tiring time of ministry, so they were all excited when Jesus took them away for a road trip. He took them way up north, presumably where no one could find them, and one night, around the campfire, in the shadow of those pagan temples, Jesus had asked them, “Who do people say I am?” Different disciples had spoken up. “Some say you’re John the Baptist.” “Others say Elijah.” “Still others say you’re one of the prophets, come back to life.” Jesus hadn’t commented on any of that; he had simply asked a different question. Maybe it was the question he wanted to ask all along. “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Everyone knew what they thought the answer was, but they were afraid to say it, for fear they might be wrong. Finally, he had spoken up—boldly, which was the only way he did anything. “You are the Messiah. You are the Savior. You are the hope of the world.”

Jesus had smiled at Peter, then had begun talking about other things. It was almost like now that they knew who he was (though they didn’t understand what all it meant), Jesus believed they could handle other things. But the things he began talking about that night were dark—not his usual teaching. He began to talk about death, about his own death, and then he said something ridiculous about rising from the dead. Peter listened for a while, but then he couldn’t take it anymore. After all, all of the disciples knew there were three things the Messiah would never do: he would never submit, he would never surrender and he would never suffer (Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 111). They had been taught that for as long as they could remember, and so Peter speaks up, probably interrupting Jesus’ teaching. “You will not die, Jesus. You can’t die. Let’s stop talking about this nonsense and get back to how I answered the question correctly!” And Jesus turned to him, and with perhaps a harshness Peter had never heard before, said to him, “Get behind me, Satan. You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” (Mark 8:27-33). And in later years, as Peter remembered that moment, he undoubtedly realized what he had done. With the same mouth by which he had praised Jesus, he offered a curse just a few moments later. He used his words to try to derail—even correct—the one he had just called Messiah, Savior. I don’t know if he ever read James’ letter, but if he did, I imagine him thinking of that moment when he came to chapter 3: “Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be” (3:10).

Now, I’ve talked to several folks who have told me how James is messing with your lives and most of us agree it’s a good thing. But if you think James has messed with you before, get ready. Fasten your seat belts, because the chapter we come to this morning in this “Practical Faith” series is even harder to take. Today, we’re going to look at chapter 3, where James directly confronts the way we use our tongue.

First, though, in what seems at first glance to some to be a verse out of place, James reminds people of the high and holy calling to be a teacher. In verse 1, he says (quite bluntly), “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” When I read that, I always remember my worship professor at Asbury, Don Boyd, who told us that when we become preachers, we cut our chances of going to heaven in half! Now, James isn’t saying that directly, but he is reminding us that being a teacher, especially a teacher of the Christian faith, is not something to enter into lightly. In the early church, and in Judaism before it, teachers were held in high esteem (Barcley, The Letters of James and Peter, pg. 79). When Paul lists positions in the church, teachers are third on the list, only after apostles and prophets. In Judaism, it was said that if a man’s rabbi or teacher and his parents were captured by an enemy, you should rescue the rabbi first. A man’s duty to his rabbi exceeded his duty to his parents; that was the importance and the influence of a teacher in the first century world of James and the apostles (Barclay 80).

When we think about our own lives, it’s not hard to see why the teacher was considered so important. I can look back and pick out the significant teachers in my own life, those who had a profound influence on my life. I think of Mr. Eiler, who was my high school English teacher and speech team coach, who helped this introverted young man learn to stand up and deliver speeches with very little preparation. I think of Dr. McGrath at Ball State, who would literally tear up reading a passage from Homer or some other ancient author, and how he instilled in me a passion for good stories and understanding the setting and the background for such stories. I think of Dr. Oswalt at Asbury, who cultivated my love for history into a passion for always reading the text of Scripture in its context first. I could name many more, and you can probably think of those teachers who shaped the course of your life as well. In fact, let’s do something crazy this morning. Let’s take just a couple of moments and turn to a person or two next to you and briefly share about a teacher who impacted you. You’ll have just a couple of minutes, so don’t think about it too long! Go ahead and share with one another.

SHARING: Significant Teachers (2 minutes)

So there are lots of ways teachers influence us, but James is specifically referring to those who teach the Christian faith. Today, we would call them Sunday School teachers or small group leaders or pastors. I had a wonderful high school Sunday School teacher, Esther Beard, who showed up faithfully every Sunday for something like twenty-two years to lead that class. They named the room after her when she retired. And even though we had that great old David C. Cook curriculum, Esther rarely relied on it. She would have the book open, but most weeks she just shared her heart, her love for Jesus with us. One Christmas, I remember, she called all of the kids in her class, taking time away from her own family because she just wanted to remind us that Jesus loved us. She taught us with her words and with her actions, and there was always this sense that Esther knew what a high calling she had. She took teaching those teenagers very seriously because she wanted us so desperately to know Jesus. And I can tell you that, at least in my class, the majority of those teenagers-now-adults are serving Jesus in some way through their local churches. I hope Esther is able to see that in heaven and is rejoicing. So I want to say this to those of you who teach (in church or wherever you teach): on those days when you get discouraged, take heart. There is hope. You are making a difference. You may not see it for a long time—in fact, you may never see it, but that doesn’t make it less true. In the midst of this warning, James is reminding us of the vital importance of teachers.

And there is no greater lesson to teach than one that points others to Jesus. If those who teach the Christian faith get that wrong, if we end up teaching something that is contrary to the Biblical record or something that doesn’t point people to Jesus, then we’ve not answered our calling. In fact, the Bible calls such folks “false teachers” and Peter says this about them: “Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping” (2 Peter 2:3). Now, that’s serious stuff, and that’s why James is focused on the tongue in the rest of our passage this morning. The tongue, which produces our words, is the only real tool a teacher has. What we say goes on to influence others. What we say sets the tone for a church, a youth group, a LifeGroup and so on. In many ways, the struggle within the larger church these days is a struggle of words. How do we interpret particular words? How do we understand the Word of God? What is being taught and, maybe even more importantly, what has been taught? The tongue has great power, and James wants to make sure we don’t underestimate that power. Whether we are a teacher or not, we need to learn control of our tongue.

So James broadens his writing beyond just teachers as he acknowledges what we all know: “we all stumble in many ways” (3:2). We all say things we wish we hadn’t. We all do things we know, in hindsight, we shouldn’t have done. We all stumble, usually because we “trip” over things we didn’t see coming. We speak up without thinking about what we’re saying. On our way home from vacation last summer, we stopped to eat dinner on the last leg of the trip, and the butter that was given for the rolls was kind of hard. Rachel, who had her back to most of the restaurant, said, “This butter is…” and just at that moment, the waitress appeared. “What’s wrong with the butter?” Rachel finished her sentence, “…fine, it’s good.” And then started laughing. Not a big deal, but there are other times we’ve all found ourselves with our foot firmly planted in our mouths because we all stumble from time to time when it comes to the things we say.

Truth is, we don’t think much about the influence our tongue has on our whole body. Unless the physical tongue is sore, we probably don’t think much about our tongue at all. James compares the tongue to three other small things no one thinks a whole lot about. Some might think of the tongue like a bit in the mouth of a horse. Once you put the bit in the mouth, you can control the whole animal; a well-trained horse will follow the lead of the bit and the bridle (3:3). Or think of a huge ship, James says, which is controlled by a relatively small rudder, perhaps a rudder that is even controlled by one person (3:4). I know that, when we were on the Lands of the Bible cruise last fall, I was thankful for the rudder. I watched a time or two as they brought that big ship in to the port, lined it right up alongside the landing, perfectly smooth. They couldn’t do that without a rudder and yet, in comparison to the whole ship, the rudder is pretty small. Or, in a stronger image, James says think of a great forest fire, which was probably started by a very small spark. What is huge, raging and out of control (as they have often experienced especially in the western part of our country) is started by something so very small. A bit, a rudder, a spark. Small things that make a huge difference, that can bring good or ill, positives or negatives. Just like the tongue.

Of course, today, when we talk about the “tongue” or the things we say—the bits, rudders and sparks that start trouble—we have to go beyond just the spoken word. Social media has opened up a whole new world. There are a lot of people who say things on Facebook or Twitter or other platforms that they wouldn’t say face-to-face. People seem to feel as if they be more unkind behind their keyboard than they can be with actual people. You know what I’m talking about—when you decide to put up that post online that is veiled enough so that most people can’t understand it but you know the person who it’s about will understand. I’ve had that happen to me, and I know I’ve done it from time to time. It’s what counselors call a passive-aggressive approach to social media. And sometimes people remove the passivity altogether and go on the attack—again, saying things they would never say if they were in the room with the other person. It’s tempting; I get it. Words spoken a generation ago are even more true in this internet age: “There is nothing so impossible to kill as a rumor; there is nothing so impossible to obliterate as an idle and malignant story” (Barclay 86). You’ve probably experienced that on some level, and while it’s always been true, the internet and social media has just made it even more true.

So the goal is, as James says, to “tame the tongue.” To help us get at that, there are some challenges James poses in verses 9-12. He reminds us there that our tongues—like our very lives—are meant and were created for offering praise to God, and yet, he says, we also use that same tongue to curse other people—people who have, by the way, been made in God’s image (as we talked about last week). “Out of the same mouth,” James says, “come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be” (3:10). He compares it to a spring that issues both fresh water and salt water—one drinkable and the other not. Such a spring does not exist. It’s not possible. Nor are there such a thing trees that were planted for one purpose (such as to produce figs or grapes) which end up producing some other kind of fruit. Things in God’s creation are created for one purpose. Springs produce fresh water. Fig trees produce figs. Grapevines produce grapes. And human beings—well, James says, we were created for one thing, but we tend to produce two. We were created to produce blessing to the world and to those around us. Instead, we praise God on Sunday and then curse others Monday through Saturday. Indeed, as James writes, “this should not be!”

Now, just a slight tangent, because a lot of times we interpret these verses as an anti-cussing statement. The word for “cursing” here in James means to condemn, to pronounce doom. It’s a lot stronger and more serious than just using a swear word—not that we want you to start doing that! Don’t go out of here and say, “Hey, our new pastor said we can cuss!” What James is getting at here is a much larger issue. You might say cussing is a small part of cursing. One way to look at it is this: cursing someone or something is to call something God made evil. We condemn someone or something when that’s not our place to do so. Why do you think Jesus got so upset or even, perhaps, angry with Peter in the story from Mark that we opened with this morning? It’s because Peter was cursing God’s plan. Jesus was explaining to the disciples how he was going to accomplish his mission, how he was going to fulfill the Father’s plan to redeem all of creation, and Peter responds, “No, Lord, you can’t do this. This is not right.” Peter did more there than just say the wrong thing; out of his mouth had come praise and then came cursing. “My brothers and sisters, this should not be!” Jesus was upset enough about it that he called Peter “Satan.” That’s how seriously God takes cursing. We are not to call evil anything that God has created and called “good.” And we can do that with our words, but we can also do it in just the ways we treat someone else as less than a child of God.

So, at this point, we have to ask ourselves: is there any hope of taming the tongue, as James suggests? And if there is hope, how do we do it? How do we tame this bit, this rudder, this spark? In order to control all of those small things, we need a firm hand, a strong hand to turn the bit, to steer the rudder and to hold onto the spark so that it doesn’t drop onto the dry ground. If we’re going to translate that image into taming our tongue, it might look like this [put hand firmly over mouth]. But since that isn’t practical all day every day (though it might help a lot of our politicians if they did that more), we need to ask for wisdom in what we say and what we post online. James, in the latter part of this chapter, says we ought to desire heavenly wisdom, which is “pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (3:17). Maybe we need a prayer like David prayed in Psalm 141. I just re-discovered this as I was studying for this sermon this week. In Psalm 141:3, David prays this: “Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.” Some other translations say “put a sentry” in front of my mouth. The image is the same. A sentry or a guard in front of a door controls what goes in and what comes out. You can’t hardly go anywhere these days without having to go through security. We got kind of tired of and, at the same time, used to the routine when we were in Washington, DC this past summer. Every building we wanted to visit had multiple layers of security, but we realize that it is the job of those security people to make sure only safe things come in and out. They are responsible for not only their own safety but the safety of lots of others. I want them to take their time, to make sure my flight is safe, to make sure my visit is without incident. While guards might inconvenience us, in the long run they are there for our betterment, our security. That’s the same image you find in that prayer in the psalms: “God, put a guard in front of my lips. Don’t let anything that is cursing come out, so that others are protected. Allow only blessing out.” In your bulletins this morning, you’ll find a little card with that verse printed on it; I want to encourage you to put it somewhere you’ll see it every morning. Let’s make that our prayer: set a guard over my lips, every day, every hour, every minute if need be! (You know who you are!)

Because our goal in this, James says, is being consistent in blessing others. We were made for blessing, not for cursing, and if our tongues are the bit, the rudder and the spark that directs our entire life, we want to aim at consistency in using our words, our voices for blessing others. How, then, can you be a blessing with your words this week? A good guideline, suggested many years ago by William Barclay, a well-known Bible teacher, is that we speak only words we would wish God to hear (cf. Barclay 90). And that’s a good guideline because God does, in fact, hear the words we speak. All of them. Sometimes we forget that! So we want to use our words to bless and not to curse. This made me think of an experience I had a few weeks ago at Kroger. I was being waited on at the deli counter when another man came up to the counter and began demanding service. They didn’t have what he wanted in the case, and when he was told that he very rudely told the worker to go get the supervisor and have them check in the back. And so it went. When the supervisor asked him to come to the other end of the counter, he saw me standing there and told me, “Why don’t you move out of the way?” I started to explain that I was just about done, I was waiting on my deli meat, and he interrupted me to say, “Fine, I guess I’ll just have to go around you.” That’s one unhappy man! I was glad God put a guard on my lips that day—but I realized after I left I should have complimented the workers. Even with the abuse, they never raised their voice or were unkind to him, despite his unkindness to them. That’s the sort of thing James is getting at—using our voice to bless and not curse, and if we can’t bless we choose at least not to curse someone else—someone who is, as hard as it is to believe, a child of God.

Let’s make this a challenge: how many people can you bless in a given day? Make it into a game with your family, if that helps, especially if you have younger children at home. Take some time at dinner to share how you’ve had the chance to bless someone that day. Remember what that looks like: words that bring peace, mercy, good fruit. Words that are impartial and sincere. You can turn back to verse 17 this week if you need a reminder of that. And for some of us, choosing to bless rather than curse might mean we have to take a social media fast. If that’s a place of temptation for you to let loose, to curse, to hurl unkind words—perhaps a fast is in order. Or if it’s just a place that makes it difficult for you to live life as a blessing, turn it off. I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook—and it depends on the day whether there is more love or hate. Were it not that it’s such a great communication tool, I would have ended the relationship long ago. It’s not always a source of blessing to me. Maybe you don’t need a complete fast; maybe just a new attitude toward social media. One thing I’m trying to do is to not resort to posting when I’m first upset or frustrated. I remind myself, “Don’t feed the bears.” And there are also some questions we can ask before posting: what will this post do for the cause of Christ? Can the post be interpreted as harmful, offensive, rude or distasteful? Is this post an outlet to vent, and if so, is there a more productive, less public way to deal with whatever it is? (http://goo.gl/9gPqec) The basic question is always this, whether online or offline: am I going to be a blessing today or am I going to curse someone?

And we need to be—in fact, we are called to be—people of blessing rather than cursing. Build others up in the love of Christ. Not just teachers, but all of us because, in one way or another, we are all teaching our culture, our world, our community what it means and what it looks like to follow Jesus, to be people who are blessed to be a blessing. What will you do to bless someone today? Let’s pray.