Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
15^th of September 2024

James 3:1-12

This morning we are again listening to the Letter attributed to Jesus’ brother, James the Righteous, and while last week I preached with gusto on one of my favourite passages in all Scripture, James’ assertion that ‘faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead,’ this week I need to be more circumspect. When I started this series two weeks ago I confessed that while I am good at sharing what I have with the poor, I am simply dreadful at keeping my tongue still. What makes the fact that I do not bridle my tongue (James 1:26) even worse is that by ordaining me the Uniting Church has recognised me as a teacher, and ‘we who teach will be judged with greater strictness’. Despite that, I will try to draw on the ‘wisdom from above,’ (James 3:17) and speak today about the dangers of speaking.

The Letter of James is a book of wisdom, the only book of wisdom in the New Testament, and we see similar warnings about the dangers of an uncontrolled tongue in all the Bible’s other books of wisdom. In the Book of Proverbs we are told that ‘rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing,’ (Proverbs 12:18) that ‘to watch over mouth and tongue is to keep out of trouble,’ (Proverbs 21.23) and that ‘the north wind produces rain, and a backbiting tongue, angry looks.’ (Proverbs 25.23) In Ecclesiastes we are told that there is ‘a time to keep silence, and a time to speak,’ (Ecclesiastes 3:7) ‘never be rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few,’ (Ecclesiastes 5:2) and that ‘words spoken by the wise bring them favour, but the lips of fools consume them.’ (Ecclesiastes 10:12) In Ecclesiasticus we are warned that ‘honour and dishonour come from speaking, and the tongue of mortals may be their downfall,’ (5:13) that ‘a person may make a slip without intending it. Who has not sinned with his tongue?’ (Ecclesiasticus 19.16) and, my absolute favourite, ‘a slip on the pavement is better than a slip of the tongue.’ (Ecclesiasticus 20:18) James is following Jewish tradition when he warns us about the dangers of our tongues.

James’ wisdom might follow Jewish examples, but his letter is particularly addressing a small and embattled Christian community surrounded by a largely hostile larger society. He is teaching Christians how to live as God’s holy people in the tension between faith and culture. According to James speaking is a Christian practice that demands as much discipline and careful thought as all other Christian practices. As in last week’s sayings about rich and poor James seems to be drawing directly on Jesus’ teachings. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells his followers: ‘I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire’ (Matthew 5:22). The Apostle Paul also warned the Corinthians against ‘quarrelling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder’ (2 Corinthians 12:20). In his Letter James agrees with Jesus and Paul as he meditates on the power and danger of speech.

James is most concerned about the speech of teachers like himself. We know that James was a leader of the group that the Apostle Paul called ‘the circumcision faction’ and that Paul accused Peter of being a hypocrite because ‘until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.’ (Galatians 2:12-13) When Paul met with James and told him about his ministry among the Gentiles James decided that Gentiles could join the Jesus movement if they ‘abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood,’ (Acts 15:20) requiring them to follow Jewish dietary restrictions. Maybe when James speaks about the teachers who ‘will be judged with greater strictness’ he is referring to teachers like Paul, who agreed with the Corinthians that there are no idols, and so there is no real problem about eating food sacrificed to them. (1 Corinthians 8) But the advice that this letter gives about the dangers of the tongue applies to all of us, teachers or not.

Language was one of the first gifts God gave humans. It is a gift that we can enjoy, as today’s passage does with all the metaphors about fires and ships and animals. James does not seem to think human speech in general is a problem. He is not suggesting we all take vows of silence, although historically there have been Christians who have done just that. Instead, James is talking about the dangers of bullying, selfish, or disrespectful speech. He is pointing out that it is hypocritical to praise God and curse those made in the image of God. Two thousand years ago James gave great advice for the age of social media.

When we do not use God’s good gift of language in ways that are pure, our words can cause tremendous damage. We know that James is right when he writes, ‘How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.’ There is a saying, ‘A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on,’ that has been attributed to people like Mark Twain and Winston Churchill although it was said by neither. The saying may come from the eighteenth-century Irish wit Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, who wrote in 1710, ‘as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it’. If you watched this week’s debate between the two American Presidential candidates, you would have seen Donald Trump claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eat dogs and cats. That seems to have started with a post in a Springfield Facebook group in which someone claimed that their neighbour’s daughter’s friend had lost her cat and found it hanging from a branch at a Haitian neighbour’s home being carved up to be eaten. It is a lie that has certainly travelled around the globe, and the truth is only slowly limping after it.

The lie that Haitian immigrants are eating pets could be seen as funny. That is the way many people have taken it, you can already order t-shirts with Trump’s quote on them, although it is less funny when we think about the anti-immigrant hatred that prompts such lies. A much more dangerous lie, a lie that we know has sparked a fire, is the lie that Hamas beheaded forty Israeli babies on October 7, 2023. That story seems to have been first told to foreign media by a Major David Ben Zion, an army reservist who lives in an illegal West Bank settlement. US President Joe Biden then said that he had seen pictures of the beheaded children, although the White House later had to clarify that neither Biden nor US officials had ‘seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently’. The lie of forty beheaded babies raced around the world while the truth, that the only baby who died on October 7, 10-month-old Mila Cohen, was shot while in a safe room in her mother’s arms, did not make front page news.

You might wonder what the difference is. Forty babies beheaded or a single baby shot: every single life is precious; every civilian death on October 7 is a crime. The difference is that since October 7 Israel has killed more than one hundred children in the West Bank. We do not actually know how many children have been killed in Gaza, because the civil infrastructure that used to count such deaths has been destroyed, but the last time a count could be taken it was more than 16,000. How many people around the world have brushed aside the deaths of all those Palestinian children, or thought Israel is justified in its actions, because of the lie that ‘Hamas beheaded babies’ or the later ‘misinformation’ about Hamas committing ‘systematic sexual violence’? We know from polls that this is how most Israelis feel; that because Hamas is ‘utterly inhumane’ Palestinians, including children, do not deserve the protection of international humanitarian law. James is right; the tongue can be a ‘restless evil, full of deadly poison.’

‘For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect,’ writes James. While I am certain that none of us would ever spread lies about immigrants eating pets, or beheaded babies, none of us is perfect and we do make many mistakes. In the first reading we heard from this letter James gave us advice on how to make fewer mistakes: ‘if any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you’ (1:5). Next week we will hear James’ definition of the wisdom God will give us if we ask: ‘the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy’. (James 3:17) We may not be able to live with purity, friendliness, gentleness, sense, kindness, helpfulness, genuineness, and sincerity in our own strength, but James assures us that with the help of God that is possible. ‘Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you,’ writes James. (James 4:8) Let us do that. In the name of the God who is always near us, just waiting for us to turn to Her. Amen.