Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will face stricter judgment. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is mature, 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 and are driven by strong winds, 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.
James 3:1-12
How great a forest is set ablaze by a such 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 life, 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 people, made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth comes a blessing and a curse. 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.
My sermon from the 17th Sunday after Pentecost (September 15, 2024) on James 3:1-12.
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So I want to start today’s sermon with a question: what’s a verse from our Bible that you return to over and over again when you need to refresh your soul? Now this isn’t meant to be some kind of pop quiz that, if you fail, is going to get you kicked out of worship. But I’m curious about the words from our Bible that have been deeply imprinted on your heart. I, personally, am not very good at memorizing anything so I tend to let stories, rather than verses, feed my faith. Yet if I had to pick a verse to answer this question, I might – depending on what’s going on in my life at that particular moment, share with others the first part of James, chapter 3, verse 2. On days when a typo appears in the bulletin or in our weekly email newsletter or when I forget to make a call I promised to make – it’s comforting to know that our Bible realizes how we all make mistakes. Some mistakes, of course, are bigger than others. Yet all of us – regardless of how holy or faithful or good we imagine ourselves to be – will screw up. This verse isn’t meant to be read as giving ourselves an excuse for the ways we harm others and ourselves. It is, rather, an invitation to be honest about who we are. Each one of us is simply one person surrounded by other people too. None of us are the default of what it means to be a human being since we all have our own unique thoughts, experiences, and stories. And while we, on one level, know this to be true – we are limited when it comes to recognizing how there really are other people in our world. Most days, we don’t always have the energy, patience, or expansive imagination necessary to embrace how others, like us, are their own people too. The mistakes we make can be more than simply poor or wrong choices. They can also reveal how limited we imagine our God to be.
Now today is the 3rd Sunday in a row listening to this letter that is wondering “what does a faithful person look like, act like, [and] be like?” We are, because of baptism, more than simply a part of the body of Christ. We are also one of the ways through whom others experience what God’s love is all about. This, like I said last week, is a terrifying responsibility because we are very human. We, like James said, are prone to making mistakes because we don’t always believe we truly are beloved children of God and that everyone around us is made in the same image of God too. This forgetfulness is often expressed in who we show partiality too. We bend over backwards to celebrate the celebrity, the rich, the comfortable – that person we want to be – because showing the same kind of care to the one who has been harmed or is hurting or is poor is the reality we’re trying to run away from. Our hope is to become the kind of person who doesn’t need help. And our actions towards others often reflect the fears and insecurities that we allow to shape our lives. This truth within us is something we don’t often want others to see. So we mask it through words and actions blaming and demonizing others instead of taking responsibility for our own vulnerability and the help we’ll always need. We are not mistakes but we make a lot of mistakes. And James, in a very intentional way, wants us to notice how we often fail to integrate into our own choices, actions, and way of life what Jesus, through the Cross, has already done for all.
Yet it’s not just actions that shape our life. James also highlighted how the words coming out of our mouth can reveal what we hold within us. Like how a large horse is guided by the small bit of metal resting in its mouth; or how a large ship is guided by the littlest rudder in the back; so does our mouth steer our being in the world. And if we needed something other than our own lives to show how this can be true, today’s reading from the gospel according to Mark shows just how human the followers of Jesus always are. Peter, while approaching a city named after the Roman Emperor that also sat next to a religious site where the Emperor was worshiped as a god himself, used his mouth to proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah – the One who will shape, refine, and change our relationship with the true God who never gives up on us. Now it’s probably reasonable to expect Peter, after such a powerful statement, might wait a day or two before questioning what Jesus was up to. But after Jesus responded by sharing just how far God’s love will go, Peter immediately told Jesus that can’t be true. He, in that moment, showed that the image of God he carried within himself was much smaller than what God’s hope, generosity, and grace was up to. His words – like our words – weren’t merely a mistake; they revealed how his expectations for God run against the love God chooses to share. That lack of imagination and care shows up not only in our words about God but also in the words we share with family, spouses, children, and friends during the arguments about big – and small things – we regularly have. In the heat of the moment, the mistake we make isn’t only the harmful words we share. It’s also the failure to internalize, accept, and repent how each one of us, in our own ways, act like a brackish spring while thinking we’re only full of water that is refreshing and clear. We have a responsibility to not only build one another up in love but to also learn how to listen, reflect, ponder, question, say we’re sorry, and expand our imagination of who our God – and who we – can be in our world. And while this work isn’t easy, what we do in worship models what this work truly is. We choose to be connected to each other and, through worship, confess publicly our need for a God who will connect us to something bigger than ourselves. We listen to experiences other people have had with the divine and before we answer, we pray for the needs of others as well as ourselves. And then, as we embrace this call to be the body of Christ in the world, we sing – using music and words to reflect a little of the hope, peace, and comfort that comes with God’s presence in our midst. We will, in worship and in this church, make many mistakes. Yet the Jesus who could have kicked us and Peter out after failing the pop quiz of what God’s story is all about – promises, instead, to feed us, to nurture us, to hold us accountable for what we’ve done and what we’ve left undone, and to expand our vision of what God’s love is all about. As beloved children of God, we are invited to be mindful of what our words and our actions reveal. We get to embrace the responsibility – and the gift that it is – to be the body of Christ in the world. We can choose to let love, rather than our ego, be at the heart of who we are. And we do this not because we’ll ever be as perfect as we want to be. But because we have a Jesus who, through the Cross, refused to let our lack of love, our lack of mercy, and our lack of generosity be the limit of who we – through him and with him – get to be too.
Amen.