Rev. Karen Pidcock-Lester

WATCH YOUR WORDS Rev. Karen Pidcock-Lester First Presbyterian Church, Pottstown, Pa August 9, 2015

Matthew 12:33-37 Ephesians 4:22-5:2

Let’s begin with a quote from one of the candidates speaking at Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate: “Our leaders are stupid; our politicians are stupid. The Mexican government is much smarter, much more cunning than the stupid leaders of the United States.”

Contrast that with a quote from Abraham Lincoln, speaking of one of his political opponents: “I do not like that man – I must get to know him better. Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

Franklin Graham in recent months posted on his facebook page: “Islam is a very wicked and evil religion…”

While Pope Francis wrote to Muslims throughout the world: “I hope all Christians and Muslims may be true promoters of mutual respect and friendship…I send you my prayerful good wishes, that your lives may glorify the Almighty and give joy to those around you.”

One spouse says to his mate: “Can’t you ever get anything right?”

Another spouse says to another mate: “That’s all right, here, let me help you.”

A little girl comments to her mother: “I hate that girl. She’s stuck up and stupid… I never want to play with her again.”

The mother says to her little girl: “Maybe you’d better take a second look at her.”

Words.

Words have power, power to shape us, power to shape the world around us.

“Words are things,” said poet laureate of the United States Maya Angelou. “You must be careful about the words you use or the words you allow people to use in your house. You must be careful about the racial pejoratives, the sexual pejoratives …Words are things. …they get on your walls, they get on your wallpaper, in your rugs, in your upholstery, in your clothes, and finally into you.” (Angelou, “The Power of Words,” youtube.com)

“Words,” says Morgan Freeman on behalf of Amnesty International, “words can do anything.”

And we know they can. They can sustain life or diminish it, they can bind up or break, heal or scar, they can illuminate our deepest selves and set us soaring, or they can squash the human soul in a moment, they can incite violence and hatred and revolution – or they can lay the foundation for a better world. In the 1980s, the words of Czechoslovakian playwright Vaclav Havel and other writers helped to bring about that country’s Velvet Revolution through their plays, poems, essays, even their failed petitions against the government. “Their seemingly hopeless actions helped build a movement that eventually toppled the brutal regime.” (Paul Rogat Loeb, The Impossible Will Take a little While, p. 61)

And the words of Henry David Thoreau about nonviolent civil disobedience, written in the woods by the side of Walden pond, went out across continents and years to Leo Tolstoy, through Tolstoy to Ghandi, through Ghandi to Martin Luther King Jr. and changed the shape of the world on several continents.

“Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind,” said Rudyard Kipling.

Words have power.

Scripture said it long before these people. Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” And the writer of James observes that the same tongue can pour out blessing or curse, and start a forest fire.

That is why Paul exhorts the early Christians in Ephesus to “let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is useful for building up, so that your words may give grace to those who hear… put away falsehood, put away slander, wrangling, malice….”, he told them. (I wonder what was going on among those Christians of First Church, Ephesus?!)

“By your words you will be justified,” Jesus said in the text we heard a few minutes ago, “and by your words you will be condemned.”

What have your words sounded like lately? What words have you been letting into your home, getting on your walls, on your clothes, in your upholstery, into you?

The Old and New Testaments, and Jesus himself warn us “Take care. Beware. Wield well the power of your words…”

Scripture tells us this not because we have to earn merit badges to get into heaven. The grace of Jesus Christ has already taken care of that for us. We are not commanded to guard and control our words so that we can earn new life; we are commanded to speak with grace so that we can experience and demonstrate the new life we have already been given.

“You are members of one another,” Paul reminds the early Christians. Gentiles, Jews, men, women, slaves, free, rich, poor…they had all been made members of one another, all been made into a new kind of community. And they could not speak to one another the way they used to speak. Their words affected each other, and would reshape households, and form the new community which they were trying to build, God’s kingdom. In Christ, they had been changed, they wanted the world to change, so their words had to change.

Because words have power. Our words affect others. Our words affect the various communities in which we live – They affect the community of our households, that intimate space in which minds develop and souls take shape. Candler Seminary professor Tom Long’s daughter Melanie is grown now, and a parent herself. Tom Long enjoys an adult relationship with her now. But years earlier, during some father/daughter argument, Long had blurted out in the heat of a moment “Melanie, you’re nothing but trouble to me!” After the moment had passed, Tom Long went on as though everything was back to normal. He forgot about it, but Melanie didn’t. 25 years after that argument, Melanie was still trying to get the poison dart out of her heart. (Long, “Sticks and Stones,” Day 1.org) Our words affect the communities in which we work – the office, the job site, the classroom. You know how the atmosphere and environment shifts for good or ill – with gossip, or underhanded talk, or malice or slander – or, with encouragement, and truth delivered with kindness and compassion. Our words affect this community of faith, what is spoken and how it is said – in Session deliberations or parking lot debriefings, in committee meetings or hallway pow-wows, around lunch tables or in car conversations or emails. These are all natural human interactions, but they have power to shape our life together, and to shape us and others, because we are members of one another. So we are charged with handling them with care, imitating the God who is righteous and holy, gracious and tender-hearted and forgiving.

And words affect the community of this great nation in which we are privileged to live. Daily we hear pundits and bloggers, news commentators and politicians spar with no concern for the exhortations of scripture about how to wield the power of words. And while it may be entertaining for a moment to hear their spiteful, malicious talk, we must be aware that it gets on our walls, in our upholstery, and rends the fabric of our national community. We need straight- talkers –not hate-talkers; we need truth tellers, true truth tellers, those who do not distort facts or their opponents’ views to score points and blast sound bites. Hate-talkers damage our nation, and damage us.

Proverbs, Paul, Jesus instruct and chastise us for our own good, because you and I need community, we need healthy, strong communities – strong homes, schools, workplaces, towns, governments, churches. Whether we are shy or outgoing, human beings are made, are wired for community. “It is not good for the human to be alone,” God said at our creation. This does not mean that every person should be married – marriage is one kind of community; it is not the only way that people are ‘members of one another.’ But it does mean that we are not complete without one another, for we are made in the image of the Triune God whose very being is in relationship, in community.

We are members of one another. “Every time we open our mouths there is something like a cosmic conflict at work, and every time we bless the neighbor with God’s peace, there is a little beachhead for God’s good future. But every time we insult or curse the neighbor, God’s cause loses a little ground.” (Verhey and Harvard, Ephesians, p. 196)

We have no idea of the reach our words have. As Frederick Buechner writes, “The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops, or in what far place my touch will be felt.” You and I will be judged by how we have built up or torn down the communities which God has given us.

Several years ago, the tv series “Lost” told the story of a group of passengers on a plane who find themselves on a deserted island after the plane crashes. The world thinks they have all died, so no one is searching for them. In their fear, the group of strangers descends into fighting, and chaos as each person tries to save himself. Because of it, people are dying. Panic sets in, until one character, Jack, stands up and says, ”We can’t do this. Every man for himself is not gonna work. We need to figure out how we’re gonna survive. …Last week we were all strangers, but we’re all here now. If we can’t live together, we’re gonna die alone.”

You and I live in a world in which not too long ago we had relatively little daily connection to people across the globe, or for some of you, across the railroad tracks. It was a world full of strangers. But we’re all here now, our futures are bound up together. Often we feel lost, and we must figure out how to live together.

Christ has shown us how! We need not die alone…

But if we want to experience the new community Christ has given us, close at home or far and wide, we have to ‘put away the old life and put on the new. Put on its practices, its habits, it behaviors, one of which is guarding and wielding well our words. They have the power to make or break us.

“Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks,” Jesus says. The closer we live to Christ, the more our hearts are filled with the abundant love of God, the more our words will build up, bring grace, and sustain and foster life.

At the debate on Thursday night, one of the candidates claimed that because of the horrible things happening in the world today, this nation does not have time to worry about the tone of our speech.

But Jesus says, “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter.”

And Paul says, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, …so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”

Maybe this is exactly the time to worry about our words.