Every Careless Word

“Every Careless Word” Matthew 12:22-37

Long ago, when I was a little boy, my mother would say to me, “watch your language”. I knew what she meant. She wanted the expletives deleted. It was good advice. Coarse language marks a person as uncultivated and shallow. Now, in holy scripture, I find Jesus Christ giving the same advice. With shocking bluntness he said, “You will be held accountable for every careless word”. Ouch!

I realize I’m in trouble, so are you, probably. I can think of careless words, foolish words. Why did I say them? I wish I hadn’t. I want to call them back. Remembering them causes me to flush with embarrassment. I ask God to forgive me. That is the easy part. In secure privacy, I can have a talk with my heavenly father. What I should do is go to the person and ask forgiveness. Sometimes I can actually muster up enough courage to do it. With others, it is no longer a possibility. They have died.

We are afloat in a sea of words. Thoughts become sounds, and sounds become words. We have an endless variety. We hear kind words, loving words, wise words, curse words, honest words, lying words, frightening words, judging words, healing words, foolish words, fun words, inspiring words. We learn to recite the sounds long before we know what they mean. We pipe “Jack and Jill went up a hill” and may never realize the rhyme is a political satire that held piercing meaning when first written.

Another childhood favorite says “Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been? I’ve been to London to visit the queen. Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you there? I frightened a little mouse under the chair.” Tragedy rests in those rhythmic words. The verse describes how most of us live. We start life with high purpose. We will rise to high places and perhaps even advise the queen. Instead, we find ourselves immersed in trivia. We watch Reality TV. What a misnomer! We obsess over sporting competition scores. Think about it. In the long run, how does a football score impact your life? Britney Spears is capturing world headlines over another question: Will she sing or will she lip-synch during her thirty-million dollar contract in Las Vegas? Please, spare me! Instead of dealing with vital issues, we spend our time and energy chasing little mice. We abandon our noble plans and obediently join the flock of sheep around us. We do not lack a shepherd. In fact, we have several shepherds: the media, Hollywood, Congress, sports. They do not always lead us in green pastures nor beside still waters.

We chant other rhymes and pride ourselves on our cleverness. Here is an example: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Words can hurt me most. They can destroy, wound, debilitate, defeat and devastate me. They can also heal, guide and lift me. Once uttered, they cannot be called back.

Words can destroy a relationship. They can separate friend from friend, parent from child, mate from mate. With more people in the world, kindness is more needed than ever. Yet look what we promote as entertainment. We admire the person who eloquently cuts down an opponent with scathing humor. We turn sarcasm into refined comedy. Do you know what “sarcasm” literally means? It means, “severing flesh”! For God’s sake, let’s promote better entertainment. Let’s find a hero like St. Francis of Assissi, noted for his compassion and his gentleness. Let’s remember our primary model, Jesus, who could be forceful in speech, as we see in today’s lesson. But Jesus stands out in history because of his wisdom and his patient, forgiving love. When necessary, Jesus used words to condemn and to correct. However, most of his words were used to help and to heal. You can do the same. Give up the bullfight, where flesh is severed in the name of entertainment. Speak the healing word.

Speech is not an ordinary instrument. It can be used to do good or to do harm. How you use the gift is a matter of life and death. Jesus said so. Your words can even affect your eternal destiny, he said. Jesus lived in a day when people were probably more violent than today. Those folk would enthusiastically gather in the village square and stone to death a neighbor who stepped across the line. Can you imagine such a gruesome event? I doubt it. We choose far more sanitary forms of execution, out of sight when possible.

Jesus interrupted his society, tossing many of the rules out the window. He made it clear he would not get hung up on what people eat or drink or do with their bodies, even though he had been raised in strict Jewish tradition. Read the seventh chapter of Mark. Jesus preached a whole sermon about the pettiness of so many moral and religious rules. At the conclusion, he summed up his sermon with these plain words: “Listen, all of you, and try to understand me. Your souls are not harmed by what you eat, but by what you think and say!” (Living Bible Translation)

That kind of preaching shocked and surprised listeners then. It still makes us wonder to this day. Even his closest friends and disciples questioned him. Jesus took them aside. He did not backpedal. He explained and expounded the same theme, over and over. We need to examine repeatedly the teaching of Jesus. Our own society is too much like the very culture Jesus condemned.

Jesus drew upon wisdom that had been quoted thousands of years earlier. Listen to some of the Old Testament passages he memorized as a child in the synagogue school: “The talk of a good man is a life-giving fountain”. “A person fosters good will when he keeps quiet about some wrong. He divides friend from friend when he gossips about it.” “Better a frank word of reproof than the love which will not speak. Wounds from a friend are honest, but an enemy’s kisses are false.” Each of those quotes can be found in the Bible. Jesus did not originate these sayings. He did something just as important: He preached sermons on those texts, and you are dealing with one of his sermons today, two thousand years later.

Think about your words. Are they a life-giving fountain? Do they foster goodwill? Probably none of us will ever attain such greatness that people will hang on our every word. That is why we get careless in our talk. But every one has the ability to speak the healing, soothing, constructive word. Our world needs it more than ever before, just outside those big front doors. Jesus, your Lord and your final judge said: “By your words you will be condemned. By your words you will be saved.”

Rev. Dr. Horace Douty Oxford Church, Lexington, Virginia September 29, 2013