The Tongue Is a Fire

A sermon based on James 3: 1-12

By Charles J. Tomlin, DMin;

October 3rd, 2021, Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Series: The Book of James, 6/12

 

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

 ² For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.

 ³ If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies.

 ⁴ Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.

 ⁵ So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!

 ⁶ 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 nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.

 ⁷ For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species,

 ⁸ but no one can tame the tongue-- a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

 ⁹ With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.

 ¹⁰ From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.

 ¹¹ Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?

 ¹² Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

 (Jas. 3:1-12 NRS)

 

     My Father was a Sunday School teacher.   He taught the old men’s class, old style.  He lectured for about 45 minutes non-stop.  The men loved his teaching.  His class was the largest in the church.  It was even larger than my first church. 

    Even thought my dad taught for many years, in everyday life he was very quiet in normal conversation.  He was mostly a listener.  So, I once asked him why.  ‘Dad, why don’t you talk more than you do?     His answer to me was simply this.  ‘Son, in Scripture it says that we will give an account of every single word.’

      That was all he said.  I’ve thought about his answer many times throughout my life. My father lived his life weighing every thing he ever said.   

 

Small Member, Yet it Boasts

     This most practical section in the book of James calls God’s people to responsible speech.  James does this by reminding us just how powerful human words can be.  He does this with two examples; a horse’s bridle and a ship’s rudder.  Both examples point to small objects that have great impacts on larger objects to which they are connected.  The small bit in the horse’s mouth guides a large horse, and the small rudder guides a large ship. They are small but control the direction of the larger objects.

 

As far as anatomy goes, the tongue doesn’t take up much space.  Still,  James says it is like a horse’s bridle or a ship’s rudder human words have a great influence on where things end up.   Politico News, wrote that after former President Donald Trump realized how his own words caused an attack on the capital, which he said he did not intend, Mr. Trump, who normally loved the limelight, became silent, as Politico reported, ‘the most press-hungry president went dark’.  ‘It’s one of the few times Trump has sensed the enormity of the situation,’. an aide said (Politico.com,  1/11/21. 

 

Words matter.  But It’s clear that James’ warning about the great power of the small tongue is especially meant for teachers, but his warning applies to all of us.  We are social creatures.  We talk.  We communicate our feelings with words.  We plan things with words.  We express ourselves with words.  Our words declare our intentions and portray who we are and where we are going with our actions.

 

Today, it’s not only the spoken word that is so powerful, but also the written word.  We might have free speech, but no speech is free to say whatever it wants.   We all know of lives ruined by gossip, lies or hurtful speech.  Words can’t break bones, directly, but they do break hearts and souls too and they can motivate people to break bones, or as we witnessed in Washington last January, the President’s words motivated others to believe lies, create their own form of reality, and to destroy sacred property and threaten human lives.      

 

Set on Fire By Hell

This is why James also speaks not only of the power of the tongue but also of the potential destructiveness of the tongue.  James wants his readers to clearly understand just how dangerous careless words can be. 

 

His example is a spark that sets a fire.  We really don’t dare imagine how destructive a fire can be, do we?  But this isn’t just any fire, it’s hellfire, eternal, unending and spiritual fire.  You can rebuild if you survive a physical fire, but what hellfire burns can’t be recovered.  It can’t be unset nor can the damage be undone or rebuilt.

 

When I was a child, my mother had a sister-in-law’s brother who couldn’t  stop drinking and smoking.  When you mix the two you’ve got what James means by hellfire.  That relative ended his earthly life in that kind of fire, too drunk to smoke, he dropped the cigarette and was burned alive. 

 

But James fire is even worst.   It’s not physical, but emotional, spiritual, and it’s eternal too.  Once this fire is set loose, it can’t be stopped.  There was once a barn fire in North Iredell happened to drive by one night.  Unfortunately a neighbor of mine was in that barn and could not get out.  When the blaze was reported, which could be seen for miles, it was too hot to approach and could not be put out.  All the firemen could do was allow it to burn.  It was all so very sad and tragic.  That’s the kind of unredeemable destructiveness James saw in the power of a negative, hurtful tongue.  It is like a fire that burns all that is good ‘beyond all recognition’.

A popular series of movies has been the Lethal Weapon series. You might remember that in the series Mel Gibson played a semi-unbalanced police officer named Riggs. Riggs is a capable detective but occasionally he goes berserk and mentally flips out. He's called a lethal weapon because you never know when he's going to go off. 

Each of us has the potential to become a "lethal weapon." We possess within ourselves a weapon against which there is no insurance that you can take out to recover from it. This very lethal weapon allows us to engage in moral hit-and-run tactics. With our tongue we can sabotage of helpless victims. Anyone we lash out against can end up in great danger. We can kill spiritually, socially, and even physically.

The tongue is deadly and destructive. No age group is untouched, no character immune, and no life safe from it. This lethal weapon is called ‘gossip’.  You’ve heard children say glibly, ‘words will never hurt me’. Don’t believe that for a minute. Words can hurt.  The Bible, rather correctly, has much to say about misusing our speech.  James says the tongue is difficult to tame and named it "a restless evil, full of deadly poison." 

This Ought Not Be So…

The aim of James is hot, however to silence us, but he believes                          we should and can do better with our speech.  We can do better because both cursing and blessing comes through the same tongues. If we can do one, we should be able to do the other.  This is why there is not only a judgement here, but also a challenge.

 

The challenge of this text is the blessing we can give each other with our tongues.  In the opening pages of the Bible brings the world into being with words.  We create ‘worlds’ with our tongues.  Think of the difference of growing up in a home filled with encouraging words rather than negativity and anger.  Words set the tone of who we are and how we relate to each other.

 

The church, that is the body of Christ should using our tongues to speak good gossip — not bad.  When was the last time you “told” on someone who unexpectedly offered some gracious act on your behalf?”What if instead of wailing about the rude driver who cut you off you witnessed about the young woman who held the door open at the market for an older person?

*Why don’t you mention how many times a certain person has done something nice and never said a word?

*What if instead of pointing your finger at someone you thanked them for what they were doing in the community?

*Instead of complaining about the weather, how about calling attention to the beauty of God’s creation in this world?

“Good gossip” is what the Body of Christ is called to pass around.

We are the community charged with ushering in the Kingdom of God, not grumbling and complaining about the world.

I’m following Len Sweet with three stories as we close.  Sweet tells of the painting by the French painter Emile Renouf (1845-94) who painted a marvelous picture in 1881 called “The Helping Hand.” It depicts an old fisherman seated in a boat with a little girl beside him, perhaps his granddaughter, both their hands on a huge oar.  Here is the link to the picture: http://s394.photobucket.com/albums/pp23/ketig/?action=view&current=EmileRenouf.jpg&

The old fisherman looks at the little girl fondly and admiringly. Apparently he has told her that she may assist him in rowing the boat. From her face you can see she feels as though she is doing a great share of the task. But you can also tell from the fisherman’s strong, muscular arms who is really propelling the boat through the waves.

God grants us the favor of guiding the ship of Zion through the high seas, going on mission in a world where people are dying and drowning.  We are privileged to do so, but we must never forget who is really the one at the oars. We cannot perform our mission on our own strength, but only as God works in and through us. When we forget the source of our power, we start to faint and get weary. We must remember that the word is not our words, but God speaking through us. We have a whole different kind of fire in our tongues.  If your tongue is set on fire by the Holy Spirit, the gates of hell will tremble. 

Now, the other two stories.  There is so much negativity in the speech of our world today, so I think about how James’ environs a different way of using our tongues with two ‘Shep’ stories.

2012 is the 70th anniversary of the death of Shep, the faithful sheepdog who waited 6 years at a train station for his dead master to return.

The dog’s vigil began in 1936 when Shep watched baggage men load the casket carrying his master, a shepherd, onto a train. From then until Shep died, the dog met each of the four daily Great Northern Railway passenger trains that arrived in this central Montana town called Fort Benton, hoping his master would be on the train. The station employees took care of Shep, nicknamed “Forever Faithful,” and he lived in and around the station, becoming well known to everyone who passed through. The vigil ended in 1942, when Shep’s paws, which were on the track to feel the vibrations of the arriving train, slipped and Shep fell beneath the arriving train.

A bronze sculpture of Shep, with his front paws on the rail, was unveiled in Fort Benton in 1994. Here it is: http://www.montanapets.org/fortbenton/index.html

The second Shep story is one that many of you will already have heard of. Wisconsin resident John Unger rescued Shep when he was just an 8-month puppy. Shep is now 19 years old, and has arthritis so bad that the dog has trouble sleeping. So every night John Unger takes his hurting dog in his arms, walks into Lake Superior, and lulls him to sleep by cradling him in his arms. A photographer friend of Unger’s decided to capture the relationship between the man and his dog down by the water and posted it to her Facebook wall. Here is the picture of the two of them, John rocking Shep to sleep in the warm, buoyant waters of Lake Superior:

http://now.msn.com/john‑unger‑rocks‑his‑dog‑to‑sleep‑on‑lake‑superior

The look on the dog’s face says it all. Or the look on John Unger’s face.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like my soul just took a bath after these two stories and images. And that’s exactly what James is telling Christian this morning: Don’t pull each other down, cradle each other with compassion and forgiveness.

In a world of nastiness and negativity— why can’t we treat each with positivity in this other way?  Why can’t the ‘fire’ in our tongue be a holy, wholly, other kind of positive fire?  Amen.