Giving Our Words
Mark 8:27-38; James 3:1-12

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words can never hurt me."
The first person who said that
probably wouldn't have said it
if it were true.
Words can hurt us,
and you and I know it!
Just ask Pope Benedict
how he and the Muslims are getting along this morning.
Or who will ever forget
the late Ann Richards
and her way with a one liner:
"Poor George!"

What James is talking about,
and what Peter illustrates,
is about much more than polite conversation.
James is talking about
how you and I live together
as brothers and sisters in Christ,
and how we conduct ourselves in the world
because we are children of God.
Because of who you and I are,
and because the of the relationship we have with each other,
we have a particular responsibility
to watch what we say
and how we say it.
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In the Old Testament,
the Hebrew word for "word" was dabar.
Except that in Hebrew,
the word dabar
was even more of a verb than it was a noun.
As early as the first chapter of Genesis,
we read that God "dabared" -
God "worded,"
and there was light and darkness,
morning and evening,
water and birds and fish and animals.
The very act of God speaking words
brought about life.
And if you stop and think for a minute
that you and I were created in God's image,
that fact alone
makes our speech pretty powerful, doesn't it?
Think about it!
God can work through our words
to bring about life! 

That same concept
carried forward to the New Testament.
That is what's behind Jesus' saying
that anyone who calls another person "fool"
is subject to judgment.
When we think about that notion of dabar
and the way our words can bring something to life,
it's almost as though calling someone "fool"
means that they become one.
These days,
we talk in terms of "affirmations." 
We hope
that if we tell our children often enough
that they are smart and good-looking and loving,
they will come to believe it themselves
and will grow to be so. 
And if we tell them often enough
that they are the opposite of those things,
we fear
that they will come to believe that as well.

For good or for ill,
our words have the power to shape reality.
If we keep our word,
if we do our best
to be truthful in all of our interactions with others,
we evoke their trust.
If we express our love for them
and our confidence in them,
they come to act
as those who are confident and loved.
We have the power through what we say
to express the creativity
and the healing
and the love of the one whose very word
is what called the world,
and each of us,
into being.
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Sometimes it can be
that the very act of speaking out loud
is what calls our beliefs into being.
It's almost like we shape what we believe
as it is coming out of our mouths.

Tom Long wrote a whole book on this
which he called Testimony,
and subtitled it
"Talking Ourselves into Being Christian."
He makes the argument that
"we just don't say things we already believe.
To the contrary," he says,
"saying things out loud
is a part of how we come to believe.
We talk ourselves toward belief."

This is one of the reasons
that you and I so frequently "talk it out" with someone.
Talking things out,
as opposed to writing
or even just thinking them,
seems to help us arrive as a healthy conclusion.
Even saying the Lord's Prayer or the Apostles' Creed
is different than just reading it.
Saying it out loud
gets it embedded within us.
And when we make our promises at baptism
to help rear our children in the faith,
we don't just nod or raise our hands;
we say so.

I wonder
if this is how it was for Peter that day,
the first time he spoke the words "You are the Christ."
In some way,
I think that Peter's speaking it
helped to make it so.
Peter was aware of what everyone else said about Jesus,
but Jesus knew that wouldn't be enough.
He pressed Peter to say more.
And finally,
after eight chapters of miracles,
Peter speaks into being
what it is that we readers have known and believed all along.
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Unfortunately, he doesn't stop there.
In thirty seconds or so,
Peter goes from being the shining light
to being called "Satan"
by the one he believed to be the Son of God.

We can understand where Peter was coming from.
No one
would want something like Jesus described
to happen to someone they love.
But as he was wont to do,
Peter too quickly rushed into those words.
And those hasty words of his
had the potential to run the plan aground.

Peter has many other "banner" moments in scripture,
like falling asleep at the Garden of Gethsemane
and denying Jesus
not once but three times, 
and rushing to action at the Transfiguration
instead of just simply worshiping.
Almost every time we encounter Peter,
he is suffering from foot-in-mouth disease.
But this episode from Mark
seems to capture in a nutshell
this "walking contradiction" named Simon Peter,
the man whom Jesus called Rock,
and the one upon whom Jesus chose to build the church.
And that is good news -
that someone as fully human as Peter
could be loved and forgiven
in spite of himself,
and called forth by Jesus
into the service of God.

We should find that comforting, actually,
those of us who know ourselves
to be walking contradictions.
You and I are capable of great insight,
moments of crystal-clear cognition
where we recognize who God is
and see the great sacrifice that was made for us.
And then in the same breath,
we are capable of creating as much harm
as we did healing
by taking our focus off God
and, in our fear,
putting the focus back solely onto ourselves.
But the good news of the gospel
is that ours is not the last word.
God has created each one of us
and called us into being for service,
in all of our humanness
and with all of our shortcomings.
In glad and grateful response, then,
we get to turn ourselves and our words over
to the One we call "The Word,"
so that we can be words of life to others.
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So how ARE you and I using our words?
Are we using them to create,
to give life,
to bring about good,
to increase the love of God and our neighbor?
Do we make empty promises,
or try to pre-empt God's will
for our own selfish ends?
Are we as good as our word?
Do we use our words to build up,
or to tear down?

You and I
are called into being by God
and gifted by God.
So if we use the God-given gift of speech
to bless on the one hand
and to curse on the other,
the letter of James points out
that it's worse than bad manners.
It's like we're breaking out of the sphere of life
in which God gave us to live.
When we as children of God
use our words for any other purpose
than for the God-given purpose
of creating and building up life,
it's like we're destroying creation itself.

But this doesn't mean
that our words always have to be pleasant
in order to be words which are loving
and which honor God.
So often,
you and I confuse the absence of conflict
with the presence of politeness.
Loving words are not always polite
or politically correct.
"Sometimes the hardest, most demanding words
we speak to each other
are born not out of rage?but of love.
Sometimes
words that increase the love of God and neighbor
are soft and encouraging and warm.
But sometimes they sound like
["Get thee behind me, Satan."]"  (Long, 105)

Let's not make the mistake
of confusing what the old hymn calls
"wonderful words of life"
with words that withhold the truth spoken in love.
The former brings unity;
the latter brings only uniformity.
When we are willing to speak hard truths to one another
as well as loving and supportive truths,
then we are coming closer to being the body of Christ.
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Heidi Neumark served for several years
as the pastor of a rough-and-tumble Lutheran church
in the South Bronx.
She knew where she had landed on her first Sunday there
when she found a box of rat poison
laying next to the communion wafers.
One can just imagine
that ordinary, everyday conversation in that place
might not have been spirit-filled every second!

One Holy Week awhile back,
her church decided to mark the occasion with a passion play.
They began by borrowing a live donkey
and parading around the block of their church,
shouting "Hosanna!" through shabby storefronts
and run-down apartments.
The play continued to unfold
back inside the sanctuary
with Jesus being tried, condemned and executed
and the women actors returning to find an empty tomb.
At that point,
the script called for three members in the congregation
to stand up where they were
and give their testimony,
to bear witness to the truth of the resurrection.
All three were supposed to begin by saying,
"I know he is alive,
because he is alive in me,"
and then go on with their story.

Angie went first.
She stood and said "I know he is alive,
because he is alive in me."
She told them how she had been abused by her father,
how she fell into despair and alcoholism,
and became HIV positive.
But then she responded to the welcome of the church,
started attending first worship and then a bible study,
and bit by bit
she rose from the grave of her life.
Now she is a seminary student,
studying to be a pastor.
"I am now alive," she said,
"because Jesus Christ lives in me
and through me."

The other two members of the congregation
rose in turn
and began to give their stories,
stories that were not so different from Angie's,
saying "I know he is alive,
because he lives in me."
That portion of the play was finished,
and it was time to move on.
But then a stranger stood up and said,
?I know he is alive,
because he lives in me."
He didn't know it was scripted!
And he began to give HIS story.
Then another stood to give her story,
and another,
and another.
Homeless people,
addicts now clean,
the least and the lost,
they all stood one by one
and brought wonderful words of life
to where there had been very little indeed.

I wish we had time to do that here this morning,
and maybe one of these days we will.
Because each one of us here
has stories that are as powerful as Angie's.
Each one of us has been called
by the life-giving Word of God
so that we might help
to bring that life to others.
For good or ill,
our words have the power to shape reality.
Let's be aware of that.
Let's give our words
so that we might "word" ourselves and others
into the praise and testimony
for which we were created.

Amen.
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Tom Long's book Testimony: Taking Ourslves into Being Christian was published in 2004 by Jossey-Bass as part of "The Practices of Faith" series.  Heidi Neumark's story can be found on pages 30ff.

The term "Walking Contradiction" comes from the song "The Pilgrim: Chapter 33" by Kris Kristofferson, copyright 1970 Resaca Music, BMI.