There’s a Jewish folktale that’s been told and retold for generations. A man went about the village telling tales and gossip about the rabbi. Later, he realized the wrong he had done, and began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his forgiveness, saying he would do anything he could to make amends.
The rabbi told the man, “Go home, take a feather pillow, and cut it open. Then come back here, and on the way, drop handfuls of feathers as you go.”
The man thought this was a strange request, but it was a simple enough task, and he did it gladly. When he returned, he asked the rabbi, “What now?”
“Now, go and gather the feathers.”
“But that’s impossible! The wind has blown them all over town!”
“Just like the thoughtless words you spoke.”
According to the Talmud, a body of ancient teaching in Judaism, “the tongue is an instrument so dangerous that it must be kept hidden from view, behind two protective walls, the mouth and teeth, to prevent its misuse.”[1] In the book of Proverbs, those who desire wisdom are taught that “to watch over mouth and tongue is to keep out of trouble.”[2] And already in the first chapter, James has declared with urgency, “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak.”[3] Steve and Cokie Roberts, in their book, From This Day Forward, write,
A friend recently told us about a twenty-fifth-anniversary party where the husband gave a toast and said, “The key to our success is very simple. Within minutes after every fight, one of us says, ‘I’m sorry, Sally.’”
Good line, but it’s also true that what you don’t say in a marriage can be as important as what you do say. We often joke that the success of a marriage can be measured by the number of teeth marks in your tongue. Keeping quiet in the first place means you don’t have to say “I’m sorry” quite so often.[4]
Speech is potent and dangerous. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words—words will hurt or heal, delight or destroy, offend or befriend. James compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship, small and incredibly powerful, and he speaks of “bridling the tongue,” but then he quickly moves to a different image, an image that denies notions of control which rudder and bridle suggest. And it’s not feathers he has in mind. The tongue is a fire, he writes. Thoughtless words aren’t just blowing all over town like feathers in the wind. Careless words, reckless words, loveless words are like hot embers that spark and spread uncontainable wildfires.
James may have been able to relate to a saying like, “Falsehood will fly from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling her boots on.”[5] But when he wrote his meditation on the power and dangers of speech, he couldn’t even begin to imagine today’s categories of Twitter storms or the spread of delta variants of toxic speech spreading via Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube. The tongue is a fire, and thanks to more and more capable technologies, a blaze will spread farther and faster than ever. James sounds rather pessimistic:
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 those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.
L. T. Johnson writes,
From the sages of ancient Egypt, through the biblical books of Proverbs and Sirach, to the essays of Plutarch and Seneca, there is a consensus that silence is better than speech, that hearing, not speaking, is the pathway to wisdom, that speech when necessary should be brief, that above all speech should be under control and never the expression of rage or envy.[6]
And then he adds that the philosophers and moralists were
aware how difficult control of the tongue is, but they [were] fundamentally sanguine about the possibility of bringing speech into line with reason and virtue. James is not. He flatly asserts that no one can control speech… In James’s treatment, the tongue is almost a cosmic force set on evil.[7]
But James hasn’t argued himself into a corner where all he can do is urge silence. A fig tree cannot yield olives any more than a grapevine figs. And a spring doesn’t pour out fresh water and brackish water. Only humans let blessing and cursing flow from the same mouth. Only humans are made in the image of God and yet dishonor the image in each other, again and again.
But God hasn’t left us to our lies and alternate facts, our slander and our slurs. God has spoken and God is speaking - light and life, truth and redemption and righteousness. And our first language has always been blessing and praise in response to God’s creative speech. Blessing and praise are as old as creation. Long before there were hymns and prayers and liturgies, there was praise.
Our babies remind us of this truth. I remember a little boy, still an infant, singing his morning psalms. Lying there in his crib, usually some time before the rest of the family was up, he awakened with the first morning light. He could not walk, couldn’t even stand up yet. But with the light of dawn in his eyes he chanted his morning prayer of giggles and gurgling, almost every morning, a song of thanksgiving for life, a hymn of praise to the maker of heaven and earth. That praise is the beginning and the end of every word and language and song. That praise is our mother tongue.
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
“Not many of you should become teachers,” says James, “for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” He begins his discussion of disciplined speech with those for whom speaking is a vocation. He doesn’t mention spouses who may or may not succeed at biting their tongues. He leaves aside leaders who who are so busy spinning, they themselves can’t tell what’s real anymore. And he doesn’t tell a story about words blowing every which way after they have left the gossip’s mouth. I wonder if he begins with teachers because he is one himself; because he trembles at the thought of having to find words to speak about the dangers of language and speech. He’s certainly good company on a day when we ordain one of us, Jackie, to serve as a minister of word and sacrament.
James doesn’t say why those who teach will be judged with greater strictness. But he’s already talked about what the judgment will be based on. “So speak and so act,” he writes in 2:12, “as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” In other places he calls it the “perfect law” and the “royal law” or “law of the kingdom,” and he quotes it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[8]
Liberty is not the freedom to say and do what I want. It is the freedom to be who we were made to be; the freedom to let ourselves be rooted in God’s love and to love each other well. May it be so, for all of us.
[1] http://storywork.com/when-stories-become-weapons-to-do-harm-and-kill/#_edn1
[2] Proverbs 21:23
[3] James 1:19
[4] Cokie and Steve Roberts, From This Day Forward (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), xi.
[5] Portland (Me.) Gazette, Sept. 5, 1820, quoted at https://freakonomics.com/2011/04/07/quotes-uncovered-how-lies-travel/
[6] L. T. Johnson, James, NIB, 203.
[7] Ibid., 204.
[8] See James 1:25 and 2:8