Proverbs 22: 10, 11; Mark 7: 27; James 3:1-12

To speak or not to speak

When we read today texts in the program, it seems like mumbo jumbo. And perhaps when you put the text together like that, it is kind of mumbo jumbo. We are better off reading texts in context. But there is a reason for doing this today. The verses are all about when speaking goes wrong.  Proverbs talks about scoffers and how they should be driven out. James is crisp and clear and also a little bit angry when he speaks of the human tongue. In verse 6 it reads:”And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity, the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life and is set on fire by hell.” Wow! Even in Mark we find Jesus, at least at first glance, saying something that is insensitive and inappropriate. We have talked about that already. Was He sarcastic or mocking others who might talk like that or did His humanness win out for just an instant?

In American schools most students at one point or another read the line:  “two paths diverged in the woods and I took the one less traveled by.” They were of course written by Robert Frost.  It turns out they did not have the intent that we might think they do.  Frost may actually have been mocking the words of an English friend who put much importance on the decision which path to take in the woods, while Frost didn’t.  I guess we won’t truly know what he really meant so just like we won’t know what Jesus really meant. It has been said that poetry is like painting with words.   We might extend this thought to our words in general.   Speaking is like painting.  Our words paint a picture, of our views, of ourselves and of the world around us, over time.  Friends, in that way the Bible is a large canvas.  Or we could say that is a combination of great paintings. Each book paints its own picture. Proverbs is all about being clear, rational and morally upstanding. Mark is one view of Jesus. James, supposedly the brother of Jesus, is all about action and doing something.  Some of the “art” of the Bible is rational, some emotional, much of it historical, some of it abstract and hard to penetrate, but through it all God’s Word comes to us.  This is a kind of miracle. All these words in the Bible, retold and passed on by mouth for centuries, or written down on parchment that survived because of the dry conditions of the land.  These ancient words still touch us and educate us and direct us and move us.  And then through our own words we try to make sense of them.

There is an anecdote about the famous nineteenth century preacher, Henry Ward Beecher. One morning he ascended the great pulpit of Boston’s Plymouth Congregational Church and there he found a note waiting for him. Beecher glanced at the note and then announced:”I received a letter from one of you this morning. It simply states, ‘Fool.’” Beecher paused, the grinned maliciously. “I often receive letters from people who forget to sign their names,” he said, “but this the first time someone has signed their name and forgotten to write the letter.”  Beecher was quick on his feet, found a snappy return, but even for him the criticism must have stung. There is such a thing as criticism offered in love, of course- courteous words of correction from a teacher, or coach, or spouse, or friend, sincerely intended to build up. But there I also that other sort of criticism, the kind that tears down To speak or not to be speak, that is the question he faced and that we face every day. He spoke. Perhaps we wouldn’t have.

I am sure I have told you that a few years ago I made a New Year’ resolution which was: “to talk less.” Now most of you will not have seen me make much progress on that one, but actually it did work, for that year at least.  I wanted to not say what I did not need to say or what people really weren’t interested in hearing.  I want to paint a different painting, one perhaps with fewer strokes and more light.   To speak or not to speak. That was my decision and that is ours every day.

In a research paper reporting on how people process words that express emotions, the author claimed that half of the words that people produce from their working vocabulary are used to express negative emotions, compared to a mere 30 percent which are used to express positive emotions and 20 percent that have a neutral context. Although the precision of the statistic may raise questions, the relative proportion of negative to positive words in our working vocabularies should be of concern to all of us. To speak or not to speak, that is the question. And how to speak.

Friends, I think all of us go through life using words and hearing words that we given no second thought.  Everybody knows that we all say stupid and inane things that in the end aren’t part of the big picture of our lives.  But words often repeated will be. And the unusual things we say, they will become the accents in the painting that will jump out.  We all paint our lives a different way. Some of the pictures of our lives are clear and straightforward, some are impressionistic and blurry.  Others are so abstract we ourselves don’t even get it.   But let us be comforted by the thought that all our words have a place in the great canvas God is painting.  May God allow them to make a difference.