6/7/26 Sermon

Before we open the letter of James again this morning, let me catch us up — because James has been building something, week by week, and chapter three only lands if we remember where we've been.

We started back at the beginning, with a man writing to scattered people. Not the apostle James — this is Jesus's own brother, the one who grew up in the same house and didn't believe a word of it until something happened after Easter. And what he writes isn't really an argument. It's wisdom. It's the kind of thing an older brother says to the younger ones he loves and worries about. He's writing to people who are scattered, far from home, trying to live faithfully in circumstances they didn't pick. Which, if we're honest, is most of us.

The first thing he told those scattered people was that the hard place they were standing in wasn't a detour. It was the road. Something was being grown in them right there, in the staying — the first crop, he called it, the first of the harvest. That was chapter one.

Then he got practical. Be quick to listen, he said, slow to speak, slow to anger. And don't just hear the word and admire it — do something with it. Real religion has hands. It turns toward the widow and the orphan, toward the people nobody else is turning toward. That was the rest of chapter one.

And then in chapter two he got uncomfortable. He caught us playing favorites — rolling out the welcome for the person who looks important and overlooking the one who doesn't. He called that a betrayal of the royal law, the law of love. Faith without works, he said, is dead. It's wishing a hungry person well and sending them off empty. A faith you can't see isn't much of a faith at all.

So here's where we've come. Where we come from. How we walk. Who we welcome. James keeps narrowing it down, getting closer and closer to the bone.

And this morning he gets about as close as he can get. This morning, he talks about the tongue. So let us now read James 3: 1-12

My brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers, because we know that we teachers will be judged more strictly. We all make mistakes often, but those who don’t make mistakes with their words have reached full maturity. Like a bridled horse, they can control themselves entirely. When we bridle horses and put bits in their mouths to lead them wherever we want, we can control their whole bodies.

Consider ships: They are so large that strong winds are needed to drive them. But pilots direct their ships wherever they want with a little rudder. In the same way, even though the tongue is a small part of the body, it boasts wildly.

Think about this: A small flame can set a whole forest on fire. The tongue is a small flame of fire, a world of evil at work in us. It contaminates our entire lives. Because of it, the circle of life is set on fire. The tongue itself is set on fire by the flames of hell.

People can tame and already have tamed every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and fish. No one can tame the tongue, though. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we both bless the Lord and Father and curse human beings made in God’s likeness. Blessing and cursing come from the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, it just shouldn’t be this way!

Both fresh water and salt water don’t come from the same spring, do they? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree produce olives? Can a grapevine produce figs? Of course not, and fresh water doesn’t flow from a saltwater spring either.

WORD OF LORD

You know, it's kind of funny. We spend most of our lives being taught that words don't really have any power. Or at least that they shouldn't. Not over us, anyway.

I remember as a kid we had these little phrases we'd say. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Or my favorite, "I'm rubber and you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks on you." We'd say them like little spells, like the mean thing somebody threw at you would bounce off and you wouldn't have to feel it. But it didn't bounce off, did it? I mean, that's the whole reason we needed the rhyme. The harsh words landed, and it hurt, and we wanted some way to pretend it didn't. But words hurt. They hurt then and they hurt now. Words have power.

And yet we spend so much energy convincing ourselves they don't. "Talk is cheap," we say. "Put your money where your mouth is.” “You can talk the talk but can you walk the walk?” We've decided words are the cheap thing and actions are the expensive thing. And, you know, there's some truth to that. But I think we mostly say it so we don't have to take our own mouths so seriously. Because if words really do have power, I'd have to be a whole lot more careful than I usually am. But, James thinks words have power. In fact, I think he's kind of terrified of how much power they really have.

He starts off chapter three in a strange spot. "Not many of you should become teachers," he says, "because we know that we teachers will be judged more strictly." And, I mean, what a way to start a conversation about the tongue. The people who do the most damage with their mouths are usually the ones whose whole job is to use them. He's not pointing at the back row. He's pointing right at himself — and at guys like me.

And then he starts grabbing for pictures, one after another, like he can't find one big enough. A tiny bit in a horse's mouth turns the whole animal. A little rudder steers a huge ship through a storm. Small things steering big things — that's the tongue, he says. And then his pictures get darker. One little spark, and a whole forest goes up. The tongue's a fire like that — a little flame, but "a world of evil at work in us." And then this line that just stops me cold: people have tamed every kind of animal, every bird, every reptile — but nobody can tame the tongue. Nobody.

And if I'm honest, I know he's right. I mean, I know it from every single time I've watched some sentence come out of my mouth and wished, about half a second too late, that I could reach out and grab it back. But you can't. That's the awful thing about words. Once they're out, they're out. You can say you're sorry, and you should, but being sorry doesn't un-say it. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube after you squeeze it out. The forest's already on fire. The spark doesn't care how sorry you are. Words have power.

And then James tells us why this little tongue is so dangerous, and honestly it's not what I expected. It's not just that the tongue is bad. It's that it's split right down the middle. "With it," he says, "we both bless the Lord and Father and curse human beings made in God's likeness. Blessing and cursing come from the same mouth." The same mouth. I mean, think about that. The mouth that sings the hymn on Sunday is the same mouth that tears somebody apart on Monday. The mouth that says grace over dinner is the same mouth that snaps at the kid clearing the table. "My brothers and sisters," James says — and you can almost hear him begging — "it just shouldn't be this way."

And notice, it's not some hypocrisy we can just decide to quit, like a bad habit. It's deeper than that. It comes pouring out of the same hole, the blessing and the cursing all mixed up together, half the time before we even notice we did both.

And notice who he says we're cursing. Not stuff. People. People "made in God's likeness." God made us in God's own image and gave us a power that looks an awful lot like God's own — the power to bless. And here's what breaks James's heart: we take that breath that was made for blessing, and we turn it on the image of God sitting right across from us. Same breath. Same mouth. We bless the Maker and curse the made, and most of the time we don't even catch ourselves doing both. Words have power.

And it's not always the obvious cruelty, either. Sometimes it's the very same words. You can say "nice job" to somebody and mean it, and watch them stand up a little taller. Or you can say "nice job" with just a little twist on it, and watch them shrink right down. Same two words. One builds them up, one tears them down. So it's not just what comes out of our mouths. It's how we say it. It matters what we say and how we say it.

I'll give you an example. Years ago, when my kids were little, I was having one of those days. I couldn't even tell you what started it — probably something somebody said to me, you never know — but everything just felt jumbled and out of sorts. And it was my afternoon to get the kids. So I get to the daycare in a foul mood, and I wake up Isaac, who’s four at the time, and he’s also in a foul mood. Which, you know, it's just awesome arguing with a tired four-year-old when you're already having a great day. I wasn’t exactly blessing anybody right then.

And then I go get Olivia. She runs up and gives me this big hug, like she still sometimes does today if I’m lucky. But then she steps back, gets this real concerned look on her face, and says, "Daddy, are you having a bad day?" And for some reason I was just completely honest, and I told her that yes, in fact, I am having a bad day. And she shook her head and said, "Oh no, Daddy. Bad days are no fun. And you need to have more fun." And boom. Just like that, the bad day was gone.

Now, that'd be a real nice little story if I just left it there. Sweet kid, sweet word, dad feels better, the end. But I've been sitting here with James, and he won't quite let me just move on without looking at this. Because if I'm honest, I want to be the good guy in that story — the one whose words made things better. But that's not who I was that afternoon. Fifteen minutes before Olivia blessed me, I'd been short and sharp with her brother, snapping at a tired little boy who hadn't done a thing except wake up cranky. She was handing out blessing. I'd just been handing out the opposite. And that's the part James won't let me dodge — because the mouth that snapped at Isaac is the very same mouth that prays over supper and stands up here on Sunday morning. Same mouth. Blessing and cursing, right out of the same opening. It just shouldn't be this way. And there it was — in me, on an ordinary afternoon. Words have power.

And that's the part that really gets me. It took a three-year-old to teach me. I mean, think about it — I'm a minister. Words are my whole job. I stand up here every Sunday and make my living with my mouth. And my little girl, who couldn't even spell the word "blessing," understood something about that mouth that her preacher father had just missed. James said the teachers get judged more strictly, remember? Maybe that’s why. A three-year-old knew exactly what to do with her words. The real question is whether her father does.

So what do we do with a tongue we can't tame? James doesn't give us a trick. He doesn't say try harder, or count to ten, or watch your words. He already told us we can't tame this thing on our own. What he gives us instead is one more picture.  He asks"Does a spring pour out sweet water and bitter water from the same opening?" Can a fig tree grow olives? Of course not. You can't get fresh water out of a saltwater spring.

You hear what he just did? He quit talking about the mouth and started talking about the source. The tongue just tells the truth about what it's drawing from. You don't fix the water by yelling at the faucet. You've got to change the spring. And that's not something we pull off by gritting our teeth. That's something God does in us — slow, by grace, getting way down where the words come from, until our mouths run sweet because the spring got made sweet. That's the part I cannot do for myself. But it's exactly the part God's already doing. So maybe the most honest prayer this morning isn't "Lord, help me watch my words." Maybe it's just "Lord, get all the way down to the spring."

So may you take that little tongue of yours as seriously as James does.

May you be honest about the same mouth that blesses and curses, and quit pretending it doesn't.

And may the God who spoke light into the dark keep working away down at the source, until what comes pouring out of you finally tastes like where it came from.

Amen.