Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 14, 2003
James 3:1-12

I. INTRODUCTION

Friends, I am here to talk to you about Jesus. The only Son of God, our Lord! He came to us from heaven, lived among us and died for our sins on the cross! Can I get an amen? But the story did not end there, friends, no, it didn’t. Because he ROSE again. He came back from the dead so that ALL would know that God has given us a gift of life from the dead, of eternal life through his precious son, Jesus Christ! Can I get an amen?

Whew, I don’t know if I can keep that up. It takes a lot of energy to be one of those fiery preacher types. But I wonder sometimes because the expectation on preaching is often so high. I think preachers are often expected to be a little fiery. In fact, think of some famous preachers. How many are dry and academic?

Think about famous televangelists. If we were to look at the forests set ablaze in our modern lives—the biggest churches and ministries: how many of those guys could be considered dull preachers? Not many. So there is a sense that dynamic Christianity requires fiery preaching of the Gospel. There is something about that kind of fire that we associate with Christian proclamation.

II. JAMES

And certainly tonight’s lesson from James is no help. “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.”

In the text James focuses on speech and on the tongue and on the importance of speech. “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” For James, right speaking is a great value, and wrong speaking is equated with ‘deadly poison.’ Speaking right is part of Christian witness, the more so for teachers and preachers.

III. PREACHING

Certainly, preaching and proclamation have been at the heart of Christian witnessing, since Jesus picked up the scroll in the synagogue in Nazareth. When he picked up that scroll the passage he read was from the book of Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed

“Bring good news” are three English words that sum up one word in Hebrew and Greek l’baser and euaggelizo, which both mean ‘to bring good news’ and from the Greek on we get “evangelize”. Jesus was anointed to evangelize, to bring the evangel, the good news, the Gospel.

We think about the apostles and how in the first century Christianity exploded across the Mediterranean world. From twelve guys in a room to tens of thousands to eventually the whole Roman Empire. It boggles the mind to think of it. How did it get there? It was the preaching and the teaching of the apostles. They had encountered the risen Christ and had gone out into the world at the expense of their own lives and they had preached. Paul preached—he made tents, but that was so he could afford to go around preaching. Our Christian origins are tied up in proclaiming the message to others.

In fact when we were done with the basic preaching, that’s when we came up with all those words that ended in –ology: theology, Christology, pneumatology, soteriology…”words about God” “words about Christ”, “words about the Spirit” and “words about salvation.” Words. More talking. Christianity has been the articulation of a message. At least, that’s what we’re used to thinking.

IV. WORD AND DEED

Is language really that important?

A. Language and Thought

Well, to some people a lot. It has long been believed that language and thought are connected. We tend to think in language and our thoughts are shaped by the words that give shape and expression to those thoughts.

It is often pointed out that there is no Russian word for privacy. And certainly in the heyday of the Soviet Union, the concept was not on their top ten list. In fact, once a visiting scholar was giving a lecture in Moscow on the right to privacy. They had the hardest time just translating the name of the paper.

The idea of the connection between thought and language was made nowhere clearer than in George Orwell’s novel 1984. In it, the State had fashioned a language to replace English in order to further its power:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.

We do that all the time, don’t we? We shift political opinion by the changing of words: “friendly fire” sounds a lot better than “shooting your own troops”, “police actions” are easier to talk a nation into than outright war. We play with words because we feel that if we control the words we almost control the ideas that lie behind them.

Are we a more privacy oriented culture because we have a word for it? Do we, unlike the poor souls in 1984 value freedom because a word can express that idea? Or do we create words that express our values? Certainly, language is resistant to control. And if we could only imagine those things we could name, there would be no invention, no fantasy, no science fiction, no scientific progress.

So, perhaps our minds are not limited by our vocabulary. But does that mean our words don’t matter?

B. Choice of words

Certainly, they do. Does it make a difference if I call someone an Indian versus a Native American? A Black versus an African-American? A girl versus a young woman?

It can matter quite a bit. Our words can have the effect of making some people feel excluded. If I were to say, “Every student at American University must apply himself in order to succeed” in addition to grossly mischaracterizing the student body as male, I might have caused some female students to feel excluded. As Christians, we are called to be inclusive, to be hospitable. Our speech can often make people feel unwelcome.

But does what we say alter our reality? This was and is the debate that surrounds political correctness. Does my changing my speaking habits really effect a change within me, such that if I abandon sexist language, for example, I cease to be sexist? Perhaps. But perhaps it can simply bury underneath what my true feelings are. Because as we talked about last week, we can learn to speak all the right words and still may do no great good. What good is it if I say, “Every student must apply him- or her-self…” but do nothing to further equality of opportunity among the sexes? What is the good of that?

V. SPEECH AND ACTION

To put it simply: talk is cheap. But what does that mean for a faith for which evangelizing and proclamation are so central? Perhaps it means we need to rethink what it means to proclaim.

A. Preaching the Word

Rev. Lucy Hogan, professor of preaching at Wesley Seminary has a sign on her door. It says, “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” Proclaiming is so much more than talking. Remember the parable of the two sons: the one son who says he will do what his father asks, but doesn’t; and the other who says no to his father, but thinks better of it and does it. How much value Jesus put on our right action.

B. Progressive Evangelicalism

We in the Wesleyan traditions, the Methodists (United, AME, AME Zion, and CME) and the Evangelical United Brethren are all in evangelical traditions. That is, we believe in the proclamation of the message of the gospel and in the inward sense of assurance and grace that it brings.

But we are also progressives in that we seek to live out our faith. And Wesleyans have always been progressives: championing women’s rights, campaigning against slavery, working for labor rights and economic reforms, seeking to have meaningful efforts to provide for the poor. Evangelicalism demands this action. Just ask conservative Alabama governor Riley who earlier this year determined that as a Christian he could not support a system of taxation that was oppressive to the poor. He shocked and stunned the Christian Coalition among others. My friends, that is exactly what the Gospel is supposed to do: to shock us out of our complacency and demand action.

We start with that inward fire, kindled from within. And then with tongues of fire, we preach it to the world not simply with our mouths or hearts, but with everything that we are.

We are progressive evangelicals. Sometimes our liberal brothers and sisters forget the evangelical, inward dimension. But just as often, our conservative brothers and sisters forget the progressive dimension. Our faith requires us not simply to be evangelical in our hearts, but in our action. Living our faith.

VI. CONCLUSION

In our confessions, we often confess that we have failed to be obedient in “thought, word, and deed.” In so doing we remind ourselves of an important truth: Christian faith is holistic, it is not something that can exist on one level alone. To James, as it should be to us, the idea of a faith that exists only internally, or only in speech, or only in deeds should be non-sensical. We proclaim our faith in thought, word, and deed.

There is something else worth noting here. In the second chapter of the book of Acts, the Spirit is described as descending on the apostles in ‘tongues as of fire’. We consider this moment to be the birth of the church. And it began with tongues of fire. Tongues of fire signifying the presence of the Spirit. The church exploded across the Mediterranean world following the preaching and teaching of the apostles, filled with that fire. It set the whole Roman Empire ablaze.

It is no less so for us today. In every generation our faith must be created anew and proclaimed anew. In this generation we face a world with staggering problems of war, poverty, hopelessness, and violence. But if we proclaim our faith not only in thought or word, but in deed, even our small fire, can set ablaze the whole world.