The Power of Words

 A short word to begin. This meditation is not pinpointed for anyone in particular. I'll be speaking to a universal concern that I'd say we all struggle with, myself included.

James, the brother of Jesus, in chapter 3 of his Epistle, offers these words about the power of words, which is what I’d like to reflect on a bit this morning.

…the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire…  7 For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8 but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth comes a blessing and a curse. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so…

13 …Show by your good life that your actions – the act of speaking included – are done with gentleness born of wisdom.

Maybe your parents said something like this to you – Son, you better mind your words. 

Why? Because little ears might be listening? Sure. Because God hears? Yes. But maybe the most important reason to mind your words and how you speak is that our words derive from us and all that makes us us – the good, the bad, the ugly, the tragic, the painful. Our speech tells us about us. 

If your spirit is hurt, you will speak in ways that hurt. If you are wounded, you will speak from that woundedness, and either wound others in turn or avoid speaking at all, opting out. If you are having a bad day in a line of bad days, it will be hard to avoid negativity affecting your words.

From your spiritual state, your words come. 

One of the truest cliches is this one: hurt people hurt people. Hurt people speak from their hurt.

What does this mean for us and our spiritual lives? 

Minding your words means minding your hurt. Minding your hurts is really, really important.

One powerful way to mind our hurt is to bring our hurt to the Lord. 

That’s what Christian salvation is all about after all! We bring our hurt to the Lord, knowing the Lord has taken the hurt to the cross on our behalf. Our brokenness was his brokenness. Our brokenness was taken to to cross, then to the grave, and then to new life through Christ’s resurrection. In other words, Christ forged a path, a path of healing where in the end all is well.

That said, Christian salvation isn’t always an immediate cure from our emotional pain. Coming to terms with the hurt takes a while. It’s a process. Salvation is the surgery that begins the process of full recovery. 

In the meantime, we need something to help us avoid hurting others out of our own hurt.

How many of you have ever argued with someone you love more than anything, your significant other, your kid? I’m raising my hand by the way. How about in the past couple weeks?  My hand remains raised. 

You don't have to raise hands for this one, but in the thick of an argument, have you ever said words you knew would be hurtful to say, but said them anyway? 

How good are we humans at using words as a figurative knockout punch? How horrible. But how human!

Minding our words in the heat of the moment or when frustrated, that is when its needed most. It prevents us from hurting and wounding with our words those we most love. But boy is it hard!

Here’s the thing. We can’t expect to mind our words in the heat of a moment if we aren’t practicing it in the cool of everyday life. Minding our words is a muscle that requires training. It's the recovery part of salvation.

Here’s a good exercise for the muscle of minding our words.

Prayerful Pausing. 

All of my life I’ve heard this saying, couples who pray together, stay together. I’d tweak it. Those who practice pause and pray together will be good at staying together. 

Christian author Chelsea Crockett puts nicely and concisely:

“When in doubt, pause.

When angry, pause.

When tired, pause.

When stressed, pause.

And when you pause, pray.”

So, as I come to a close here, I encourage you to start your days by pausing and praying. 

A few weeks, at our first Mindfulness service, we began with five minutes of pausing and silently reciting this centering prayer:

The selflessness of Christ in; the compassion of Christ out.

That might be a good one to try.

Or pause and pray your own prayer. The idea is to pause and pray as you begin your day.

Here’s another bit of homework. When you feel things getting a little tense, when you feel the temperature rising, when your kid starts in and you feel the need to yell, when your wife peeves your pet nerve, try pausing and praying, ideally together. Here’s a prayer you might use: 

Lord, help me be a conduit of your love. 

One final word about a critical question that may arise this morning. Knowing what’s going on in our country and world, isn’t this all a bit small, a meaningless case of navel gazing? Shouldn’t we be focused on bigger things?

I’ll simply say speaking truth to power and fighting for what’s right to power is good, even necessary. But doing so wisely and compassionately, in the spirit of Christ, is always best practice for us as Christ-followers. As Brother James suggests, let our words, even those that firmly speak truth to power, be a blessing and not a curse.

Let me end with a quote by Skye Jethani.

Believing in Christianity, the cross and the resurrection means, “I pursue the way of Jesus” [and, yes, ardently struggle for justice, equality, compassion in the world,] but I will not compromise on the ethics of Jesus to win.” And the ethics of Jesus is love.

In other words, be a blessing by sojourning the way of love.