Monday Meditation
Words seasoned with grace
How do words matter in our common life together? They hurt and they heal. They destroy and they heal. They are holy and they are evil. Saint Paul is clear that the words we use - the manner of our speech - matters in our communal life. He is speaking to a fledgling community yet his counsel is for all of us. Imagine words seasoned with grace, whose purpose is to repair, heal and renew our life together.
In my coaching practice I always ask, “is there a next step for you from this conversation?” So, beware, I will ask the same after this sermon.
Remember the chant our parents taught us to protect us against cruel insults on the playground? Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me? How many of you have heard that mantra? How many whispered it under duress? Honestly, how many of you believe it is true? Sticks and stones may break my bones ... yes, we know that is certainly true. How about that second line, words can never hurt me? Nope. Children in therapy and parents in divorce court testify that the words exchanged are the lethal weapons that broke their hearts and minds. Even when their bones remain untouched.
We know words – our everyday human speech – have tremendous power to help and to heal, to encourage and sustain, to make peace and create hope. The Christian faith has understood this creative power from the beginning, connecting it as closely as possible with God. “In the beginning,” writes John, “was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. ... And the Word became flesh and lived among us [...] full of grace and truth.” Human words, the ones that you and I use with each other, have the capacity to create whole new worlds of understanding.
This must be why Saint Paul puts so much emphasis on the quality of conversation in the community of the Church. Speak truthfully to your neighbors, he says, in this case meaning other Christians, because you belong to them. What a simple and obvious thing to say: tell the truth!
Sadly, using words deliberately to deceive is more common than we care to admit. Is this true? From the little white lies we consider innocent and justify in a thousand different ways, to the lies that bring down a household, wreck relationships, shatter churches, ruin careers, corrupt political discourse, even destroy nations. Lying happens. If it were not so, we wouldn’t encourage our children to tell the truth, there would be no impeachment proceedings. No such thing as fraud, embezzlement or purgery. No politician, president, preacher or priest would ever face a jury.
One we acknowledge the reality that lying happens, even among otherwise good people, we can understand why Christians are told so emphatically in our scriptures, speak truthfully to your neighbors, for you belong to them. Why tell the truth? Speaking falsely will hurt your neighbor, indeed. But ultimately it will hurt yourself - corrupt your soul - because you belong to your neighbor. And, as Dr. King taught us, what hurts your neighbors hurts us all.
Telling the truth can deliver a friend from despair, set a student on a new and better path. You can break the chains of guilt with a single phrase of forgiveness. Saint Paul, or one of his students who wrote this letter, know this, too. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up faith, as there is need, so that – wait for it - your words may give grace to those who hear. Let’s think about that for a moment.
You know what it’s like to take up a habit, like walking daily, or going to the gym, or practicing a langue. Paul is saying discipline your mouth. Let nothing evil comes from you. Use your words to build up others. This is remarkable. You have the power to offer grace to someone. Do it. Refrain from what is evil. Never let your words be used to tear apart another person. Evil words offer no grace. Neither do they build up, they destroy.
A telephone call or a letter, an email or a card, a conversation filled with words that build up, bring hope, encourage vision, sustain passion, kindle imagination, offer forgiveness, – this our way of life in the Body of Christ. You and I can choose to build up and not to tear down, all by the use of words.
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Consider this Hasidic story. A member of a village who had spread malicious gossip against several of her neighbors came to her senses and asked her Rabbi for advice. What can I do, she said? He told her to gather a basket of feathers and at night place it on the porch of every person she had told a lie or otherwise hurt by her words. Return in the morning to get them. When you have finished come back to me, with the baskets of feathers. So, she took the basket to each porch at night, and returned in the morning as she was told. Then she went to the Rabbi. What happened? He asked. She said, when I returned to the houses in the morning, there were no feathers, they had all blown away. The Rabbi then said to her, that is how it is with words; once you have spoken them you cannot ever bring them back. The woman went away very sad.
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Is there forgiveness? Yes! That is the Good News, God in Jesus Christ forgives our sins. Yet, we know the work of repair remains. It is true for the woman whose feathers are flying on the breeze. It is true in our lives, our families, our communities and in our nation.
The habits Saint Paul urges upon us are clear. “Put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.” That’s the bad stuff no one wants anyway. Here’s the good stuff: “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ as forgiven you.”
So here we are at the end. Is there a next step you want to take? Wellness always begins with a first step. As Saint Paul said, Let us “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
