The 16th Sunday after Pentecost- Rev Melanie Lemburg

 


16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19B

September 12, 2021

        This week, I stopped in a local drive-through to pick up supper.  The line was long, and it had been a long day.  When I finally approached the order board and began to place my order, the worker rudely interrupted me to inform me that they could not make any quesadillas because the grill had been turned off.  “It’s an hour before we close,” she told me angrily.  I was extremely irritated and fumbled around to try to find something else to order, and finally just made do with something.  And then I waited.  And while I waited, I seethed.  What kind of restaurant turns off its grill an hour before closing, thus eliminating at least a third of its menu items?  And how dare she be so rude to me? 

        By the time, I reached the window, I was ready to let her have it.  When she opened the window and I opened my mouth to just blast her (completely regardless of the fact that I am sitting in my car in the clergy collar), the Holy Spirit did something really strange.  In that one moment before I spoke, I had a spark of curiosity that was not my own, and I said, completely surprising myself, “Would you sell me the ingredients for the quesadilla, so I can just make it at home?”  She looked at me for at least 15 seconds straight, and then she started laughing and closed the window.  I waited, assuming she would need to go ask a manager if she could do this, and I just felt so weary.  But then, she surprised me.  She came back to the window with a bag of ingredients, handed it to me with a smile and said, “It’s on me.”

        In all the years that I have been preaching through the lectionary, I don’t think I’ve ever been brave (or foolish enough) to preach on this lesson from James.  We don’t really know anything about this book of the Bible; we don’t know who wrote it, who they were writing to, where they were writing…It is the lone book of wisdom literature in the New Testament, which means it is more like Proverbs than a true epistle like Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.  And our passage for today is especially intense, as the writer takes up arms against the tongue, calling it “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”  He writes, “The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue.” “With it” he continues, “we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.”

        Perhaps this is why I’ve never preached on this lesson:  I doubt there is any person here who has not felt the ill effects of someone else’s tongue, or felt shame over the damage caused by their own words.  And yet, James doesn’t tell us what we are supposed to do about it.  Where’s the good news in this? 

        I read an essay this week that speaks to this.  The woman writing was sharing how her husband, who is a Christian pastor, had run for United States Congress on one of two of our major political party tickets.  She writes, “By the end of what surely was the most divisive and tumultuous U.S. election season my generation has ever experienced, we had moved out of our house twice because of concerns of violence and harassment at our home; on a regular basis people drove by our house slowly with the windows down shouting obscenities before peeling off with a roar.

        Several families in our Christian school community made it clear through emails, anonymous snail mail, Facebook messages, and icy stares that our family was unwelcome and unwanted at “their” school. Our kids endured more than I care to write about here. We were slandered in unmentionable and dehumanizing ways, even some local pastors told us straight up that we were not Christians if we voted for X.”

        She continues, “Strangers on Facebook — people who had never met us or engaged in meaningful dialogue with us — wrote monstrous heart-stopping words about our family and took giddy pleasure in publicly boasting about all the ugly things they would like to do to us…        Why? Because there was a [particular letter] beside my husband’s name [on the ballot], and that was enough to justify vilification. There was no end to the violent, poisonous, and dehumanizing rhetoric — including by self- professed Christians.  Throughout history, dehumanizing labels and rhetoric have always been a precursor to justifying violence. Always. And so it was so very difficult to realize that this kind of cruelty was lurking underneath so many of the polite and well-manicured faces that moved among us.”

        She writes about how she has fled to her garden as her refuge in this time, about how one of her friends “hammered out the barrel of a gun and transformed it into a beautiful garden trowel for [her]. He is literally turning weapons into garden tools.”  She continues, “Gripping the carved wooden handle and plunging it into the hot summer soil became a repetitive symbolic reminder that we are called to be people of life and hope — not death and destruction. We are called to throw light at the darkness, to dish out love to those who slam us with hatred. We are called to embody God’s way of shalom in the midst of a cruel and chaotic world. We are called to self-sacrifice in the service of others — not to sacrifice others in service of ourselves and our selfish power gains.”

She concludes, “Gardening has become a meditative, contemplative practice where I’ve learned to intentionally examine the workings inside myself and begin the work of easing out the hatred that hides in the corners of my own heart — a hatred that tempts me to draw a sword and swing back. Here I am learning to appreciate and name the good in even those who seek to hurt my family. Here in the silence of the garden, God seems always present and always whispering to me the reminder that violence nearly always begets violence whether we are talking about global warfare or a war of words intended to wound and kill, and that God calls us to step away from it.”[i]

Rev Aimee has been on a crusade for several months to get me to watch the tv show Ted Lasso.  (She’s talked about it here at church, too, and even preached about it.)  About a month ago, I finally succumbed, and I told her (as I do many times), “You were right!”  In one of the episodes, Ted experiences a victory over one of the nastier characters of the show, and he tells him, “You know, Rupert, guys have underestimated me my entire life, and for years I never understood why.  It used to really bother me.  But then one day, I was driving my little boy to school, and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman painted on the side of the wall, and it said, ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’  I like that.  …And all of a sudden it hits me.  All of them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them were curious.  They thought they had everything all figured out, so they judged everything and they judged everyone.”[ii]

Be curious, not judgmental.  It’s the good news that is buried in the James reading.  We are not destined to be victims and perpetrators of our untamed tongues.  The Holy Spirit has given and continues to give us the gift of curiosity, and when we choose to be curious over being judgmental, then we help bring about God’s kingdom here on earth and help make this world a kinder, more curious place.   

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