Bridling the Tongue: A Meditation on James 3, for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost

Even so the tongue is a little member, and

boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire

kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of

iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it

defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of

nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

In a land where freedom of speech is treasured above nearly all other things, the idea of bridling one’s tongue may seem archaic.  We have more magazines and newspapers than could be easily named, with journals and periodicals focused on every topic under the sun.  Add to this a new revolution in information distribution, and the internet is pulsing with more writings and videos than can be counted.  If one is unable or unwilling to be published in a print medium, there are innumerable outlets for blogs, posting boards, and social media which will take our thoughts and broadcast them to every corner of the earth.  We are a people who love to speak our minds, who chafe at boundaries to free expression, and even become defensive if our expressed ideas are challenged as inferior or wrong.  In our time and place, it is common for people to publish every passing thought throughout any given day, with opinions on everything from breakfast to traffic to politics.

What is easily forgotten in our age is where ideas come from.  Ideas aren’t floating around in either newspapers or wiki sites apart from a mind which produced them; i.e., whoever saw an idea that formed itself?  We may not know the author of every idea ever published or word ever spoken, but we know that they came from somewhere.  Even if a computer were to randomly or serially generate words, those words would have to originate with the programming of the system, which would have originated from a mind capable of those ideas set to code.  Ideas and their expression come from people, and they reflect the people from which they come.

Of course, there are some really ignorant ideas out there.  There are also illogical ideas, unlivable ideas, and ideas completely detached from reality.  Take for instance the idea that a person can “self identify” as a gender other than his genetics define in his DNA; or the idea that one human being is more “evolved” than another, based upon their geographic heritage; or the idea that one person’s life is worth more or less than another person’s life, based upon the age or development of the person; or the idea that improving our local neighborhood means looting it and burning it to the ground; or the idea that repairing relationships with police means ambushing them with gunfire; or the idea that the universe as a whole, and mankind in particular, is a meaningless accident without the capacity for moral virtue; and a countless host of other ridiculous concepts floating around today.  Each of these ideas came from people who propagated them, and are continued in the public discourse by people who embrace them.

Such awful ideas point to a reality which St. James addresses in the third chapter of his epistle.  The fire we can kindle with an unbridled tongue is enormously greater than the relatively modest size of the human tongue.  What’s worse, though, than realizing what devastation we can bring upon the world through our horrible ideas (from burning towns to burning nations) is where such fires are really originating.  It’s not just that the fires we light with a filthy tongue do great and often irreparable damage to our neighbors, but the fire which our tongue bears is one born in hell itself.  Our wicked nature is not just a corruption bound up in ourselves, but it is a devilish corruption that makes us puppets of a hellish horde.  It is not that we simply come up with bad ideas—and certainly we do—but all our bad ideas actually originate with the one for whom lies are a native language, and who has been a murderer from the beginning.  When we yield our tongues to the service of ideas which harm, enslave, defraud, covet, slander, and murder our neighbors, we have become the spokespeople of the devil himself.

Knowing this, St. James warns his readers at the opening of this chapter, that not many should be teachers, since those who teach shall bear a greater judgment.  When we seek to persuade our neighbors to our ideas, we become teachers of our ideas, and God will hold us accountable not only for the ideas we have espoused, but the fires they light in everyone who both hears them and is impacted by them.  We might be tempted to think that hell is some kind of monolith in which judgment is all the same, but we ought not be fooled:  our judgment shall be proportional to the gifts we were given, and the harm we have done.  Not many should be teachers, because the judgment against false teachers with evil ideas is horrific beyond description, proportionate to the devastation wrought by the propagation of soul slaying heresy.

So, if our ideas are corrupt, and our natural tongue set on fire by hell, from whence do we find good ideas?  From the Author of all that is good, right, and salutary, and the Mind from which flows all the good and beauty in creation.  It is the God whose idea to create the universe with order, logic, truth, beauty and virtue, who has given us this world in which we live and move and have our being.  It is this same God who watched mankind listen to the corrupting ideas of the devil, and by embracing them, cast the whole creation into its burning corruption.  It is this same God the Father, who sent His Only Begotten Son as His Incarnate Word to become flesh and dwell among us, that He might reconcile the fallen world to Himself through His Cross.  It is this same God the Father and God the Son who sent the Holy Spirit to bear witness to His Word of salvation, to the Gospel of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name alone.  It is this same God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who continues to be the Word of our reconciliation, of our hope, and of our life eternal in Him.  It is our God who has shown us again what love, mercy, truth, and virtue are, and how they both originate and are completed in Him.

It is true that all have sinned, and fallen short of God’s glory and goodness.  We have all failed to bridle our tongues, and set fires in the world with our tongues that bring forth suffering, death and hell to our neighbors.  But there is a greater Word that calls to us from before our fall into wickedness, before our enslavement to a devilish tyrant, and before our tongues were set aflame by the hell we justly deserve.  It is the Word of Life:  of Faith, Hope, and Love.  This Word of Life, Jesus Christ, brings His Word into your very soul, extinguishing the hellish flames of your nature by the blessed waters of Holy Baptism.  His Word of Gospel calls you out of your burning darkness, and gives to you a new Word to speak to your neighbor which brings healing and restoration.  His Word feeds you at His holy table, putting within you the medicine of immortality which sooths the flames of your passions, making of you a messenger of His Word to others who need this same heavenly medicine.  And when you fall to temptation, His Word comes to you in your faith and repentance, bringing Holy Absolution and restoration to you by His inexhaustible grace and mercy.

Lift your eyes from the burning wreckage of a world destroyed by human tongues, bearing human ideas which are forged in the hellish fires of our fallen nature.  Look instead to the Word of God which comes not only to sooth the flames of your own personal hell, but the hellfire consuming the whole world.  The Word of Life calls you to hear Him, to turn from the ideas and words which destroy, and embrace instead the eternal life He offers you by grace through faith in Him.  Hear Him, turn, be healed, and live.  Amen.