Download Pr 1:20-33 - Delavan First Presbyterian Church

Do No Harm—Jam 3:1-12
“How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!” About noon on August
14th, 1933, a searingly hot day with very low humidity, loggers dragged a felled
Douglas fir tree across another downed tree: hardly an unusual thing. There was
smoke, there was a flame; the dry logging debris in the immediate area quickly
caught fire. When that fire had finally burned out, some 240,000 acres of prime
timberland in the Oregon Coast mountain range was lost. Twelve billion board
feet of timber had burned, enough, some estimate, to build over one million fiveroom houses.1 All that potential shelter, all those potential happy memories of
home that might have been, lost in one terrible summer, one terrible fire.
As a boy, playing at the Oregon coast, I remember clearly the dead trees that
had been tossed up onto the sand by the strong winter tides: old, large trees,
bleached white by the sun, worn smooth by the sand, with faded black burn scars
along the top, the sides. These derelicts were relics of the Burn. Decades after
1933, these dead logs could still be seen. To young children who didn’t know any
better, they were just big playthings on the beach. To others, my grandparents,
perhaps, those sun-bleached hulks were reminders of a terrible disaster. Yes, “how
great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire,” as St. James says in our reading for this
morning.
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“The Tillamook Burn,” http://www.tillamoo.com/burn.html, accessed 14 September 2012.
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“And the tongue,” as he goes on to say, “is a fire.” Maybe you have
experienced that. Maybe you spoke an unwise word at an unwise moment, and a
relationship burnt to the ground. Maybe someone said something terrible, untrue,
hurtful about you, and you had to endure the flames as others avoided you, or
laughed at you, or joined in the attack. Maybe you heard something once that has
nagged at you, gnawed at you, ever since: a slow fire, like hot embers, turning your
thoughts, your hopes, your beliefs to ash lighter than air.
God gave us the blessing of speech to instruct one another, to encourage one
another, to be a blessing to one another, and to praise God together. Human
beings, however, have long been using speech for other purposes, including
harming one another. Beloved, I wish you would all pray earnestly that God
would prevent you from using the blessing of speech to harm another. That is St.
James’ prayer for the faithful to whom he is writing his letter.
He says the tongue is a fire. 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” (3:6). He is anything but optimistic about the words that
come out of people’s mouths. When is the last time you heard a word of true
blessing from the mouth of another?
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I hope you may hear one today, but James is holding me to a high standard in the
midst of his doubts about the words with which people scorch one another.
Teaching elders are especially charged to do no harm.
I spent many years at several universities. If anyplace should be a place for
constructive speech, for speech meant to teach, surely it would be there. What I
discovered was that the main lesson my professors wanted to teach me was that
there was no ultimate truth to be taught or pursued. What was true was whatever
was true for you at the moment. No one could tell you what was true! Such
teaching, I suppose, was meant to be liberating. It gave a veneer of legitimacy to
whatever anyone thought at a given moment, whatever anyone wanted at a given
moment, whatever anyone felt at a given moment.
My faith protested. If there is no ultimate truth, it becomes impossible to
have a fruitful discussion about values, because without ultimate truth, no value is
better than another, no value is more healthy, more righteous, more holy, more true
than another. Then what guidance do we have? Shall we trust ourselves? Are we
so wise as that? So good as that?
My teachers thought they were setting their students free, but they were only
casting us blithely into perpetual confusion, aimless wandering, hopeless
indulgence of appetites and impulses.
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True freedom, sisters and brothers, is salvation. Salvation comes to us through the
Church, through the Word that breathes life into the Church, through Jesus Christ,
the Word of Life.
Yet what do we find in the Church today? Confusion, wandering, teaching
elders blessing the indulgence of appetites and impulses, and, above all, avoidance
of hurting any. It is as if the great commandment is “hurt none” when what God
commands those who would teach His Word is “do no harm.” Speech was given
to us for blessing, not for harm. We ought not harm with our words, but somehow
we have come to the mistaken notion that because we ought not to harm our words
must not hurt. Our words should never be hurtful and no one should ever be hurt
by our words. And that, beloved, is not so.
How many people, do you suppose, were hurt by Jesus’ words to them?
Was that Syrophoenician woman, who came to seek Jesus’ help for her little, sick
daughter, was that woman hurt, do you think, when Jesus spoke of her as a dog?
Were the pharisees hurt when Jesus called them whitewashed tombs? Was Peter
hurt when Jesus called Peter Satan? Were his disciples hurt when Jesus accused
them of having barely any faith? Were the disciples who stopped following him
hurt, when Jesus said that he was the living bread from heaven,
and that no one who did not consume him could enter heaven? Jesus’ words hurt
many, and his words hurt many even now, today.
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An old girlfriend of mine was walking backwards down my parents’
driveway. Why was she walking backwards? She did things like that. Anyway,
she walked herself right into the rusty tailpipe of my father’s car, jammed her leg
into it. It was not a large wound, but it was painful: rust and debris from the
tailpipe were lodged under a little, thick flap of her skin. We went back into the
house, and I cleaned the wound. To do that, I had to pull back the thick flap of
skin, to wash out as much of the debris as I could. Do you think that hurt? Was I
doing her harm?
Often, healing involves pain. The deeper the wound, the greater the pain.
When James speaks of the tongue as “a restless evil, full of deadly poison,” he is
telling us not only that the tongue can wound others—how well we know it!—but
also that our tongues are wounded. We are wounded, full of deadly poison. This
becomes clear to us every time what we want conflicts with what God says. How
we try to find the words to get around that, away from that! There’s some pain
then, some hurt then. God wants to draw that poison out.
What is God trying to draw out of you? I cannot name it for you. God calls
you to name it. It will hurt to have that wound washed, cleaned, and dressed. The
work of the Spirit is painful, sometimes it hurts, yet the Spirit does no harm.
There will be no harm, if you allow God to wash the wound, to bind it up, and
follow God’s direction. What is it that Wisdom said at the end of our reading in
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Proverbs today? “[T]hose who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease,
without dread of disaster” (1:33). What is it we hear in our reading from the
Psalms for today: what God teaches is perfect, sure, right, clear, pure, true and
righteous altogether. God’s instruction, God’s wisdom, God’s Word, is more
valuable than the finest, brilliant gold, sweeter than golden honey.
God’s teaching. Not human teaching, but God’s teaching. How can you tell
the difference? The Reformers, because of whom we are worshipping here today
rather than at St. Mary’s, thought they had the way to tell. Words that harmed
were not God’s Word. They knew God’s Word could hurt, but it would never
harm. The Reformers heard all the human words that were doing harm, and
wanted to throw those words out. Beloved, God’s Word sometimes hurts, but it
never harms, it never poisons the soul, it never consumes human life in the fires of
appetite and impulse. I cannot promise you that the words I speak to you will
never hurt any of you, never upset any of you. When God called me to this
vocation, this ministry, as James reminds all of us, it meant that I would be judged
with greater strictness. This is very fearsome to me, for I make many mistakes.
That I know very well. My comfort is that it is God who gives me the Word to
share with you. My hope, and our hope, is in that Word: that Word of healing, that
Word of health, that Word of Life.
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My joy is that though the Word may sometimes hurt, it does not harm but heals. If
healing must involve pain, then I am willing to undergo pain, for I yearn for God to
heal me.
Many in the Church are confused. Many of my brother and sister pastors,
teaching elders, are confused. They have confused harm and hurt. They are afraid
of hurting. They are so afraid of hurting that they end up harming the precious
souls placed in their care, teaching what is not true, blessing what is not to be
blessed. Brothers and sisters, they have forgotten Christ and they are poisoning
others as well as themselves.
The benefits, the blessings, the joys we have in Christ, with Christ, through
Christ, we can never fully name. Those blessings come to us, that health comes to
us, that life comes to us through hurt, through pain. I include our pain as Christ
renews us, but I mainly mean Christ’s pain, the pain of which he speaks to Peter
and the other disciples, through his “great suffering.” Peter didn’t want to hear it,
though. He is not alone. Many cannot bear the thought that Christ suffered so that
they might live; the thought of hurt, of pain, is painful to them. We do not think
about Christ’s sufferings. We ignore them; we place them out of view.
In Reformed churches, Christ is not on the cross. There are several, and
good, reasons why this is so. Sometimes—just sometimes, mind you—I wonder if
this is best.
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Christ on the cross keeps ever before our eyes that our healing involves pain,
involves suffering, involves hurt. Jesus was hurt, and sometimes the Word hurts,
but God’s Word never harms us, beloved. That is the difference between God’s
Word and our words: human words spoken as though they were God’s words,
God’s will, God’s way. God’s Word can hurt, sometimes, but it never harms.
Human words pretending to be God’s words try to avoid hurting, harming all the
while. Honey is sweet, and God’s Word sweeter by far, yet for many, the words
that seem sweetest—the words they like best—prove to be deadly poison. When
calamity comes like a whirlwind, like an all-consuming forest fire, they will have
no place to run, no shelter. Salvation does not come from our words, not from my
words, but from God’s Word.
I hope that our grandchildren, when they are grandparents, will not look
upon dead church buildings, like so many dead, scorched trees half buried in the
sand. I pray that God may douse the fire of harmful teaching, teaching so pained
by the thought of hurting that it ends up consuming denominations, congregations,
burning to the earth, to ashes, to dust, all that potential shelter, all the potential
happy memories of home. Salvation does not come from human words, our words,
not from my words, but from God’s Word.
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And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood,
and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and
dominion forever and ever. Amen.
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