The Rev. Sara Warfield
Scripture: James 3:1-12
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
I call BS. That’s crap.
For example, I heard this happen after a high school soccer game once. The final score is 4-1. We’re at the back of the little stadium where parents wait for the players to come out of the locker rooms after the game.
The lone goalscorer for the losing team comes out, and a guy, presumably her dad, comes up to her with a glowing smile. “What a goal,” he says. “I know you’ve been working really hard on your shooting and it shows.”
“But we lost,” the daughter says.
“That happens, love,” the dad replies. “I can tell you and your whole team worked really hard.”
The girl nods and smiles a little smile.
Another player from the other team is out there, too. She scored two goals in the game, but she did miss a penalty kick that would have given her the hat trick. (“Hat trick” is sports talk for three goals in one game.) Her dad comes up to her and the first thing he says is, “What happened with that penalty kick? You have to do better with those.”
The daughter doesn’t say anything. Her teammates had just been giving her hugs and high fives in the locker room. She’d scored. Twice. They won. Handily. Now she just looks down at her feet.
—
How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.
That’s from our lesson in James today. In other words: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” is, well, unbiblical. Not only is James saying that words can hurt, he’s saying that even the smallest, the seemingly most insignificant words can cause huge damage.
But James is even more particular about who has the capacity to cause the most amount of damage. Not many of you should become teachers, my siblings, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
Those who teach, he says, have an even greater responsibility with how they use their words. And a lot of people teach: teachers, obviously; but also coaches; doctors; priests; parents. But it’s not just about the role, it’s about the power difference. It’s about who’s supposed to be speaking and who’s supposed to be listening in a certain situation. It’s about who has expertise and who doesn’t. It’s about who our culture assigns power to and who it doesn’t.
Most of all, it’s about who we’re taught to trust. That’s what authority is all about: who we trust to guide us and make decisions on our behalf. And teachers, in all their different forms, bear the great privilege and responsibility of authority.
Currently, a community of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are hunkered down, fearful for their lives and their children’s lives because of the words of a political authority.
The words spoken from this spot where I stand, from pulpits across the country, can inspire people to love their neighbors, no matter how they look or love or believe, to go out and seek understanding and to find ways to lift one another up. Or they can, as James says today, curse those who are made in the likeness of God, whether they’re undocumented, transgender, Muslim.
But I think some of the most powerful words, the words that shape who we are and how we live our lives, come from the authorities closest to us. The people we spend the most time with. A teacher’s encouragement can lead to a lifelong passion for music. But one careless comment can cut off a germinating love of chemistry before it even breaks the surface. And then there are parents.
Let’s get back to those two high school soccer players. I don’t know where the girl who scored the one goal, whose dad told her how awesome she played, ended up. Hopefully, she played soccer for as long as it gave her joy. Hopefully she carried that joy into the other parts of her life.
I do know about the other girl who scored two goals. It was me. I don’t remember who we were playing or how I scored the goals I scored. I just remember my dad criticizing me about the penalty kick I missed.
But let me tell you a different story. A year or two ago, my parents drove out from Wyoming to visit me. That’s kind of their thing: they love long-distance drives with the dogs. It was towards the end of their visit when my dad asked if I could take him to an auto parts store. “Sure,” I said. “Why?” It turned out he’d been checking over the truck for the drive home when he’d dropped the cap of the coolant tank into the guts of the engine, and he couldn’t find it anywhere. He needed a new cap.
As we were driving to the AutoZone, my dad could not stop beating himself up. “I was so stupid,” he kept saying. “I should have been paying more attention. I put the cap on the tank instead of on the edge like I usually do, and I just knocked it right off. I hate when I’m so careless.” It was a stream of self-berating consciousness the entire drive. If you heard his tone, you might have thought that he had totaled his truck because he fell asleep at the wheel, not that he’d knocked over and lost a $10 coolant tank cap.
In that moment, I thought about the penalty kick. I realized that after that game he was simply observing and judging things the way he was taught to observe and judge things. I wondered if when he brought home a painting he did in art class, one of his parents only pointed out the accidental smudge in the corner. If when he brought home a report card of almost all A’s and B’s they asked, “What happened with this one C?” What kind of words did he hear from his parents?
It made me wonder about what kind of words my grandparents heard from their parents. And what they heard from their parents.
But what struck me hardest about my dad was how he had internalized those words. They were no longer the words someone else said to him, they were the words that he said to himself. Honestly, it broke my heart.
How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.
What words have you been taught to repeat to yourself? When you’ve made a mistake? Or when you’ve done something amazing? Is the volume higher on one than the other.
No, really. Take a moment. Think about a time you made a mistake. Big, small, it doesn’t matter. What were the words that went through your mind? And how about when you really knocked something out of the park? You made an exceptional dinner that everyone raved about. Or you made a real difference at your job. Or you went far out of your way to support a friend in trouble. Did you stop to acknowledge your gifts, the way you impact others? Did you minimize what you did?
What words have you been taught to repeat to yourself?
As you can imagine, my internal dialogue hasn’t always been the kindest.
But something really little helped to change that for me. As most of you know, I’ve had a sitting meditation practice for a long time. The practice is simply to sit silently and notice and label what’s going through my mind. But my practice for a long time had been, “Welp, you’re thinking again. About remembering to buy half and half. Get it together, Sara. Oh, now you’re thinking about an email you need to send. God, you’re bad at this.”
So you can probably imagine what kind of words I was repeating to myself in other situations. That sermon could have been better. Why do you always forget to bring the reusable grocery bags? They’re right by the door.
But then I was reading Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart, and I came to this description of a man in Austin, Texas, who had come to one of her meditation retreats. He told her that whenever he found his mind wandering, he’d bring himself back by labeling the thought and following it up with “good buddy.” For example, in my case: “Thinking about buying half and half, good buddy.” “Thinking about sending an email, good buddy.”
I read that, and I thought, I think that’s how God talks to us. “Whoop, you’re veering off the path, good buddy. Let’s get you back on.” And when we reply with, “damn it, I did it again,” God’s like, “You’re alright, good buddy, you just need to alter your course a bit. Let me help with that.”
I started doing that first in my own meditation. Then it started to bleed into other parts of my life. I miss my exit on the highway, and I hear God saying, “It’s okay, good buddy, you can get off at the next one and turn around.” When the mic’s batteries went out during confirmations with the bishop last Sunday: “Take a deep breath, good buddy. I’m still here and I got you.”
What if you started modifying the words you repeat to yourself, the words you’ve been taught to repeat to yourself, with “good buddy” in God’s voice which is love? Maybe instead of setting forests ablaze, your words could quench a deep thirst. Maybe it’ll help you remember, through your biggest mistakes and greatest successes, that you are indeed made in the likeness of God.
Who knows? Couldn’t hurt to try, good buddy.
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