Lethal Weapon
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
For Sundays In Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany
A popular series of movies has been the Lethal Weapon series. You might remember that in the series Mel Gibson plays a semi-unbalanced police officer named Riggs. Riggs is a capable detective but occasionally he goes berserk and mentally flips out. He's called a lethal weapon because you never know when he's going to go off.
Each of us has the potential to become a "lethal weapon." We possess within ourselves a weapon against which there is little insurance others can take out. This weapon enables us to engage in moral hit-and-run tactics. With this weapon we can engage in the sabotage of helpless victims. Anyone we touch with this weapon is in great danger. It can kill spiritually, socially, and even physically. This weapon acts with deadly destructiveness. No age group is untouched, no character immune, and no life safe from it. This weapon is gossip.
The little sing-song ditty is sometimes glibly mouthed: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me."
Let's not believe that for a minute. Words can be lethal weapons. Words can hurt us! The Bible, rather correctly, has much to say about gossip. James talks about how difficult it is to tame the tongue and calls it "a restless evil, full of deadly poison."
Jesus himself talked about gossip: "Why do you see the tiny little speck that is in your brother's eye and not see the huge beam that is in your own eye. You hypocrite!" Time and time again Jesus stated, "You have heard it said ... but I say to you ..." and "Blessed are you when people falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me."
Apparently gossip has always been a lethal weapon. Margaret Johnstone1 once told of an individual she knew who had actually been killed by gossip. A ten-year-old child had as cause of death: general peritonitis, ruptured appendix, and malicious gossip.
Some tests on the child revealed peritonitis. The doctor said the appendicitis was bound to recur. He advised an appendectomy and scheduled a date for the operation.
Two days before the child was to enter the hospital, his mother went to a dinner party. She returned visibly upset. "What's wrong, Helen?" her husband asked.
She responded: "John, we simply cannot have Doc do that surgery."
"Not have Doc? Are you out of your mind? Why, he's been our doctor for years."
"I know, but wait until I tell you what Marsha told me, and she ought to know. Her mother keeps house for Doc. Well, since Doc's wife died, he's not been himself. Marsha's mother says that even though he puts up a good front to his patients, he's having a nervous breakdown. Not that I'm surprised, John, after all Doc's been through. But our baby, John! Can we let anybody who might go out of his mind operate on our child?"
The next morning John canceled the surgery. The child seemed better. No use hurting Doc's feelings by consulting another physician. So months passed. One night the child started screaming. He was rushed to the hospital. There was no time to waste. Doc tried to save him but it was too late. The child died two days later.
At the funeral, Marsha was among the mourners. After it was over Helen went up to her and said: "I don't care what your mother says about Doc. John and I think he's a wonderful physician. No person could have done more for little Jackie."
"Why, whatever makes you say that?" exclaimed Marsha. "I've always said Doc was tops. Oh," she added as the recollection appeared, "do you mean that business about a year ago? I meant to tell you. There was nothing to it." Then, she dealt the final blow: "After all, Helen, you know Mother and her tongue."
Why do people let loose this lethal weapon? Lest we blunder into a misconception, let me tell you that the most vicious gossip tends to be spread by men, not women. Why do we humans tend to manufacture and spread unfounded gossip?
Let me suggest four motivations2 why people victimize themselves and others. All of us have a desire for excitement. Most of us are rather bored with life. It takes more and more to get us excited. In fact, the church viewed boredom as one of the Seven Deadly sins. To be bored is "to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general" and most of all, your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about since you yourself are not worth getting excited about. The number one complaint of students at Manhattan College is: "Boredom -- there's nothing to do." As Fred Buechner says, "You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it."3 Gossip stirs things up.
Secondly, we all have a desire for attention. Those who gossip are attention seekers. The concern for self-interest as you and I gossip outweighs our concern for the plight of the people about whom we gossip. We don't have the slightest intention of helping the person about whom we gossip. It's merely an attention-grabbing device for ourselves.
Thirdly, there is a desire for prestige. Most gossipers have a tremendous inferiority complex. "I know something you don't know." It bolsters our self-importance.
Finally, consider the desire for security. We think by ripping to shreds someone else we can make ourselves secure. This happens frequently in the world of politics. The past decade has spawned a new term, "disinformation." What it means is that lacking security a person leaks out to the media the version of truth he or she wants known, and suddenly that other person, that idea, and that institution are utterly destroyed. The gossip defeats them at a distance. We've elevated gossip to politically acceptable behavior. Disinformation?
So what do we do? There are three phases to gossip: the telling, the hearing, and the retelling. You and I can do little to stop the telling of gossip. There are too many bored, inferior-feeling, attention-seeking, insecure people in the world.
Gossip will continue to be told. And there's little we can do to stop hearing it. People will gather together and talk. But we don't have to retell what we hear. We can stop its spread. And to do that, the scriptures can help us.
A Christian person should never be bored with life. To be given the gift of life is the image of God. We have a purpose in life -- to finish off God's creation. We have a memory, an imagination, and an ability to love, care, and sacrifice. We are on this earth as a privilege. One out of five million sperm swam its size equivalent from North Carolina to Oregon, upstream, to fertilize an egg and one egg only or you and I wouldn't even be here, someone else would. We should thank our creator each day for the sheer excitement of being here.
We certainly don't have to be interested only in ourselves to grab attention. When we hear of another's misfortune, true or not, we should pray for them, not talk about them. Jesus is right -- in the long run, there can be no real joy for anybody until finally there is joy for us all.
You and I should never have an inferiority complex. Through Christ we have become sons and daughters of God. Is there anything more important a person could hope to be? The Son of God laid down his life for us. We can have a personal relationship with God. Is there any greater security than eternal life?
We have a high calling. Return good for evil, humility for boasting, and silence for falsehood. It could be the start of a whole new life for us.
As one reads the scriptures, it is sometimes difficult to separate those issues which are timeless from those that are time-conditioned. Such is not the case with this text from James. Control of the tongue is, perhaps, a bigger problem in today's society than it was in the society in which the early church existed.
Our society's images and language are devoured by references to male and female anatomy, human excrement, the biological urges of someone with references to their mother, a four-letter word for copulation, or the insistence that God's last name is "damn." And yet we are the people who think we are going to portray the typically happy American family at some point in the future with children who have their lives all together. We'll be parents who are strong and wise, noble in our words and actions, we think.
Yet our values are expressed in terms of images and language. These things, not the material constructs of life, provide human solidarity. Our children will look up to and learn the language our culture transmits to them.
James concludes his treatise on the tongue by referring to images drawn from the Old Testament stories of creation. The author moves from the taming of the animals, birds, reptiles, and creatures of the sea to the cursing of fellow humans who have been created in God's likeness. The image presented contains a profound theological statement.
One of the amazing claims of the Bible's account of creation is that humans as well as all of life were created by God's word. God spoke and things were created. God's word stirred life into being. The Bible also maintains that we are to be co-creators of our history with God, having dominion over our time on this earth. Our words, then, help create our lives. Our words have us in them. They tell people who we are. Words are incarnate. They flesh out who we are and how we live, our attitude toward others and even ourselves. As John said, "In the beginning was the Word and it became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth." Words do have a tendency to become flesh and dwell among us. When our language is full of virtue and nobility, those words move us closer to the gentleness of spirit by which we become fully human. Our words become flesh. When our language is full of profanity, and four-letter references to sexual copulation or human waste, then those words, too, become flesh.
The tongue can become a lethal weapon that can destroy us.
____________
1. Margaret Blair Johnstone, Create Your Own Tomorrow (Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, 1950), pp. 163-165. I transposed some of the story. The illustration is hers.
2. Ibid., pp. 167-168.
3. Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 142.
Each of us has the potential to become a "lethal weapon." We possess within ourselves a weapon against which there is little insurance others can take out. This weapon enables us to engage in moral hit-and-run tactics. With this weapon we can engage in the sabotage of helpless victims. Anyone we touch with this weapon is in great danger. It can kill spiritually, socially, and even physically. This weapon acts with deadly destructiveness. No age group is untouched, no character immune, and no life safe from it. This weapon is gossip.
The little sing-song ditty is sometimes glibly mouthed: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me."
Let's not believe that for a minute. Words can be lethal weapons. Words can hurt us! The Bible, rather correctly, has much to say about gossip. James talks about how difficult it is to tame the tongue and calls it "a restless evil, full of deadly poison."
Jesus himself talked about gossip: "Why do you see the tiny little speck that is in your brother's eye and not see the huge beam that is in your own eye. You hypocrite!" Time and time again Jesus stated, "You have heard it said ... but I say to you ..." and "Blessed are you when people falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me."
Apparently gossip has always been a lethal weapon. Margaret Johnstone1 once told of an individual she knew who had actually been killed by gossip. A ten-year-old child had as cause of death: general peritonitis, ruptured appendix, and malicious gossip.
Some tests on the child revealed peritonitis. The doctor said the appendicitis was bound to recur. He advised an appendectomy and scheduled a date for the operation.
Two days before the child was to enter the hospital, his mother went to a dinner party. She returned visibly upset. "What's wrong, Helen?" her husband asked.
She responded: "John, we simply cannot have Doc do that surgery."
"Not have Doc? Are you out of your mind? Why, he's been our doctor for years."
"I know, but wait until I tell you what Marsha told me, and she ought to know. Her mother keeps house for Doc. Well, since Doc's wife died, he's not been himself. Marsha's mother says that even though he puts up a good front to his patients, he's having a nervous breakdown. Not that I'm surprised, John, after all Doc's been through. But our baby, John! Can we let anybody who might go out of his mind operate on our child?"
The next morning John canceled the surgery. The child seemed better. No use hurting Doc's feelings by consulting another physician. So months passed. One night the child started screaming. He was rushed to the hospital. There was no time to waste. Doc tried to save him but it was too late. The child died two days later.
At the funeral, Marsha was among the mourners. After it was over Helen went up to her and said: "I don't care what your mother says about Doc. John and I think he's a wonderful physician. No person could have done more for little Jackie."
"Why, whatever makes you say that?" exclaimed Marsha. "I've always said Doc was tops. Oh," she added as the recollection appeared, "do you mean that business about a year ago? I meant to tell you. There was nothing to it." Then, she dealt the final blow: "After all, Helen, you know Mother and her tongue."
Why do people let loose this lethal weapon? Lest we blunder into a misconception, let me tell you that the most vicious gossip tends to be spread by men, not women. Why do we humans tend to manufacture and spread unfounded gossip?
Let me suggest four motivations2 why people victimize themselves and others. All of us have a desire for excitement. Most of us are rather bored with life. It takes more and more to get us excited. In fact, the church viewed boredom as one of the Seven Deadly sins. To be bored is "to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general" and most of all, your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about since you yourself are not worth getting excited about. The number one complaint of students at Manhattan College is: "Boredom -- there's nothing to do." As Fred Buechner says, "You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it."3 Gossip stirs things up.
Secondly, we all have a desire for attention. Those who gossip are attention seekers. The concern for self-interest as you and I gossip outweighs our concern for the plight of the people about whom we gossip. We don't have the slightest intention of helping the person about whom we gossip. It's merely an attention-grabbing device for ourselves.
Thirdly, there is a desire for prestige. Most gossipers have a tremendous inferiority complex. "I know something you don't know." It bolsters our self-importance.
Finally, consider the desire for security. We think by ripping to shreds someone else we can make ourselves secure. This happens frequently in the world of politics. The past decade has spawned a new term, "disinformation." What it means is that lacking security a person leaks out to the media the version of truth he or she wants known, and suddenly that other person, that idea, and that institution are utterly destroyed. The gossip defeats them at a distance. We've elevated gossip to politically acceptable behavior. Disinformation?
So what do we do? There are three phases to gossip: the telling, the hearing, and the retelling. You and I can do little to stop the telling of gossip. There are too many bored, inferior-feeling, attention-seeking, insecure people in the world.
Gossip will continue to be told. And there's little we can do to stop hearing it. People will gather together and talk. But we don't have to retell what we hear. We can stop its spread. And to do that, the scriptures can help us.
A Christian person should never be bored with life. To be given the gift of life is the image of God. We have a purpose in life -- to finish off God's creation. We have a memory, an imagination, and an ability to love, care, and sacrifice. We are on this earth as a privilege. One out of five million sperm swam its size equivalent from North Carolina to Oregon, upstream, to fertilize an egg and one egg only or you and I wouldn't even be here, someone else would. We should thank our creator each day for the sheer excitement of being here.
We certainly don't have to be interested only in ourselves to grab attention. When we hear of another's misfortune, true or not, we should pray for them, not talk about them. Jesus is right -- in the long run, there can be no real joy for anybody until finally there is joy for us all.
You and I should never have an inferiority complex. Through Christ we have become sons and daughters of God. Is there anything more important a person could hope to be? The Son of God laid down his life for us. We can have a personal relationship with God. Is there any greater security than eternal life?
We have a high calling. Return good for evil, humility for boasting, and silence for falsehood. It could be the start of a whole new life for us.
As one reads the scriptures, it is sometimes difficult to separate those issues which are timeless from those that are time-conditioned. Such is not the case with this text from James. Control of the tongue is, perhaps, a bigger problem in today's society than it was in the society in which the early church existed.
Our society's images and language are devoured by references to male and female anatomy, human excrement, the biological urges of someone with references to their mother, a four-letter word for copulation, or the insistence that God's last name is "damn." And yet we are the people who think we are going to portray the typically happy American family at some point in the future with children who have their lives all together. We'll be parents who are strong and wise, noble in our words and actions, we think.
Yet our values are expressed in terms of images and language. These things, not the material constructs of life, provide human solidarity. Our children will look up to and learn the language our culture transmits to them.
James concludes his treatise on the tongue by referring to images drawn from the Old Testament stories of creation. The author moves from the taming of the animals, birds, reptiles, and creatures of the sea to the cursing of fellow humans who have been created in God's likeness. The image presented contains a profound theological statement.
One of the amazing claims of the Bible's account of creation is that humans as well as all of life were created by God's word. God spoke and things were created. God's word stirred life into being. The Bible also maintains that we are to be co-creators of our history with God, having dominion over our time on this earth. Our words, then, help create our lives. Our words have us in them. They tell people who we are. Words are incarnate. They flesh out who we are and how we live, our attitude toward others and even ourselves. As John said, "In the beginning was the Word and it became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth." Words do have a tendency to become flesh and dwell among us. When our language is full of virtue and nobility, those words move us closer to the gentleness of spirit by which we become fully human. Our words become flesh. When our language is full of profanity, and four-letter references to sexual copulation or human waste, then those words, too, become flesh.
The tongue can become a lethal weapon that can destroy us.
____________
1. Margaret Blair Johnstone, Create Your Own Tomorrow (Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, 1950), pp. 163-165. I transposed some of the story. The illustration is hers.
2. Ibid., pp. 167-168.
3. Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 142.
