"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Now if that old schoolyard taunt is helpful to you, if it allows you to let an insult roll off your back like water off a duck, then please, please, please do not let anything that I am about to say take away the power of those words to protect you. When I was a kid, I found it very helpful to remember that expression that my teachers taught me when someone would say a mean thing or two to me.
But as I have gotten older I have found that that expression is not as helpful to me, because ultimately I find the expression rests upon something that is not true. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me", as if sticks and stones, the physical things in this world, have power, but words don't have power? I don’t think that is right. Our faith teaches us about the power of words. It's right there at the very beginning of the Bible, the very first chapter of the very first book: In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was a formless void and the Holy Spirit moved over the waters of the deep, God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light, and God said that it was good." God said, God spoke, God used words, and through the power of those words creation was birthed. Words have power.
We are reminded of that again in the beginning of John’s gospel, the prologue: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John goes on to say that that Word was Incarnate, was made flesh, was birthed, in the person of Jesus Christ, that Word then went on to die on the cross and to rise again on the third day for us and for our salvation. The power of word.
Word is the power to create, the power of creation, and word has the power to save, the power of salvation. It is with that understanding of that background that James comes to us in our Epistle reading today, and warns us to be careful with our words, be mindful about the words that we use. Because that creative power of words can easily become a destructive power of words. Words wrongly spoken can be like a fire, like a wildfire that rushes through a forest, that rushes through a town and takes lives. We don't have to look any farther than this pandemic of the last eighteen months, to see the power of words, especially the destructive power of words. The crisis we find ourselves in right now is a crisis of not enough people being vaccinated, and not enough people are vaccinated because of the power of words, the lies and the misinformation. Misinformation is lies lesser cousin. They both have been powerful enough to keep people from getting vaccinated. We have heard so many stories of people on their hospital deathbeds saying I wish I had gotten the vaccine, but I had heard something about it, how it is not safe, or not effective, or how it is actually harmful. All of those words, all of those lies and misinformation, kept people from getting vaccinated and it has taken lives. Words are powerful . They have the power to create and the power to destroy.
As followers of Jesus Christ who taught us to love our neighbor, we have to be mindful of our words, and use the power of those words in love to help create a world in that love. We need to use the words that we share with people to bring about hope in people's lives. We need to use the words in grace and mercy and kindness. We need to be careful with our words and tap into the creative power and not the destructive power of them, to tap into the salvific power of them and not the power they have to imprison or to shackle. Words have power so we, my friends in Christ, need to use those words appropriately in love.
AMEN.
