"Speech of substance, weighted with love"

Sermon, St. Andrew’s, Sedona,

Proper 19, Year B

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And 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. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue-- a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.  --James 3:1-12

Have you ever dealt with a bully before?  Not just from being bullied yourself, but suppose you were in a position of power, and had to deal with a bully.  Have you ever watched a bully try to get out of trouble?[1] One of the first things you might notice is that the bully will try to minimize the harassment.  You’ll recognize it immediately because of the language and tactics they use:

“It was just a joke.”  The use of the word just minimizes the impact and tries to paint the harassment as a small matter.  Calling the harassment a joke tries to frame the entire matter as if the person who was being bullied simply mistook the bully’s intention.  Or the bully wants you to focus on the intention, not the reaction, as a way of avoiding blame.

“You are being too sensitive.”  This is often a silencing mechanism that a bully uses.  It is a tactic that attempts to make the mistreatment normal.  “It makes it sound like there is some line [at] which it is alright to be sensitive, but that the current incident does not cross that line,” as interpreted by the bully, or others who share the bully’s worldview.[2]  It attempts to rest the problem on the person being bullied, who the bully tries to define as too weak to handle the real world or the supposedly objective truth that a bully claims special access to.

Relatedly:  “I’m sorry you were offended.” This is the great non-apology, right?  “The aim is not to atone for a wrong, but to reduce damage to the person’s image. Repentance is feigned or ignored, contrition held at arm’s length. Non-apologizers…are more likely to implicitly blame the [person receiving the non-apology] for getting upset, manufacturing offense, or interpreting the incident in a way that reflects badly on the wrongdoer.”  The person delivering it can move on, professing the matter dealt with—a routine step in self-mythologizing narratives [that will make them feel better about themselves—meanwhile] recipients of the unapology feel continued frustration, even disgust, at the failure to accept responsibility.”[3]

These are incredibly common sayings.  Even if you might not fall into the category of ‘bully,’ you might use this kind of minimizing language because it’s the cultural mess we exist within that conditions our reactions to things. 

And there is a difference between a bully and a person making a mistake— a difference between a genuine expression of remorse and an insincere fauxpology designed to get someone’s conscience off the hook.  The difference comes down to such things as acknowledging the offense clearly, explaining it effectively, restoring the offended parties’ dignity, assuring them they’re safe from a repeat offense, expressing humility (which shows understanding of their suffering, and making appropriate reparation).

But a bully will hold to the tactics above, and that is if they do not simply persist in abusing others with no attempt to minimize their acts.  There are also the people who proudly proclaim they are simply and always offensive, as though that is enough to excuse all manner of abuse they mete out to others.[4]

The minimizing tactic is interesting to me, as is the use of language and words as a weapon.  The use of minimizing language is an attempt by the person who uses language as a weapon—think of people who rightfully get called out on their use of racist, sexist, or homophobic language—they use it to distance themselves from any responsibility for the power and consequences associated with what they say or the words they use.

In other words, bullies know full well how powerful their choices of words are, but they try to deny that their words have any power beyond their mere existence.  Bullies choose words explicitly for the pain they know the words can cause, and then blame their victims when the words do their expected damage by claiming the victim gave the words too much power.  The bully counts on a simultaneous reliance upon and denial of the power of language, and gambles that bystanders will agree with the bully’s denial of the power of words.

This is part of the cultural context we live in.  We live with the knowledge of very public cases detailing how sustained campaigns of bullying have led to teens committing suicide—and leads many others to depression.  We live in a world in which we’ve seen how carefully orchestrated propaganda campaigns against groups help create the conditions through which their mass murder becomes possible (think about how Germans referred to Jews as rats and Rwandan Hutus referred to the Tutsis as roaches for years before the slaughters began—a pattern of dehumanization).  

The very reason that the classical rhyme we learned as children—that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will never hurt us—the very reason that has to be a constantly repeated mantra is because it flies in the face of this truth:  our realities (even our obscured realities), the worldview we inhabit, our notions of our very self, are constituted and expressed by words and language.  “Every choice of phrasing and spelling and tone and timing carries countless signals and contexts and subtexts and more!”[5] That nursery rhyme may be helpful for a time in someone’s life—to help not take the hateful words of another as the truth.  But the nursery rhyme is dead wrong in trying to say that words have no power.   And this notion that our speech is so easily rendered useless is one that James, who wrote the epistle lesson we heard this morning, would have found disastrously untrue.

Our reading from James comes halfway through his letter—and his attention to right speech is one of the three marks of true religion that he lays out at the beginning when he writes that:

“If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”[6]

For James, an unbridled tongue is much more than a local problem characterized by a little gossip—though it can include that.  He considers an unbridled tongue to be an almost cosmic force set on evil. We see that in his conviction that the tongue is a fire capable of setting the whole cycle of nature ablaze.[7]  Given how speech can be used for significant evil—such as setting up the conditions for genocide, or quite literally bullying someone to death, or contributing of the marginalization of other groups (James is particularly concerned with the wellbeing and the mistreatment of the poor)—it is not so hard to see James’s point.[8]  Nor does it help that we may use words and language in such harmful ways, and try to deny that our words have any power.

We live as witnesses to a society that rewards significant attention to the most extreme voices. I don’t think I have to point to the election cycle as an example, but there it is.  We witness bullies use the most hurtful language they can muster against others while claiming that the fault for the reaction belongs to the person who was just insulted.  We witness promises being broken.  It is unfortunately not hard to find Christians who participate in this kind of behavior.  In cases in which there is an argument about removing a display of religion from the public square, you would not have to look very hard in any online comment section or letters to an editor to find a Christian issuing a death threat, or condemning an opponent to hell.

We witness the power of language, and we may lament that in so much of our discourse there is power to destroy, to divide, to berate.  We might actually prefer that words could be emptied of their power.  Sometimes it may even feel like we do that when we stop listening, seeking a break from the non-stop negativity, It may be tempting to fall silent, unplug, and retreat into shells we create for our own mental health.  There is some necessity in that, given how it helps to detox from the worst discourse the world can throw at us so that we have room to see the truth that God reveals to us more clearly.   It’s like recovering from drinking too much brackish water. 

But, there is something else we can do, something other than retreat.  While James has been interpreted to advocate silence, it is more accurate to say that the act of speech is a Christian practice and that careful attention to speech is important.  For James, The life of faith is one that integrates all parts of oneself toward perfection in God’s image.  That is what he means when he writes that it should not be the case that blessing and cursing comes from the same mouth, as fresh water and brackish water cannot come from the same spring.

James means that our progression into the life of God will be characterized by our ability to offer the world wellsprings of that which refreshes instead of that which sickens.  It means offering speech of substance, weighted full of healing and love.

Here are some ways that might look:

·        It might mean remembering the power of our own words, and not attempting to minimize their impact.  If we think we’ll have to walk back something we are about to say, consider whether those words need to be spoken. 

·        It might look like holding onto our own criticism of others until we can find a way to do so in ways that build others up instead of tear them down.

·        It will look like apologizing—actually apologizing—for when we hurt others.

·        It might look like holding a bully accountable for the power of their words and the harm they cause.  It means not buying into the lies they use to try to minimize the impact of their words.

·        Simultaneously, we must offer comfort and support for those who are bullied, so they might experience the reality of love, healing, and worth that bullies would deny to them.

Sisters and brothers, there is a thirst in this world for something better than our society can give.  So many people can tell stories of showing up with cups in hand, seeking a spring of fresh water, only to end up with mouthfuls of salt water.[9]  How might we be springs of refreshment in this world, offering refreshment borne of the love of God?  How might we, knowing the power of our words, offer speech of substance that heals the wounds and oppressions the world inscribes onto us and others?

---

[1] Well, election season is upon us, so you’ll get some practice! 

^[2]  "You're Too Sensitive." Geek Feminism Wiki. Accessed September 11, 2015. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/You're_too_sensitive.

[3] Carey, Stan. "Sorry Not Sorry: The Many Names for Non-Apologies." Accessed September 11, 2015. http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/11/20/sorry_not_sorry_non_apology_fauxpology_unpology_and_other_names_for_hollow.html.

[4] They might introduce themselves by telling you they are an asshole.  You will most likely quickly find this is true.

[5] Munroe, Randall. "I Could Care Less." Xkcd. Accessed September 12, 2015. http://xkcd.com/1576/.

[6] Jas 1:26-27.

[7] My appreciation to Barbara Brown Taylor for much of this phrasing, and her quoting of Luke Timothy Johnson’s commentary on the “letter of James,” (in The New Interpreters Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998, 12:204)).  Bartlett, David Lyon, and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary.  Year B Vol 2. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.

[8] See Jas 2.

[9] I owe this image to Barbara Brown Taylor, ibid.

Christians who like the Idea of Concentration Camps

There is a video that has been haunting me for the past eight days or so.  I’ll post the video below, but for the sake of context, I’d also like to mention that this video comes out of the past five weeks in which anti-lgbtq malice has gotten more press, either because homophobic churches are increasing their own rhetoric, or their normal homophobia is simply making it into the mainstream much faster.

For example, a preacher advocated physical abuse toward children.   Another suggested they go into what would be best described as concentration camps.   Another flat-out advocates a government extermination program.   And this last week a video surfaced of a church teaching/allowing a toddler to sing "Ain't no homos gonna get to Heaven".

I’ve written a short Christian response to homophobia/heterosexism that you can find on Facebook, so I will not repeat that response’s argument except to say the pastors linked above are peddling sickening stuff not worthy of the Gospel of Christ.

The video that has been haunting me is related to the sermon of Pastor Charles L. Worley who advocated putting gay and lesbian men and women into electrified fenced-off areas until they die.  As bad as that is, even more chilling and cringe-worthy is the video of Anderson Cooper interviewing a congregant of Worley's church.

(I do a "close viewing (?)" of the video, so it's up to you if you want to watch it now or return to it later.)

The rest of this post is my reflection about this video, which utterly fascinates me.  I'm broadly putting my reflections under the headings of "the failure and marginalization of Christian language" and "studies in how to cultivate the conditions for the elimination of entire peoples."

The utter failure and marginalization of Christian language

There reaches a point where Christian language--the language that Christians and the Church uses to describe reality--fails.  Part of this development is simply part of one generation passing on the language, propositions--and, more importantly, the unresolved questions--of the Faith to the next generation.  The next generation then has the task of making sense of and engaging the Faith in a way that is able to be heard in their own time and place.  This is a messy process and occurs unevenly.  It is work that is never finished because the world in which we live and move and have our being in relationship to God is always changing (which is why a Christian who claims to have all the answers is a liar).  Christian language fails when Christians give up the task of reinterpreting the tradition and do not bother to make it understandable to those outside the Church.

While we in the Church try to describe the reality we experience, other things are going on.  In this particular time in human history, it is increasingly clear that the "burden of proof lies on believers and the life they lead" in terms of whether the Faith adequately describes reality.  The Church is rightfully under the judgment of the world--and God--on this point, because it is the world--and God--that points to the Church's own inconsistencies and calls the Church to account.  The Church rightfully loses credibility in the world when the Church's language becomes incomprehensible to anyone but ourselves, and at the same time the transformation--and the reality we try to bear witness to--is not forthcoming. We forget that the Church must continually earn the right to speak about God. Further:

The weightiest criticisms of Christian speech and practice amount to this:  that Christian language actually fails to transform the world's meaning because it neglects or trivialized or evades aspects of the human.  It is notoriously awkward about sexuality; it risks being unserious about death when it speaks too glibly and confidently about eternal life; it can disguise the abiding reality of unhealed and meaningless suffering. [1]

I would also add that Christian language is also co-opted to legitimate terrible violence against a variety of "others."

As a result of the failure of Christian language, our preaching loses power.  A religion based on the living Word (logos) of God in Jesus Christ loses its ability to transform.  The Church becomes Godless.  (Ironically, God can still be found in the world where Christians may least expect to find God.)    The challenge for the Church is to not to simply learn the Church's own language about God and Jesus, but to find the words that make people capable of transforming and renewing the world through the enabling of the work of God.  In those words are where one will find the Gospel, and they may not mention God at all.

That is a lot of introductory material to make a simple point:  Christian language--and basic Christianity--fails in this video.

Okay. To the video. I think I've identified two major rhetorical tactics the congregant (Stacy) tries. The first tactic is to claim that the statement was taken out of context; this tactic is used in three different ways by Stacy. The first way was to try to say that Pastor Worley surely "would never want [imprisoning gays and lesbians in concentration camps] to be done." She then continues to say that people will take what he said and use it any way they want to.

Anderson then brings a powerful observation to Stacy: "You said he doesn't want it done, but [Worley] said that he wanted it done, and he said it from the pulpit." Anderson is making an interesting and appropriate move here. Anderson accords a great deal of respect to the pulpit, and assumes that what is said in the pulpit by a preacher are not idle words. I would hope most Christians would agree that the pulpit is not a place for idle, rambling thoughts.

Stacy counters with, "Maybe that's what [Worley] felt like should happen...but to make the short of it, yes, I agree with him." The tactic fails. Stacy then begins to imagine the Worley's scenario playing out. Homosexuals "would not get the message that that's wrong....you know...they can't reproduce and eventually they would die out."

So, Stacy started the interview by trying to say that Worley didn't literally mean to put homosexuals into concentration camps, then within thirty seconds she is agreeing with Worley and imagining such a future. The head shake and the "...you know..." in her thought and speech passes over the imagining of homosexuals being rounded up over months and years, transported under armed guard to a facility they would never leave. But maybe she isn't imagining it. Maybe her hope is that it would happen with no claim on her conscience or attention. It's probably much easier for her to simply imagine a future without homosexuals than think about how they would be made to disappear.

The second attempt at tactic one comes; Anderson forces her to go deeper into her agreement with Worley and imagine how the crackdown would work. I think Stacy knows at this point that she's in over her head. She becomes increasingly belligerent and defensive. Anderson asks if she really thinks imprisoning homosexuals would keep others from being born. She concedes that more homosexuals would be born to straight parents (and I don't think she really meant to do this; because for her homosexuality is a choice, not something you are born with). She now says that they just meant the imprisoned homosexuals would die. Then she reiterates that all of this is being taken out of context. "The main point is always the same." For Stacy, homosexuality is wrong.

Anderson then asks about other categories of sin from the Old Testament and whether the death penalty should be applied. Stacy stumbles to answer but eventually simply says "yes." Did she just agree to expand the death penalty to promiscuous girls, disobedient children, and adulterers? It seems to be the case.

The third attempt at tactic one comes next. Anderson (rightly) asks if putting people in electrified fences seems Christian. Stacy rolls her eyes. She bemoans that "people keep harping, harping, harping on the electric fence, this and that...It's about the homosexuals and it's [sic] wrong." So, another attempt at downplaying what was actually said. Anderson asks her to consider why people may think it is a rather big deal that one group of people wants to put another group of people into a concentration camp. The point seems lost on her. She retreats to saying that no one is actually going to put people (particularly homosexuals? hard to tell...) in fences and kill them. Anderson rightly points out that this happens to homosexuals in other countries, which does not faze her except to increase her defensiveness.

Tactic two immediately follows, and it's an appeal to authority. "You know what?  This is a pastor who speaks the word of god [intentionally lower-case]. Anybody can take it any way they want to and if they don't like it they don't have to...they can turn around and go on!" Stacy has had enough, she pulls the God card, and retreats into a world that cuts off conversation. Her language about God had failed, and she gave up.

So, how does Christian language fail in this video? In the past four months I've seen Christians attempt moves like Stacy's first tactic. It is a weird argument for someone of such a text-centric religion [2] to make: that what the pastor said was harmless or meaningless, nevertheless the congregation defends his/her belief and support of a harmless and meaningless statement. In other words, these Christians claim that which they hold dear is meaningless, yet it is treasured by them. One should not simultaneously say something is meaningless, yet of ultimate concern. A person can go on believing such a meaningless statement, but the question that immediately comes to my mind is why I or anyone else should give any type of credence or respect to a belief that its adherents claim is meaningless. I cannot respect a meaningless statement. If that is what Christian language comes to--insider jargon that has no power to transform and transmit faith, hope, and love--it should be treated as unserious. It already is treated that way by most of the world. And the irony of it all is that these Christians participate in fostering their own irrelevance.

The second way Christian language fails is related. Advocating locking people up in concentration camps is not the transmission of the Gospel, and in any case, it is not harmless. It's always good and appropriate to remind people that words do have meaning and consequence. It is scandalous that Christians have to be reminded of the power of words, particularity when Christians should always be able to be called to account for the words they use.

In the end, I'm left with the conflicting feelings that what I'm watching in the video is simultaneously Christian and un-Christian. The Gospel has not worked to convince these folks that advocating concentration camps is something to take seriously, to be apprehensive about, or fosters a need for their own repentance. Christianity becomes the shell in which they place their own hate, bravado, defensiveness, and insularity.  Christianity is in this case nothing but a pious wrapping around the demonic.  What is terrifying for me is that this goes under the banner of Christianity in popular conversation in America, that this video will far exceed the reach of the people like me who write to denounce it, and that Christianity will only be known by what it is supposedly against. 

How to cultivate the conditions for the elimination of entire peoples

One doesn't have to have spent a significant amount of one's academic career on genocide, holy war, and post-holocaust ethics to be disturbed by this video.  But I think it helps and it certainly colors my view of what is going on.  This is ironic to me, because disapproval of concentration camps through an academic lens is a place where a Christian concept is found in the world, and this disapproval is missing from churches where people want to put other humans into concentration camps.  Where Christian language fails, (finding God in) the world can provide the words.  As I watched the video, Daniel Goldhagen's work on eliminationist policies came to mind.  His work details five distinct ways of eliminating a population:  transformation, repression, expulsion, prevention of reproduction, and extermination.  Pastor Worley's vision meets all five of the criteria of an eliminationist stance.  For Pastor Worley and Stacy, if homosexuals do not act the way they are supposed to (ultimatum of transformation), then they should be rounded up against their will (repression), placed in concentration camps (expulsion), where they "cannot breed" (prevention of reproduction), to eventually die (extermination).

There are a few points in the video where what Anderson was saying wasn't on a level Stacy could understand.  One of those levels was the gravity of someone advocating a dream of a group of people dying out in a concentration camp in a world in which it has already happened, is happening, and will happen again.  Elimination of populations is a real thing, and I think Stacy exemplifies the conditions of individuals that show how it can happen.  Like many others, Stacy doesn't think eliminations are possible, but they are.  The Third Reich proved it.  Rwanda proved it. [3]  Like many others, she will think the population to be eliminated--in this case homosexuals--deserve what they will get, particularly by refusing to change to meet the dominant groups demands and expectations.  As exemplified by Pastor Worley, there is a significant amount of disgust, to the point where imagining homosexuals' existence and its consequences (like, say, a kiss between two men) is deeply and personally offensive and repugnant.  These homophobic folks see the lgbtqia community as more than in error or sin.  They see gay folk as contaminating, an abomination.  This level of hatred, fear, and disdain is familiar to marginalized groups who have faced oppression from dominant groups. 

I cannot stress this enough:  Pastor Worley said he was not joking; Stacy eventually admitted that she agreed with him; there were plenty others in the congregation saying 'amen' to what Worley was preaching.  There are people in this country who can imagine--and like the idea--of putting other groups of people into concentration camps.  This is not a small matter or a joke in a world that has seen such things happen.  It is odd but true that wanting to eliminate people and claiming it cannot happen is exactly how you go about eliminating a people.  It takes time and a complacent populace to create the conditions for an eliminationist policy.  I'm not willing to give these folks that opportunity.

This is not the kind of thing Christians should let pass in silence, which is a sort of consent.  Christians ought to be getting loud about the cultivation of this type of behavior in a church, and be quick to denounce anything that degrades others' very humanity.  Christian silence, particularly progressive Christians' silence, leaves a void where Christians who like the idea of concentration camps become the ones who define our faith for the rest of the world.  And that ain't the Gospel.

___________________________
[1] The three opening paragraphs under this heading are based on the essay "The Judgment of the World" by Rowan Williams, found in On Christian Theology. The quote is on page 39.
[2] Christianity is a "bookish" religion, but I also mean 'text' in a much broader way that includes a range of symbols and symbolic actions.
[3] To name two of many, many 20th century examples.