The Tongue of a Teacher

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 50: 4-9 and James 3: 1-12 Sermon Title: The Tongue of a Teacher Preached on September 12, 2021 Many years ago, in some far-off place, the town gossip was called to the church by the priest. He handed her a feather pillow and asked her to go to the church tower to empty it out, which she did. She stood in the tower and watched as the feathers were caught by the wind and swept through the streets. Then she returned to the priest with the empty pillowcase, and he asked her to go and collect all the feathers. Insisting that it was impossible, the priest then told her that her words are no different. “Once they leave your mouth they are beyond your control,” he said. “Doing good or evil, they are caught by the wind to be swept through the streets and can no more be collected again then the feathers of a pillow, so you must be careful what you say,” the priest said. The book of James reminds us of this same truth. “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Why? Because words have power. As a bit guides a horse, As a rudder steers a ship, As a forest is set ablaze by a small fire, So, the tongue, a small member of the body, boasts of great exploits. Think about it. Did you see it in last Sunday’s paper? The Atlanta Journal Constitution told four stories of 9/11 twenty years later. After the planes hit the Twin Towers and we all were so desperately consumed with fear and anger, an Iranian American teenager named Jalal wrote in her Winnie the Pooh journal, “I hate those terrorists.” Only then, she heard the words of her classmates, her friend’s parents, her teachers, who made jokes about bombing the middle east back to the stone age to put an end to all those barbaric people, and she felt lumped in with the very people she hated. You remember. The FBI reported a spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes following 9/11. In Columbia, Tennessee where we lived before coming back here, someone burned the Mosque to the ground. This is the power of words. Words like Muslim or Arab. Spoken by the tongue of a teacher who misuses her words. It’s true. And that was a day that should really make us think about the power of words spoken by a teacher. Yesterday, on the 20th anniversary of September 11th, 2001, when what we thought would never happen did, so many names were read that it took more than two hours to read them all. The Marietta Kiwanis Club put up an American flag for each one at the base of Kennesaw Mountain. Each person who was killed when airplanes were turned to weapons by men who were told by their teachers that we were not humans, but infidels. This is the power of words. Words like infidel. Spoken by the tongue of a teacher. Such a word as that can make a student forget that people are people and that all life is sacred. Yet still today it happens again, for teachers still speak without wisdom or love. So, as hospitals fill up beyond capacity I ask you to remember how many told us that this virus isn’t even real, how the vaccine has microchips in it, or that it will make you vote for democrats. Just think about how someone got the rumors started, first that bleach will cure you, then that horse de-wormer will knock it out, and some people actually tried it. This is the power of words. Words like COVID-19. Spoken by the tongue of a teacher, that end up killing people. Therefore, teachers will be judged with greater strictness because people will do what they say, even when they’re wrong. James is harsh on this point. But James is right. Once the words are out of our mouths there’s no getting them back in, any more than toothpaste can be shoved back inside a toothpaste tube or feathers back into a pillow. Once the words are out of our mouths, they are swept up by the wind and take on a life of their own. And so, “The tongue is a fire,” the book of James says. “Sticks and stones will break your bones but words…” words set the world on fire. And the words we speak, reveal the state of our souls. James says that with the tongue: 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 saltwater yield fresh. That’s just not how it works, so if your words set the world on fire, what is the state of your soul? If your words tear people down, how broken is your heart? If you don’t speak words of love, does Christ reside there within you? Do you know the expression, “if you don’t have anything nice to say come sit by me?” Sometimes we’re that way, and so James asks us as well as our teachers: Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Which will it be? Who are you? For if you’re both, expect them to lose trust in the well. This summer I started a family book club. This is a good thing to do if you want your children to hate you, make them read books during summer vacation, but I did it anyway. We all read three books together, just three. I researched good chapter books for 10- and 12-year-olds and came up with the list. Sara got the books from the library, and we read them together. The best was a book called, From the Desk of Zoey Washington, by Janae Marks. I highly recommend it, and I tell you about it now, in this context of how we use our words, because Zoey Washington really needed a friend, but she couldn’t trust the person who was supposed to be her best friend. She had decided to audition for a baking contest called the Kids Bake Challenge, and she wished she could talk to Trever about recipes, but she couldn’t. It’s the summer before seventh grade and she wanted to talk to Trever about what seventh grade would be like, but she couldn’t. Then she received a letter from her biological father who had never been a real presence in her life because he’d been arrested before she was born and was still in prison, but she couldn’t talk to Trever about it, because one day she stayed home sick from school and overheard Trever talking to some of his basketball friends about her, and it wasn’t good. Of course, this is how it is for us sometimes. We want acceptance, we feel pressure, so we yield saltwater. On the other hand, the Prophet Isaiah, in our First Scripture Lesson, testified to one who has been given the tongue of a teacher, “that he may know how to sustain the weary with a word.” How does he do it? Well, listen to what happened to him: He gave his back to those who struck him. His cheeks to those who pulled out his beard. He did not hide his face from insult and spitting. No, his face was set like flint, standing before our adversaries, confronting the evil doers, because you matter more to him than his own comfort. You matter more to him than his own advancement. You and your welling being matter more to him than his own wellbeing. Have you ever had a teacher like that? I told you already that yesterday the Marietta Kiwanis Club organized an event to remember all those who were killed September 11th, 2001. In addition to having a flag at the base of Kennesaw Mountain, each victim’s name was read. So many were the names that they took more than two hours to read them all. In a tragic way, this event testified to the terrible power that the tongue of a teacher wields. One teacher’s words can lead to the death of so many people that all their names can’t be read in two hours. It took two different readers just to get through the A’s. And those whose last name began with A weren’t just Adams or Abernathy, but Abdula and Anchundia. These were names that the Kiwanian’s practiced before they read, and my 5th grade teacher, Debbie McCracken was one of them. She pronounced each name so perfectly that it was as though she had said each one 1,000 times before, and this point is what I want to emphasize: While one teacher lumped them all together and called them all infidel, my teacher so honored each one as to practice saying their names. This wasn’t the first time, either. I wonder how many names she remembered in her years as a teacher. I don’t know, but she looked into my eyes yesterday and I knew that this teacher saw me. She said the 10-year-old boy she knew was still in there. “Maybe there’s less hair on his head, but he’s still in there.” You see, she saw me as a person, and she called me by name. This too is the power of words. Words like your name. Remembered and written on the heart of the teacher, said again and again, so that you know you are more than a number. You are not a tool to advance an agenda. You matter more than a vote, a dollar, or a favor, and your name is written on the heart of the God who chose to suffer for you, because it was better for Him to suffer than to conform to this broken world. Remember that. Remember that there is tremendous power in those words which remind us of each other’s humanity. Words like faith. Words like hope. Words like love. There is power enough in those words to change the world, and to set it on fire with the power of God. May it be so. Amen.