The power of words

September, Trinity 16: Isaiah 50:4-9a, James 3 :1-12 and Mark 8: 27-end

Some of the type-setting has gone awry this week: apologies!

Words have tremendous power.

Communicating meaning and purpose; stories, advice and wisdom.

Evoking feelings that enable us to imagine the lives of others, to stand in their shoes; to be a litter kinder.

Persuading us, with rhetorical flourish, to vote, to act, to change our mind; the messages that unite or divide communities.

Revealing our inner thoughts, ideas, hopes, wounds; with all the intimacy and

vulnerability that brings.

Words have the power to encourage or deceive; strengthen or undermine; and much else besides.

Words: spoken, heard, remembered.

The philosopher, mystic and social activist Simone Weil wrote a series of essays entitled The Power of Words.  She brings a moral clarity to the way in which language can be manipulated by the powerful and challenges us to think through the obligations we have to others. 

Born to agnostic Jewish parents in Paris in 1909, Weil was attracted to Christianity - to love of neighbour, divine love in affliction, to a radical self-emptying in love. Known to be both brilliant and eccentric, she was fully immersed (at some personal cost) in the political movements of the twentieth century until her death aged 34. 

In naming the ways in which order, equality, truth and liberty can make us human,

she says: 'There are certain words which possess, in themselves, when properly used, a virtue which illumines and lifts up towards the good'.

Words carry the gift and risk of influence. 

Isaiah, like Weil, leans on the power of language as virtue; on words which seek the good.

‘Sustain the weary with a word’, Isaiah writes, aware that such speech flows from God. The words on the teacher’s tongue flow from listening. Listening, like Weil, to the oppressed, but also to God. 

The word shared is not our own: no influencer hashtags or carefully branded messaging. The teacher is humble enough to listen - morning by morning, the ear awakens to God’s ways before a single word is said to another. 

When this teacher does speak, it’s not for self-advancement or to exert influence: they speak to minister to others; to those who have been wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world. 

Weariness creeps in on us: it might be personal circumstances, complex relationships, the responsibilities we carry; it might be daily struggles, bodily aches and the ways life can feel hard; or the wider anxieties about the world - living costs, climate change and conflict.

Support might come from councillors, teachers, carers or others, but what gift might a church community offer: sustaining the weary, sustaining each other, with a word of hope or joy, forgiveness or life even in the face of opposition?

The words of Isaiah do not just speak of practical pastoral wisdom - or of ways of grounding our human words in love divine. The passage we hear comes from a section known as the ‘servant song’ which has been interpreted as pointing to the nature of the Lord’s Messiah, to Jesus.

This is because Isaiah speaks not only of the opposition but of adversaries, disgrace, insults and spitting: a description taken up as Jesus describes the way that he is to walk; all that he bears in his body on the cross. 

The suffering servant does not depart from or give up on the task of bringing comfort, raising up the weary, bringing healing where there is brokenness. The source of such assurance is the same as the wisdom of the message: the Lord is the

helper. 

In today’s gospel, Jesus begins to teach his disciples about the way in which his identity as God’s Son, the servant and reconciler of all,  takes him to the place of suffering and rejection, death and resurrection.   For in this, love's redeeming work is done.

Jesus begins to open up this conversation with his disciples through a series of questions - first by asking them what the word on the street is about him. Then, as they exhaust that line of speculation and curiosity, he invites them to sit with that same question in their own hearts: who do they say that he is.

Peter with customary boldness dives in: he speaks the truth with conviction and instinct. He’s not overthinking the implications but expressing the hope he sees in Jesus, the trust that has built as he has been with him.

Jesus doesn’t allow that answer to be the full-stop at the end of the exchange. He

leads them into a place of more painful and costly teaching. The rebuke to Peter must have stung in that moment; but over time, Peter was to know the truth of this message. 

He knew it as he fled when Jesus was arrested; as he watched from the shadows and denied him as dawn broke. He knew it as the crown mocked and the soldiers pierced his side. He knew it as Jesus’ body was buried.

Peter dared to hope in life out of death when he heard rumours of an empty tomb and ran to see. He flung himself into this hope, the word of life which raises up the

weary when he saw his Lord on the lake side, and found himself recalled in love. 

As he learnt to love the questions as well as the answers; to allow Jesus into his heart, and to find there not a rational truth but a boundless, merciful and radical depth of love.  

Yet as he was called to love and feed the sheep of Jesus’ flock, Peter is also reminded that Jesus invites him to walk the way of the cross too. To follow this way of love was to lose life for his sake, for the sake of the good news of a love that wins, and thereby to save it.

Mark’s earliest hearers would have known how stark and fearful a challenge it was to take up the cross: it was a symbol of shame, condemnation and death. Yet as Jesus takes it up, he undermines the power of imperial Rome. 

Jesus spent his ministry bringing healing to people and relationships, binding up

broken hearts and feeding the hungry. He was concerned to alleviate suffering. To

walk in his way is to speak and act in such a way as to sustain the weary and

transform the status quo.

Pope Benedict said this: ‘Jesus from the throne of the cross welcomes every human being with infinite mercy.’

We are met with such mercy. To take up our own cross is to be agents of such mercy. To take it up on behalf of our beloved community and to know that the Lord we follow is with us step by step. 

It is trust that others will sustain us with their words too, so that we can remain

faithful in love. It is to return to God’s words of life given for us in Scripture,

embodied for us in bread and wine and stirred up in us by the Spirit. 

To follow Jesus is to choose to do the thing that exposes us to the risk of love and

mercy, rather than the thing that will save us from that burden of care, or preserve

our self-interest and comfort. 

To return to Weil: it is to recognise that our words - and our lives - possess in

themselves, when properly used, a virtue which illumines and lifts up towards the

good’. 

In his letter, James is encouraging his hearers to such a pattern of constancy and

consistency. He uses a range of images to remind us how our words have power -

that our speech can build up and sustain, or cause harm and diminish. 

We know that our tongues can bless and curse: that a moment's thought can give us the time we need to hold it in check; but that a moment’s frustration can lead us to utter words we regret. The tongue is part of our imperfect bodies [as the recent graffiti art opposite the church says, ‘only God is perfection!].

Perhaps our hope is in our accountability to each other: noticing who within our

community can help us grow together, rather than fragment into division. In our

life together may we, like Weil, find the ‘possibility of living divine love in the

midst of affliction’; in our life nourished by the blessing we find at our Lord’s table

may we find the fullness of joy - but also sustenance in suffering and compassion

for others. 

But we do not do this on our own. Our collect reminds us that we rely on the grace

and the power of God, and the Spirit’s life in us. As our post communion prayer puts it: love is the fulfilling of the law; may we love God with our whole hearts and our neighbours as ourselves. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2024

A kindness in God's justice

1 September, Trinity 14: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9, James 1:17-end 

& Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Do you remember any of your school rules?

Reminiscing with my sister, we recalled being allowed to go as far as Wathen’s sweet shop; but also being forbidden from eating in the street. 

We both remembered going to the fair at lunch time - waltzers, dodgems, the mexican hat - cash zipped into blazer pockets alongside pens, making it back just in time for the bell.  Maybe it wasn’t banned, maybe rules were flouted, or maybe it was an accepted tradition: who knows! 

We were definitely banned from ‘spinning out on cups of coffee’ in cafes which always seemed like a curious rule at that time as it didn’t seem a likely teenage temptation let alone habit.

Coffee cups: stock image

Fast Forward 30+ years and that rule has been dropped from the list - replaced by the more ambiguous yet weighty generic of pupils remembering ‘that they are representing the School in public areas’.

That said, working in cafes is now more normative - both socially acceptable on the one hand and an irritation to owners on the other if coffees are ‘spun out’ for hours. 

Rules and traditions are both given by communities and also form them.  Within schools, they’re designed to maintain discipline and provide structure to underpin an environment where learning can happen.  

It’s about more than that: some might be about ideas of etiquette, behaviour or personal development; others about protecting students from harm as part of safeguarding. The values that underpin the wider ethos might be political, social or religious - an overarching vision for human flourishing and fostering the common good. 

Our first reading sets statutes and ordinances within the context of establishing a settled community after a period of nomadic life as God’s people trekked through the wilderness. They were to be a covenant community shaped by obedience to the commandments. 

The ten commandments reflected a series of right relationships: loving God and loving one’s neighbour as oneself. They offered a framework which set boundaries on acceptable behaviour in worship and community.

Adherence to such teachings were to be a sign to others - who might find their way of life attractive, a means of stability and flourishing; a mark of wisdom and discernment.  Their life together was to reflect the nature of God: a Holy One who knows the thoughts of our hearts, beyond our comprehension yet the source of goodness, justice, rest and joy. 

Worship of this God - and the distinctive ways of this people - was to be passed down to future generations. Children would be taught these commandments - inhabiting a culture which set out how to show their love of the Holy One in worship and in their behaviour, honouring their obligations to their neighbour. 

There is wisdom and discernment in this - inviting us to consider our motivations for doing the ‘right thing’. Is it about compliance or how we feel - or pointing to the kind of God we trust in?

Yet overtime, as the community faced new challenges and influences, those commandments prompted further questions. Fresh guidance was needed - clarification, interpretations, case studies. 

All these things were ways of making sure that the holiness of God was honoured; that nothing impure would get in the way. Way of making sure the community was distinct: that food was safe to eat and that relationships were appropriate.

Every community does this. We have our rules which shape our culture and expectations.   Every church has its ‘normal’: but we’re also shaped by beliefs and traditions - about God and how we live together. 

Today Jesus is challenging his hearers to consider what flows from the heart. Do our attempts to live faithfully tempt us to judge others on externals? It’s easy for us to say ‘thank goodness we’re not like the Pharisees’ but we also have an opportunity to understand them - and in turn appreciate how Jesus’ words might challenge us.

The Pharisees took the call to be a holy nation very seriously. As the community settled into ordered patterns of worship, and sought to maintain a distinctive life, we can understand why the ritual of washing hands (done by the priests serving in the temple) might be extended to ordinary meal times as a way of marking it as sacred. 

Those additional traditions of the elders became increasingly important to maintaining their faith and way of life - particularly in exile, when reestablishing community afterwards or under Roman occupation as they then were. 

When they saw Jesus’ sitting lightly to some of those things with his disciples they were moved by fear that  it was a step towards undermining God’s law itself. 

Jesus’ words of reproach in response was perhaps undermining their expertise and seriousness: but rather an invitation to go deeper into. Jesus quotes Isaiah which teases out the distinction between keeping rules externally and neglecting our internal motivations. 

‘This people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me’. 

The external practices designed to demonstrate wisdom and discernment, to point others to God’s holiness and to be a blessing to others had become such a focus, that the life of the human heart had been neglected. 

The focus on the external left some excluded or marginalised - women or foreigners for example. Yet they were those about whom the commandments of God were also concerned. Love of neighbour included the widow, orphan and stranger. 

As people of faith we too want that commitment and trust to be reflected in the concrete realities of our lives. Sometimes we might be tempted to limit the scope of God’s grace - to think that some might be more or less deserving of that grace than others. 

As Faber’s famous hymn puts it, there is ‘a wideness in God’s mercy’ and a ‘kindness in God’s justice which is more than liberty’.  

Faithfulness to God’s ways is about loving God with all that we are - heart, mind, soul and strength - and also loving our neighbour as ourself. Sometimes as Faber continues ‘we make God’s love too narrow / by false limits of our own, / and we magnify its strictness / with a zeal God will not own.’

With the no nonsense pragmatism about the natural processes of digestion, Jesus stresses that nothing from outside of us can defile us. Instead look to our hearts: and the way bitterness or deceit, envy or pride, misdirected desires and selfish intent can take root there. What is in our hearts, can shape our thoughts, attitudes and actions, separating us from God and each other. 

Yet this is also good news: because God knows all the secrets of our hearts. In Jesus love divine is known in human flesh - the one who dares to embrace the outcast, raise up the lowly, restore the sick, challenge the powerful.  His life was given for all. There is welcome and grace, there is ‘mercy with the Saviour, there is healing in his blood’ as the hymn puts it. 

That good news does have a claim on our lives: faithfulness is about attending to our heart and reaching out to others with lives that have been shaped by the radical love of God given for us in Jesus Christ.  The breadth of such love is an invitation to rest on that assurance that ‘our lives would be illumined / by the presence of our Lord’. 

The letter of James leans into the lessons of such a way of faith and faithfulness: he too contrasts the gifts of grace and acts of love which come from God, and the desires that separate us from earth other,  the ways of death rather than life. How can we live as children of God, rather than as those shaped by solely worldly desires?

He talks about the importance of communication - of listening and keeping a cool head; warning against the danger of rising too quickly to anger. Yet at the same time seeking what is justice and good. 

How we communicate impacts on how we are heard; how we listen shapes what we say. Allowing space for curiosity about the other or getting to the root of the concern might open up new ways forward. Though sometimes perhaps we have to take a deep breath, walk away, and allow the temperature to go down; or sometimes the mediation of others.

James also stresses the importance of faithful action - or action informed by our faith. He uses the shorthand ‘law of liberty’ for God’s commandments of love.

These should be things that shape our body language - not glimpsing in the mirror and forgetting what we look like - but practising those gestures of kindness, self-control, compassion, patience, generosity and joy.

For James faith and faithfulness is about caring for each other and those who’re vulnerable or marginalised: remembering that we are not just representing Jesus in the personal and public areas of our life; we are members of Christ's body called, by the power of the Spirit, to be a living sign of God’s ways. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2024