By The Reverend Dr. Kitty Hahn-Campanella delivered to the congregation of First Christian Church of Lynchburg, VA on September 15, 2024
“Watch Your Mouth.” This was an expression that my parents used to say to us when I was growing up. It was a warning to stop talking before we said more and got ourselves into trouble. Usually, this was said when we were talking back to our parents, or to any adult, for that matter.
In a sense, the ever-so-practical writer of the book of James was saying the same thing: “watch your mouth!” Before you use it unwisely and say things that need not to be said, or which are incorrect.
This passage takes a slightly different turn, because watching the mouth, in this case, had less to do with being sassy and more to do with teaching falsely.
Therefore, the writer of James cautions his readers and audience about taking up the profession of teaching. He saw it as a huge and very important undertaking.
“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will face stricter judgment” -meaning we are to be held accountable for what we say.
Some of you might remember Jane Elliott. She is an American diversity educator. As a school teacher, she became known for her “blue eyes / brown eyes” exercise, which she first conducted with her third grade class on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.
In rural Iowa in the late 1960;s, Jane Elliott knew she was taking a big risk teaching an all-white classroom about race and racism – her husband even warned her not to, she said.
In her classroom exercise, brown-eyed students were portrayed and told that they were superior to the other students, and they were sat at the front of the room. Students with blue eyes were presented as inferior, given collars to wear and were moved to the back of the room. Elliott said throughout the exercise, she witnessed her students turning on each other (responding to the false divide and distinction that she had made up with untrue suppositions about eye color).
Quickly, the dynamic of the room shifted. “I watched wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating third graders.” “Within five minutes,” she said, “I had changed that group of loving, kind, generous, thoughtful human beings into people who act the way people who are allowed to judge people unfairly on the basis of physical characteristics do every day in this country.”
Elliott said the exercise and her anti-racism teachings are not aimed at making people feel guilty about the past. She said:
I’m teaching them to feel responsible for what they do in the present to create the future. After all, there’s only one race: the human race.
Matthew Soerens wrote an article that was featured in the Religion News Service entitled, “Immigrants, pets and the sin of slander in an age of social media.” He wrote:
This week, outlandish allegations that, in a small city of Ohio, Haitian immigrants were hunting down and eating people’s cats, dogs and other pets spread across the internet, even making an appearance in the presidential debate. Though there’s no verifiable evidence of any case of a Haitian immigrant eating a pet – to say nothing of a trend that will soon threaten your pet – rumors spread quickly (and Haitian people became suspect of questionable behavior).
It was already an ‘old proverb’ in the 19th century when Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon quipped, ‘A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.’ In the internet era, falsehoods move at light speed, and the biblical commandment to ‘not bear false witness’ has become among the more socially acceptable sins.
That’s probably because it’s so easy: We can now disparage someone without personally articulating the charge, in either verbal or written form; we can reshare slanderous accusations with a tap of a finger or click of a mouse. Our human nature is apt to do so, dismissing any reluctance over an unverified charge if it seems credible to us, especially when the subject is an individual or group of people we’re predisposed to view as villainous.
I saw a meme this week which read, “I wonder how it feels to be a Haitian kid showing up to school in Springfield, Ohio. Rumors are not victimless.”
We are easily led to turn opinions into facts about people we don’t know and about things we’re uncomfortable with or don’t understand. Even the suggestion that casts doubt on another person’s character, or an innuendo, can be negatively influential and subsequently damaging.
But if we are to be faithful to the New Testament’s repeated instructions to put away slander of any kind, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. We should refrain from propagating any disparaging charge that we cannot confirm to be factual, lest we, as the epistle of James puts it, “curse people who are made in the likeness of God.” That’s always true, but it’s all the more relevant in the midst of a polarized U.S. election season.
In the first and second chapter of the book of James, the author of it has made clear that certain outward characteristics – impartiality and faithful action versus favoritism and the mistreatment of vulnerable people – are not to be held.
In chapter three, another piece of external evidence of one’s interior person is brought to the forefront, namely speech. The tongue is identified as a part of our body which needs to be very carefully managed because if it isn’t controlled it can create harm. Three illustrations are given, one right after the other one, to show how vital it is to “watch your mouth.”
It takes just one small thing – a harness with a bit to control a large horse, a small rudder to steer a large boat. It takes very little, just a spark, to make a fire that consumes endless acres of forests.
“The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a such small fire! And the tongue is a fire. 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 people, made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth comes a blessing and a curse and this ought not to be so.”
This passage calls us out for our inconsistencies. Speaking life and uplifting one another. Bestowing blessings. And, in the next minute, speaking hurtfully and hatefully and tearing one another down. Bestowing curses. This ought not to be so.
Scripture talks much about the tongue and teaches that “out of the abundance of the heart our mouth speaks.” We must guard our hearts and our tongues.
If we’re to take seriously the many biblical injunctions to refrain from slander, the Apostle James offers wise counsel: “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” In our context, we might also add being “slow to retweet.”
Thanks be to God for practical instruction interspersed in scripture among chapters and verses of higher spiritual and theological teachings, thanks be to God for words that motivate us to know better and to do better, thanks be to God for insisting that we be careful and loving in what we say. Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Kitty Hahn-Campanella is the Chaplain at Sweet Briar College. She is an ordained Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor who as served churches in Texas, Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia, and Florida. Kitty has also been a Hospice Chaplain for 17 years. Kitty grew up in Lynchburg and has returned to be near family after 40 year away.
Along with a handful of her progressive clergy friends (including Jarrett), she is creating “good trouble” as they make their presence known with inclusivity, acceptance, and a wider community of shared faith that holds expansive viewpoints in fairly religiously conservation places.
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