The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 19B
This past week showed the power of words and images. In just a few short days, a neo-Nazi claim about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio went mainstream. All it took was people loudly repeating it – no evidence, of course, just saying “I totally saw them stealing geese” and “Cats and dogs go missing here!”. And then people point to that, saying that “well, look, that person said it, it must be true!” A baseless, hateful claim about our neighbor becomes a powerful lie that leads to bomb threats. It may not be true, but enough people want it to be true because it feels true to hate their neighbor from another country. They know it in their gut.
And then people kept sharing it to make fun of that first group. Sharing memes that repeated the lies, but with a little wink – “Isn’t it hilarious what people will believe?” But guess what – the lie is still being spread. On the internet, the line between, “I don’t believe this” with a wink and “I do believe this” with a wink is razor thin.
And who paid the price? Not the people spreading the lie, whether to foster hate or to mock the haters. Who paid the price? It was the Haitian children who went to school to be mocked by their peers. It was the Haitian parents who had to pick up their kids after bomb threats closed schools in Springfield. It was the Haitians who had fled violence to try to make a new start.
And for us Episcopalians, Haiti should be particularly close to our hearts. The Diocese of Haiti is part of the Episcopal Church, and numerically the largest diocese. St James Theodore Holly was the first Black man consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal Church, and when he first arrived in Haiti as a missionary priest, his wife, his mother, and two of his children died from yellow fever and typhus. James Theodore Holly believed in the people of Haiti and its future so much that he persevered even in the midst of unimaginable grief both as a priest and as bishop; Haitians deserve much more than what they’ve gotten.
This past week has so strongly proved the point of the Epistle of James. The tongue, the human ability to speak and communicate, is a fire and sets mountains and forests ablaze. Lies and jokes spread rapidly and can burn up truth, can burn up people, can burn up whole communities.
And grumbling and sniping slowly burns away the connections in communities. The human tongue can create futures of hope and truth, or it can burn away and poison the ground to destroy the future.
And it’s not all explained by intention. I didn’t intend it that way – yet, the effects can be still real. And it’s not just the effects – it’s the interpretation, all the stuff going on in my life that can change how the same message is received.
Communication exceeds our ability to control perfectly. We can craft an essay, an internet comment, a sermon, a video with intense precision, but once it’s out there, it’s out there. And when we hear a message, we have to decide what to do with it, how we will respond, what we will internalize. Communication is beyond our ability to control.
Communication, so foundational to the human experience, is one of the messiest, hardest, most dangerous aspects of the human experience. Like fire – it is useful and transformational, and it can destroy. And yet, how often we speak our mind, or, to be more precise, we speak our unformed opinion, and expect someone else to deal with it.
So, what do we do? How do we control our tongue?
Not silence – though we might want to practice more silence. But there are times we must speak. Like speaking up for Haitians and other immigrants. If the only thing we choose is silence, then we will not learn how to speak more effectively and Christianly.
We must practice, practice, and reflect.
Practice giving ourselves a pause between our gut reaction and our tongue.
Practice giving ourselves a pause between our gut reaction and our interpretation.
In the last week, folks have told me how someone spoke to them or to someone else. That someone was snippy, someone was abrupt, someone was unkind.
And, now that I’m informed of it, the assumption may be that my magical priest powers will allow me to tell the person that their way of communicating was unhelpful, and that person will hear only that kind correction and not have their own reaction because I’m, you know, magic.
I’m magical but I’m not magic.
So, the reality is that we all have to do that work. We all have to do the work of communicating the truth in love, and that goes both for what we say and how we interpret it. We have to figure out how to speak truth in love, and hear truth in love.
Because in community, we have to talk and communicate. We have to practice saying it right, we have to practice saying sorry, we have to practice speaking truthfully and lovingly.
It is hard to do! It is part of how we follow Jesus. The world around us doesn’t know how to practice discipline in speaking. Reaction and rage and contempt are more palatable, more fun, require infinitely less work.
But we’re Christians, and we’re called to follow the way of the cross, we’re called to follow the way of Jesus. We’re called to listen with care. Whether we are silent or speaking, we are called to be attentive and prayerful.
As James says, “the tongue is a fire.” With it we can set wildfires of rumor and slander and grumbling and false witness. “The tongue is a fire.” And yet, we could also use that tongue to warm cold hearts, cook up hospitality and friendship, and create wonders of speech and thought. How will we use the fire of communication? We choose every day, every moment what we shall do.