Thomas J Parlette
“The Power and Peril of Words”
James 3: 1-12
9/15/24
“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” A simple childhood rhyme that we all know, designed to get us through those bouts of teasing and name-calling that inevitably happen as we grow up. You get teased at school and when you get home, mom says, “Don’t worry honey, sticks and stones… now sit down and have some cookies.”
And yet, as well-meaning as that rhyme is – we all know it’s entirely true.
Words are not harmless. Words have power.
They have the power to hurt, but also the power to heal.
Words have the power to build up, but also the power to tear down.
As the Chinese proverb says: “A bad word whispered will echo a hundred miles.” (1)
There’s an old story about the famous nineteenth-century preacher, Henry Ward Beecher. One Sunday, he climbed into the imposing pulpit of Boston’s Plymouth Congregational Church, and there he found a note waiting for him. Beecher glanced at the note, and then announced, “I received a letter from one of you this morning. It states quite simply, “Fool.” Beecher paused, then grinned and said, “I often receive letters from people who forget to sign their names, but this is the first time someone has signed their name and forgotten to write the letter.” (2)
Beecher, quick on his feet, found a snappy comeback, but even or him, the criticism must have stung. Even though the word missed it’s mark, it was still meant to wound.
But words also have the power to heal us and save us. Consider the story of Georgie Fletcher and Beth Legler. Georgie, from West Virginia, and Beth, from Australia were playing an online game where you could text message back and forth while you played. During their game, Georgie’s husband in West Virginia began experiencing weird sensations in his chest and left arm. Georgie mentioned this in passing to her gaming partner thousands of miles away in Australia – who in turn mentioned the symptoms to her husband, who just happened to be a doctor. Beth’s husband recognized that Georgie’s husband was experiencing symptoms of a heart attack, and insisted through text messages that he go to the hospital immediately. Which he did, as it turned out, just in time. He had a 99% blockage near his heart.
After this incident, Beth said, “Had we not gotten that message, I don’t think my husband would have gone to the doctor that day.
Today, Beth’s husband us alive and well, because of a few words over a text message. (3)
It has been said that “a bad word whispered will echo a hundred miles.” But perhaps we could also say, “good word whispered can save a life.”
There is an elementary school teacher in Minneapolis named Natalie Ringold, who has gone viral with a lesson that she teaches her 4th grade students. She teaches her students that kindness matters, their words matter. As she says, “If somebody can’t change something about themselves in 30 seconds or less, then you shouldn’t be mentioning it to them. It’s okay to tell someone that their shoe is untied, or they have a little something on their shirt, they can change those things in 30 seconds or less. But if you comment on someone’s hair color or hair texture or something about their body, they cannot change that very quickly. Your words have power. If you say something that someone can’t change in 30 seconds or less, you don’t say those things.” (4)
The power and peril of words is the subject of our passage from James today. At the beginning of his letter, a letter that some scholars call “the New Testament version of Proverbs,” James lays out an overview of what true wisdom looks like:
1. taking care in how we speak,
2. giving care to those in distress,
3. and being careful about what we let into our lives.
The rest of the letter, or perhaps we should think of it more like a sermon or a piece of wisdom literature, elaborates on what becoming wise looks like. Last week, we considered James’ direction about giving care to those in need as we read his well-known statement that “faith, if it has no works, is dead.” Today, we deal with one of the other bits of wisdom the Book of James is built on – “take care in how you speak.” Or, as James so eloquently puts it, “… the tongue is a small thing, yet it boasts of great exploits.” I love that phrase.
Barbara Brown Taylor notes that wisdom writers typically look to the natural world for demonstrations of divine truth. James certainly does that. He has a bag full of metaphors to help him make his case.
He points to the need to bridle the tongue, so it remains under control, as you would a donkey or a camel.
He uses the example of a small rudder controlling the direction of a large ship.
He talks about small fires growing into raging infernos, springs bringing forth two kinds of water, fig trees producing olives instead of figs.
All these metaphors are used to show that our words have great power, and come with great peril. The tongue can be used for blessings and curses. This should not be true. The truly wise must learn to hold their tongue.
As Mark Twain once said: “The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” (5)
The truly wise know that. Words have power. A bad word whispered can echo a hundred miles.
There is an old story from Eastern Europe that tells about a woman whose tongue was sharp and unkind. She was known in her village for being the source of many hurtful rumors. One day, she was brought before the village Rabbi for judgment.
She defended herself by saying, “The things I say are only in jest. I don’t mean any harm. Other people go off and spread the rumors. Blame them, not me.”
But her victims cried out for justice, “You’ve ruined our reputations! You must be punished.”
“Wait, wait – I can make it up to you,” said the woman. “I will take back my words and everything will be fine.”
The Rabbi listened to what the woman had to say and sadly shook his head. “You don’t understand what you’ve done.” Then the Rabbi called out, “Bring my feather pillow to the market square.”
Someone ran to the Rabbi’s house and brought back his pillow. Standing in the bustling town square, the Rabbi cut open his pillow and cast the feathers to the wind. He said to the woman, “Your careless words can not be forgiven until you bring me back my fathers – every last one.”
The woman reluctantly agreed, but thought to herself, “the wise old Rabbi is out of his mind!”
But to humor him, she dashed off to chase down every last feather. She ran to every corner of town. She weaved down every city street. She leaped and grabbed and snatched feathers out of mid-air – even took one right out of a dog’s mouth. But at the end of the day, she had only a small part of the pillow filled. (6)
She went back to the Rabbi with a new awareness of the power, and the peril of her words. Words are like feathers in the wind. Once they are released, we can never get them back. A bad word whispered can echo a hundred miles.
But the opposite is also true. A good word whispered can echo in your heart for a lifetime.
Twenty-seven years ago, a man named Bob Greene wrote a piece that appeared in the Chicago Tribune. He wrote how he once overheard a mother say to her little boy, in a moment of exasperation – “Are you too stupid to do anything right?” Those words got him thinking:
“A few words spoken in the heat of the moment – words that seem to mean little at the time to the people responsible for them – can have enormous power. Words like that can echo.”
But so can words of the other kind.
That experience makes me think of a story I heard once from a man named Malcolm Dalkoff. He’s 48 years old, and for the last 24 years he has been a professional writer, mostly in the advertising industry. Here is what he told me:
“As a boy in Rock Island, Illinois, he was terribly insecure and shy. He was quiet, he was scared, he mostly stayed to himself. He had few friends, and so sense of self-confidence.
In October of 1965, his English teacher at Rock Island High School, Mrs. Brauch, gave the class an assignment. The students had been reading To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. The assignment was to write a chapter that would follow the last chapter of the novel. Their own chapter.
Malcolm wrote his last chapter and turned it in. Today, he cannot recall feeling anything about the act of writing that chapter, or the grade that he got.
What he does remember – what he will never forget – are the four words his teacher wrote in the margins of the paper: “This is good writing.”
Four words – and they changed his life.
Up until those words, I had no idea of who I was or what I was going to be, he said. “But after reading those words, I went home and I wrote a short story – something I had always dreamed of doing but never really believed I could do.”
Over the rest of the school year, he wrote many short stories, always bringing them to school for Mrs. Brauch to look at and evaluate. She was encouraging, but she was also tough and honest. “She was just what I needed,” says Dalkoff.
Later in his high school career, Dalkoff was named co-editor of the school newspaper. His confidence grew, his horizons broadened, he started off on a successful and fulfilling life. And he is convinced that none of that would have happened had his English teacher not written those four words in the margin of his paper.” (7)
Just a few words.
“Are you too stupid to do anything right,” as opposed to
“This is good writing.”
Just a few words, but they can last forever. They can change everything. As James reminds us this morning – the wise know the power and peril of their words. The wise understand that a bad word whispered can echo a hundred miles. They are like feathers in the wind – you can never get them back.
But those who are wise also know that a good word whispered can echo in your heart for a lifetime. So, I ask you – what words will you write in the margins of the people you meet?
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol XXVIII, No. 4.
2. Ibid…
3. Ibid…
4. retrieved from online newsletter “Nice News” Sept. 9th, 2024.
5. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXVIII, No.4.
6. Ibid…
7. Ibid…
