Canticle of Love, UMH 646
James 1:
17-21
Canticle of
Love
September
3, 2006
Rev.
Elizabeth Macaulay
A man lived
in a highland village in
So he
passed the story on. He thought the
story was true. When the story got
around the village, it utterly destroyed the man the story was told about. His family, his job, and his integrity were
all devastated by the rumor mill. He
finally had to leave town. And he left
that place a ruined and destroyed man.
In time,
the man who passed the story discovered that the rumor was false. With that knowledge he knew this: he had helped to destroy an innocent man with
his tongue.
He went to
his pastor and said, “Pastor, I have destroyed a man with my words,” and he
told the whole story. “Please,” he said,
“I am sorry - can I be forgiven this sin?”
The pastor
told the man that this was not so simple, and told him to take a bag of
feathers and place one in the front yard of every house in the village. Although the man thought this was a strange
request, he really wanted forgiveness, so he followed the instructions the
pastor had given him.
At last he
came back to the pastor and said, “I have done all that you asked, may I now be
forgiven?”
“Not yet,
my son,” the pastor replied. “You must
first retrace your steps and bring back to me every feather you placed in the
village!”
“But - I could never do that, the wind has carried the
feathers away!”
“Yes,” the
pastor said, “and in like manner have your careless words destroyed and
innocent man!” (Story told in Homiletics,
Sept. 2006, pg. 29)
Do you
notice that James minces no words about what it is that testifies to the world
that we are followers of Jesus?
It’s what
we do. It’s what we say. It’s how we embody our role as healers and
workers for grace. That is what marks us
as disciples of Jesus.
It’s Labor Day weekend.
Is there a one of us that is not a walking banquet of
emotions about that?
The air
shifts and the calendar turns and suddenly we feel the stirrings of
back-to-school anxiety and excitement, no matter how long it has been since we
last sat in a desk.
Labor day
weekend feels like a pivot point. It’s
the weekend when we bit farewell to summer.
We marvel at how it went flying past and if we are wise, we take the
time to savor the gifts we shared over the summer months.
Camping
trips and family reunions, time outside and projects undertaken, sun on the
skin, the delicious good of bare feet and the way the sparkle on water makes
its way into our very souls.
Those things. We
savor. And mark their passing on this
weekend.
And, as things end, they begin.
With a new
school year come new learning opportunities both at school and at church. What we encounter will grow us based on what
we bring to those encounters.
I don’t
know that there are better lessons to launch us in our new days of learning
than the two texts read this morning.
What we can
decide, as we begin a new school year and a new church year, is that we are
going to be doers of the word, not just hearers. That we will do our best to live the
integrity of word and action called for by Jesus.
My husband
Cooper was talking with one of his Confirmation students following a recent
retreat. He had some one on one time
with him in the car on the way home. He
was asking this young man what was powerful in the retreat. Was it the games, or the food, or the
goofiness that goes with getting away?
The young
man said, “No, man, it was the reenactment of baptism that we did. It was going down in that cold water and
knowing that Jesus went there too, that place of darkness and craziness.”
“Well,” Cooper asked him, “What is it for you? What are the places of darkness in your own
life that you thought about when you were under the water?”
“It’s this”,
said the young man. “I talk about people
sometimes. In ways I don’t want to. And I know it’s wrong to say things about
people behind their backs. And you know
Jesus doesn’t like that. And I know I’m
going to do it again and so I need forgiveness and to figure out a way to stop.”
So he needs
the water of his baptism to remind him that he is held by Jesus in the way of
Jesus and, he needs the water of his baptism to remind him that what this thing
called being Christian is is about how to live in community together. How to guard the Christ in each of us in such
a way that we just are not going to participate in gossip that hurts another.
We just are not.
“If we
think we are religious and do not bridle our tongues, our religion is
worthless.” says James. It doesn’t get
much clearer than that.
Here’s what
I want to challenge us each with in the school year and church year to
come. Or in the next day to come, if it
helps to take it one day at a time.
Don’t
gossip. Refuse to participate. If you are engaged in a conversation that you
know savages another - whether it is someone you know or someone you do not
know - don’t participate. Leave the
room. And, if you have the courage to do
so, tell the gossip slinger to stop.
Because
allowing them to continue in their poisoning of others is bad for their souls
and it is bad for yours.
Don Miguel
Ruiz has written a book entitled The Four Agreements. It is drawn from Toltec Wisdom, a wisdom
tradition from
He presents
in his book four basic agreements that he believes could change the world if we
would embrace them.
The first agreement is this:
be impeccable with your word.
To be impeccable means to be without sin.
James says that the word is implanted and has the power to
save our souls.
Ruiz says
that our word is the power we have to express and to communicate, to think and
thereby to create the events in our lives.
We can use
our words to create hell on earth - words aimed at ourselves about our own
badness, words aimed at others about theirs, words aimed at any target we can
find because we feel so darn miserable about ourselves that we have to get the
sludge out somewhere, find someone who is “less that” we are.
Or, we can
use the word that was implanted in us.
The word that has the power to save our souls. That word is love, the canticle of God’s
grace and it is sung to us before our birth and it is taught to us by our
family and community and that word is meant to be shared but us in such a way
that we testify to the power of Jesus by our own words and actions and
We will not
use our words to savage ourselves or others.
Not overtly, and not by innuendo.
We just will not.
That’s our resolution.
Because the
gospel of Jesus Christ is not grounded on destroying people. It’s about empowering each of to live into
the gift of love. By what we say. By what we do. By how we love.
I end with
this true story.
Years ago a
young teacher was at her wit’s end with a class that just wouldn’t be tamed.
Having
tried everything, she tried something new.
She wrote the name of each student on a piece of paper. And then she distributed that list to the
class and asked them to write something they admired about each of the people
on the list. Some gift that was good.
She took
the entries home and organized them so that each student was able to read what
their classmates saw in them. There was
a hushed silence in the room when the lists were passed out. And the students didn’t mention the exercise
again. But they somehow found a way to
work well together.
Years
later, one of the students was killed in
The parents
thanked the teacher for the powerful gift she had helped their son to
know. His own goodness in the eyes of
his community.
Other
students at the reception chimed in. It
turns out that one had it in her diary.
One had it in his wedding album.
One had it on him. Another had it
tucked away in her precious things.
Years and
years. Uniforms and wedding dresses and
so many bumps and glories and what had given them ground for so many years was
the list of good words. Impeccable
words.
May we be a
people who share them.
Amen