Can We Talk? Series Intro

I am excited about this year for many reasons: hopes and dreams for our church, my family, my kids growing, opportunities to teach and learn – so much! And yet I am also cringing. Why? It’s an election year. We are already being bombarded by partisan propaganda, political in-fighting, candidate slander and excessive media coverage. And you know what’s coming right? It’s gonna ramp up more and get much worse.

Maybe it was naïveté of my youth, but election years used to be exciting with the opportunity to hear visions, debate policy, and collectively chart a course for a new four years. But to me it doesn’t feel like that anymore. I see and hear divisiveness, defensiveness, name-calling, mean-spirited, win-at-whatever-expense, money-wasting election campaigns than my admitted limited experience can recall.

And I don’t look forward to it. I am afraid of how people will vilify one another across party lines. I am afraid of harmful words, inappropriate behaviors, negative campaigns. I am afraid of the debates in which no one ever acknowledges the point or perspective of the other in a meaningful, respectful and decent way. I am afraid of how that will all trickle down to you and me. How our local community will become eaten up with partisan sound bites that make fun of liberals or conservatives, that call people idiots and hateful and stupid and on and on. In short, I am afraid that what this year will bring – through the  election – will make us all less like Christ.

So, God has placed upon my heart this: a few weeks of focusing on how Christ would have us talk to and about one another. You see, our words matter. And this will be a year filled with words spoken to and about one another unlike non-election years. This is a year in which parties will vie for your heart, your mind and your soul. They will fight for your allegiance, for your attitude, for your ideology. They will scratch and claw for your vote through any means possible so that their candidate wins. And what you can be sure of is that neither of them will place Jesus Christ at the center of what they say or do.

As I have been praying and listening to God the past few weeks, there are a lot of passages of scripture that have stuck out to me. Today I want to briefly share one of them with you and reflect upon the question it asks which coincides with questions I am asking, questions that I invite you to honestly ask as well. It’s from the letter of James (chapter 3, specifically verses 9-12.

One of my bibles subtitles this section of James letter with these words: Taming the Tongue.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. James 3:9-12

James is asking a very basic question here: if you follow Christ, how can you curse your brothers and sisters in Christ? How can you praise God in one breath and then disregard God’s child who thinks or believes or lives differently than you in another breath? This word curse is not about 4 letter words that are taboo to say. No, it about putting someone down, about wishing ill upon them, about an expression of dislike, disregard, or loathing someone.

So, how can we praise God while loathing a fellow human being? Christ did say for whatever you have done to the least of these you have done to me, right? So what we say to others is what we say to Christ. That’ll make you think twice before talking I’ll of someone won’t it? Shouldn’t it?

I think James question is a good one if we are trying to be Christians, that is, follow Christ and the way he calls us to live.  It’s a question that should stay at the forefront of our minds as Christians especially during this year where we will be pulled to the left and the right on a host of issues and through a host of candidates who want our vote.

So, before we tumble into all the words and speeches and polls and telephones calls and media and advertisement and barber shop conversations and all the rhetoric of a ramped up election year, I wonder: Can we talk?

Paul’s says this in Ephesians:

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up” (Ephesians 4:29)

But I wonder. I believe Paul. But I’m not so sure I trust us this year. So I wonder. Can we talk?

Can we really talk to one another?
Can we talk without unwholesome words?
Can we talk as God intends us to talk?
Can we talk in ways that represent Christ living in and among us?
Can we talk about difficult topics and really listen respectfully to another perspective?
Can we talk without vilifying someone who sees the world differently?
Can we talk without name calling? Without slander? Without disparaging another human being?
(Disparage – to regard or represent as being of little worth)
Can we talk across party lines? Across religious lines? Across racial lines? Across gender lines? Across any of the artificial categorical lines that we humans draw between ourselves?
Can we talk with honesty and integrity?
Can we talk without lying?
Can we talk in search of truth when finding that truth means acknowledging we were wrong?
Can we talk with humility?
Can we talk when we don’t agree?
Can we talk when we do agree without putting those down who don’t agree?
Can we talk in ways that build up everyone?
Can we talk with two ears and one mouth?
Can we talk with more questions and less condescension?
Can we talk without reliance on memes and sound bites that oversimplify complex issues?
Can we talk without our phones and TVs and radios?
Can we talk with a spirit of learning?
Can we talk with the Spirit of God guiding our words?
Can we talk in order to find compromise and common ground?
Can we talk about alternatives to the competing ideas of today?
Can we talk in ways that bring us and the world together?
Can we talk as if Jesus were sitting right next to us?
Can we talk in a way that recognizes that God hears our every word?
Can we talk as if every word we speak is a gift from God that we have been given in order to bless God’s good creation?
Can we talk?

So I have been looking through the Bible for the past two weeks, combing through scripture, through a few books by theologians who have been thinking about the questions I am asking and searching for deep and meaningful answers. And over the next 5 or six weeks we will dive deeply into our words, our communication and conversation. We will explore the gift of speech and how it has both creative and destructive power. We will examine Biblical models for how and why we talk. We will look to Jesus in the ways that he talked. We will search for those Christian practices, those tips and tricks and practical skills that guide us to speak as God would have us speak. And God may even throw in a lot more than I have figured out so far. I hope you will share with me throughout the weeks ahead what you hear from God and one another. I hope you will share your struggles and your successes, your frustration and your gratitude. I hope you open your hearts as we discover some holy answers to both a practical and sacred question: in such a time as this, can we talk?

Martin Luther King, that great prophetic pastor who led this country into a new era of civil rights, has said this about our lives and our words:

“People fail to get along because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”

If we are to live as children of God in the world that God created, then we must learn that our words matter, that our conversations are sacred. I pray that over the weeks ahead you and I will step closer to the heart and mind of Christ through all that we say and do. Amen.