In the last Pastor’s Corner, I wrote about one of my two sabbatical projects. This column is about the other one.
Before I start with that, though, this reminder: I will be coming back. My sabbatical runs from February 1, 2025, to April 30, 2025. We have a wonderful minister coming to serve as interim pastor. The Rev. Dr. Diane Weible served as Associate Conference Minister of the Hawai’i Conference and provided care and support to churches here on Hawai’i Island. After leaving Hawai’i, she served as Conference Minister in the Northern California Nevada Conference UCC, and now provides consulting services. Please be ready to welcome her on February 2nd!
My second sabbatical project will probably occupy most of my time over the next three months. You are familiar with my custom of telling stories for worship based on the creatures of Hawai’i (including people now and then). I will go through those stories, make selections, and prepare them for publication. I expect that some of them will need to be re-written, at least in part. I’ve composed them to be told in the worship setting, and they will need some revision for the printed page.
Somewhere through that time I will inquire with different publishers to see who is interested, and to get that process started. From what I understand, that takes quite a while.
I’m afraid I won’t have a finished book to show when I’m back in May, but I hope it will be on its way. I’m quite sure I’ll have photos to share and stories to tell, and I know there will be work for us to do together as the people of God.
Blessings to you all!
In peace,
Pastor Eric
Photo of Eric Anderson collecting stories on New Year’s Eve 2024 by… Eric Anderson.
The single most efficient communications system I have ever encountered in my life is known as “The Coconut Wireless.” And I’m afraid, contrary to the hopes of my colleagues in the Hawai’i Conference who edit and manage the Conference’s electronic newsletter of that title, that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the original Coconut Wireless that gets good news and bad news from friend to friend and family member to family member in less time than it took for the original event.
If only the original Coconut Wireless had editors as good as those for the Hawai’i Conference’s Coconut Wireless. I’m afraid that the news we distribute so effectively around Hilo, Hawai’i Island, and far beyond, is… inconsistently accurate. And inconsistently well-meaning. And inconsistently careful about telling other people’s stories.
I may think the Coconut Wireless is more efficient than similar “unofficial” communication systems I’ve encountered in my life, but it definitely shares those inconsistences with the other “rumor mills” I’ve known. I’ve been told that family members were dying by other family members – and yes, they were pretty sick, but not dying. I’ve been told that people were upset with me or that they were pleased with me, and in conversations with those people later, found out that neither was true. I’ve lost count of the recommendations people made for people who weren’t interested in what they were being recommended for.
And I’m still aching about the reassurances I have given that I simply didn’t know enough to give. “It will be all right,” is what I said and what I wanted, but it wasn’t what I knew, and sometimes… it wasn’t all right.
“…No one can tame the tongue,” wrote James, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”
Sometimes our Coconut Wireless goes that far, doesn’t it?
Margaret Aymer writes at Working Preacher, “What does it mean to think of one’s tongue as that which controls one’s whole being? Or perhaps, in today’s vernacular, what does it mean to think of one’s entire being as controlled by what we post on social media?”
To be honest, we don’t need social media to spread information (and misinformation) efficiently, but Dr. Aymer’s question is on point. We are accustomed to thinking that our actions must match our words. Last week we sang it, in fact, with these words from “Christian, Rise and Act Your Creed”: “Let your prayer be in your deed.” James said similar things earlier in the letter. We read one of them last week.
“If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily foodand one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (James 2:15-16) Well, not much. No wonder James went on to say that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
He wasn’t just interested in matching word to deed, however. He had observed the way that our words lead our deeds. It’s like the bridle of a horse, he wrote. It’s like the rudder of a ship. It’s like a flame.
It’s rather clever writing, actually. Did you notice that all of them have something to do with tongues? The bit goes into the horse’s mouth, over the tongue. The rudder of a ship is tongue shaped. And we talk about… tongues of fire.
Dr. Aymer continues, “[James] argues, the tongue has the capability of destroying one’s religious practice and that of one’s community. Here, James invites meditation on destructive ‘speech,’ more broadly defined. One might, for instance, think critically about racist speech, vitriol against immigrants, or the practice of ‘trolling’ on social media.”
If that sounds like Dr. Aymer had the current political climate in mind, she wrote those words in 2018. When, it must be said, the political climate wasn’t that much different.
When it comes to our Coconut Wireless, it is indeed difficult to bridle our tongues. Juicy news is just too good not to share, right? Even if we don’t have confirmation that it’s true. Even if it might hurt someone. Even if it’s someone else’s story to tell, not ours. James wanted us to use our faith to guide what we say. Too often, we say it, and then our tongues become the guide for what happens after that.
Gossip, however, is not the worst example of the unbridled tongue. The Coconut Wireless carries care and compassion, too. It’s how we find out that someone needs help, and it’s how we start to organize support for them. No, it’s when the tongue dips into the evils within the human spirit and casts them out into the world: that’s when the tongue becomes “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”
It’s been twenty-three years since that terrible September 11th when so many people died. Do you remember the ways in which tongues wagged? Do you remember the hateful things said about Afghans, about Arabs, about all Muslims? I remember some efforts by national leaders to restrain such things, but they weren’t enough. In 2011 the Justice Department reviewed anti-Muslim hate crimes from 1998 to 2010. In 2000 there were less than 50 reported incidents. In 2001 there were nearly 500. In 2002 they fell to about 160 – but they continued to be between 100 and 170 right up to 2010.
Hateful words led to hate crimes.
This past week a hateful – and baseless – accusation against immigrants in an Ohio community received a lot of amplification. Hateful words on a national stage led to bomb threats that closed elementary schools in Springfield, Ohio, for two days this week. The people amplifying these racist lies have not just refused to recant them, they have repeated them.
Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What we say can reveal more about us than about the recipient of our speech. The scary part about toxic talk is that it reveals the character of our inner identity. ‘Out of the overflow of the heart,’ said Jesus, ‘the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned’ (Matthew 12:34–37).”
Well. I suppose I should be grateful for some revelatory unbridled tongues. I’m afraid I’m not, though.
“Bridling the tongue is not for the faint of heart,” writes Casey Thornburgh Sigmon at Working Preacher. “It takes courage and a strong heart to listen in order to hear another, to tune into the Spirit’s whispers through them and in the space between people, rather than to listen only for a gap to insert yourself in an unbridled fashion.
“Our American society hasn’t the faintest idea how to listen. So much of American Christianity is a shouting match. Foolishness abides. Fires are set, and what is the cost?”
We know the cost. We do not need to pay it.
James offered no easy guidance to bridling the tongue. He simply said, “Do it.” So here are a few suggestions of my own.
First, if you don’t know it’s true, don’t say it. I’m not talking about asking questions for learning. If you don’t know something, by all means ask. But if the sentence begins, “I heard that…” make sure that the person you’re quoting had the ability to know what they told you. If they didn’t, check with someone who does. If you don’t know it’s true, don’t say it.
Second, ask yourself whose story this is to tell. Who is concerned in it, and who is affected by it? If the story is about you, it’s yours. You can tell it or not as you need or as you please. But if the story is about someone else, did they give permission to share it? What impact might it have upon them if it goes farther than you?
Impact: that’s the third thing. Will what you say tend to help or to harm? Will it organize support or coalesce into shame? Will your jokes be “laugh with” or “laugh at?” Will other people be further affected, particularly by speech that can be heard as prejudiced?
Here’s James’ advice: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
That works, too.
I’m still impressed with the efficiency of our Coconut Wireless. It’s so quick. It’s so effective. It makes things happen.
By what we say, may our Coconut Wireless also be truthful, sensitive to others’ stories, and focused on compassion.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, so the text will not precisely match the recorded sermon.
