Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
My house has mugs from Oddfellows Cafe, which was the cafe in the Elliott Bay Bookstore. (Last I saw, it appears that it did not survive the financial hit of the pandemic.) Still the mugs say, “Words matter.” I think these mugs were first sold when Donald Trump was elected, but the timing is not really essential. Words matter all the time. Words can build up someone, or words can hurt. Words matter.
One could view the Epistle of James as entirely rooted around the importance of words and words in action, aka deeds. The Epistle of James’ primary concerns are being cognizant of how we speak, caring for those in distress, and being careful about what we let into our lives. For James, words are hugely important. Words and good deeds matter, not just what you think or feel. (The Epistle of James could be seen to challenge Paul’s epistles, which talk a lot about faith; essentially a theme in James is that a person’s faith means nothing without deeds to back it up. And for this passage and others from the Epistle of James, words are a sort of an expression of good deeds.)
As I said at the beginning, words matter, but for James words matter most in prayer. Prayer addresses all of James’ concerns. Wise speaking is always as if before and to God; in other words, James’ concern is how we speak. Wise speaking just IS prayer in a sense. And in terms of caring for the distressed of a community, for James, the community that prays together, stays together. We are encouraged to pray together. Finally, in terms of how we tend to ourselves, or how we live our lives… if we live in prayerful awareness of God’s activity in the world, then there is a peace that passes understanding, and this peace is from God, no matter what illness or what sin a person may possess. Words do matter. Words in prayer perhaps matter most. Words in prayer are wise, they provide cohesion and they keep the believer on track.
Now because words matter, there is no denying that the images of casting out demons and threats of hell in this week’s Gospel present particular difficulties for enlightened congregations, such as ourselves. This particular vision of God in Christ seems one perhaps more in line with something our evangelical Christian sisters and brothers might latch on to. We might instead want to ignore it. However, remember that everybody cherry-picks lines of scripture, it’s just that people cherry-pick different lines. Words matter, and we then tend to interpret the Word of God in a way that matches our world view. And we are wary of people who take the meanings of scripture to match a different world view than our own.
Since the time of Augustine, a somewhat classic way of dealing with the concept of hell is to focus on a loving God who made all things good, who made all things to be loved, and so instead we can think of hell as being when one willfully turns oneself away from or against God. Not being with God, that is clearly hell. This goes okay as a general understanding of hell, but it is not perfect. There are many questions for which I don’t have answers: What do we do with the concept that others are clearly affected by demons, but Jesus isn’t? How do we explain the power of Jesus’s name? Whatever are we to make of demons? I don’t have answers for those questions. These are questions we have for the text. Whatever you think demons are, mental illness, or angels of the dark side, if we reduce demons to figments of primitive imaginations, then we miss the point that casting out demons is a significant deed of power. However, we still know that words matter, because Jesus is sure that an exorcism done in his name is a powerful act, and cannot leave the performer of such action unaffected.
Ironically the remainder of the Gospel for this week in microcosm covers the main themes of James’ epistle, perhaps not all that surprising, since these themes are at the heart of the Gospel after all—care about what you say (words matter), care for the marginalized, and care for the self so that you are right with God.
But what do we do with the litany of losing parts or being thrown into hell? First, let’s take it that Jesus really, really means it that he is concerned about a little one being led astray or hindered from reaching him. That is the important part. Also this may be literal, then again it may not. Teresa of Avila’s words that “we are the hands and feet of Christ,” she understood as the direct implication of scripture. The most important thing is to take care of the little ones, the marginalized ones who have no power. If we lose a “member” of the Body of Christ in the process, well… not great, but we don’t hurt someone who has no power. So how do we stay in relationship with God so that we don’t block a little one, so that we stay salty? We must tend to our saltiness. We stay in relationship with God. We do this in prayer. We consent to God with our words, prayerfully, and our words shape and form us. And prayer can be anything. Many of you know the words of the poem by Mary Oliver:
Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
Words matter, they are our doorway, to put us where we need to be—kind, caring for the other and salty—so that we can enter the silence in order to hear God, which is also prayer. Let it be that we speak to God and of and to others only with appreciation and respect; and let us become – over time and by God’s grace – let us become the words we pray.
Track 2
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29 Psalm 19:7-14 James 5:13-20 Mark 9:38-50