Curse Words

This is the text of the first sermon I preached at Bound Brook Presbyerian Church on Sept. 12, 2009. I'm trying to give myself impetus to use the lectionary, so I've included the two that were most important to this sermon.

James 3:1-13 NRSV
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue--a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh. Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. (Jam 3:1-13 NRS)

Mark 8:27-38
Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah." And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." (Mar 8:27-38 NRS)

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

An old man goes to a wizard for help removing a curse he’s had for 40 years. The wizard agrees, but says he needs to know the exact words that were used to curse the man. He answers the wizard, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” It’s a terrible joke, I know.

But it does illustrate a point--what exactly is a curse, eh? It’s a good deal in the eye of the beholder. I found these articles in the news over the past two weeks. A Georgia man was arrested after slapping a stranger’s crying 2 year old in a Wal-Mart. The mother and child were walking in the aisles when a 61 year old man approached and said “if you don’t shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you.” A few moments later, in another aisle, he grabbed the child and slapped her across the face four or five times, then told her mother “See, I told you I would shut her up.” When police arrived, he admitted he had slapped the child but said that he had apologized to the mother. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.

CNN reported that when President Obama recently visited Phoenix, Ariz. local pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful World Baptist Church, who strongly expresses hatred for Obama in many of his sermons, told his congregation that he wished him dead. The next day, at the rally, one of the parishoners arrived toting a semiautomatic gun. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.

When I first read the lectionary for this week, I was dismayed. The first line of James reads, “not all of you should become teachers”; maybe I should just sit down. Added to that is Peter’s rebuke of Jesus (and I often find myself siding with Peter) and Jesus’ reply “get behind me Satan!” This weeks reading felt a little personal. The whole James passage is devoted to the evils spoken by the tongue. But it should be noted here that only modern readers first assume that the writer is talking about the individual person’s tongue—my tongue, your tongue—and not the tongue that is leading the congregation. What James may really be saying is that we need to support our teachers and preachers wisely—those that lead the congregation have a great responsibility to speak carefully and wisely. And in that case it would be me, Linda, Brooks, Tom, the lay readers, Beth, Sunday School teachers, Martha who prints the bulletins…and just about anyone in the church who admits they are a member here and talks about what this church does. We should all think before we speak. But that’s not exactly news, is it?

When I read the passages, I really noted the word “perfect”. Sure, the writer of James first says, “we all make mistakes,” but the rest of his rant makes it pretty clear that he’s not going to make excuses for us. Am I really meant to be perfect? Ah, no. Not exactly. The Greek word for perfect “Teleos” actually means something different than what we’re used to. Being a recovering perfectionist myself, I was quite surprised to learn that here “Perfect” of a person really means, a. full-grown, mature, adult or b. fully developed in a moral sense, perhaps “being on the right road and progressing nicely”. See, in light of the passage as a whole, perfection is a process of becoming, not a thing you automatically are. So there’s a little hope for me here. That in Christ I am in the process of becoming perfect, even if I’m not quite there yet. But then I read on to the gospel message of today.

I have to admit, I’m always biased in favor of Peter. I feel for Peter, I can get into Peter’s head. So when Jesus asks him who he thinks Jesus is, Peter replies, “You are the Messiah.” See, that’s the sort of thing I think I would say, right? But then Jesus starts talking about what it will actually mean to be messiah, to die and be resurrected, and Peter rebukes him. I can see myself rebuking Jesus too. Because of course he doesn’t want Jesus talking like that! Not only is that kind of talk going to get all of them in heaps of trouble with the Pharisees, the Sadducees and maybe even the Romans, but he doesn’t want his friend to get hurt! Of course Peter rebukes Christ! Who wouldn’t? And then there is that little matter of the cross—only sinners die on the cross, and the worst kind. Murderers and terrorists, no good citizen dies in such a terrible way. It’s like imagining killing Christ by water-boarding him to death, or putting him in one of those old-school electric chairs. It’s a terrifying image, and one that completely defies the idea of Messiah.

And that’s when I realized that in the Mark passage, Peter blesses and curses Christ with the same tongue, just like in the James passage. Peter is blessing Jesus when he names him as the Messiah, and curses him in that he denies the reality of what it means to be the Messiah—namely, dying for the sins of humanity, and being resurrected to destroy the power of sin and death. See, Peter curses God by denying the Truth of the cross. He doesn’t have to say one dirty word or anything that any faithful, loving person might not say—all he has to do is deny the life-giving power of the cross.

I said that this lectionary passage felt personal. Back when I realized that the time had come for me to go to seminary, and to leave the life I’d built behind, it came as a real surprise for some very close people in my life. They didn’t even realize I was Christian, much less that I would go off to seminary and preach someday. Not because I didn’t act like a good, moral person, but because they’d never heard me talk about my faith. I was denying the cross without a word. I didn’t have to say a thing. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.

Cursing with one’s mouth isn’t a matter of dirty swear words (as my mother might want me to think), or failing to speak the truth— this message is much the same as Linda’s a few weeks ago: it isn’t what goes into –or out of—our mouths that defiles us, but what is in our hearts. Anything we think or believe that doesn’t build up God’s creation or the meaning of the cross is a curse. And what, then, is the meaning of the cross?

While I was a hospital chaplain, I had one patient, about 35, who had a massive brain embolism, and the prognosis wasn’t good. She’d been there about two weeks with very little progress or movement. Only two days earlier she’d had three “code blues”, which is when your heart stops beating and the whole hospital rushes to save your life. She hadn’t really regained consciousness, or spoken two coherent words, since she’d arrived. So on this day I was talking to the patient’s mother, trying to get her to tell me more about her daughter. What would she say right now, if she could? “Oh, she’d be cursing up a storm” she tells me, she’d be so angry about the situation. I looked at the patient and thought, well, I’d be cursing too. Trapped inside your body, in pain and confused, unable to seek help or get the comfort you needed. I’d have some choice words about that situation too.

About this time the nurse comes in to do the daily physical therapy for the patient; takes off the big boxing gloves they use in the unit to keep neurology patients from writhing about and pulling on their tubes. She moves her arms and feet, her hands, and her eyes open. Trapped in her body as she is now, what is she feeling inside there? So I take her mom at her word, and introduce myself to her. “Hi, I’m your chaplain. Your mom says that if you could talk right now, you’d be pretty ticked off about this situation.” And her mom laughs, and agrees, yes sweetie, you look like you’d like to say a few good curse words right now.

And the look she gave me says “you don’t know the half of it.” So I tell her, “If I put myself in your position, I’d sure like to let fly with a few choice words right now. And I know a lot of good curse words.” Her mom is looking completely appalled at this. And so I do something a little dangerous—I curse for her. I tell her every curse word I know from the Bible, English and Hebrew, because hey, must be ok if you can find it there, right? (There’s even a curse word in today’s reading!) Her mom looks aghast.

And the patient smiles. Her mom says, “oh baby, you’re smiling.” And maybe this is the first time the patient actually heard her mother, but she looks at her. And then she tries to say something. We have to get the nurse to take off the air mask to hear what she’s saying—I stick around for a few minutes, watch the hubbub start—and decide it’s time for me to go. You see, I hadn’t really done anything; I’d just named her reality, said the words that she wanted to say. She had used that anger, that energy, to muster up her own will. The Chinese call anger “raising the chi”, and that’s exactly what she did.

I come back the next day, hoping the change was permanent, and with an assortment of birthday cards for her mother—it’s her birthday, and wouldn’t it be nice to have a card from her daughter? And she’s there, sitting up in bed, looking ticked as all get out about being stuck in a bed, boxing mitts on again, staring at the TV. I say hello, and ask her what she’d like me to write in the birthday card for mother, since she has those gloves on. And she tells me, softly but forcefully, “Write: I wish I could take off these damn gloves so I could sign this card myself.”

I laugh, because that’s funny, and write exactly that down for her—at which point she takes the pen from me and signs her name. While I’d been chuckling about what she had said, she had used that anger, that curse word, to get up the energy needed to pull her gloves off with her teeth—and sign her name as clear as if she were writing a check. I thanked her and went to show to the nurses—had they seen? Did they know? A woman who was dead three days ago was alive—did they know what this meant? No, they did not know. This was news. Someone had to testify to the healing in that signature.

I asked you earlier, what is the cross? The cross is Christ’s signature in the world. The cross means healing, forgiveness and salvation. Healing for a sin-sick world, forgiveness and reconciliation of for sins that should be unforgivable, and salvation—radical, ridiculous, amazing salvation for people that don’t deserve it. We Bless God when we say what we believe, when we speak on behalf of life and love—when we are willing to learn a new language (Spanish, anyone?) or do something daring. And yet we still curse God with what else we do: degrading others, jokes in poor taste, denying people that don’t meet our standards. Cursing God isn’t about the words we use, it’s about the reality we testify to. You can curse God with words, or thoughts: cursing God is when you fail to testify to the signature meaning of the cross.

When I read the James passage I heard the image of a spring giving forth either fresh or brackish water. This is important when you live in a desert and need springs that only give fresh water. But I don’t live in a desert today; I do know what Hot Springs look like. Like in Yellowstone National Park, Geysers can only give off boiling water or cool, not both. If I were a spring, I’d be a boiling spring. I boil with righteous indignation when I hear the healthcare debates, when I witness racism, sexism, homophobia. But will I use my anger, my boiling, to curse God—scalding and burning the Creation? Or will I use my boiling spring to make steam, and spin the turbines of change? Does that boiling water, like a geyser, point to the glory and majesty of God? The life affirming power of the Cross?

With the same mouth we bless God and curse God—my brothers and sisters this ought not to be so. But it is so. The question then is: how will you turn your cursing, into blessing? How will you speak to the meaning of God’s signature in the world?

Amen.