Sermon for September 12, 2021 - The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello

Lord God, give me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.  Amen.

To sustain the weary with a word.  That is what I wanted from God out of this sermon today.  

I am so weary.  Even with my recent sabbatical, and maybe because of some of the perspective I gained during it, I find myself so very weary.  I am weary of the unpredictable nature of this continuing pandemic and the never-ending decision fatigue it creates.

I am weary of the losses we continue to endure.  

I am so very weary of the public discourse, or rather, the barrage of public diatribes by which we are assaulted on a daily basis.

I am weary of trying not to be weary, of putting on the joyful face, of pretending all is right with the world when, in my heart, I am wondering if anything is right in the world.

I am weary, and I know that many of you are, too.

So I read this passage from Isaiah, and the Psalm, and the letter from James, and finally the Gospel from Mark with Isaiah’s prayer on my heart.

“Lord God, let me hear your Word, that you might sustain this weary one with a word.”

And sustain this weary one, God did.

These texts we heard this morning were my companions this week; they became the lens through which I experienced this past week, as they often do when I am preaching.  As they often are for anyone who spends time with scripture.  The written word on the page receives the breath of the Holy Spirit and becomes the Living Word with whom we experience our days.

These were the texts in my heart as I began to read testimonials and news articles leading up to yesterday’s commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the events of 9/11.  Like many of you, the pictures of smoking towers, the recordings of voicemails left by loved ones and the sharing of the many “I remember” testimonials brought so much of that day back.  

And I started to think about the fact that it all started with a spoken word.  

Someone’s mouth spewed rhetoric that grew into hate.

Someone used their lips and their tongue to suggest an act of terror never before imagined.

Before there were planes boarded, there were plans spoken and discussed.

And before there were soldiers sent, there were more words and more rhetoric; there were words that suggested where to point the finger; tongues and lips that planned a war.

How much of what we have experienced in our lives can be traced back to an ill-advised word spoken; to a word meant not to build up the kingdom of God here on earth, but to gain something of this world for themselves; to conquer another for the sake of greed, or power.  Words used in order to gain the world yet forfeiting life.

Twenty years ago today, on September 12, 2001, we woke to a new and scary world, and those who were in positions of public trust used the power of their tongue to point us to an enemy “over there”.  “You are either with us or against us,” the President of the United States spoke two months after the attacks.

any Facebook posts I have seen this week remember with nostalgia the sense of unity we experienced as a country in the days after 9/11.  These voices long for such a sense of unity in the face of our current challenges.

But that unity was selective.  That unity came at the expense of anyone who was muslim, or any woman or man who wore a head scarf or turban.  

In the twenty years since 9/11 any sense of unity has been slowly corroded by the tongues of those who have turned the sword of the speech from enemies “over there” who do not look like “us” or worship like “us” to enemies right here who do not look like “us”, worship like “us”, love like “us”, think like “us.”

Every act of hate.  Every gun shot, every brick thrown, every legislation passed begins with a word spoken by a mouth just like mine.  The words that lead to violence begin first as the very breath of God that, as it passes over vocal cords, are transformed into the very weapons of mass destruction we want to believe exist somewhere else, in the hands of another.  But they are right here.  They exist in each one of us.  Somewhere between our hearts and our minds.

And once spoken, they catch fire.  They hit the kindling of fear and anger and they spread, like the wildfires we watch in horror in the Pacific Northwest.  Each one originally just a single flame.  As James says in his letter, “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! and the tongue is a fire.”

We see what a single flame can do.  We see the fire it can become and the destruction it spreads.  The smoke spreads across the country, dimming out the sun.

But each word spoken by us is a word chosen by us.

The same physiological miracle that creates words that destroy is equally capable of creating words that build up, words that nourish, words that quench, words that feed.  We all have the capacity to utter a word to sustain the weary.

Imagine if we could trace every single word we spoke to its conclusion?  What would we find there?  Where did it land?  What did it do?  Did it become fuel for someone’s fire of fear or anger, without us even meaning it to?  

Did we say something flip, toss a snarky remark, or repost something without intent, like a cigarette butt flicked out the window of a car that happened to land in just the wrong place?

Imagine if we could see where our words go, and what they become as they flow from our mouths like James imagines in his letter.  Was what I just said blessing or cursing?  Was is fresh water or brackish?  Fig or olive?

As I look back on the events of 20 years ago, it is important for me to remember that every good thing that happened also began as a spoken word.  The heroes of that day and days and weeks that followed who spoke words of courage when confronted with fear; words of hope when none seemed present.  

The words that result in anything good, anything of God, are usually words that call us to follow Jesus’ teaching to let go of our lives, that we might have life.  To lose the world in order to gain it.  To take up the crosses in our lives knowing that the power of love will always win.

Words of God spoken are the water hose on the forest fire.  They are the green sprout of new life in a charred landscape.  But fighting those fires can make one awfully weary.

I came to realize this week that what makes me so weary these days is my sense that the forces of evil are too big for me to combat, that I have nothing at my disposal to use to make the world more loving, more just, more as God knows it can be.

But I do.  We all do.

For I have a voice.  Spoken, written, drawn, or signed, each of us has within us the power of the Holy Spirit who waits to run over our vocal cords or through our hands and be made into something that has the power to change the world.  To heal a heart.   

Know that every word we speak, every tweet or post we make, has the capacity to change the world, or to break it. Every word is a possible flame.  Each word is a potential drop of water.

When I set my mind longing for the things of this world, it does not take me long to become weary.  When I set my mind on divine things, on the things that are of God, I find that I am sustained, even in my weariness.

May God sustain you, my weary friends, with a word.  And may God give you the tongue of a teacher that you might use every breath God gives you to sustain the weary of this world with a word of your own.

AMEN.  

© 2021 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello