Sermon for September 13, 2009

               Scripture:      James 3:1-12

                   “Renew a Right Spirit”  

                  Rev. Christopher Fazel

            The letter of James was probably written in the first quarter of the second century.  That makes it one of the later books of our new testament, although it is still two thousand years old!  Even so, this letter addresses issues that are as important today as they were way back then.  That’s because the human soul, if it is evolving at all (and I believe it is) it nevertheless evolves slowly and unevenly.  We are painfully aware (if we are aware at all) that the human soul is capable of the most horrific examples of selfishness and brutality.  And we are witnessing in our own day monstrous eruptions of the dark shadows that lurk deep within the human soul – individually and collectively.

            The constant threat of such eruptions is one of the issues that the letter of James addresses.  And James rightly identifies a primary agent in unleashing these dark forces.  That agent is the human tongue.  James says, “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!!  And the tongue is a fire.” 

            In 1994 in the African country of Rwanda, the ruling government composed mostly of the Hutu tribe initiated a massacre of an opposition tribe called the Tutsis.  In a one hundred day reign of terror, a million Tutsis and Hutu moderates were dragged from their homes and hacked to death with machetes.   History calls it the Rwandan Genocide.  And if we think that Western Civilization has evolved beyond such eruptions of barbarity, we have forgotten Nazi Germany, Northern Ireland, and the Ku Klux Klan. 

            Now, Rwandan history is complicated, and I don’t mean to oversimplify, but it is a matter of historical fact that the genocidal conflagration was fanned into flame by a steady barrage of hate speech that was splattered in print and spewed from the radio.  The burning tongue set their world on fire.  This tragic chapter in human history, along with all the others, must be a lesson and a warning to us today. 

            I want to teach you a word, if you don’t already know it.  The word is demagogue.  The word is Greek.  It first appears in a play by Aristophanes – a contemporary of Plato.  The word describes a person who leads masses of people by appealing to their fears and prejudices.  The ultimate example in recent history is, of course, Adolf Hitler, but he is by no means alone.  The alarm today is how widely his spirit and tactics are employed in our own world and in our own nation.  The burning tongue is seeking again to set firestorms.  That’s the bad news.  It’s bad for our nation, but it is also bad for each of us individually, because we are all vulnerable to its infection.  Who among us has not felt the atmosphere of hostility that pervades the media and our very relationships of family, neighbor and community?  As someone in our Thursday morning Bible Study pointed out, we feel in our very souls the temptation to suspicion and confrontation even toward members of our own communities.   We are all tuning forks.  We begin to resonate with our atmosphere whatever it is.  But here’s the good news.

            We have the power to maintain an attunement to the living spirit of the risen Christ in ourselves and in our relationships if we will but keep awake to who we are and who is the author and finisher of our souls.  So let us permanently take on these three disciplines:  First, we must be vigilant in observing our own attitudes and emotions.  We must learn to recognize temptations to suspicion and resentment that come to us – from without or from within – that seek to feed on our better and wiser natures.  We must courageously name them for what they are.  And as with all demons, naming them deprives them of their power.  Second, we must seek the place of peace within ourselves.   We must cultivate the discipline to seek daily an attunement to the Light of the World that indeed lives within and seeks to work through each one of us.  This involves quiet time and silent prayer in nurturing surroundings.

            And finally, we must seek joy in the company of those with whom we live and work.  These disciplines are the great and powerful antidote to the fires that are set by the burning tongue, either physical or mental.  With these disciplines we renew a right spirit within us and among us – and through us to the rest of the world.  Thanks be to God for such blessings and opportunities.  Let us pray.

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