September 15, 2024
Adam Hamilton tells of a young man who was invited to a youth group outing at a large local church. He was not close with most of the kids in the youth group, indeed, many almost never spoke to him. But they were having a “bring a friend day” and one of the group invited him to join them on their outing to a waterpark. The young man described the day like this:
“It didn’t start off badly; the rides at the park were fun, and I even enjoyed hanging out with some of them. But during the long ride back to the church, they started talking about people. They discussed who was having sex, who was smoking, who was gay. The more they talked the worse things they said. Many of the people they were talking about were my friends, and they knew it! To make things worse, some of the ones talking loudest were doing the very things they were gossiping about. Finally, they went on to the subject of who was going to hell. It seems that if you don’t go to their brand of church, you didn’t stand a chance of getting into heaven. That, of course, meant me, and it didn’t matter to them at all that I was sitting right there, soaking all this up.”
The gossip, the judgmentalism, the hypocrisy and the cruelty of the conversation had an indelible effect on the young man. He made up his mind not to go back to church. [Hamilton, When Christians Get It Wrong, Participant’s Book, 10-11]
Words are powerful. The old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is simply untrue. Words can tear down and destroy. We see this all too often in our world. In the past couple of years there have been a number of reports of teenagers committing suicide in response to bullying. Much of the bullying took place through written words posted on the internet.
Back in 2005, when some 26,000 people sought shelter in the Superdome to escape the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, rumors circulated about violent assaults happening in the Superdome. Gary Webb, a professor and chair of emergency management and disaster science at the University of North Texas, observed that the rumors were unfounded, but they nevertheless "painted a picture of lawlessness and disorder that profoundly shaped public perceptions of the disaster and its victims." [https://www.npr.org/2018/09/14/647935099/sharks-in-the-water-fema-tries-to-fight-fake-news-as-florence-hits] Words both distorted peoples’ perceptions of the truth and simultaneously undermined their compassion for the folks languishing in the Superdome.
Words can cause great harm. And the church and Christians, as we have already seen, are not immune to the misuse of the gift of language.
Rev. Magrey deVega provides a pretty comprehensive list of such misuses of words, of such destructive uses of language. [A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series, p. 146-147] I have shared these before, but it is worth considering a few of these again. Among the abuses of speech he lists are:
Lies: A straight forward violation of the Ten Commandments. With some lies we try to escape blame or responsibility. With others, we try to make ourselves look better, to take credit for things we didn’t do, or to exaggerate our achievements. Either way, we distort and obscure truth.
In addition to lies in personal interactions, this is something we see all too often in our shared political life. And in the lead up to the elections in November, this is something that may be on many of our minds. Wednesday, following the presidential debates, there were multiple fact checks published which show that both candidates distorted the truth, exaggerated or underplayed facts, and at times told outright falsehoods.[1] Many of us also recall great presidential lies like Nixon and Watergate and Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The prominence of those scandals often causes us to forget other significant lies told by presidents. Eric Alterman wrote a book entitled When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences [Penguin Books, 2004]. In it he focuses, in great detail, on lies about foreign policy from Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, and George W. Bush. As an example, Roosevelt’s lies about the Yalta Conference profoundly affected Americans’ understandings of the Soviet Union and American policy in the Cold War. Roosevelt likely made the Cold War worse than it might have been because he led Americans to falsely believe that the Soviet Union had not upheld its agreements about the post-war future of Poland—agreements that did not in fact exist. As a result, many Americans came to completely distrust the Soviets and believe it wasn’t even worth negotiating with them. Why should we negotiate with them if they don’t keep their word? I heard this four decades later in the 1980s. But there was never an agreement about the political future of Poland. [detailed in Chapter II: “Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and the Yalta Conference,” pp. 23-89] So, lies have consequences and, unfortunately, they are far too much a part of our political life—just as they are far too much a part of our personal lives.
Slander: A close cousin to lies. We often seek to delegitimize those we don’t agree with by labeling them or seeking to undermine their character. Our political opponents are dismissed as “fascists” or “communists” or “too extreme and radical.” This is so widespread and often so divorced from reality that I fear many of us would not recognize a real communist or fascist if we actually encountered one. We do something similar with our religious opponents as well, labeling them “heretics,” or accusing them of immorality. And once they are labeled, we can simply dismiss them—that’s really the whole point. We can dismiss them and we don’t have to deal with them or listen to them because they are that thing. We don’t have to consider that they are fellow human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, beloved by God so much that Christ became incarnate and died for them as well as us. We don’t have to consider that they, thus, may have legitimate concerns or valuable insights.
Gossip: The spreading of rumors about other people’s affairs. I remember, when I was young, how a dedicated layperson was rumored to be having an affair with the music minister, simply because of all the time she spent volunteering at the church. It was completely untrue, but looking back I wonder how much damage it might have done to her marriage or to the music minister’s reputation.
Insults: We tear down others, often to make ourselves feel better or to look good to others by way of contrast. Insults run the gamut from racial or ethnic jokes to making fun of disability or difference to rude comments about a person’s physical appearance, clothing, or economic status. Some insults are lies. Others are based on stereotypes. But often, insults are based on truths—frequently exaggerated for effect—truths about a person and their situation that are told in order to embarrass or hurt. As the English poet William Blake wrote, “A truth told with bad intent/Beats all the lies you can invent.” [“Auguries of Innocence;”]
Speaking Rashly: So often we jump to conclusions. We assume the worst. We judge and pronounce judgments before we know the whole story. We should heed James’ wise advice to be very careful about what we say: “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, [and] slow to anger.” [1.19]
I want to add two forms of destructive speech to deVega’s list.
Bullying: Laura Holmes, in a commentary on this reading from James, defines bullying as “any repeated use of force or speech by and individual or a group of people with power to cause hurt to or harm others who are vulnerable and feel helpless to respond.” [Laura Sweat Holmes, “Proper 19; James 3.1-12: Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections, Year B, Volume 3, p. 313] Bullying is an act of intimidation which is meant to keep people in a subservient position. It can be destructive of one’s self-esteem, even to the point of inducing a sense of worthlessness and despair—something we see horribly played out the bullying related teen suicides mentioned earlier.
Dehumanizing another person: In Rwanda, in the early 1990s, the government began to label members of the Tutsi ethnic group as “cockroaches.” This helped set the stage for the genocide of 1994 in which 800,000 died. Many perpetrators of the killing spoke of it as “wiping out cockroaches.” This happened in a country which had sometimes been referred to as the most Christianized nation in Africa; indeed, many church members and not a few clergy participated in the slaughter, including at least one incident in which a church in which dozens of Tutsis had sought refuge was burned to the ground killing everyone inside.
A less violent example: I once heard of an executive who responded to a request to open salary negotiations with farm workers by equating them with machines. He refused to talk with the workers, declaring, “We don’t negotiate with our tractors.” Using dehumanizing language, labeling people as animals, monsters, beasts, or machines, is often a key step on the road to oppressing or even killing them. And in Christians, it is also a form of hypocrisy: “With the tongue we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.” [James 3.9] How can we bless God in one breath, and then curse those made in God’s image in the next? The creation of all people in the image of God is the very foundation of Jewish and Christian concepts of universal human rights. When we dehumanize others, we betray our faith and the God who created and loves all of us.
There are other examples: grumbling and complaining, cursing, using discouraging words, hypocrisy, and so on. James sees such abuses of language as a serious problem for Christians; they are not consistent with the righteous life to which we have been called by Christ. Thus, he pleads with his readers, with us, to recognize the problem: “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” [3.10] In chapter 1, he is even more pointed: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.” [1.26] The point is clear: our words are powerful and we should exercise care in how we use them, because they reveal the quality of our discipleship, the depth or the shallowness of our faith. Our use of words is one of the deeds that shows how alive or dead our religion is. Our speaking should be a work of love that flows from our faith. Not only what we do, but also what we say should accord with the Royal Law of scripture: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” [James 2.8]
You see, our words have great power to do harm, only because they also have great power to do good. With a word, God created. And we, who bear God’s image, are called to be like God by using our words in creative, life-giving ways.
Let me give two examples of the power of words, the first negative and the second positive. My first example is the reason I am preaching on this text from James. I originally intended to preach on the text from Mark 8, but events this week convinced me I had to speak today about James’ warning about the destructive power of speech.
By now you all likely know the outlines of the story. Last weekend a woman in Springfield, OH posted to social media a rumor she had heard fourth-hand: that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were kidnapping and eating people’s pet cats. The post went viral. It was picked up and amplified by social media influencers and political commentators with lots of followers. On Monday, senator and vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance reposted the story as an example of the dangers of immigration.
The problem of course was that none of it was true—there is no evidence of anyone eating cats. Now, Springfield has seen a large number of Haitians (15,000 to 20,000) move to the city in the last four years, in part because local business and industry encouraged them to come to help overcome a shortage of workers in the city. It should be noted that these folks are all legal immigrants. The city has experienced challenges and new problems because the rapid growth has stretched resources and stressed infrastructure.[2] Much the same thing has happened in the NC town where my sister lives as large numbers of mostly middle-class white folks have move to there because of its school system, location and “small town charm.” There are lots of complaints about the situation—increased traffic, overstuffed schools, etc.—but of course no one there is accusing the new-comers of eating their neighbors’ cats.
City officials in Springfield, including the mayor and the police chief, made repeated public statements refuting the rumor. They had received no reports of any such crimes. But by Tuesday the rumors had taken on a life of their own and the negative effects were already being felt. Memes and bogus claims swept through social media like a forest fire. I heard an interview with the head of the Springfield branch of the NAACP who reported that on Monday there was a spike in the number of hateful and threatening emails she and her office were receiving, the most she had seen in over 10 years on the job. Vance, for his part, later admitted in a social media post that the rumors of cat-eating might not be true, but then he immediately turned around and told his audience to “keep the cat memes coming,” effectively encouraging the continued trumpeting of the discredited claims.
On Tuesday evening, at the presidential debate, Vance’s running mate, former President Trump, not only echoed the debunked rumors, but escalated them, claiming—without evidence as usual—that local Haitians were also kidnapping and consuming pet dogs and area waterfowl. This led to more inaccurate and untruthful memes and social media posts and more futile attempts by Springfield officials to refute the story.
Since Tuesday, Springfield has been convulsed by a series of bomb threats against City Hall, the mayor’s home and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I counted at least five bomb threats against schools that led to evacuations or cancelations—several of the threats were against elementary schools. On Saturday, two local hospitals were temporarily shut down by bomb threats. Late in evening, Wittenberg University announced it was canceling all Sunday activities because of bomb threats. Meanwhile, the Haitian community in Springfield is understandable nervous and worried about what might happen because of the lies being told about them.
Yesterday, Dayton also became involved in this fiasco when a video purporting to show local immigrants barbequing a cat went viral. The city was forced to issue multiple refutations which included a statement from the police chief saying, “We stand by our immigrant community and there is no evidence to even remotely suggest that any group, including our immigrant community, is engaged in eating pets. Seeing politicians or other individuals use outlandish information to appeal to their constituents is disheartening.”[3] [“Dayton Police ‘strongly refutes’ new social media video claiming migrants ate cats,” WHIO TV, September 14, 2024, https://www.whio.com/news/local/dayton-police-strongly-refutes-new-social-media-video-claiming-migrants-ate-cats/SE34KY6DVBF2BNGYRE3HFOYSJU/]
How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! An unsubstantiated rumor is now raging out of control. It has turned into a scurrilous lie. The claims being made are dehumanizing: they strongly echo false made in the past of immigrants kidnapping and eating dogs which were leveled against Vietnamese immigrants in the 1970s and Cuban immigrants in the 1980s. Yesterday I read an article in which historians traced these sorts of claims back to the 19th century when Chinese immigrants to the western U.S. were accused of eating pets. This is an old slur against immigrants. [Justine McDaniel et al. “Trump’s false claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets invokes racist trope,” Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/14/trump-immigrants-eating-pets-racist-stereotype/ ; see also, Jasmine Garsd, “The stereotype of immigrants eating dogs and cats is storied — and vitriolic as ever,” NPR, Sept. 11, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/09/11/nx-s1-5108401/donald-trump-debate-eating-dogs-cats-immigrants-false-stereotype ]
As a congregation that was once composed largely of German immigrants and their descendants, we should remember a thing or two about tropes and unfair statements directed at immigrant populations. This is a theme in our American history: not just the Chinese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Cubans and Haitians, but also German, Polish, Italian, and Irish immigrants have all had different lies leveled against them because people were afraid; because people were worried for their financial futures because of competition for jobs; and because all of us, as mentioned last week, have certain biases and prejudices. And those prejudices and fears sometimes come out in nasty ways.
I would also remind you of something I pointed out in my sermon two weeks ago. While the Old Testament says in one place, Leviticus 19.18 [see also verse 15], “you shall love our neighbor as yourself”—an idea quoted by Jesus—it says in at least 36 places “you shall love the stranger as yourself.” [an observation by the late Jonathan Sacks, formerly Chief Rabbi of Great Britian] You shall love the stranger because, you, people of Israel, were once strangers in the land of Egypt. [see, for example, Exodus 22.21 & 23.9 and Lev 19.33-34] This last phrase points us to two other possible translations of the Hebrew rendered as “stranger.” It can be translated as “foreigner:” you shall love the foreigner as yourself [NIV translation of Lev 19.33: you shall treat the “foreigner…as your native-born”]; or as “resident alien:” you shall love the resident alien, for you were once resident aliens in the land of Egypt. [NRSV translates Hebrew as “aliens.” CEB renders it as “immigrants.”]
As I said, I did not intend to preach on this passage. What ultimately convinced me that I must do so, was a social media post made by an old friend of Nancy’s and mine. The post made this issue more personal and left me feeling I had to speak on this subject. I want to share that post with you. I should say that the post has been edited to protect the identity of our friend and their family members. Some years back, our friend adopted a child from a country in Asia. That child has now grown into a bright, kind, creative youth, but their ethnic/racial identity has at times been held against them. Thus, our friend responded to the lies about the Haitians in Springfield, saying:
So here's my comment for tonight - our words matter. Most of what's wrong in the world is wrong because people forget that words have power. So when people viewed as authorities by some continue to repeat outright lies about immigrants eating pets, we forget the damage it does, maybe even making jokes about how dumb it is. But I can't find it in me to laugh at it, because years ago, when [child] was in elementary school, [they] got in the car one afternoon kind of quiet and in the middle of our ride home asked me, "Mom, why would ___ ask me if I eat cats and dogs?" And I got to spend the afternoon helping [them] work through what [they] already sort of knew knew - that it was because that kid heard nasty stuff about immigrants and turned it around on my (every bit as American as they were) [child]. [They were] solidly in the phase of [their] childhood where if we are what we eat, [they were] a fun mix of Thai vinaigrette dressing and tomato bisque soup (and maybe bacon). And [they were] learning, thanks to kids repeating what they hear, what it means to respond to racism that may come in the form of jokes about what people think you eat.
So I can't laugh at the absurdity of repeating debunked pet-eating stories, because I can't stop thinking about the little kids that will get in their cars the rest of this week and ask their parents why someone asked them the question.
Words matter. They can be used to used to do great harm. They can cause mental and emotional pain and they can justify physical violence.
But words can also be used in creative, life-giving ways. Words do matter because they can be used to create new possibilities and new realities. During college, Sherman Rogers spent his summers working at a logging camp in Idaho. He recalls an encounter which happened during that time, an occasion which demonstrates how and why our words matter. Once, when the superintendent had to leave for a few days, he put Rogers in charge.
“What if the men refuse to follow my orders?” Rogers asked. He thought of Tony, an immigrant worker who grumbled and growled all day, giving the other men a hard time.
“Fire them,” the superintendent said. Then, as if reading Rogers’ mind, he added, “I suppose you think you are going to fire Tony if you get the chance. I’d feel badly about that. I have been logging for 40 years. Tony is the most reliable worker I’ve ever had. I know he is a grouch and that he hates everybody and everything. But he comes in first and leaves last. There has not been an accident for eight years on the hill where he works.”
Rogers took over the next day. He went to Tony and spoke to him. “Tony, do you know I’m in charge here today?” Tony grunted. “I was going to fire you the first time we tangled, but I want you to know I’m not,” he told Tony. “I’m not going to do it because of what the superintendent told me yesterday. He said that in his 40 years of logging, you are the most reliable and dedicated worker he’s ever had. He praised you as the first in and the last to leave and told me how safe your hill is. Just thought you should know that.”
When he finished, Tony dropped the shovelful of sand he had held and tears streamed down his face. “Why he no tell me dat eight years ago?” he said in his heavily accented English.
That day Tony worked harder than ever before – and he smiled! He later said to Rogers, “I told Maria you first foreman in deese country who ever say, ‘Good work, Tony,’ and it make Maria feel like Christmas.”
Rogers went back to school after that summer. Twelve years later he met Tony again. He was superintendent for railroad construction for one of the largest logging companies in the West. Rogers asked him how he came to California and happened to have such success.
Tony replied, “If it not be for the one minute you talk to me back in Idaho, I keel somebody someday. One minute, she change my whole life.” [story from Sherman Rogers, Foremen: Leaders or Drivers?; as related by Steve Goodier, “One Minute Can Change A Life,” http://www.LifeSupportSystem.com; italicized text from Goodier with my additions for clarity in normal font]
I would bet that Tony’s grouchiness and grumbling had something to do with the way he was treated by other people and the harsh words that some of them spoke to him. Surely, his prickly attitude was in large part a defensive mechanism meant to shield him from abusive, cruel words. But the words spoken to him by Sherman Rogers had exactly the opposite effect. They changed his life, opened him up. They created a new reality and new possibilities. Those words led him from a hurt and fearful place, to a broad place, an open place [Psalm 18.19] where there was hope and a vision of a different, better future.
Our words are powerful. They can shape how we and others view the world. They can destroy or transform lives. So, let us seek God’s grace to use our words rightly. Let us commit ourselves to truth and compassion. Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to guide and empower us to build one another up instead of tearing each other down. Let us seek the Divine Wisdom that will enable us to love our neighbors as ourselves, both in deed and in word. For this is the only possibility of a new and different future. Our hope is in God and in how we image God’s love, how embody Divine love in the world. Let us seek God’s help to do so in everything we do and everything we say. Amen.
[1] See for example “Presidential debate fact check: Analyzing Trump, Harris on abortion, immigration and more,” USA Today, Sept. 10, 2024, Updated Sept. 11 at 12:50 p.m. EST; https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/10/presidential-debate-fact-check-2024/75089233007/ . For an examination of deceptive campaigning, see “Fact check: Harris campaign social media account has repeatedly deceived with misleading edits and captions,” CNN, Saturday, September 14, 2024 (I came across this in my news feed Sunday afternoon after church.) https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/14/politics/fact-check-harris-campaign-social-media/index.html . Harris’s campaign is not alone in this tactic which is widely used by candidates and their supporters from all parties.
[2] In August, well before the current “cat-eating” uproar, NPR ran a story on the serious challenges faced by Springfield and some of the reactions: Jamine Garsd, “How Springfield, Ohio, took center stage in the election immigration debate,” Aug. 12, 2024, originally heard on All Things Considered,; https://www.npr.org/2024/08/12/nx-s1-5055784/immigration-vance-trump-migration-president-migrants-election-ohio
[3] On Tuesday, two days after I preached this sermon, it was revealed that law enforcement has determined that the “vast majority” of the threats came from foreign countries. While this highlights the real and troubling efforts of foreign adversaries to exploit the divides in our nation, it does not alter the fact that the accusations against the Haitian immigrants living in Springfield are completely false. There likely would have been no bomb threats, a few of which did come from within the U.S., without the bombastic falsehoods spread through social media and by a presidential campaign, with the assistance of allied politicians. Nor is his new information likely to alleviate the fears of those Haitians, legally present in the country, who are afraid because they are now being threatened with deportation by politicians campaigning for office. The lies are the issue; the bomb threats are merely a result of the lying, albeit a very negative result which has induced fear in the Springfield community.