Hold Your Tongue

AM Psalm 97, 99, [100] • PM Psalm 94, [95]
Hab. 3:1-10(11-15)16-18 • James 3:1-12 • Luke 17:1-10

Today’s epistle from James begins: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” Having recently retired after a half century in the classroom, my first thought on reading this was “Now he tells me.”  

But of course teachers know this well. Even as you notice a few students on the back row on the edge of dozing off, you know that your basic responsibility is to pass along information, insights from others and sometimes yourself, new perceptions and more that are of value and, as best you can determine, are true. And just as certain, you know that there will be plenty of times when you will fall short in that job.

A good friend in another state recalls what I suspect most teachers know all too well—the “out-of-body classroom experience.” While passing along what she considers some vital point, suddenly she is floating above herself, looking down from up close to the ceiling, and that other self thinks: “That’s ridiculous. How could that person possibly think what she is saying is correct? It makes little sense. Or in any case it could be said better.” 

As a teacher it’s a painful, humbling moment, and it should be, but the experience, of course, is universal. On so many occasions we each have hovered above ourselves in a conversation, asking “Why did I say that? What was I thinking?” Particularly painful are the times when our words are hurtful or inconsiderate. 

I will take James’s admonition—which on its face is more than a bit silly; the problem is not our tongue but our brain, and within it our moral settings and our attention to others—to be an oblique caution, not just to weigh my words, but in every conversation to begin by being as aware as I can of whom I am talking to.  

And if we must find a scriptural connection, how about looking for moments when characters in the stories might have had that out-of-body experience, and from that a moment of shocked self-realization? Maybe Jesus himself, when he compares the Syrophoeneian woman to a dog, or when he at first turns down his Mama at the wedding at Cana? And certainly the many times when slick lawyers and religious authorities try to trip him up with sophistries, then find their pat positions turned inside out. If we were privy to their reactions, would we see them suddenly facing simple truths they never dared to face?

Written by Elliott West

Elliott is professor of history emeritus at the University of Arkansas and has been a member at St. Paul’s for more than thirty years.