Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in
Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.
Help me guard my ways, lest I sin with my tongue.
Take my lips, and let them be
Filled with messages for Thee.
Take my voice and let me sing
Always, only, for my King. Amen.
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What About That
Tongue? based on James 3:1-12; Mark
8:27-38 Rev. Karen Goltz
I find myself
going back to the ship imagery we heard in the reading from James. I grew up
near the ocean. I’ve been on a few boats. I don’t know my port from my
starboard, but I do know my bow from my stern. I’ve been tossed around on big
waves in a tiny little Boston whaler, I’ve operated the thing that controls the
rudder—I think it’s called the tiller—on a two-person sailboat, and I’ve sailed
on a very large sailboat with about fifteen other people from Marblehead
Massachusetts to Rowes Wharf in Boston, and then back again.
I understand
about rudders, and how they’re so small and yet can still control boats that are
so much bigger than them. But more than that, I’m fascinated by the idea of a
large boat in a large ocean being pushed around by fierce winds. It’s not just
the size of the boat that the rudder has to worry about; it’s got to deal with
the waves and the winds, too. Even without bringing the rudder into it, that
boat’s moving. But without the pilot, that boat’s at the mercy of those other
elements, elements that dwarf the size of that boat, and render it helpless.
Without the pilot, that boat could be forced further out into the sea, or pushed
up on a beach, or slammed into some rocks somewhere. But the same thing can
happen when you’ve got a ship and a pilot, but no rudder. The pilot and
the rudder need to work together.
I understand why
the author uses the ship and rudder analogy to make his point about the tongue.
A rudder’s small, yet it’s responsible for the actions of a much larger vessel.
The tongue’s small, yet it can cause a large amount of damage. This text goes
to great lengths to make the tongue seem like a horrible, terrible thing. About
the only nice thing said about the tongue in this text is that is used
for blessing the Lord and Father. And then even that’s tainted by
pairing it with cursing those who are made in the likeness of God.
And that’s where I
have trouble keeping the analogy: tongue: small, rudder: small.
Tongue: bad, rudder: bad? The rudder seems pretty good to me, personally.
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