Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees and teachers of the law. They tried cornering him. They pointed their judgmental finger at him and his disciples, accusing them of breaking their longtime standard of washing hands before eating a meal. They weren’t concerned with sanitation and germs, but holiness expressed in a traditional practice. Their created rule to wash hands before eating was an attempt to keep people holy before God.
Jesus wasn’t buying what they were selling. He pushed back. First, he accused the religious leaders of breaking God’s law commanding (adult) children to honor their parents. They were all in for their own rules but failed to keep the important rules. Secondly, he made a profound statement that it is not what goes into a person’s mouth that makes them unholy, but what comes out.
The pig and the pork entering the mouth do not make a person unclean before God. Instead, it’s the words and phrases that exit the mouth that do. The anger words. The sensual words. The lying words. The hypocritical words. The fraudulent words. The hateful words. The manipulative words. The racist words. The shaming words. The slanderous words. The dehumanizing words. The divisive words. The evil words that rise from the heart and pass over the lips spoken by the tongue are the words that reveal our true self. And let’s be honest, it’s not very attractive.
Words matter.
What we say matters.
Ask anyone who has been hurt by a spoken lie,|
Or has experienced a broken promise.
Words matter.
Words carry weight.
Ask anyone who has been bullied and verbally abused,
Or anyone who has been in a meeting when the person with the power stymies all
forward progress by words chosen to intimidate others;
Words matter.
Words are not without meaning.
Ask anyone who knows a second language,
Or anyone who had to defend themselves by saying, “That’s what I said, but not what I meant;”
Words Matter.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Ask anyone who has been trashed on social media,
Or has a paper returned from the teacher highlighted in red;
Words Matter.
Words will never harm me.
Ask anyone whose husband has told her, “I don’t love you anymore,”
Or that child whose classmate insults him for the “umpteenth” time;
Words matter.
We live in a time when words are overused, filled with cliches, drowned out by the noise around us, and have often lost meaning. Like truth, it feels like words can convey anything we want them to say. Thus, words struggle to take root in the heart of people as they bounce off the heart like a superball ricocheting off the street. We find ourselves dismissive of the words spoken to us for if we heard it once, we’ve heard it all before. Didn’t Solomon once say himself, “Nothing is new under the sun.” Maybe so.
Words matter.
The Bible is filled with words. In a society that is shaped visually and where attention span is as long as goldfish’s memory, God’s Word contains over 700,000 words. That is a lot of words. In the middle of those words, we find Psalm 119:105, “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path.” The Psalmist believes that God’s word, Scripture, will help guide the reader through life clearly and safely.
Sprinkled throughout the Old Testament like seasoning, we find the phrase, “The word of the Lord.” One hundred times this phrase will surface to make the reader cause to pause. Sometimes the phrase signifies that God is communicating information or insight to a person. Other times, it is used to signify the validity of the prophet’s spoken word.
The Gospel of John opens his Jesus story by drawing the reader back to Genesis 1, “In the beginning.” This time, though, John tells us that it is the Word who was with God, and in fact was God from the beginning. The very Word of God who called the universe into existence is the Word that now dwells among us in the form of Jesus. John writes in wonder if his readers will heed such Word or turn a deaf ear.
James, who was Jesus’s brother and an important leader in the Jerusalem Church, speaks to the words we use. Unlike animals, our words have never been tamed. We speak sweet praises to God while poisonous words ooze from our mouths against those made in the image of God. James shakes his head because mixing streams of fresh and salt waters are incompatible and may even be combustible.
In Exodus 20 Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai with two tablets, tablets known as The Ten Commandments. That title was coined late from the Bishop’s Bible (C.E. 1568) which the King James Bible picked up on to popularize. The Hebrews called them the 10 Words. 10 Words. And the nineth word in that list addresses words directly: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor.” At the core of the Hebrew moral and ethical law is the use of our words. You do not lie and make up stories or accusations against someone or a people for any reason. For any reason. The Hebrews bearing a false witness is criminal. Our American word, perjury, hardly does this justice.
Words matter.
Let me tell you a story about a local enterprise,
There’s one in every town, no matter what its size;
It doesn’t bring a profit or bring any revenue,
It’s good for one thing and that’s the damage it will do,
It’s called, The Rumor Mill.
The people who work there are all volunteers,
Their only qualification is a mouth and two big ears;
If the story’s not clear enough, that OK,
They’ll just doctor it up and then send it on its way;
It doesn’t matter who’s involved or who is gonna hurt,
As long as folks are listening, they’ll keep shoveling dirt
At the The Rumor Mill.
The Rumor Mill (And you’re manufacturing lies)
The Rumor Mill (The truth is disguised)
The Rumor Mill (Where reputations are crushed)
The Rumor Mill (Where nothing is untouched)
If it can be twisted, you can be sure that it will,
‘cause there ain’t nothin sacred,
At the Rumor Mill.
Now listen, my children, to this warning I make,
We’ve got a lot to lose, there’s a lot here at stake.
The Bible plainly states you’re gonna reap what you sow,
And you’ll be shown mercy by the mercy you show.
So shut your mouth and ask your friends to kindly do the same,
For you’ll end up as a victim with no one else to blame
At the Rumor Mill.
Words matter.
While I was at home caring for my mother, the hospice chaplain came to visit. Since he and I were in the same profession, we got off to the side to talk shop. He told me that his whole approach to his hospice chaplaincy changed when a patient said something to him. She looked at him and said, “Why haven’t you given me any words of hope?”
I questioned what I have been doing for the past three years. Have I used words to bring hope to my patients? Preachers tend to use a lot of words. We say something, but do we say anything worthwhile? Do we use our words to offer hope, or are they empty phrases filled with filler notes or cliches, or worse, negative words that lead to despair? Moving forward, how will I engage with my patients so that I will be more intentional with words of hope?
Words matter.
Billy Graham was a no-nonsense preacher. Stadiums overflowed as he proclaimed words of warning and salvation to the audience. His credibility and crafting of words led thousands to the alter in dedication or rededication, and prime-time television showcased his crusades. When Billy Graham spoke, people listened.
Martin Luther King, Jr. painted pictures with the words he uttered. Where Bob Ross used paint, paint brush, and a canvas to bring something to life, King used his poetic phraseology. The finished product of his words ignited a flame that swept through America known as the Civil Rights Movement. Mind you, how beautiful his words were, they were often hard to swallow. Even today, some sixty years later, his words are still hard to hear and just as hard to swallow.
Words from the mouth of Hitler is another verse. Fueling the hatred for the Jews, they were called unmentionable names in order to blame and scapegoat them for their nation’s problems. Hitler’s words dehumanized the Jewish people, making it easier to view them as less than human. If they weren’t real humans and part of society’s problems, then it would be that much easier to remove them like an exterminator removes mice and roaches. Hitler’s words tapped into Germany’s fear and ignited a hatred that led to the extermination of six million people. The only thing worse than Hitler’s words are the words spoken by the Holocaust deniers.
Words matter.
One day a woman was caught in the very act of adultery. The intimacy was exposed for all to see. As her accusers were dragging her through the streets leaving her dignity behind, Hank Williams was playing loud and clear in the background. If you listen carefully, you can hear, “Your Cheatin’ Heart” echo throughout time. The scene was ugly, like someone capturing the moment on TikTok for the whole world to see. And the whole town was witnessing the humiliation of the moment.
They brought her before Jesus and the gathered crowd, displayed like it was a reality tv show for ratings. The Pharisees forced Jesus to embrace the law of Moses which called for the execution of the those caught in adultery. In their hands were the rocks ready to be thrown. But Jesus spoke no words, and the silence was deafening. It doesn’t take a New Testament scholar with a PH.D. to ask the simple question, “Where’s the man?” If they caught her “in the very act of adultery,” then the missing guilty man means she’s been framed and is a pawn for their show. Suddenly, this story is getting creepily dark.
Jesus knelt on the ground and began to write. Did he doodle something? Did he write words? My curiosity is captured because I want to see what he was writing. And isn’t that the point? All eyes are now squarely focused on Jesus, and not on the woman. For a moment, her guilt and shame dissipate, as the crowd is more interested in what Jesus is doing than in what she has done.
But the instigators persist and press Jesus for a ruling. So, he rules, stating that anyone without sin casts the first stone. He then bends back down on the ground to write, while all eyes are now fixated on the provocateurs. And in an unexpected plot twist, the rocks begin dropping from their hands as they walk away from the scene, the oldest to the youngest.
And with the crowd still watching, Jesus looked up and questioned the woman. “Where are your accusers? Is no one here to condemn you?” Looking at the one sinless man with the right to condemn, she said, “No one.” And with words, he removed the guilt and shame as he kindly dismissed her. As she walked away you could almost hear Hank Williams singing, “I saw the light.”
Words matter.
“May these words of my mouth, and this meditation of my heart, be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Ps. 19:14).
Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)
* The Rumor Mill words by Jon Mohr.