Sermon on James 3:1-12, for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, "The Untamable Tongue"
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Today’s sermon is from James; his warning about the deadly work of our tongue. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We all know and have felt the evil of gossip in our lives; we all know the feeling of a harsh or hurtful word that was spoken in anger. Think how easily you can darken someone’s day by a rude or thoughtless word. But have we owned the fact that our tongue is a “restless evil, full of deadly poison” as James says? That it sets on fire our whole course of life and it is set on fire by hell? Isn’t that overstating it a bit, we think? How can such a small thing as our tongue be so bad or have such a terrible effect? Sure, maybe we’ve known some people with dirty tongues, who could unless a stream of abuse or cursing that would make a sailor blush…but my tongue?!? Certainly not! But I suspect we all sharpen our tongues sometimes and imagine j...