​First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood                          
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ September 22 2024)
Sermon Title – The Blessing and Invisible Tattoo
Text – Rev. 22:1-5, Numbers 6:22-27
Rev Richard Herman

​First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood                          
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ September 15 2024)
Sermon Title – Lord Keep Your Arm Around my Shoulders and Your Hand Over my Mouth
Text – James 3:1-12
Rev Beth Thomas 
 
My maternal grandfather was a great character.  He worked in a nursery beside many migrant workers and whenever the truck carrying them back and forth to work would go by our house, all the men would yell and whoop it up when they saw him sitting in a lawn chair out in the yard.  I said to him one time, “Pop-pop, why do those guys make such a fuss over you?”
 
“I told them I’m the mayor,” he said.  We didn’t even live in an incorporated town.
 
Pop-pop had these sayings that I never heard anyone else use.  I only remember a few of them and when I texted my brother asking him to send me a few more for my sermon on the tongue he replied, “I remember a lot of his sayings, but none that can be repeated in church!”  I guess Pop-pop was a little more colorful than I remember!
 
The saying I do recall clearly is one he used when he was a senior citizen.  Advanced in age, he would look at women who were his contemporaries and say, “Well, there’s a face that’s worn out two bodies!”  I think that had to do with wrinkles but I wasn’t quite sure.  I knew enough to know that it wasn’t very flattering.  Sometimes my beloved Pop-pop left me speechless!
 
And in some of the commentaries I read to prepare for this sermon, more than one scholar suggests that being speechless is not that bad—that instead of preaching a sermon on life and death being in the power of the tongue, pastors would do well just to set aside about 20 minutes of silent prayer.  I thought about that!
 
So, what is James saying to us about the potentially destructive power of the human tongue?  And why is he singling out those of us who teach and preach?  I guess because we are bold enough or foolish enough to speak in public. 
 
Teachers in the time of James gave public discourses and students and other interested listeners would gather around.  If the speakers weren’t careful or if they got carried away, they could wrongly influence listeners.  Imagine how easily someone might be led astray by a misplaced or unintended word within any discourse.  Did you watch the Presidential debate this past week?  Think of the pressure not to misspeak there!
 
Yet who can imagine a teacher or public speaker who never misspeaks or never makes a poor choice choosing a word or an illustration?  As James says, “All of us make many mistakes.”
 
If you were starting out on a career today would you choose teaching?  Suddenly it can become high risk and life-threatening—not because of misspeaking, but just because of where you can be at any given time.  My mother was a teacher—she started in a one-room schoolhouse and taught for most of her life.  I think she liked, it but I can hardly recall a year that she didn’t have at least one child who was hard to discipline, hard to teach, hard to love and easy to complain about at dinner time—but they always survived the school year.
 
So how can this little part of our body—our tongues—rank as one of our most destructive elements?  James has several ideas about that:  he compares the tongue to how bits work in the mouths of horses, how rudders are used to steer large ships, and how little sparks can cause big fires.  These are great descriptions, aren’t they?
 
James also talks about how humans tame wild animals, how no single spring pours forth both good and bad of water, how fig trees cannot produce olives and how grapevines do not make figs.  It’s all very thought-provoking and slightly ironic that James uses such brilliant language to explain how that same language can be dangerous.
 
How well can we control our tongues?  Do we sometimes need a bit in our mouth?  Can our words flow out in all sorts of directions like a rudderless ship?  Have we ever uttered something that set off a big ole blaze of heartache?
 
Do our mouths ever produce words that are just the opposite of the words God wants us to speak?  If we are made to produce the fruits of the spirit, why do our tongues sometimes produce the fruits of wrath, anger, envy, and more, all sorts of words that are not loving or rooted in our faith?
 
Author Barbara Brown Taylor says that we construct worlds with the words we speak.  And those worlds are either full of love or they can be exclusive worlds where we only let in the people who speak just like us.
 
When we are busy building our environment through words, we sometimes make the mistake of thinking the whole world should be just like ours.  And sometimes we even think that God is aligned with our world—that God is only on our side—and it’s okay to dismiss or even harm people who are different from us.  And there are many people who see the world in a different way because they are in a different place or were raised in a different place.  See how complicated those little words we utter can become?
 
There is a line in one of those Jack Ryan spy movies where a bad guy implies that he had no choice but to become a terrorist because of all the things he saw as a child.  He says, “Geography is destiny, my friend.”  In other words, how you see, process and speak about the world is largely a matter of where you were born and raised and what you were taught.  It means that certain geographical regions have strategic, economic and political advantages that other areas of the world lack.  Think of all the people you encounter during your week and how very different their lives may be.
 
Think about immigrants who walk thousands of miles to find a new home in this country and how different their lives have been from ours.
 
Think about people in Delaware whose perceptions of New Jersey could have been influenced by “The Sparanos” and the “Jersey Shore.”
 
I think James’ spirit-inspired cautions are more important today than ever before.  Today we have so many more ways to communicate besides just talking.  We can tweet, we can text, we can post on Facebook, we can push a button and send an angry e-mail, we can start a blog and list all our opinions there good or bad.  We can Face-time or Skype, we can share photos in hundreds of different ways.  We can make a video and post it on YouTube.  We can host a website.
 
And while all of these ways of communicating begin in our brains, when we filter our thoughts into sentences to share what we text, e-mail and blog, it is all an extension of our voice and ultimately of our hearts.  Isn’t it?
 
Today anyone can have a public voice and people can agree or disagree with it.  Taylor Swift endorses a political candidate and millions of people either like or dislike it within minutes.
 
And sometimes we don’t even know how public our voice can be.  Years ago one of my friends posted on Facebook about how proud she was that our then-President wasn’t afraid to be a bully.  I replied, “I’m not sure I want a president who can be a bully.”
 
My friend replied, “Good point.”  But as the day went on, 127 other people I didn’t even know sent me all kinds of mean-spirited messages about being unpatriotic.
 
Why did 127 people from who knows where care about one sentence a housewife from Delaware posted on Facebook?  It’s a little scary that our always powerful language can now reach others we don’t even know so much further and faster.
 
But there is also some good news in all of this:  don’t you think James is pleased up in heaven as he now tries to imagine how many people can access his words all these years after they were written?  Don’t you think he is pleased that we still ponder the role our speech plays in depicting our life of faith?  Is he happy that we may ponder his words at some point before we speak?
 
For if we steadily practice our faith and we believe what the Spirit empowered James to write—then we know that loving our neighbors as we love ourselves is the way of wisdom.  And if we know that, then we can all strive to control our speech even if everything we have yet experienced tells us this can be incredibly difficult.
 
My husband’s grandfather had a unique expression he would utter when things worked out all right.  He’d say, “You must have held your mouth right.”  Again, I’m not 100 percent certain what he meant, but there is wisdom in that comment.
 
So how are our mouths?  How do we hold them?  When people hear the things we say, do they know we are Christians?  Do we use our words to build up or tear down?  Do we use our gift of language to bless or to curse?  Is our speech respectful or full of gossip?  Do our lips curl up in smiles that are blessings or turn down with words that curse?
 
How often do we use the vocabulary of faith?  Inside the church on Sunday mornings it’s easy, whenever we pray together, each time we lift our voices together in song, each time we read words of scripture and welcome strangers to worship, we are using the vocabulary of faith.
 
And, outside of church?  We, use it when we peacefully agree to disagree or when we can put our own agendas aside for the sake of something larger.  When we apologize and ask for forgiveness or grant it to someone else, we are using the language of faith.
 
When we recognize that everyone we encounter has the potential to be a faithful child of God, then we can start using the language of faith, speaking to other people with the same voice we use to talk to God.  When we enact the spiritual practice of bridling our tongues, we are inviting God to put God’s good and wise words right in our mouths.
 
Let me close with this interesting story:  My friend Lisa has a son who is a medical professional who promotes good breathing techniques.  Under his guidance, Lisa says she tapes her mouth shut each night before she goes to bed to ensure that she breathes through her nose and not her mouth when she sleeps.  She says this promotes a more peaceful and healthier sleep.  I think I might have a more peaceful and healthier sleep if I could keep my lips taped shut during the day!  Just imagine, I couldn’t just blurt out whatever comes to my mind, I could learn to pause and build my vocabulary of faith.  I might even be able to stop lying awake at night replaying conversations where I misspoke.  Maybe I could also take down this sign that I keep on a wall in my house which is also the title of our sermon today.  It has become one of my favorite prayers:  “Lord, Keep Your Arm around My Shoulder and Your Hand over My Mouth.”  Amen!

​​First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood                          
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ September 8 2024)
Sermon Title – Walking the Talk
Text – James 2:1-10,14-17
Rev Wanda Sevey 

​First Presbyterian Church of Blackwood                          
21 E. Church Street
Blackwood, NJ 08012                                                                              
Sermon Notes (Sunday ~ September 1 2024)
Sermon Title – Summer’s Over
Text – Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Rev Scott Morschauser