NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

'The tongue is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell/ Strong words from James! But can speaking really be as bad as all that? Well, it's not so very different from something Jesus said, when he was teaching the crowd about hypocrisy: 'Listen and understand! What goes into a man's mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean.'

Now it sounds, from these two quotations, as if nothing good can come out of our mouths in terms of the things we say. If that were true, I would have no option but to go back down those steps, stay in my place and hold my peace. But neither Jesus nor James are quite as uncompromising as that, even though the idea is expressed rather forcibly. At another time, Jesus said, 'The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart; and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.'

He seems to be speaking in rather extreme terms as if people were either 100% good or 100% evil. James's purpose, on the other hand, is to give practical everyday advice, and so his words sound closer to our normal experience. He says 'out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man.' And although he says that it shouldn't be so - suggesting that it's as unnatural as fresh and salt water coming from the same spring - I think he's realistic enough to admit human weakness, while at the same time encouraging his readers to do better! Now to be logical, we have to say that, since even our best words are not perfect any more than our best actions are, it follows that everything we say is tainted with sin; but for practical purposes, we have to accept the judgement that some of the things we say are better than others. Unfortunately, we do sometimes get the feeling that some of the things people say seem to be motivated by evil, by a desire to dominate or hurt, and we may even feel that there are people who seem to be that way inclined in most of their dealings with others.

Perhaps the key difference here is regret. Awareness and regret. You can't regret saying something, unless you are aware that it has hurt someone, but then if you do regret what you have said, it does show that at least you aren't 100% evil. But if you don't regret what you have said to hurt someone, doesn't that make it different? This is all much too simplistic, of course: there will be times when you have to say things that will upset someone - you know, those uncomfortable truths - in the belief that it will lead to a good outcome, but that's quite different from taking advantage of the opportunity to hurt someone for your own satisfaction and not being sorry afterwards.

But if it is as Jesus says, that what our mouth speaks is 'out of the overflow of our heart'/ then it is not surprising that our tongue can cause so much damage, is it, since our hearts tend to be so full of selfish desires. So we open our mouths, and out pops that selfishness! Not surprising, then, that we are urged to - as James puts it - 'keep a tight rein on our tongue'. He stands in a long tradition urging the same restraint. In the Psalms: "Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days/ keep your tongue from evil." In Proverbs: "When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise." And we have our own sayings: "Speech is silver: silence is golden." "Least said, soonest mended."

Odd then isn't it, that a large part of what we read about in the book we hold sacred, consists of the things people have said to each other! Take today's Gospel reading, for example, and see how totally dominated it is by talk! It starts as Jesus is on his way to Caesarea Philippi with his disciples, and he asks as an opening question, "Who do people say I am?" Now, if you or I had said that, wouldn't it have seemed unbelievably pretentious? You imagine me walking along with you, and I suddenly say, out of the blue, "Who do people say I am?" Well, if what I say is the overflow of my heart, wouldn't you say my heart was preoccupied with one thing only: myself? How often we find that the things Jesus says are either incredibly and unforgivably arrogant, or they actually prove who he is. And we know what the Pharisees thought on that subject, don't we?

Anyway, what he asks about is itself what people are saying! So the disciples say their piece, reporting what they have heard other people saying about him. And then Jesus presses them to say what is in their heart, and, as you know, Peter comes out with his great confession, "You are the Christ." There is absolutely no doubt that this is one of the good things brought up by a good man out of the good stored up in his heart. It is the overflow of a loving heart. And as such it is recognized as one of the most perfect uses to which the human tongue has ever been put.

And does Jesus say, "Yes, Peter, you are right. You'll be able to tell everyone what a great discovery you have been blessed with..." No way! He warns them not to tell anyone about him. Extraordinary! Why? What can be wrong with telling everybody who Jesus is? If it was the truth, wouldn't they be more in the wrong if they just hushed it up? If telling the truth is the right thing to do, then how can not telling the greatest truth of all be right?

Just as an aside here, I want to tell you about the telling of another great truth. It just so happened that I was reading about Albert Einstein at about the same time that I was thinking about today's sermon, and, as tends to happen, it seemed to tie in rather well with what I wanted to say. You have of course all heard of his great 'theory of relativity'; and you don't need to understand it any more than I do to know that it has been very important in our understanding of the universe at every level from that of atoms to that of stars and galaxies. The famous equation, e=mc2, is one of the finest achievements of one of the greatest scientists and thinkers of all time, and we can hardly imagine anyone being sorry that we now have this great help to our understanding. But did you know that Einstein lived the last twenty years of his life with exactly that feeling? He went public with his discovery that matter could be converted into massive amounts of energy, and had to live with the knowledge that this led, among other things, to the development of the atomic bomb. "If I had known," he said, "that my theories would lead to such destruction, I would rather have been a watchmaker." How dreadful to think that he wished he had not spoken! Would it have been better if he had kept quiet? I don't know how you answer that question.

Coming back to our gospel reading/ after Jesus warned the disciples not tell anyone about him, he began to teach them a very uncomfortable truth: that he was destined to suffer and die. As Mark says, 'He spoke plainly about this.' Well, should he have kept quiet, in view of what Peter said to him after that? We're told in Matthew's gospel that he said, 'Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you.' Well I bet Peter regretted speaking when he heard Jesus's response! 'Get behind me, Satan!' What a dreadful situation to be in, and all caused by talking! And yet, what was it that motivated Peter's words? Were they not still the overflow of a very loving heart? Poor Peter! He says one good thing, and he gets brownie points; he says another good thing and he gets smacked down as if he were the prince of darkness himself!

But I think Jesus's response is very revealing. It gives us a sudden insight into his humanity. I think that Jesus responded so vehemently because, in that instant, he felt a very great temptation. Here were his closest friends urging him not to go through with the harsh suffering and death which was confronting him. Of course it was a tempting prospect. And it was in that temptation that Jesus recognized the presence of Satan. I used to think he was calling Peter 'Satan', whereas what really happened was that he heard Satan's voice in Peter's words - words that had outpoured from Peter's loving heart - and it was the tempter, not Peter, that Jesus was ordering to get out of his way forward. It was a very human moment.

We don't really need stronger proof than that, that both fresh and salt water can issue from the same spring, do we? But isn't it interesting that it's this very person - the one who so frequently must have wished that he had kept his mouth shut - that Jesus identifies as the rock on which his church is to be built. Yes, Peter does often say the wrong things, but how true it is also, that he is capable of the deepest regret. Should Peter have said it? It was the truth as he saw it, and having said it, he learned an even greater truth. It's as if, sometimes, speech with a sensitiveness to your hearer's response, could be an even better way than silence. Not always, but maybe sometimes. For how else can we grow?

We are always encouraged to believe that we should speak the truth. For instance, in our family service at Cranmore, we regularly say the words 'May the lips that have sung your praises always speak the truth.' But as you will have gathered from what I have said so far, that's not as easy as it sounds. Superficially, of course, we are being strengthened not to tell blatant lies. But Peter was speaking the truth, as he saw it. So was Einstein. Should we say everything that we believe to be true? I remember the shock I felt as a schoolboy, when our headmaster, an ordained minister, taught us that sometimes it was better to tell a white lie than to tell a truth that would upset someone for no good reason. It is complicated! And in a court of law when you declare that you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you have probably already perjured yourself, because how can you possibly tell the whole truth? You can certainly not do better than tell the whole truth as you see it, and that's not the whole truth by any means. And if you did tell the whole truth as you saw it, it would take all day, as you went into every minute detail. We should really say we will tell the truth, the whole material truth as we see it, and nothing but the truth.

I labour the point, because I believe it is important. We cannot tell the whole truth, only what we see. As the Archbishop said in an address in Wells on Friday, what we take to be the truth depends on which way we are looking. If we look this way, one thing appears to be true, and if we turn around and look the other way, something else appears to be true. We cannot presume to know the whole truth about God. We can only know what we see. Nor can we know the whole truth about our neighbour. We can't even know the whole truth about ourselves. As St.Paul says, 'Now I know in part.' And Jesus, promising the gift of Spirit of truth, makes it quite clear that truth is not a total, once-and-for-all revelation, but a process of learning and growth. He says, 'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.'

There is one other side to all this business of speaking - which is obviously so fraught with danger, and which, at the same time, is equally obviously such an important part of how we live and grow together - and that is the business of listening. For every talker, there must also be a listener, and it's probably just as important to be aware of how we listen as it is to be aware of how we talk. You see, James could equally well have said, 'If anyone is never at fault in how he listens, he is a perfect man.' I said earlier that logically everything we say must be tainted with sin, as what we say can never be 100% perfect. Now if the person listening to your version of things hears just the sin and the selfishness, the deficient vision of truth, in what you say, then it's likely that the conversation will develop badly and lead to disagreement and a poorer relationship. But if the person listening looks for the good in what you say, then it's likely that the conversation will develop well, and lead to a better relationship. But it's hard to do, especially when both of you are full to overflowing with what is in your heart.

The current difficulties between the Vatican and the Muslim world illustrate what a deeply important issue this one of speaking and listening is. The Pope (who is of course today's Peter) has uttered imperfect words out of his heart of love, but his hearers - well some of them - have heard the imperfection rather than the message of peace.

So with that in mind, I don't think I can do better to than to end by praying in some words of a hymn that we sang in Wells Cathedral on Friday, at that great celebration with the Archbishop: Give us the tongues to speak, In every time and place, To rich and poor, to strong and weak, The word of love and grace. Enable us to hear The words that others bring, Interpreting with open ear The special song they sing.