Well Spent

James 3:1-12

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• We will be judged more strictly
• Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze
• No human being can tame the tongue
• With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings who are made in the likeness of God

Applying the Word to My Life:
In February of 387, John was a new priest in a city waiting to find out whether the emperor was going to kill them.

The trouble had started over taxes. An angry crowd in Antioch turned into a mob, tore down statues of Emperor Theodosius and his family, and dragged them through the streets. It probably felt satisfying for a few minutes, but once the anger faded everyone remembered who Theodosius was and what Rome usually did with insults to the emperor. Rumors spread that soldiers were coming, executions would follow, maybe even that the city itself would be destroyed. People began fleeing, and those who stayed could do little except wait.

Bishop Flavian left Antioch to plead with the emperor for mercy, while John stayed behind with a city full of frightened people and no guarantee that the appeal would work. He had been a priest for less than a year, but night after night he climbed into the pulpit and preached about fear, repentance, mercy, and trust. He could not promise that Theodosius would pardon them because he did not know that either. While Flavian carried their case to the emperor, John tried to keep Antioch from coming apart.

He gave them what he had: words.

And he happened to be very good with them. As a young man, John had studied rhetoric under Libanius, the great pagan teacher of Antioch. He could have built an impressive life around his ability to speak. According to an ancient account, Libanius thought highly enough of him that, when asked near the end of his life who should succeed him, he named John before adding that the Christians had gotten to him first.

Eventually Flavian returned with the news everyone had been waiting for: the emperor had pardoned the city. John's sermons had not won the pardon, but while Antioch waited for it, his voice had helped hold frightened people together, and people remembered that.

Years later, when Constantinople needed a new archbishop, imperial officials came for John. They did not exactly send him a polite invitation. He was enormously popular in Antioch, and there was good reason to think either he or the people might resist his leaving, so he was quietly taken outside the city before being told where he was going.

Once in Constantinople, John discovered that preaching hard truths to frightened ordinary people can make you beloved, while preaching those same truths to rich and powerful people can make you enemies. He preached against extravagance in a city full of wealth, redirected resources toward hospitals and the poor, and could be especially hard on Christians who worshiped beautifully and then walked past suffering outside the church as though the two had nothing to do with each other.

That kind of preaching eventually put him in conflict with powerful people at court, including Empress Eudoxia, as well as bishops who had their own reasons for wanting him gone. John was exiled, but Constantinople erupted in protest. According to the traditional telling, an earthquake struck soon after his departure, deepening the fear that something had gone terribly wrong, and Eudoxia herself pushed for his recall.

John came back, but he did not become quieter. He kept preaching, and eventually his enemies succeeded in removing him again. This time there would be no quick return. Already sick, John was sent farther and farther from Constantinople until another order pushed him still deeper toward the edge of the empire. The journey was brutal, his body was failing, and he never reached the final destination.

He died near a little town called Comana. The man whose words had comforted a terrified city had discovered just how expensive words could become.

His last recorded words were not a complaint about the emperor, the empress, the bishops who opposed him, or the guards who marched him toward his death. They were: "Glory be to God for all things."

James begins this passage with a warning that not many should become teachers because teachers will be judged more strictly, and then he turns almost entirely to the tongue. A tiny bit can steer a horse. A small rudder can turn a ship. A spark can burn down a forest. The same mouth can bless God and curse someone made in His image.

John's life makes those images feel less theoretical.

His words were never harmless, but that was not the same thing as being uncontrolled.

I spend a lot of my own working life choosing words carefully. Some are easy to say: congratulations on the promotion, welcome to the company, good work. Others are harder. Someone's employment is ending. Someone made a mistake that needs to be corrected. Sometimes the loving thing is a truth I know another person would rather not hear.

James reminds me to be careful because words have enormous power. John reminds me that careful does not mean silent. A tongue devoted to God may still get you into trouble. Telling the truth in love can cost something precisely because the truth matters.

John spent his gift well. When his words comforted people, he used them. When they challenged people, he used them. And when almost everything else had been taken away, he spent some of his last breath the same way he had spent the rest: giving glory to God.

The goal is not to make my tongue so safe that it never costs me anything. The goal is to make sure whatever it costs is being spent on truth, spoken in love.

My Response for Today:
Today I'll say one true thing I have been tempted to leave unsaid, and say it with love.

ABOUT ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
Name: St. John Chrysostom ("Chrysostom" - "Golden-Mouthed" - a nickname earned for his preaching, not his birth name)
Lived: c. 347-407, Antioch and Constantinople
Feast Day: September 13
Patron of: preachers, orators, lecturers, public speakers, education
Title: Doctor of the Church
Read more: Franciscan Media, Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent)
Selected Writings: On the Priesthood - his own reflection on the weight of teaching and preaching, a fitting companion to today's passage