Mark 8:27-38
27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
34 He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my word in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
James 3:1-12
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will face stricter judgment. 2 For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is mature, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 4 Or look at ships: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.
How great a forest is set ablaze by a such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of life, and is itself set on fire by hell. 7 For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8 but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth comes a blessing and a curse. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.
Tell me what you hear in this audio clip (nature sounds)
In Genesis 2:19 it says, “So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” We are able to name what we just heard in that clip because God graced humans from the very beginning with the ability to organize our world with language, to name what something is and what it is not. In this way, the tongue is a powerful tool. Wielding the tongue comes naturally for a lot of people, but as the letter of James reminds us this morning, wielding it almost comes too naturally for some us and as a result we find ourselves speaking without first thinking about what we’re saying, this problem is known as foot in mouth disease. Humans have a hard time thinking before we speak, and in our power to wield words, we forget that just because we are capable of saying something doesn’t mean we necessarily understand its implications; that just because we can utter the words doesn’t necessarily mean others understand what we mean by them. Speaking words and understanding words can be two very different things.
God has watched us for centuries name things and speak about the world without fully understanding the stories behind it, and in our present age, I think we are going to be able to relate to God a whole lot more with the advent of A.I. Have you ever asked Alexa to play Taylor Swift, and she says, “playing Taylor Swift” and a song from The Weekend comes on? Or have you ever been in your car and asked Siri to pull up directions to rue de la Gauchetiere and she says ‘showing directions to rue de la Gauchetiere’ and then begins playing a song from your Spotify playlist? These devices seem to say the words right, but they don’t always understand what the meaning is behind them.
Have you ever heard about the paperclip apocalypse? Several philosophers at the University of Oxford were speculating on how humans in the future might be able control a super-intelligent AI if that AI were magnitudes smarter than the humans. The thought experiment went like this: What if someone who owns a paperclip factory programs and switches on an AI to help with production and gives this AI the sole instruction to produce as many paperclips as possible. Because it is AI and can figure out how to maximize output better than humans, the programmer allows it to invent ways to achieve this goal. As this scenario was played out, it revealed that the AI was being driven forward by only one goal, to produce as many paper clips as possible, like it was told to. It would therefore logically end up using all the resources it encountered to do exactly that. Eventually paperclips would be produced in ridiculous quantities, filling up cities and countries, and if anyone tried to stop the AI it would see this as a threat to its goal of producing paperclips and find a way to keep going, defeating any humans who got in its way until it produced so many paper clips that it had to find a way to go to other planets to keep producing them and then other solar systems etc. The idea behind the experiment was to reveal that technically the AI didn’t do anything wrong, it performed its given task to a tee, but it didn’t really understand what the human was asking it, it didn’t understand the meaning behind the command. And the human who gave it the task, ‘produce as many paperclips as possible’ by not paying attention to the exact words they were using created a situation where everything became out of control leading to disaster.
‘Who do people say that I am?’ Jesus asks the disciples in our gospel reading this morning. And we hear that people are using a lot of words and names to describe him, John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets, but none of them quite tell his real story. ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Jesus asks again, and we hear from those who have spent much time listening to him a more accurate response: ‘You are the messiah.’ Peter has identified him correctly; Jesus is pleased and begins to tell them what the story of the messiah is: torture, execution and resurrection. But these words do not compute to Peter’s understanding of what a messiah is. A messiah for him is going to liberate Israel, will free the people and usher in a new world order. Peter rejects Jesus’ words and tries to wield his tongue to override the narrative because he can’t fathom that the greatest act of humanity will be made with humility not power, that the most spiritual thing we can do is to deny ourselves not uplift ourselves, that making a choice to live for love at all costs is worth dying for. Peter can name Jesus as the Messiah but he doesn’t understand what that really means. By speaking without thinking, he makes it difficult to learn what Jesus is trying to reveal to him.
The letter of James says that we should never speak recklessly and appreciate all words that leave not only our mouths but the mouths of others. Since words create the world around us, when we speak it is a big responsibility we are taking on. Likewise, when we hear others speak, we should be listening for what they are trying to create. The ancients knew this well, each culture through time has had teachings on the need of silence as a path to wisdom. Silence allows us to really hear what someone is saying, it stops us from asserting our own assumptions and truths into the narrative of someone or something else, and it assures us that when we do speak we are doing so with real intention. Silence allows us to pause and think before we use the power of our tongue to tell AI to make as many paperclips as possible, to pause and think before we use our words to start rebuking the son of God on what it means to be the messiah. Silence invites us to pause our natural human reflexes, and allows for spiritual encounters to surface.
And God wants us to encounter these spiritual stories behind the material world. God has a deep desire for us to come to know who God is and what the story behind creation means, it is why we were invited to speak and name all life. But knowing the story of creation does not end when we name it, it continues on as we listen to the world, taking in its stories and opening our hearts to being transformed by them.
Tell me what you hear in this audio clip (nature sounds)
On this Sunday, may we, guided by the teachings of Christ, find the humility to bridle our tongues and listen deeply for what is being revealed to us by creation, whose story is one that God not only gave us the ability to name, but to in love come to know. For this gift, thanks be to God. Amen.
Comments