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Email can be a
dangerous way to communicate. Let me illustrate with a couple of stories.
The first is a story that have been around for awhile and I don't know how factual it is, but I know
that it is truthful about communication.
There was a young woman who had recently become engaged to a young man, whom she loved very much.
She was so excited about the engagement that she sent an email to everyone she knew that had email. Her
fiancé, her family, his family and all of their friends. That was all well and good.
One of the fiancé's best friends wrote a congratulatory note back to his friend. In doing so he sent
the note to everyone who had received the original email, a simple thing to do with most email programs.
It's just a matter of hitting a reply button that will copy all of the addresses to which the original was
sent. Everything is still fine because it was a simple note of congratulations on the joy of being
engaged.
The fiancé decided to send a note back to his friend, telling him how happy he was to be engaged to
this young woman, how wonderful their relationship was, how well they loved each other and on and on until
the note was rather like a romance novel about their relationship. You probably get the picture, but if
the email had to have a rating, it would probably be "TMI" - Too Much Information!
Still, that probably would have caused no great harm except that the fiancé, too, had hit the key to
send this note to everyone who had received the initial announcement. Now this passionate summary of their
relationship went not only to the fiancé's best friend, but also to the young woman who had sent the
original email, her family, his family and all their friends. You can imagine the reaction. Not everything
we want to say should be said to everyone in the world!
The next story was one I happened to see, fortunately from the sidelines. I was working with a small
group of colleagues on a project and we had been meeting for quite some time. The group had become used to
each other's humor and ways of communicating. One of the members of the group decided to send the rest of
us an email that was fairly critical of a portion of the work being done. The email spoke of some of the
issues in what the author intended to be a humorous vein, but with enough sarcasm so that someone from
outside the small group might be quite offended by a couple of statements.
Instead of typing in the group address correctly, my colleague typed in another group address that
was very similar. It's easy to do if the addresses are closely related. These addresses were. The email
went to ALL the clergy in the diocese who are on the email list rather than a small group of people who
were working together. The result was not very pretty.
I could tell that my colleague had received some private replies to his email right away because of
the apology that he sent out about the original email, explaining that it was intended for a small group.
That obviously didn't satisfy some folks because they sent out scathing replies to everyone who had
received the original email and the apology so that their anger toward our colleague would be duly noted
by all. The first email was not helpful, in that it started all of this, but the following were just as
bad or worse in their attempt to justify rudeness by "righteous anger".
The reason I tell these stories is to help us think about what the Epistle from James tells us today
and to see how we might live out his advice.
James says, "Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not
produce God's righteousness." We are to be quick to listen, but slow to speak and slow to anger. It seems
as if our culture has rewritten James' words to be, "Everyone should be slow to listen, quick to speak and
quick to anger; because your anger displays God's righteousness."
"That's right," we say "if God were here he wouldn't put up with this ridiculous thought and so why
should I? I might as well be the one to tell this person how awful they are."
Many of us know that it has become so easy to reply quickly to an email that we don't agree with. We
read an email that is obviously wrongheaded and the first thing we do is hit the reply button to explain
how wrongheaded the offender is. The trouble is, we are no longer speaking with one another as persons,
but speaking to one another as objects of thought we don't agree with at the moment. We lose the
hospitality that comes from communication between people of varied thought.
But James doesn't stop at saying that we need to listen carefully. He continues to point out that we
need to understand what we have listened to and act on it. There is an interesting contrast between
hearing words and understanding that the words call us to a specific kind of behavior. James knows that if
we really listen we will have to take time to think about how what we have learned will impact our lives
and behavior.
There is an old story from India that helped me to grapple with the idea of listening, understanding
and then acting on that understanding.
There was a king of a small kingdom in India who ruled well and was loved by his people. The king
called his four daughters together one day and said to them that he wanted to go away to learn about God
and spend time in prayer. The daughters would rule the kingdom in his absence. "Before I go", he said, "I
want to give each of you a gift. I pray that this gift will help you learn how to rule."
The king gave each daughter a grain of rice and left. The first daughter ran off to her room and
wrapped the grain of rice in a golden thread and put it in a crystal box so she could look at it every
day.
The second daughter put her grain of rice in a small wooden treasure box and hid it under her bed so
that it would be safe. The third daughter looked at the grain of rice, said "Yes, that is a grain of rice
like all others." And threw the grain away.
The fourth daughter looked at the grain of rice and pondered what her father meant. She pondered all
that day and finally put the grain of rice away and continued her work. She continued to ponder the grain
of rice all that week and into the month and then for several months. After almost a year had passed she
finally understood the significance of the grain of rice.
After several years the father returned and had indeed grown closer to God. The time spent in prayer
was shown by the joy on his face. He called his daughters together and asked, "Where is the gift that I
gave you?"
The first daughter ran to her room and brought the crystal box. She said, "Father, I wrapped the
grain of rice in golden thread and placed it in this crystal box. I have looked at it every day."
The king bowed to his daughter, smiled and thanked her as he took the box.
The second daughter ran to her room and brought the wooden box to her father. "I placed the grain of
rice in this treasure box and hid it so that it would be safe all this time."
The king bowed to his daughter, smiled and thanked her as he took the box.
The third daughter ran to the kitchen and brought back a grain of rice. "Here, Father, is a grain of
rice!"
The king, having spent much time in prayer, had become close to God and was surely a holy man. He
smiled at his daughter, bowed to her and thanking her took the grain of rice.
The fourth daughter said to her father, "I do not have the gift that you gave me."
The king asked what had happened and the daughter explained.
"I pondered your gift for a long time and I finally realized that the grain of rice was also a seed.
I took it out and planted it. When the rice grew I harvested more grains for seed and planted them. I have
continued to do that. Come, let me show you what has happened." She took her father to a window where they
could look out and see fields of rice going off into the distance. "This was from your gift," she
said.
The father turned to his daughter and placed his crown upon her head. "You have learned what it
means to rule."
The story illustrates the complexity and the simplicity involved in discovering the truth about
listening and then acting on that discovery.
We in the church must begin hearing as James instructs us, asking Jesus to open our ears and our
hearts as necessary so that we can begin to understand each other in our differences. It is only then that
we can show our understanding by going out to do the work God has given us to do. We need to be quick to
listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.
Bishop Gordon Scruton, the Bishop of Western Massachusetts, sent a pastoral letter to his people
after convention in which he explained what had happened at convention, how he had voted, how the
delegation had voted and so on. In the letter he said something very important that gets to what James is
trying to tell us in the Epistle. Bishop Scruton wrote, "The quality of our relationships is as important
to Jesus as the content of our conversation."
Let me repeat those words. "The quality of our relationships is as important to Jesus as the content
of our conversation."
I believe that he is right. How we treat one another gets to the heart of loving one another. In
fact, I think that the quality of our relationships may often be more important than the content of our
conversation.
It's very difficult to hear the truth if it is spoken in anger or with haughtiness. We stop
listening to people whom we believe do not genuinely care for us.
It matters to me how God has acted in your life. I want to know how your relationship with Jesus has
helped you make decisions. I want to know how God's love has been active in your life. I hope that it
matters to you how God has helped me and acted in my life. The quality of our relationships is just as
important to Jesus, and to us, as the content of our conversations.
This is part of what James is getting at in the Epistle. He also has some very specific ways that we
go about acting on what we have learned from one another about God. James says that we are to take care of
those who cannot care for themselves. He speaks specifically about taking care of widows and orphans
because those were folks in his culture who could not care for themselves. But we can understand that to
mean all those who need our help.
As you go about your week you might think of whom you could call that would appreciate a phone call
just to say hello. How can you reach out to those who are hungry and help them to be fed? How can you
assist in someone's healing this week? Those are the kinds of things that often help us to know we are
cared for and thus help us to trust others when we do hear the truth.
"Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce
God's righteousness."
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