The Tongue is a Fire: 12 September, 2021

Mark 8:27-38

In the beginning of today’s gospel, Jesus asks the disciples a question: ‘”Who do you say that I am?” . . . People have been pondering it for two thousand years, weighing and debating the answers. But Peter. . . answers at once: “You are the Messiah.”

Messiah is Hebrew for the Anointed One. In the Greek of the New Testament, Messiah is translated as Christos, which means the same thing. In English this becomes Christ. In ancient Israel a new king was anointed with oil to show that he had been set apart to be king. So Jesus the Messiah—or Jesus Christ—means something like “King Jesus.”

And that’s the idea Peter seems to have gotten hold of: Jesus has been chosen to free the Jews from their Roman overlords, remove the corrupted religious leaders, and then rule over Israel as some kind of priest-king. But while Peter is not precisely wrong—because King Jesus is exactly who Jesus is—his understanding is all wrong. Jesus is not going to be king of a few hundred square miles of earth. He’s not even going to rival Alexander the Great and seek to be the ruler of the whole earth. He is going to be the king of the cosmos. . . . He is not going to be King Jesus in this world, in this time and place in the way that Peter expects and can understand. The cross and Easter lie in between. –– Joseph McHugh

James 3:1-12

James saves the preacher time by illustrating his own teaching. And nowhere do we find such a cluster of metaphors as in 3:3–6. James presses into service virtually universal illustrations: the bridling of the horse (v 3), the steering of the ship (v 4), and the violence of the forest fire (vv 5–6). The first two metaphors are parallel, each showing how a small implement (the bit, the rudder) can direct the course of a much larger object (the horse, the ship).

The tongue, James suggests, is like the bit and the rudder. While a comparatively small member of the human body, it has the ability to set the whole course of a person’s life. Timely, well-chosen words can preserve friendship, bring reconciliation with others, and most important, please God, whereas hasty and ill-chosen words can wreak havoc in personal relationships, harm the people of God, and bring God’s judgment.

. . . How can the tongue have such power? James concludes this section by reminding us that evil spiritual forces (“hell”) seek to gain power over our speech so as to disrupt our human relationships and sever us from God himself. –– Douglas Moo, in Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts, ed. Roger E. Van Harn (Eerdmans, 2001), 530.

Isaiah 50:4-9a

This is the third ‘‘Servant Song’’ in Second Isaiah, written in the time of the Babylonian Exile. The servant is dedicated to God despite the pain and rejection that will follow from that dedication. The servant does not try to escape from the sufferings that come from his commitment to the LORD. Rather he expresses confidence in God’s love. He knows that God is on his side. His confidence is vindicated by the LORD’s bringing his people back to their homeland. –– Joseph McHugh

Joseph McHugh is a freelance writer from New Jersey, and a former weekly newspaper columnist writing on lectionary readings and whose recent writing includes Explain That to Me!: Searching the Gospels for the Honest Truth about Jesus (ACTA Publications).

Douglas Moo is professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, Illinois.

Homily Service 42, no. 4 (2009): 15-25.