Elder Tom has been intending to write this article for a long time, but something has been keeping him from it. Elder Tom is not sure what it is, but he thinks it is because he has a bad conscience. Elder Tom would like to say that he has always appreciated and commended his pastors and teachers, along with the leaders and members of the congregations and church body of which he has been and still is a part. But the truth is that Elder Tom has all too often found fault with them and even indulged in bad mouthing them. Elder Tom repents of these trespasses, as well as all his other sins, in sackcloth and ashes. (This is figurative language; his wife will not tolerate her husband donning sackcloth, and if he ever tried to cover himself with ashes, she probably would not allow him in the house.) Elder Tom strives to bring forth fruits of repentance in his relationship with his current pastor and the members of his congregation. He tries to commend them and support them as much as possible. If there is a circumstance where he must be critical, he strives to resolve the issue as the Lord directs us in His Word.
But still, damage has been done. And sometimes Elder Tom wakes up in the middle of the night, wishing he had the ability to kick himself in the posterior over something he thought or felt, something he said or wrote that was wrong or communicated in the wrong way, some issue he failed to resolve properly, some missed opportunity to apologize and seek a brother’s or sister’s pardon. There is another thing that can wake Elder Tom in the middle of the night. That is the memory of things that people have said about him, both to his face and behind his back. Elder Tom knows how it is to have people bad mouth him, and he knows what it is to have to cope with the damage that results from such activity. He confesses that he has trouble forgetting and forgiving what was said, not to mention how hard it is for him to love and respect those who did the talking.
Elder Tom needs to watch his mouth, and so do you and all our fellow Christians. Elder Tom knows how it hurts to be on the receiving end, and many of you, if not all, have the same knowledge. Elder Tom has also observed the damage that violations of the Eighth Commandment (Lutheran Counting) have done to the church. Ministries have been destroyed because called workers have been bad mouthed by their members, and – despite how unthinkable it ought to be and is – even by other called workers of the same fellowship. Called workers and members have had their feelings hurt. For all too many, the quality of their lives and the sphere of their service to the Savior and his church have been diminished. Others have found it difficult to worship and to have a receptive attitude towards the means of grace, the gospel in word and sacrament.
We need to watch our mouths, and our hearts. If we allow ourselves to become judgmental and hyper-critical, we do ourselves and others great damage. If a Christian gets down on his pastor for some reason, how is he/she going to be able to receive what the pastor says, how is he/ she going to be served with the gospel that comes from his mouth, how can she/ he properly receive the Sacrament from his hands? If we get down on one of the members of our congregation, how can we work with them, help them, pray for them, love them as our Savior wants us to do? How can we do outreach to our friends, neighbors, colleagues, or family if they hear us talking about what a loser our pastor is or what hypocrites we have in our congregation? How can any project succeed if the participants are talking each other down?
We need to watch our mouths, our hearts, and our souls. We want the gospel to come to one and all, we want everyone we know, everyone in our community, everyone in the whole wide world to know Jesus as his/her Savior and to share all the riches of God’s love and generosity that have been lavished on us. We don’t want careless, thoughtless words, let alone malicious ones, keep anyone from receiving the gospel. When our pastor visits a family, we want them to see him as a loving, caring, devout, truthful, authoritative person on whom they can rely to bring them the truth of God and serve them with the gospel of Christ. We want to see him in the same way for ourselves. We don’t want anything we feel or say to lead ourselves or others to see him in any other light. The same is true for all our fellow Christians. We want them to see us and we want to see them as sincere believers in our Lord Jesus and the truth of his word, penitent sinners who are bound together by our common faith and confession into a dynamic fellowship that is committed to communicating that confession of faith to each other, to our children, and to all the people around us. We want our community to see us that way as well, and we do not want to have our feelings and/or our words militate against or diminish in any way the clarity and energy of our communication of the Savior’s name.
We do not want to damage others, and we certainly do not wish to damage ourselves. If we indulge in a judgmental, hyper-critical attitude toward our pastors and fellow Christians, we hinder our ability to receive the gospel. If we continue down that road, and do not repent, then we will indeed continue down that road, and down, and down, all the way to…all the way to that place that Elder Tom doesn’t like to mention and that he doesn’t even want to contemplate. If we give voice to that attitude and talk behind people’s backs, we make it more difficult for them to serve the Savior and to get the gospel to those who need to hear it. We need to cultivate the opposite attitude. We need to view each other as positively as possible, and to speak that way about each other. When offenses come, as our Savior assures us they will, we want to be sure that we are not to be counted among those through whom the offenses come. (Woe to us if we are in that number, as our Savior also asserted.) When issues arise, we want to resolve them as our Savior directs us.
As our Savior directs us – we claim Jesus as our Savior. We know that He suffered unspeakably to atone for all the things we should not have spoken about our fellow Christians and our called workers. We know that He suffered unspeakably for all the things that our fellow Christians might have spoken amiss about us. Because our Savior answered for all our careless, and even malicious words, those sins, along with all the others, have been forgiven and even, in the mystery of the new covenant, forgotten by God. From this forgiveness comes the power, as well as the imperative, to forgive others, no matter how hard it may seem or how “good” or memories may be. From the forgiveness we received comes the imperative and the power to share that forgiveness and its Author with one and all. From that forgiveness comes the power and imperative to “defend, speak well of, and take the words and actions of others in the kindest possible way,” especially when it comes to our pastor and our fellow Christians.
