Ordinary 24B (Psalm 19; James 3:1-12)
James reminds us of the duplicity of language, like a matchstick dropped by singed fingers that leaves behind charred acres. The deception of language is that we believe it is innocent.
I’ve only read the first few chapters of The Flame Alphabet, Ben Marcus’s dystopian novel about a time when the language of children inflicts deathly wounds on adults. But it’s already a book I both love and fear. As I read I wonder if Marcus, whose prose is steeped in scripture, stirred lines from this week’s James text into the darkness.
The friend who gave me this book pulled it open to the middle and read lines from the pages ahead, dialogue from one of the rabbis who channel wisdom through secret languages in huts deep in the woods:
Since the entire alphabet comprises God’s name, [Rabbi] Burke asserted, since it is written in every arrangement of letters, then all words reference God, do they not? That’s what words are. They are variations on his name. No matter the language. Whatever we say, we say God. . . . Therefore the language itself was, by definition, off-limits. Every single word of it. We were best to be done with it.
