Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord

Jesus and his disciples were walking through Gali lee when they came to Capernaum. When they entered a house, Jesus asked them, “What were you talking about on the way?” Perhaps they thought Jesus had not been listening to their conversation, but he had. Mark tells us, “They were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.”

What were you talking about? What was the color of your conversation? Was that profanity you just used? Did you just curse when you could have blessed? These are questions that, perhaps, Jesus could ask of us.

Jesus often spoke of language. In the Gospel of Matthew we find his words: “How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justifi ed, and by your words you will be condemned.”

An employee, washing lettuce in the grocery’s produce aisle, was approached by an elderly woman who said, “I’d like to buy half a grapefruit.”

The worker said the store only sold whole grapefruit. The woman continued to be very insistent, so the produce worker said he would speak with the store manager. He found the manager at the front of the store and said, “Boss, there’s this crazy lady in produce that insists on buying half a grapefruit...” Just at that moment he looked to his side and there was the woman who had followed him to the front of the store. He quickly added, “And this wonderful woman here would like to buy the other half.”

Satisfied, the woman went to retrieve her basket as the boss said to the employee, “Wow, son, that’s the fastest thinking I have ever heard. Where do you hail from?”

“Kansas City, sir, home of the best football team and the ugliest women in America.”

“Really?” said the boss with a slight grimace, “My wife’s from Kansas City.”

In a split second, the produce worker responded, “Oh really, what position does she play?”

If only our verbal slips were so tame; but, increasingly, they are not. Language that used to be scrawled only on bathroom walls now appears on bumper stickers for all the world to read, on oversized decals plastered on the rear windows of pickups, on flags flying over people’s homes, and even in the titles of current TV shows, albeit with some asterisks thrown in that do absolutely nothing to camouflage the ugliness of the language.

In the novel Where the Crawdads Sing, a young girl has just been taught to read by a friend. She exclaims in astonishment, “I wasn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full!” Not only do the kind of words we speak hold so much; they also determine much. I truly believe that not only do we become what we think about all day long, as philosophers contend: We come to resemble in spirit and character the words we choose to speak all day long.

“How can you speak good things, when you are evil?” Jesus asked. “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” In such wisdom the psalmist prayed: “Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.”