Sermon Tone Analysis

How to Talk Like a Christian

Sunday, August 8, 2021 | Ephesians 4:25-5:2

They say talk is cheap.

But the kind of talk Christ calls us to utter — kind, compassionate, caring discourse — is the rarest of commodities and the building block of true Christian conversation.

It’s a simple but reliable principle of human life: how people talk reveals a lot about who they are.

I used to translate American into “proper English” (and vice-versa) for a coworker years ago.

Lorry = truck

chemist’s = pharmacy

bonnet = hood

trainers = tennis shoes

Loo = restroom

motorway = freeway

lift = elevator

biscuit = cookie

crisps = potato chips

trousers = pants

pants = underwear

The way we talk can also reveal something about how committed we are to being Christian.

It has nothing to do with accent, or vocabulary or grammar.

It has everything to do with how we use this God-given gift of speech.

Do our words hurt, or do they heal?

Do they work in service to truth or falsehood?

Do our words build up, or do they tear down?

Such are the concerns we read about in Ephesians, chapters 4 and 5. It’s a collection of ethical advice and many of these instructions can help your congregation understand how Christians should talk to one another … and to others.

Quit Lying

Let’s see what the Scriptures say:

Everybody knows that!

We like to imagine ourselves as fundamentally trustworthy people.

But not so fast.

What about the infamous “little white lies” we tell, intended to not hurt another person’s feelings?

What about when the dental hygienist asks whether we really do floss twice a day?

What about the expenses we deduct on our tax returns?

Telling the truth isn’t always so straightforward and simple, is it?

Think about some examples of things we say or do that we quickly follow with explanations:

I'm only human.

Everybody does it.

I did what I had to do.

It’s only business.

If I don’t do it, somebody else will.

It’s a victimless crime.

I was only following orders.

Nobody’s perfect.

If we ever find ourselves advancing rationalizations such as these, we’re already in deep water.

Speaking the truth, always and everywhere, is one of the most important ways to talk like a Christian.

The only problem is, we fail that simple test almost every day.

Can any of us ever aspire to perfect truthfulness?

It’s part and parcel of our sinful nature to bend the truth from time to time.

Maybe the best we can hope for in this life is that those little ethical alarms keep going off, so we can hear them and keep that goal of truthfulness ever before us.

Be Angry, But Do Not Sin

Here’s something else chapter 4 says about how to talk like a Christian:

Wow.

That verse makes you sit up and take notice, doesn’t it?

“Be angry but do not sin.”

And this is the Bible speaking?

Yes, that’s exactly what it says.

The reason that statement sounds so strange is that most of us have been taught that anger is always un-Christian and ought to be avoided.

Many of us have been taught that the most important characteristic of a Christian is to be nice — to not make waves, to smile a lot, to be soft-spoken, and — truth be told — to be a doormat.

“Be angry but do not sin.”

You’d almost think the Bible considers it normal for Christians to get angry!

Here’s a little secret, just between us.

The Bible does consider it normal for Christians to get angry.

Nowhere, in all the many ethical instructions Jesus gives to his disciples, will you find the command to be “nice” — in the way Ned Flanders is unfailingly nice.

It’s a distortion of the New Testament to equate all anger with sin.

Even Jesus himself got angry.

There are more than a few Bible passages where he does.

Mark reports how Jesus gets angry at the Pharisees: “He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart.”

And why?

Because the Pharisees have been objecting to Jesus’ plan to heal a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath.

An even better-known example is Jesus’ cleansing of the temple.

He strides through the temple courtyard, overturning the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sell sacrificial doves.

In Mark’s version of the story, Jesus cries out, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?

But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17).

Them’s fightin’ words.

In John’s version of the story, Jesus is cracking a whip made of cords.

Nothing especially nice about that!

The difference in both these cases — compared to the situations in which we typically feel our anger boiling over — lies in the reasons for the anger.

Most of the time, when we find ourselves raising our voices and getting red in the face, it’s because we feel personally injured or abused in some way.

Somebody just squeezed into the parking place ahead of us.

A co-worker just fired off a flaming e-mail.

The person ahead of us in the express line has 16 items in the cart.

We feel injured, so we respond by getting angry.

Whenever the Bible speaks approvingly of anger, the object of the anger is not our own precious sense of injury, but rather injury or injustice inflicted on another person.

When Jesus gets mad at the Pharisees, it’s because that poor man with the withered hand may not get healed.

When he swings that whip of cords in the temple courtyard, it’s on behalf of all the poor, devout pilgrims who are getting swindled by a corrupt system.

The letter to the Ephesians moves on to supply some practical advice on how to manage anger, righteous or otherwise.

Don’t hang on to it obsessively.

That’s good advice for a marriage, as well as a social reform movement.

Those who live their lives driven by anger eventually pay a bitter personal price, as Frederick Buechner points out in this oft-quoted passage from his book, Wishful Thinking:

“Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun.

To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.

The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself.

The skeleton at the feast is you.”

[Harper & Row, 1973, 2.]

Talk That Builds Up

Ephesians 4 says something else about how to talk like a Christian:

The translation “evil” — as in “evil talk” — is actually a cleaned-up version, compared to the original Greek.

The word literally means something like “putrid,” as in rotting fish.

What sort of talk is worthy of that sort of description?

You may think that this passage must be about profanity or obscenity.

But if you read on, you’ll find the letter-writer has something very different in mind: