Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
WadhamsUCC home Other sermons
Sermon by Steve Smith Order of Service
July 6, 2008 Matthew 5:22
Several days ago, I was out walking in the woods, but found my enjoyment hampered by the clouds of mosquitoes and the slippery muck trying to pass itself off for a trail. As I turned around to head back, I was chiding myself for not having anticipated such conditions. And maybe you never do this, but I was calling myself a few unkind names as I slogged back to the car. So when I was out in the woods again on Friday, in much better conditions, I started wondering where some of those derogatory names came from. What did they originally refer to, and what creative wit decided they would make a wonderful application to the twit they wanted to mock or ridicule?
So let’s start with the word twit. Any thoughts on where that came from? It’s undoubtedly an abbreviated form of nitwit, but were did that word have its origins? This is pure speculation on my part, but I’m thinking that it compares unfavorably to a halfwit, seeing as how a nit is a tiny little bug that you can barely see. The wit of a nitwit, then, would scarcely be visible, resulting in someone who is a complete blockhead. Do you see how it goes? Let’s press on to the next word, then, a blockhead. Any guesses on how that word found its way into our language?
Shakespeare used this derogatory term: “Your wit, tis wedged up in a blocke-head.” The term comes from the wooden block that was carved into the shape of a human skull, and which was used to rest wigs and hats on when not in use. The implied message was that the person was not using their mind, and the direct message was that a blockhead had no more intelligence than an inanimate wooden block. Isn’t this fun? I also found myself wondering about the phrase “Loony Tunes,” which is really a modern expansion on the original word loony. Where do you suppose that came from? Loony is a shortened form of lunatic, which you can trace back through Old English and Old French to the Latin word lunaticus, or “moon-struck.” It dates in Old English to the 13th century and refers to someone who is affected with periodic insanity, dependent on the changes of the moon.
What about the word, wacky? In my day, it meant being silly, but how did it get started? It comes from British slang of the late 1800’s, and probably ultimately comes from the word whack, for a blow or a stroke, from the notion of being whacked on the head one too many times. I was pretty sure that this was the same case with a knucklehead, as in someone who has had a few too many knuckle sandwiches, but I couldn’t verify it in my research. What do you think about the word numbskull? Doesn’t it sound like it should fit into the same category, like someone who has used their head to absorb too many blows, or someone who has had to be hit repeatedly upside the head with a two by four in order to get something straight?
The other thought I had was that maybe it referred to animals that like to charge into each other, head to head, like rams. But I was wrong. It turns out a 1699 dictionary lists the word numskull, but the original spelling from 1697 had a “p” in it, as in numpscull. The Oxford English Dictionary hypothesizes that it comes from another insult word, numps, coined at the end of the 17th century, referring to a silly or stupid person, or a fool. Which brings us at last to the key word for today, a popular word in the Old Testament book of Proverbs, the word fool. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word has a much stronger meaning now than it originally had.
In its earliest days, it was missing the implication of insulting contempt that it now enjoys. In the 14th century it was a reference to the court jester or possibly an amusing lunatic that was kept on the payroll. It can also be traced back into an Old French reference to a madman, or into Vulgar Latin as a reference to the leather bag used in bellows, thus implying that the person in question was a windbag, or the ancient equivalent of our modern airhead. I’ll bet you thought that etymology, or the history of words, was dull and stupefying, didn’t you? All you have to do is find the right groups of words to study, like insults, and you can enrich your name-calling capacity in a matter of moments.
Now that we have all that sorted out, let’s go back and see what Jesus had to say about lamebrains. You have heard that the law of Moses says, ‘Do not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ But I say if you are angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you say to your friend, ‘You idiot,’ you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, and call them a fool, you are in danger of the fires of hell. That kind of spoils our fun, doesn’t it? Talk about your rigid legalists! On one page, Jesus is calling the religious leaders of his days a bunch of hypocrites, on another page a brood of snakes, and on yet another whitewashed tombs, but we’re not even supposed to call anyone a fool or an idiot.
Which I find even more puzzling when I remember the parable Jesus told where God even calls someone a fool. Like a petulant child, I want to say, “How come God gets to call people names and I can’t?” If I were to stop and think about it for very long, though, I’m pretty sure God’s answer would be, “Because I’m God and you’re not.” That, of course, would be the end of the sermon, and we still wouldn’t have any good answers to our burning questions on why Jesus had to make such a big deal out of name-calling. As we’ve already seen in the briefest of study results I shared with you, finding new and creative ways to insult people is a time-honored tradition going back, no doubt, to the dawn of history.
So why would Jesus put angry insults on the same level as capital crimes like murder? What is the big deal? In order to understand what Jesus might have been doing, it’s helpful to look at the larger context of his words. Going back a few verses earlier in the chapter, we find Jesus telling his followers that if they want to make it into God’s kingdom, they’re going to have to do much better at obeying the law than the vowed religious of their day, the Scribes and Pharisees. In other translations, it says that their righteousness will have to exceed the righteousness of the vowed religious. In today’s language, it would be like Jesus telling us that we would have to be better Christians than priests, or pastors, or nuns, or missionaries.
That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? So in order to illustrate what he meant by being more righteous or by being more obedient than the saints of our day, he went on to elevate name-calling to the same class as a capital crime, punishable by judgment. By now he’s got my attention, because I’m as guilty as anyone else when it comes to reacting to the foolish antics or irresponsible behavior of others by using derogatory and insulting terms. I might not use those words in their hearing, but I’m thinking about it, and now that I’ve done my research, I’m even more well-equipped to find a clever and witty way to put them down.
And therein lies the danger. Once we lower someone or a whole group of people to a lower status than us, we open the door to more than verbal violence. When our ancestors wanted to rid the land of the indigenous population so that we could fulfill our manifest destiny to rule from sea to sea, some clever wit came up with the slogan, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Since it was official government policy, the implied message was that it was alright, and even desirable, to commit cultural genocide on the various nations and tribes still living among us. While we might consider ourselves above all that, since we have never personally participated in anything so horrible, Jesus reminds us that we have probably been complicit in other forms of hatred and bigotry.
For a long time, it was socially acceptable to make various ethnic groups the butt of our jokes, whether it was Polack jokes, or redneck jokes, or jokes about the French-Canadians just over the border. It was customary to refer to entire people groups with some simple derogatory term, whether it was Wops, or Japs, or Chinks, and nobody thought much of it. Anybody who was different from us was an easy target, and the more different they were (usually because of their skin color), the more virulent and ugly the names were. At some level, Americans relaxed their political correctness after 9/11 so that we could focus some so-called righteous anger toward the perpetrators of this horrific attack.
Overnight, Arabic people who had been living peaceably among us became suspect, and we started referring to them as Ay-rabs and towelheads. Anyone who professes to be a Muslim is labeled as a terrorist or a sleeper in their grand scheme to overthrow our way of life. Out of our fear and anger at being attacked on our own shores, we have debased an entire group of people who are no more responsible for what happened on 9/11 than we are individually for what is happening in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Guantanamo Bay.
By holding up a mirror and showing us how ugly the name-calling can be, Jesus is pointing the way toward a righteousness that truly does exceed that of the vowed religious, because it can deliver us from evil. All of us can remember the teasing and taunting that we have experienced in life, and none of us can honestly say that it was a positive and uplifting experience for us. In fact, it can scar us for decades if it’s prolonged and persistent enough. I can still vividly remember being treated this way by my team leader at a hospice in Florida, and it happened more than ten years ago now. The name calling, the mocking, sing-song tone of her voice, it had a profound impact on me, and I still harbor hard feelings about it, no matter how many times I turn it over and ask God to forgive that person through me.
As we linger with those painful memories, they serve as reminders to us that mocking, insulting behavior leaves its mark on people. While they don’t do as much physical damage as sticks and stones, names do actually hurt us. While a broken bone can be healed up in a matter of months, an injured psyche can take decades to recover from verbal brutality and prejudicial behavior. The damage done to survivors of genocide lingers even longer, and is passed on from generation to generation. All we have to do is look at the beleaguered people on our Indian reservations, or to see the pain and anguish of the descendants of slave trafficking in America to verify that truth.
But still, isn’t our brief, angry reaction to slights or insults or encroachment a far cry from the mass slaughter of history books or even today’s international news? Of course it is; calling someone a name doesn’t turn us into mass-murderers. But it does something else to us that is so subtle it’s easy to overlook, or excuse: it sets us above other people so that we can feel superior to the fools, twits and blockheads who seem to grow in number with each passing year. By holding a mirror up to our behavior and our attitude, Jesus wants us to catch a glimpse of an unwelcome truth: that perhaps we are becoming more intolerant with each passing year.
Perhaps our quickness to anger is a sign to us of a need for deeper transformation, that God is calling us to live more peaceably with the people around us and even within ourselves with each passing year. Perhaps our flashpoint anger is our cue that we have met up with someone who needs our prayers for blessings, and not curses. And maybe, just maybe, that twit or blockhead in front of us is really Jesus in disguise, come to invite us to follow more closely the path to eternal life. May God grant us grace to tag along to see what God can do with someone whose righteousness exceeds that of the vowed religious.
Order of Service July 6 , 2008 Back to Sermon
"NC" refers to The New Century Hymnal, The Pilgrim Press (1995)
Welcome, Announcements, Joys and Concerns
A Candle for Peace NC #594 (vs 4)
Call to Worship
Leader: O God of mystery and providence, you called the founders of our country to make this pilgrimage to a foreign land, so that they might lay a foundation for freedom for generations yet to come.
People: As we make our pilgrimage through the days you have given us, strengthen us to lay a foundation for pilgrims yet to come.
Leader: Though they had little to go on beside their vision of a better life, they pressed forward toward your future for them.
People: Inspire our vision of a better life, so that we might be encouraged anew to press forward toward your future for us.
Leader: Though we cannot plan the course of our lives in detail, still we can be guided by the mysteries of your direction in our lives.
People: Help us to recognize the glimmer of divine guidance and the whispered echoes of Spirit’s call.
Hymn NC #18 Guide Me O My Great Redeemer
Responsive Prayer
Leader: We come before you today, O God, with love for our country and its heritage. We love the reminders of who we are as a nation, and what our forefathers and mothers believed. We treasure the stories of people like George Washington, Betsy Ross, the signers of our Declaration of Independence.
People: Teach us to honor those who have gone before us in order that we may live nobly in the present. Make us mindful of the sacrifices of others that allow us to celebrate our freedom and independence today.
Leader: We pray for our nation’s soul, dear God. Guard it against complacency, against disregard for the plight of others. Nurture and care for the good that is in our nation, and defend that good against all deterioration.
People: Give strength of heart and mind and soul to our president, our Congress, and all other officers of our government. Protect our armed forces. Stir up in its people a true interest in politics and a zeal for the right to vote.
Leader: Grant, dear God, that our national aim for all the years to come will be to channel your gifts of love and support to its citizens and to all peoples of the world.
Pastoral Prayer, Lords Prayer
Hymn NC #592 God of the Ages
Psalm 63:1-8, Ecclesiastes 7:1-10, Matthew 5:21-26
Sermon Of Twits and Blockheads
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #533 Children of God
Benediction
Leader: We thank you, God of abiding love, that you continue to touch us with your hand of blessing.
People: We thank you for the promise of a future where you will wipe away every tear and heal our every hurt.
WadhamsUCC home Sermon Other sermons by Steve
Webmaster: Bob Carroll Hosted by Westport Marina Updated 13 July 2008